Modi’s anti-Muslim rhetoric taps into Hindu replacement fears that trace back to colonial India

Archana Venkatesh,

 Clemson University

 THE CONVERSATION
Fri, May 17, 2024 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is popular but divisive. Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images


The world’s largest election is currently under way in India, with more than 960 million people registered to vote over a period of six weeks. Spearheading the campaign for his Bharatiya Janata Party, incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi is spending that time crisscrossing the country, delivering a message he hopes will result in a landslide victory for the Hindu nationalist party.

He is a popular figure but also a divisive one. Modi’s speeches are drawing heat for their anti-Muslim rhetoric. At a campaign rally on April 21, 2024, he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators.”

He later doubled down on these remarks, suggesting that if India’s largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, came to power, the wealth of Hindus would be snatched and given to communities that “have too many children,” a seemingly lightly veiled reference to Indian Muslims.


Such language represents a fear that Modi and the BJP have stoked many times before: that Muslims will become a numerical threat to India’s Hindu-majority population.

Modi has since claimed that he did not explicitly target Muslims in his speech, but his words – widely recorded and disseminated – have certainly been taken that way.

To some onlookers, the rhetoric is an indication that not all is well in the BJP campaign as it seeks to secure a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament. By appealing to the party’s Hindu base, the argument goes, Modi is trying to counter voter apathy in the face of high youth unemployment and rising economic inequality.

As a historian of public health in India, I believe it is important to shed light on the specific origins of anti-Muslim rhetoric and how it fits long-standing fears of Muslim population growth and the erosion of the Hindu majority in India.
Fears of a Muslim takeover

Demographic fears in India are tied to political and administrative representation and have been since the days of British colonialism.

In 1919, the British granted Indians limited franchise; Indian legislators were allowed to create policy in certain fields, such as health care and education, but not on law and order.

After the 1931 census, Indian leaders – mostly Hindus, but also some Muslims – and British officials began to express concern about the seemingly rapid rate of population growth in India, which at the time was increasing by over 1% annually.

These leaders, in common with similar efforts around the globe, began to push new birth control methods toward Indian women.

But to successfully induce large numbers of women to embrace family planning practices, colonial officials and Indian administrators had to contend with the fact that Indians of all religions were suspicious of birth control propaganda.

These suspicions stemmed from cultural practices shared by both Hindu and Muslim communities that informed women’s status in society, including child marriage, the seclusion of women and polygamy.

Policies that tried to interfere with the traditional lives of Indian women, including birth control, were widely considered harmful instances of colonial control.
Role of British colonizers

While the British used these cultural practices and suspicions to suggest that all Indians were responsible for rapid population growth and associated poverty and hunger, Hindu nationalist groups created a different narrative. These fringe groups, which emerged as a political force in the 1930s, popularized the idea that practices encouraging population growth were particularly prevalent among the Muslim population.

At the same time, there were growing tensions between the Indian National Congress party and the Muslim League, which was founded in 1906 but began to demand a separate homeland for Indian Muslims in the late 1930s.

Divisions existed in Indian society prior to British rule. By classifying Indians into categories based on caste and religion, however, British colonial rulers made these identities and divisions more rigid, pitting various communities against one another.

Communal tensions allowed the British to uphold the idea that without the control and surveillance of colonial rule, Indians were incapable of self-government and liberal democracy.

Though the British left the new nation-states of India and Pakistan in 1947, increasing Hindu-Muslim tensions after partition continued to inform family planning propaganda in independent India.

Hindu nationalists had expected the creation of a single nation with Hindu majority rule. As such, they saw the creation of Pakistan – a homeland and nation-state for South Asian Muslims – as a massive failure of the Indian freedom movement and a loss for India.

Additionally, post-partition leadership and administrators in India were for the most part drawn from Hindu men and some women, since the majority of educated and elite Muslim classes ended up in Pakistan.

As a result, colonial-era perceptions of Muslims continued to inform the way Indian policymakers and administrators created and implemented health care and education policy. In particular, preexisting perceptions of Muslim hyperfertility in Indian policymakers’ minds became more deeply entrenched with partition.
Population control programs

As India launched its first major population control program in 1951, administrators at all levels of governance assumed that uptake of birth control would be lower in Muslim communities than Hindu communities.

In actuality, the factors that influenced the rate of uptake of IUDs, oral contraceptives and tubectomies in postindependence India were governed more by geography – whether women lived in rural or urban areas, and were from the country’s north or south – and class status.

Since 1951, population control has been one of the major goals of Indian policymaking as part of a program to reduce poverty and improve public health. But the continued assumption that Indian Muslims are unwilling to participate in population control practices has led to the public perception of Islam as “superstitious” or “backward.”

