The making of Hinducracy in Modi’s India
By Habib Siddiqui
BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata
Party) landslide re-election victory under Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves
no doubt that Hindutvadi divisive forces
have grown steadily like a cancer in the body politic of India that is beyond cure.
They have essentially nailed the coffin of Gandhi-Nehru-Azad’s ‘secular socialist’
India that many people admired, rather ignorantly. In practice, India has neither
been secular nor socialist. It has always functioned as an upper-caste Hindu
state.
Interestingly, the BJP and
its allies continue to call themselves democrats! But what the world sees under
the saffron skirt of Hindu nationalism is the ugly and stinking face of fascism,
fanaticism, communalism, racism and bigotry, and nothing to feel good about the
direction India is heading to.
After all, Hindutva, popularized by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923 and championed by the Hindu supremacist
organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – which is the mothership of the ruling BJP
and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar (RSS
Family), e.g., Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), Akhil
Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Bajrang
Dal, Bharatiya
Kishan Sangh, Shiv Sena and Hindu Sena – was explicitly influenced by European fascist movements.
Its leading politicians regularly praised Hitler and Mussolini in the late 1930s
and 1940s. It espouses that India is for Hindus only.
In this context, it is
worth quoting from M.S. Golwalker, the supreme leader of the RSS in 1940. In
his book “We, or Our Nationhood Defined,”
Golwalker wrote: “Ever since that evil
day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment,
the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting to take on these despoilers. The
Race Spirit has been awakening. In Hindustan, land of the Hindus, lives and
should live the Hindu Nation.…All others are traitors and enemies to the
National Cause, or, to take a charitable view, idiots.… The foreign races in
Hindustan…may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation,
claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential
treatment—not even citizens’ rights.” He continues: “To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the
world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at
its highest has been manifested here, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to
learn and profit by.”
It is clear that Hindutva likens
the Muslims of India to the “Jews of Germany,” and believes that Muslims - the followers of a "foreign religion"
– have no place in Hindu India. Unmentioned there is the fact that millions of
India’s Muslims are the descendants of people who converted to Islam to escape
Hinduism’s cruel, racist caste system.
Hindutva denies the
culture of inclusiveness that has been the hallmark of India's national
character for nearly a thousand years, and distorts India's very history of diversity
and religious influences. And examples are plenty for anyone interested in finding
such relics of civilization with distinct touches not just in places like Fatehpur
Sikri and Taj Mahal but everywhere in this land of people of so many races and
nationalities who mingled and came to call it their home - not just the Turks,
the Mughals and the Afghans, but also the Arabs and the Persians, the Portuguese
and the English, and their descendants.
Muslim rulers of India, unlike
western colonizers, have called
Hindustan their home; they lived and died there. Muslim history in India can be
traced back to the 7th century. And yet, all such essential elements
of Indian history are lost amongst the Sangh Parivar’s die-hard Hindu
communalists. Muslims are cast as treacherous permanent “outsiders.” It is a
constant refrain in the public speeches of BJP politicians, and finds utterance
in chilling slogans raised by rampaging Hindu mobs. For example: “Mussalman ka ek hi sthan—Kabaristan ya
Pakistan” (Only one place for the Muslim—the graveyard, or Pakistan). In
October this year, Mohan Bhagwat, the supreme leader of the RSS, said, “India is a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation)
and that “This is non-negotiable.”
The danger from Hindu
supremacists in India cannot be ignored when one ponders on the fact that none
of the white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups that are on the rise in the western world
today can boast the infrastructure and manpower that the RSS commands. It has 57,000 branches across the country with an
armed cadre of 600,000 fascist ‘volunteers’ at the grassroot level. It runs
schools in which millions of students are enrolled, and has its own medical
missions, trade unions, farmers’ organizations, media outlets, and women’s
groups. Recently, it announced that it was opening a training school for those
who wish to join the Indian Army. With financial support from wealthy Indians –
living at home and abroad, the RSS controls much of the media today. As Arundhati Roy recently said, more than four
hundred round-the-clock television news channels, millions of WhatsApp groups
and TikTok videos keep the population on a ‘drip feed of frenzied bigotry’. It
has also been able to buy out or crush its political rival.