Research has shown that Indian Muslim communities across the nation have felt the effects of this stereotyping, especially in northern India. Muslims reported being disproportionately targeted by population control initiatives. These concerns among the Muslim community intensified with the aggressive forced sterilization program carried out by the Indian state under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s.
Using religion for politics

Modi’s party, the BJP, was formed in 1980 but failed to win significant elections until the 1990s.

Several people on top of the 16th century Babri Mosque five hours before the structure was completely demolished in December 1992. Douglas E. Curran/AFP via Getty Images

The main focus of their organizing in the 1980s and 1990s was to demand the demolition of a mosque commissioned by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya, traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Hindu deity Rama.

In tandem with this campaign, the BJP promoted fears of Muslim demographic dominance in India, tying demands for “taking back” the land on which the Babri Masjid was built with fears of a Muslim majority.

But such fears are unfounded. Despite the Muslim minority growing from 11% in the mid-1980s to 14% today, their representation in Parliament has actually declined, from 9% in the mid-1980s to 5% today.

Since the BJP came to power in India in 2014, party leaders have relied on the historic fears of imagined Muslim population growth to help them win successive elections at the state and national level and pass legislation such as the Citizenship Amendment Act, which discriminates against Muslims. BJP leaders have accused Muslim men of forcibly converting Hindu women to Islam through “love jihad,” a conspiracy theory that Muslim men deceptively seduce Hindu women to increase their demographic strength.

Modi’s latest statement referring to “those who have too many children” is the latest iteration of a long history of Hindu demographic fears – and has proven to be a lasting one.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Archana Venkatesh, Clemson University

SEE   HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

India's parliament has fewer Muslims as strength of Modi's party grows

SHEIKH SAALIQ and KRUTIKA PATHI
Updated Wed, May 15, 2024

MALAPPURAM, India (AP) — Preventing Muslim migrants from gaining citizenship. Revoking the semi-autonomy of the country’s only Muslim-majority region. Building a Hindu temple where a violent mob razed a mosque.

These were political triumphs for Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the past decade, burnishing his reputation as a leader who prioritizes the interests of India's Hindu majority. For India's 200 million Muslims, they highlight their waning political power in the world's largest democracy.

Tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India are not new, but they have gotten worse under Modi, whose ruling Bharatiya Janata Party touts a Hindu-nationalist ideology. And with Modi seemingly on the cusp of a third five-year term, the outlook for Muslim politicians — and citizens — is bleak. This year's vote will be decided in June.

It's not just that Modi has ramped up anti-Muslim rhetoric in campaign speeches. Ever since the BJP began its rise as a political force in the mid-1980s, the proportion of Muslim lawmakers in parliament and state legislatures has shrunk.

Muslim representation has fallen in the ruling BJP, and in opposition parties, too.

When Modi assumed power in 2014, the outgoing parliament had 30 Muslim lawmakers — and just one was a member of the BJP. Muslims now hold 25 out of 543 seats, and none belong to the BJP.

India has gone from being a country where Muslims were largely marginalized to one where they are “actively excluded,” said Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a political scientist and historian at New Delhi’s Ashoka University.

“Without representation, you are unable to ask the state for resources and articulate the kind of needs the community has in order to progress, whether its education, jobs, health or basic infrastructure,” Mahmudabad said.

In the mid-1980s, Muslims accounted for 11% of India's population, and had 9% of seats in parliament; today they are 14% of the population and have less than 5% of seats in parliament.

Nine out of 10 members in parliament are Hindus, who make up 80 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion.

The political representation of Muslims at the state level is only slightly better. India has more than 4,000 lawmakers in state legislatures across 28 states and Muslim lawmakers hold roughly 6% of these seats.

A government report in 2006 found Muslims lagged Hindus, Christians and people from India's lower castes in literacy, income and access to education. They have made some gains since then but are still at a significant disadvantage, according to multiple independent studies.

Under Modi's decade in power, the BJP has enacted or proposed various laws that Muslim leaders consider discriminatory.

— Some states ruled by the BJP passed laws restricting interfaith marriage as a way to address what they claim is the threat posed by Hindu women marrying Muslim men and then converting.

— One state formerly ruled by the BJP banned girls from wearing hijabs in school. (The law was reversed after the BJP lost political control.)

— The BJP is advocating a common legal code that would affect some religious practices, by changing some laws in India's constitution that deal with matters ranging from marriage to divorce and inheritance.

Violence against Muslims is commonplace, and Modi has said little to deter it. Muslims have been lynched by Hindu mobs over allegations of eating beef or smuggling cows, an animal considered holy to Hindus. Their homes and businesses have been bulldozed, and their places of worship set on fire.

At recent campaign rallies, Modi has said Muslims are “infiltrators” and that they “have too many children.” Without evidence, he has accused the BJP's main rival, the Congress party, of planning to redistribute the wealth of Hindus to Muslims.

Many Muslims believe Modi is stoking divisions as a campaign strategy.

“They're keeping the Hindu-Muslim issue hot... so they remain enemies,” said Mehmood Bhai Khatri, a 64-year-old Muslim voter from Modi's home state of Gujarat, a BJP stronghold.

“But who will speak up? If they do, they may be picked up (by police) or a bulldozer will be sent to their homes," said Khatri. "So out of fear, nobody speaks up.”

Not one of India's 28 states has a Muslim as chief minister; the BJP and its allies have chief ministers in 19 states.

In Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state and where roughly 16% of residents are Muslim, just 7% of state lawmakers are Muslim.

As the BJP becomes ever more powerful, India's opposition parties have become increasingly reluctant to nominate Muslim candidates for fear of alienating Hindu voters, experts say.

While Hindus overwhelmingly rally around the BJP, Muslims have struggled to form a cohesive political agenda, in part because of how diverse their community is across sects, ethnicity, language, customs, and culture.

“There is no way to unite this very heterogeneous group of people, without making Islam the common denominator,” said Mahmudabad, the political scientist.

But when political parties don't field enough Muslims, issues important to them — from minority rights to hate speech — hardly ever get debated in the parliament, said Muhammad Saad, a cab driver in New Delhi who is Muslim.

“If there are no Muslims in the parliament, who will raise the voice for us?” Saad questioned.

Analysts say the BJP has made some outreach efforts to Muslims, such as seeking their help as volunteers and at the polls. But the party fielded just 13 Muslim candidates combined in the 2014 and 2019 elections, and none were elected.

The BJP denies discriminating against Muslim people.

The party "permits accommodation of all kinds of people, not just the Hindus,” said M Abdul Salam, the only Muslim out of some 430 BJP candidates running for parliament this year. If he wins, he will become the first Muslim member of the BJP since 2014 in India’s lower house of the parliament.

Salam, who is from the Muslim-majority southern city of Malappuram, said Muslim politicians from other parties could gain power by joining the BJP’s alliance in parliament.

But Muslims from other parties are struggling simply to stay in office.

S T Hasan, a Muslim member of parliament from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, was not chosen by the Samajwadi Party to seek reelection. He was replaced by a Hindu politician, a decision he believes was made to appeal to Hindu voters, who are the majority in the region he represents.

Hasan said political parties, especially those that consider themselves secular, need to make more room for minority candidates.

“Fair representation of every community is good for a democracy," he said. “But what we are seeing is that one community is being gradually pushed to the corner.”

___

Pathi reported from New Delhi and Ahmedabad.

___

SEE   HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

India’s illiberal election

BJP ARE ARYAN SUPREMACISTS

Maleeha Lodhi 

DAWN

Published May 13, 2024 

GENERAL elections are underway in India in a phased voting process that concludes on June 1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widely predicted to win a third term in office. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) goal is for its National Democratic Alliance to secure 400-plus seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha — a target encapsulated in the party slogan abki baar 400 paar. There are doubts this can be achieved, especially as voter turnout has been lower in the first three phases of the election compared to 2019. Election outcomes are never foregone conclusions.

In the 2019 election, the BJP won 303 seats. With its allies, its support in the Lower House swelled to 352 seats. This time, it hopes to win 370 seats on its own as it does not see the opposition as much of a challenge. Although the party secured comfortable parliamentary majorities in the previous two elections to enable it to rule unhindered in its decade in power, well over half the electorate did not vote for BJP. In 2019, BJP polled around 38 per cent of the popular national vote; in 2014 it was less than 31pc. This indicates its real support, even though the first-past-the-post electoral system gave it an outsized share of Lok Sabha seats.

The BJP has benefited from a weak, divided and regionally fragmented opposition. The Congress party looks jaded and bereft of new ideas. Leading an opposition alliance called ‘INDIA’ (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), Congress has been unable to capture the public imagination or offer a credible alternative to the BJP’s narrative. It has struggled to counter Modi’s extravagant claims about his government’s achievements. Positive developments on India’s economic front have not all resulted from the Modi government’s policies but are entirely attributed to him by the BJP’s vigorous social media and propaganda campaign.

Modi’s carefully cultivated strongman image has yielded significant political dividends. This rests on claims of providing firm and incorruptible leadership, achieving economic development, benefiting India’s poor, and ‘connecting’ to ordinary people. More importantly, the Hindutva agenda is woven into his cult of personality, with the party portraying Modi as the champion and saviour of Hindu nationalism. His anti-Muslim actions and rhetoric have served to burnish those credentials.


The outlook for India-Pakistan relations is troubled if Modi returns to power.

Modi has sought to mobilise electoral support on his economic record, welfare and infrastructure projects, as well as his Hindu supremacist ideology. Even though rising unemployment and the soaring cost of living will weigh on voters’ minds, Modi is seen by many Indians to be a better bet on the economy than his opponents. He enjoys the backing of big business, for which the opposition accuses Modi of pandering to India’s super rich. In campaign speeches, Modi has repeatedly stated he has enhanced India’s international standing and helped to attract more foreign investment. He has even cast the election to be about making India “a major world power”.