Interestingly while the
Hindutvadis have not come to terms with a divided India in 1947, they still dream
of establishing Ram rajya not
just in the BJP-ruled India but over all those territories – from Afghanistan
to Bangladesh – that were once part of Akhand
Bharat. Since that wishful dream of the Hindutvadis is not going to happen
in a foreseeable future, the ruling BJP has taken certain steps that have
galvanized its rank and file only at the peril of the minority Muslims, which
are sure to widen the mutual mistrust.
Under Modi, vigilante
Hindus have increasingly perpetrated hate crimes
against Muslims, sometimes in an effort to scare their communities into moving away,
other times to punish them for selling beef. Cow
slaughter has been forbidden in many Indian states. Under the name of
protection of the cow (gaw-raksha) lynching
of Muslims has become a daily phenomenon in most parts of India with the
perpetrators often walking free. Under the name of Ghar Wapsi ("Back to
Home") “reconversion” activities, facilitated by the VHP and RSS, poor
Muslims, esp. the Dalits, are lured and/or forced to convert into
Hinduism. Hundreds of Muslim-sounding names of towns and cities have already
been changed to Hindu names. The site for the 500-year old historic Babri masjid,
demolished in 1992 by Hindu vigilante mob that was organized by the BJP and the
VHP (the World Hindu Council), has recently been transferred by the Supreme
Court to the Hindus where they are permitted to build a Hindu temple. The VHP
has also refused to back down on its past statements that it will turn its
attention to other mosques.
Muslims in India have
essentially become the most marginalized, disenfranchised and vulnerable of
people — a community without political representation, without a voice. While 1
in every 7 is a Muslim in India, only 27 Muslim MPs (representing less than 5%)
have been elected to the latest 17th Lok Sabha. Various forms of
undeclared social boycott are pushing Indian Muslims down the economic ladder,
and pushing them into ghettos. In Modi’s India, they must constantly reiterate
and demonstrate their loyalty to the Indian flag, and worse yet, chant the new
Hindu war cry “Jai Shri Ram” (Victory
to Lord Ram) that is sacrilegious to them! Lynchers and others accused in hate
crimes including mass murder have been rewarded with public office and honored
by ministers in Modi’s cabinet.
And as if all these
Hindutvadi measures are not enough in what is fast becoming Savarkar-Golwalker’s
India, this summer, Modi erased the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir
(J&K), India’s only Muslim-majority state, which had previously enjoyed some
form of autonomy over its own affairs. Right now, some ten million people there,
overwhelming numbers of whom do not wish to be citizens of India and have
fought for decades for their right to self-determination, are locked down under
a digital siege and the densest military occupation in the world. In preparation
for the dissolution of Section 35A of the Indian Constitution, by the night of
August 4, tourists and pilgrims were evacuated from the Kashmir Valley. Schools
and markets were shut down. More than 4,000 people were arrested that included:
politicians, businessmen, lawyers, rights activists, local leaders, students,
and three former chief ministers. Kashmir’s entire political class, including
those who have been loyal to India, was incarcerated without being charged. By
midnight, the Internet was cut and phones went dead.
Simultaneously, in the
eastern state of Assam, almost two million people have found their names
missing from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), sometimes because of simple
clerical errors, and risk being declared stateless, much like what has happened
to the Rohingyas of Myanmar. They will have to appeal now to a Foreigners
Tribunal that is built on prejudice against them. They are told they had a limited
time in which to prove that they are, in fact, citizens. Otherwise, they can be
rounded up into massive new detention camps and, ultimately,
deported.
Hindutvadi fascists have long
made the waters of the Ganges and Brahmaputra muddier with the 2011 Indian
census results that showed: Muslim population to rise from 13.4% in 2001 to 14.2%
in 2011; the state of Assam recorded that the Muslim percentage
in the state grew to 34.2% from 30.9%; Manipur was the only state to show a
fall of Muslim population in the same decade; J&K has the highest percentage
of Muslims with 68.3% while Bengal has 27% of the total population in the state.