The opposition’s attack on Modi has principally focused on his authoritarian conduct and policies. Certainly, democratic backsliding during his 10 years in power has been substantial and far reaching. This, his critics say, has turned India into an illiberal democracy. Judicial independence and media freedom have been undermined and civil liberties eroded. Modi’s government has muffled dissent, intimidated the media, harassed and incarcerated journalists and mounted extraordinary pressure on the opposition. Two state leaders allied with Congress, Arvind Kejriwal and Hemant Soren, have been jailed on dubious corruption charges. In March, the Congress party’s main bank accounts were frozen. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was expelled from parliament last year on the charge of defamation for ridiculing Modi’s name. Later, his jail sentence was suspended by the supreme court.

Modi has pledged to push ahead with his Hindutva agenda, for which the party points to several actions taken by the government, including construction of the Ram temple, a citizenship law disadvantaging Muslims, and revocation of Article 370 of the constitution, which gave Jammu and Kashmir special status. Modi has used toxic anti-Muslim rhetoric throughout his election campaign. He has called Muslims “infiltrators” and said they “have too many children” in an effort to scare Hindu voters into believing Muslims will eventually outnumber them. He has repeatedly accused the Congress party of favouring Muslims and conspiring to transfer wealth “looted” from Hindus to Muslims. The BJP has also posted videos containing these allegations. This prompted the Congress party to petition the election commission to act against this violation of election laws.

But nothing has deterred Modi from using inflammatory, Islamophobic language to demonise Muslims. He has even said his target of winning 400 seats is to prevent Congress from reviving Article 370 and putting the “Babri lock” on the Ram temple. Declaring “India is at a crucial juncture in history”, he has said the choice is between ‘vote jihad’ or ‘Ram Rajya’. He went further to say, “In Pakistan, terrorists are threatening jihad against India, and here the Congress people have also declared to ‘vote jihad’ against Modi, asking people of a particular religion to unite and vote against Modi.”

Along with Muslim-bashing, Pakistan too has been targeted by Modi’s incendiary rhetoric. He has contrasted his muscular approach in dealing with terrorism allegedly emanating from Pakistan with the infirm response of his predecessors. “Earlier, weak governments used to send dossiers to Pakistan after terror attacks, but we hit terrorists in their homes” — a reference to India’s air strikes on Balakot in 2019. Describing his government’s “new India policy of looking an adversary in the eye and speaking the truth rather than resorting to stealth,” he has warned of launching cross-border strikes in response to terror attacks on India. He has also ridiculed Pakistan by saying “a supplier of terrorism is now struggling for flour”.

This makes the outlook for Pakistan-India relations a troubled one if Modi returns to power. Some may dismiss Modi’s Pakistan-bashing as election politics, but words have consequences. Moreover, anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim themes are a part of his and the BJP’s deeply held beliefs. This may not preclude some form of post-election India-Pakistan re-engagement, but it is unlikely in the near term to lead to any significant movement toward normalisation of ties.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2024

Modi won’t go down sans a fight

Jawed Naqvi 

DAWN

Published May 14, 2024 

MOST neutral observers are sanguine that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is winning a third term. Let’s put it this way, it isn’t a foregone conclusion that Mr Modi is losing the election, which crossed its fourth of seven phases on Monday, despite compelling pointers he could. The assumption of his defeat is based on broad headcounts computed by seasoned analysts.

On the other side is the unceasing clamour from ‘Modi channels’, amid communal dog-whistling by anchors, that he is winning 400-plus seats. That’s a two-thirds majority with which we are told he would change the constitution. Adding weight to the claim of a Modi victory is psephologist Prashant Kishore’s assessment that the BJP could become the single largest party in West Bengal and Odisha. He says the BJP could make inroads for the first time in Tamil Nadu or at least its vote share in the state would hit double digits. That’s good news for Modi, but Kishore does have a mixed reputation at predicting poll outcomes.

We can discuss both sides of the claim and draw our respective conclusions. The question is, would Mr Modi accept defeat if it does come calling. Or would he take the Donald Trump route on losing, whipping up a terrifying frenzy instead? There are many variables to say just what the verdict could be at the hustings, not least because publishing the findings of exit polls is officially banned until the last vote is cast. Exit polls would come on June1, although there can be no certainty about their veracity either. That’s what experience shows. Thus, we must wait for the outcome till June 4.

But let’s hear from Yogendra Yadav, veteran former psephologist who recently became a member of Rahul Gandhi’s cross-country unity march for democracy. He said in a TV analysis on Monday after visiting key battleground states and noting the relatively low voter turnout that Mr Modi was likely to lose. “Election karvat le raha hai,” he said. (The election is changing course.)

The phrase is commonly heard on YouTube channels watching the elections from the ground, a far cry from regular TV channels that have already declared a victory for Mr Modi. Bunching the states in the fray including those that scored the maximum for the BJP in 2019, Yadav estimated those where Modi could lose a few, not least because there was no way to increase the tally from 100 per cent wins as in Gujarat or Rajasthan and Haryana or Delhi. The bulk of Mr Modi’s losses are expected from Maharashtra and Bihar, he says. Maharashtra is where Modi ditched the Shiv Sena and split the former ally to form a state government with the BJP. Now Shiv Sena leader Udhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, both members of the INDIA opposition alliance, are campaigning with doubled energy on the plank of defeating the ‘ghaddaars’, or traitors.


Would Modi accept defeat if it does come calling? Or would he take the Donald Trump route, instead?

With Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, the BJP secured 41 of 48 seats in Maharashtra in 2019. Without Thackeray, Yadav sees a loss of 20 seats at least. Bihar is where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar quit an alliance with Lalu Yadav’s party to go back for a third or fourth time to the BJP. Kumar is lampooned widely as ‘dal badloo’, a party hopper. The BJP and Kumar had 39 of 40 seats in Bihar last time. Yadav says they could lose 15.

Mr Modi’s tally could shed 10 in today’s Congress-ruled Karnataka where BJP had 26 of 28 seats in 2019. In West Bengal and the northeastern states, estimates Yadav, the BJP could be losing 10, which is at variance with Kishore’s reading. In Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand where the BJP held 69 jointly, it could lose 15. The BJP could gain five seats from the cluster of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Telangana, and 10 from Andhra where it has an alliance with a local party. All told, Modi and allies at current reading could land 268, four short of majority.

Let’s consider both scenarios, Modi winning or losing. Lending weight to Yadav’s estimates is Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of best-selling biography of Modi at the start of his Delhi sojourn. In an article last week, he said what could hurt Modi. “Reduced turnout, near absence of the famed cadre of the Sangh Parivar, lacklustre campaign of Modi, and the need to resort to … divisive and communally polarising spiel — all suggest the Modi script of 2024 has gone awry.” Despite Yadav’s headcount, if Modi does go on to win cleanly then he has won a third term. What if he loses?

According to Parakala Prabhakar, author of a best-selling Modi critique and husband of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the BJP could try to steal the elections. It has too many skeletons in the cupboard waiting to tumble out. Besides, 2025 is the centenary year of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. They wouldn’t want not to be in power to celebrate. Yet, analysts also claim it is the RSS that may be dragging its feet on handing a great victory to Mr Modi. The dice, says Prabhakar, is loaded and potentially spiked. “The regime has eliminated the role of the supreme court in the selection and appointment of the election commissioners. Whether the government-appointed election commissioners will do the regime’s bidding is a matter of speculation or suspicion.”

Mr Modi moved to freeze the bank accounts of the Congress party, crippling its putative challenger. He put two chief ministers in prison. But for the supreme court giving interim bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the Modi regime had rendered the opposition’s onslaught that much weaker.

“There is every likelihood that the present dispensation would, therefore, try to do everything to steal this election. Unlike the earlier general elections, the present election is unlikely to conclude with the conclusion of polling on June 1 and declaration of results on June 4.”

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2024

Indian elections

Modi’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is raising concerns of violence.

Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry 

DAWN

Published May 12, 2024 

THE Islamophobic rhetoric being employed by Narendra Modi for this election campaign has become shrill. Pakistan has nearly always been an electoral issue in India.

However, this time, it is Indian Muslims who are bearing the brunt of the Indian prime minister’s hate speech. Speaking in Rajasthan last month, he called Muslims “infiltrators” and said they produce too many children. In Gujarat, where, as chief minister, he had overseen the massacre of Muslims in 2002, he accused the Congress of seeking to “loot” India’s wealth and redistribute it among Muslims, and of organising a ‘vote jihad’ against his leadership. Later, he accused the Congress and Muslims of stealing Hindu wealth and property.

Modi’s inflammatory rhetoric was followed by the BJP’s campaign video portraying Muslims as outsiders who plundered India’s wealth. As concerns grew about communal violence, the video was removed. These allegations are a sequel to Modi’s public referencing of earlier conspiracy theories of ‘love jihad’ (Muslims forcibly converting Hindu women and marrying them to increase the Muslim population) or ‘land jihad’ (capturing land to construct religious structures and gaining control of India’s territory). Concerns that his rhetoric might incite further violence against Indian Muslims are increasing.

Ordinarily, since Hindus are in a majority in India, it may be difficult to question the rationale of creating a Hindu state. However, two observations are in order. One, the expansionist designs of the cherished Hindu state seek the creation of an Akhand Bharat, a Hindu right fantasy, which would violate the territorial integrity of Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, as per a map displayed in the new parliament building. This is not acceptable to the aforementioned independent states.