The increase in Muslim population
is falsely
attributed by the Hindutvadis to the migration from neighboring Muslim countries,
esp. Bangladesh when it comes to Assam.
In the 2019 Indian
election, one of Modi’s central campaign promises
was that he’d get the NRC in shape and deal with the Muslim migrants in Assam
once and for all. Other BJP members have used dehumanizing language to describe
the Muslims there. “These infiltrators are eating away at our country like termites,”
BJP president and home minister Amit Shah said at an April rally. “The NRC is our means of removing them.”
Shah has openly said the goal is to deport those who are deemed illegal
immigrants.
Last month, Shah said the government will conduct
another count of citizens — this time nationwide. This could be used to clamp
down on Muslims throughout India, potentially triggering a huge humanitarian
disaster. It is worth mentioning here that many
rural residents in India don’t have birth certificates, land deeds or other
papers, and even among those who do, many can’t read them; a quarter of the
population in Assam state is illiterate.
Thus, the task to prove one’s nationality is a daunting one. The problem
is further compounded by the fact that names are often misspelled in various
documents due to clerical errors. While such mistakes had been viewed as
nothing more than a nuisance in the past could now render many stateless. Thus,
when Muslims are singled out to produce such documents one cannot but question
the very intent of the Modi government.
Recently, the
controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) was passed in both the houses of India’s Parliament. This
legislation turns religion into a means of deciding whom to treat as an illegal
immigrant — and whom to fast-track for citizenship. The bill is being sent to
President Ram Nath Kovind for his approval (he will almost certainly sign it),
and then it will become law. It has elicited diverse and
negative responses all over India. As of Friday, December 20, 2019, at least 14
lives have been lost since the first protests erupted. The protests have become
the biggest challenge yet to Modi and his bigoted agenda that aims at excluding
Muslims from citizenship rights. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom have all warned that this bigotry-ridden law could soon
turn into a humanitarian disaster of horrifying proportions. Some American lawmakers
called for sanctions against India.
In his
defense of the Bill, Shah angrily retorted in the Rajya Sabha that “Is desh ka vibhajan agar dharma ke aadhar
par Congress na kari hoti to is Bill ka kaam nahin hota (Had
the Congress not partitioned this country on the basis of religion, there would
have been no need for this Bill).” It is worth noting here that the same argument
has been lobbied against M.K. Gandhi by the RSS and Nathuram Godse who assassinated
him in 1948.
With all these Hindutvadi fascist
measures, can India still claim to be a secular state? The CAB legislation is
the proof that Modi’s Hindu supremacist project is not an anomaly, but an
enterprise that threatens the nation’s very foundations of pluralism and
secularism.
As noted by Sigal Samuel in a recent article for the
VOX, “At first glance, the bill may seem like a laudable effort to protect
persecuted minorities. It says Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and
Christians who came to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan won’t
be treated as illegal. They’ll have a clear path to citizenship. But one major
group has been left out: Muslims. That’s no coincidence.”
The CAB is only the latest measure the Indian government has taken to
marginalize its Muslim minority. This measure is particularly blatant in its
discrimination.
Those in
Assam whose names do not appear on the NRC have been told the burden of proof
is on them to prove that they are citizens.
Arundhati
Roy says, “Coupled with the Citizenship
Amendment Bill, the National Register of Citizenship is India’s version of
Germany’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws, by which German citizenship was restricted to
only those who had been granted citizenship papers—legacy papers—by the
government of the Third Reich. The amendment against Muslims is the first such
amendment… The Foreigners Tribunals and detention centers that have already
started springing up across India may not, at the moment, be intended to
accommodate hundreds of millions of Muslims. But they are meant to remind us
that only Hindus are considered India’s real aboriginals, and don’t need those
papers. Even the 450-year-old Babri Masjid didn’t have the right legacy papers.
What chance would a poor farmer or a street vendor have?” None!
It is not improper to surmise
that all these discriminatory and bigotry-ridden measures are giant steps taken
by a Hindu supremacist government towards converting a constitutional democracy
– albeit an illiberal one – into an unconstitutional Hinducracy. The question
is only how many more such steps India takes, and how fast to transform her
into a Hindu Rashtra?
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