Two, though the creation of a Hindu state should not translate into discrimination against minorities, regrettably this will be the case. The works of French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot illustrate how Muslims, 14.5 per cent of India’s population, are grossly underrepresented in bureaucracy, the judiciary, police, and legislative organs. They are second-class citizens.

The Muslim-majority area of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmiri is also being subjected to demographic engineering. The destruction of the centuries-old Babri Masjid by Hindu zealots in 1992 and the construction of a temple in its place has set a precedent that might be followed for other historic mosques. This contrasts sharply with the UAE’s gesture of permitting a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi.

Modi’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is raising concerns of violence.

Analysts are also pointing out the fascist tendencies of the BJP regime, a steep decline in democratic values, and a departure from the moorings of pluralism and secularism on which modern India was founded. In her book The Incarcerations, Alpa Shah contends that Modi’s India is using its national security apparatus to incarcerate ordinary citizens for their dissenting views. Commenting on the book, Arundhati Roy stated that this was about criminalisation and incarceration of dissent itself.

Strikingly, the Modi regime has also used art and culture to project the Hindutva philosophy. Kunal Purohit’s book H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars shows how Hindutva pop stars and influencers are being used to spread the message of Hindu supremacy and create acceptance of Hindutva’s core beliefs.

Apart from this, Modi is playing on his government’s accomplishments: making India the world’s fifth largest economy; the construction of 50,000 kilometres of national highways; boosting India’s mi­­litary spending; bu­­ilding Vikrant, In­­dia’s first domes­ti­­cal­­ly built aircraft carrier; and the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing.

His prospects of winning a third term have been bolstered by a weak opposition. Despite the formation of the Congress-led 37-party INDIA coalition, there is no real challenge. What has bolstered his outreach is India’s enhanced global standing. In his book Why Bharat Matters, S. Jaishankar presents India as a leader of the global south and makes a case for the rejuvenation of India as a civilisational state.

There are some lessons that Pakistan could learn from India’s electoral process. One, despite the large scale of India’s elections (969 million registered voters; 1m polling stations) and the use of electronic voting machines, election results are largely accepted without much ado. Two, there is no caretaker government, as the incumbents become ‘caretakers’ in a way, and refrain from announcing major policy decisions or sanctioning expenditure for development schemes.

If Modi wins a third term, he is likely to maintain his pro-Hindutva, anti-Muslim, and hegemonic attitude towards regional countries, particularly Pakistan.

The write is a former foreign secretary and chairman of Sanober Institute Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2024

Indian (ANNEXED) Kashmir voters prepare for historic election amid political shifts

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA

May 12, 2024 
By Muheet Ul Islam

Kashmiri polling officials carry Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) ahead of the fourth phase of voting of India's general elections in Srinagar, May 12, 2024.

SRINAGAR —

Voters in Indian Kashmir are going to the polls from May 13 through May 25 to select their representatives in the Indian parliament. Local media reports claim that more than 1.7 million voters will determine the outcome for 24 candidates competing for the Srinagar constituency.

This is part of India’s ongoing general elections, which began in late April and run through June. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third term.

The vote comes nearly five years after the Modi government stripped Muslim majority Kashmir of its semiautonomous status. Kashmir's loss of its special status in August 2019 led to the division of the region into two federal territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. Both areas are ruled by the central government and have no legislatures of their own.

Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is not contesting the elections in Indian Kashmir. News reports say the move signals ongoing discontent over the 2019 move and there is speculation BJP candidates would have lost.

HINDUTVA OCCUPATION FORCES

Indian paramilitary soldiers arrive to guard a venue for the distribution of Electronic Voting Machines and other election material in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, May 12, 2024.

Residents say the Indian general elections are important for the people of Kashmir. They maintain that the Modi government has robbed the region of rights that were guaranteed to them under the Indian constitution.

“What’s left for us locals? Our land is given to non-locals, jobs are taken by them too, our electricity is sent to other Indian states and everywhere you look, high-ranking officials are not from Jammu and Kashmir,” Fayaz Ahmad Malik, a resident, told VOA during a rally at Fateh Kadal, an area in Indian Kashmir’s capital.

“I have not voted in my life ever before but today I feel it is necessary because we are suffering. Modi and his party want to destroy us, but we have to stop him,” he said.

Locals listen to the former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir at an election rally organized by his party, the National Conference, in the Palpora area of Srinagar. (Credit: Wasim Nabi for VOA)

Modi visited Indian Kashmir in March for the first time since the region lost its special status. Amid tight security, he told a crowd that had packed the Bakshi Stadium in the region's capital, Srinagar, that Kashmir has seen significant changes and prospered since his government acted in 2019.

Muzamil Maqbool, a political analyst and host of the podcast show Plain Talk, told VOA that the Kashmir valley is expected to see record-breaking voter turnout. He said the situation on the ground has changed since 2019.

“The government of India always wanted to increase the voting percentage here because for years and decades Kashmir has witnessed a massive boycott,” Maqbool said. “The government of India, political institutions and others always wanted Kashmiris to vote irrespective of which candidate will be chosen and the government of India has highly succeeded in that,” he added.

Mehbooba Mufti, President of Peoples Democratic Party, addresses a gathering at Faiteh Kadal area of Srinagar. (Credit: Wasim Nabi for VOA)

Maqbool believes people want to cast their vote and support their candidates openly. He added that young people, first time voters especially from central Kashmir, south and north Kashmir, are very eager to show the power of voting in democracy.

Gul Mohammad Khan, a resident of Srinagar, said that he expects a strong candidate who would dare to challenge Modi and other Hindu leaders openly.

“In the past no Kashmiri politician supporting India has shown such courage. They instead have aligned themselves with New Delhi’s interests,” Khan said. “I hope for a leader who can make Indian leaders dance to his tune,” he said.

Professor Noor Baba, another political analyst, told VOA that competition in Kashmir will be primarily between two regional political parties; the National Conference, or NC, and the People’s Democratic Party, or the PDP.

Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi is a candidate of the National Conference in Srinagar. He is considered as a strong candidate because he has a huge support of his voters spread across the region. (Credit: Wasim Nabi for VOA)

Modi's ruling party, Baba said, chose not to contest voting in Kashmir despite significant investment it made in reshaping politics in the area. India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, or INC, is supporting the NC.

“In Srinagar, the NC candidate has the support of his voters while the PDP candidate has also gained sympathy as he has been a victim of post-2019 politics,” Baba said.

Nasir Aslam Wani, the National Conference provincial president, and Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, National Conference’s candidate for Srinagar, were contacted for comments but their phones were switched off.

“NC has an advantage due to its longer historical presence and stronger social base.

There is a perception that PDP played a role in the political rehabilitation of the BJP in the politics of the erstwhile state by forming a government with it as its alliance partner. It played a key role in facilitating BJP’s reshaping politics in Kashmir,” Baba added.

Altaf Bukhari, businessman turned politician, has emerged as a strong political figure after he formed his own party known as Apni party. (Credit: Wasim Nabi for VOA)

Just before the ruling BJP revoked Kashmir’s special status in 2019, the party withdrew its support from the PDP, ending their alliance. The PDP is now a bitter rival to Modi’s party.

The “2024 elections in Kashmir are different from previous ones. Expectations are high, especially among the youth, who seek candidates to truly represent them in the Indian parliament,” said Tariq Ahmad Bhat, a senior youth leader of the People’s Democratic Party, to VOA.

“Previously the public viewed elections negatively, believing that voting would not make any difference. Today I can see the change. People have realized that undeserving candidates cannot be governed anymore,” Bhat added.

Jammu and Kashmir has been a disputed Himalayan region between India and Pakistan since the countries gained independence from British rule in 1947. Two wars have been fought between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Both nations govern the territory under its control.

 

Modi’s Policies Give Fresh Lease Of Life To Dravidian Movement In Tamil Nadu – Analysis

Location of Tamil Nadu in India. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

 May 12, 2024  

By P. K. Balachandran

The North-South and Brahmin-non Brahmin divides have again come to the fore but Tamils hope that the INDIA alliance will blunt the BJP’s brutal centralization and divisive Hindu nationalism.       

The on-going elections to the Indian parliament are being fought in various States and Union Territories of the country on the basis of a multiplicity of issues varying from State to State. 

These issues could be caste, farmers’ problems, unemployment, oppressive taxation, political malfeasance, dictatorial tendencies, excessive centralization, financial discrimination against the better performing States, social justice and communalism, especially persecution of Muslims.    

In Tamil Nadu, where polling for all the 39 seats was held in the very first phase on April 19, the over-riding issue has been the danger posed to the time honoured values of the Dravidian movement which stands for federalism, secularism, equalitarianism and justice for the socially and educationally backward classes, Dalits and tribals.

All parties in Tamil Nadu, barring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi, are sworn to protect and foster the ideology of the Dravidian movement which is under an unprecedented threat posed by the BJP which is identified with brutal centralization and an extremist brand of political Hinduism encapsulated in the term Hindutva.   

Not all parties in Tamil Nadu brand themselves as “Dravidian”. The Congress and the Muslim League in Tamil Nadu are not Dravidian parties per se, but they are as committed to the ideals and goals of the Dravidian movement as the branded ones. In fact, no party which is not committed to the ideals of the Davidian movement can strike roots in Tamil Nadu’s soil.

Indeed, some outstanding leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League are considered as part of the Dravidian pantheon. The outstanding examples are K. Kamaraj of the Congress and Mohammad Ismail of the Muslim League. 

Kamaraj is hailed by the Dravidian movement as Perun Thalaivar or the Great Leader of the Tamils. In return, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee recognises the founder of the Dravidian Movement Periyar E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker as one of its earliest State level Presidents, and has a portrait of his in the party office in Chennai. 

Mohammad Ismail is recognised as a votary of the Tamil language. In fact, in the Constituent Assembly in 1947, Ismail had advocated the recognition of Tamil as one of the official languages of the Union of India. After partition in 1947, Ismail became an ally of the Congress but later shifted to the Dravidian parties as these were more accommodative of the Muslims. The Tamil Nadu Muslim League has since been promoting the Muslim interest within the Dravidian ideological framework.

The BJP, on the other hand, is seen as the quintessential anti-thesis of Dravidian ideals, a representative of the upper caste and upper class Hindus. More precisely, it seen as representing the Brahmins, against whose historic hegemony the Dravidian movement has been fighting since the 1920s. No wonder then that today, the staunchest supporters of the BJP and the RSS both in Tamil Nadu and among Non-Resident Indian Tamils are Brahmins.   

While the Dravidian movement considers Sanatan Dharm as an ideological justification of the caste system, the Brahmins and North Indian Hindus see Sanatan Dharm as a set of liberal values even considering caste as division of labour rather than a system of invidious social system of discrimination based on birth. But the Dravidian movement thinks that this interpretation is utterly false.  

When the Tamil Nadu Sports Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin said that Sanatan Dharm has to be eradicated, Hindus in the North and Brahmins in the South condemned him. The Congress party’s silence on the issue was exploited fully to show the Congress and the DMK as anti-Hindu. 

However such a portrayal did not wash in Tamil Nadu because Tamils do not identify Hinduism with the Sanatan Dharm. Tamil Hinduism, which is what is practiced in Tamil Nadu by the masses, is egalitarian, based as it is on the Bhakti cult. 

The North-South and Brahmin-non Brahmin divide came into the open when a leading Carnatic vocalist, T.M.Krishna, was given the Madras Music Academy’s top award of Sangeetha Kalanidhi and was to preside over the next annual session of the Academy. Through his  concerts, speeches and writings, Krishna had been castigating the caste biases in the Carnatic music echo-system. He has been including Islamic and Christian themes in his concerts. But the Brahmin lobby saw Carnatic music as Hindu music.     

While the non-Brahmins hailed Krishna’s efforts, the Brahmin lobby which has a stranglehold over the Music Academy, flew into a rage. Musicians Ranjani and Gayatri withdrew from the December Music concerts. They accusing Krishna of singing the praise of Dravidian movement’s founder, Periyar Ramaswamy Naicker, who, according to them, proposed the “genocide” of Brahmins repeatedly and referred to Brahmin women using “profanity”.

Other Brahmin artistes followed suit with condemnation of Krishna. North Indian BJP leaders and North Indian Youtubers interviewed the dissenters to portray Krishna, the DMK and even the Congress as anti-Hindu.

Issues such as Sanatan Dharm and T.N. Krishna were incubating in a climate of a Centre-State/North-South conflict over the devolution of finances from the Centre to the States. Tamil Nadu and other Southern States had been protesting against the Central government’s policy of punishing them for performing well on the population control and economic fronts. The finances devolved to them did not at all match their contribution to the Centre’s kitty, while it was the other way round in the case of the poorly performing North Indian States. Leaders of the Southern States even sat on a dharna in New Delhi to draw the attention of the Modi regime.   

The other issue that was bothering Tamil Nadu and other South Indian States was the proposal to redefine parliamentary constituencies based on a new population count. That could lead to the further dilution of the South’s representation in parliament as the Southern States’ populations are under control in contrast to those of the Northern States.

The explosion of Youtube news and discussion outlets have made all these issues, including the ones thrown up in the on-going elections, subjects of comment and debate involving the common man, experts and politicians. These programs have started getting lakhs if not millions of viewers of all classes as the smart phone is ubiquitous these days.

So far, these Youtube outlets have been encouraging only sober debate not slanging matches which are standard fare in the mainstream TV channels. 

What one observes in the new media in Tamil Nadu is the attempt to highlight the history and culture of the Tamils with the help of scholars and litterateurs. A new pride in being a Tamil is being instilled, pride which had dimmed in the balmy era of Gandhi and Nehru. The secular nationalism and the accommodative ethos of Gandhi and Nehru had eroded aggressive Tamil nationalism.

In the face of the challenge from the intolerant and oppressive nationalism based on Hindutva, promoted by Modi’s BJP, there is a revival of aggressive Tamil nationalism on the Youtube 

However, the new Tamil nationalism is not separatist. It is based on an explicitly stated hope that under the Congress-led INDIA alliance, the ideals of the Indian constitution will be reinstalled as the guiding star of modern India and that India’s unity will be re-established and strengthened. 

Hence the wish in Tamil Nadu that the DMK-led INDIA alliance will sweep the current elections winning all the 39 seats and help rein in or replace Modi’s BJP at the Centre.

P. K. Balachandran is a senior Indian journalist working in Sri Lanka for local and international media and has been writing on South Asian issues for the past 21 years