Modi's Lockdown rendered many homeless
The Freedom House report made caustic and vitriolic comments on the status of Muslims in India under PM Narendra Modi, whose government and party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is wedded to pro-Hindu political ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism.
Two international reports recently have left Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in India grieving and complaining that global organisations probably have 'agenda' against it. V-Dem Institute in Sweden has downgraded India’s status from a ‘democracy’ to ‘an electoral autocracy' while another NGO, US-based Freedom House said, "India’s status declined from 'Free' to 'Partly Free' (as a nation) due to a multiyear pattern in which the Hindu nationalist government and its allies have presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population".
"The political rights of India’s Muslims continue to be threatened," Freedom House said and referred to Indian government and parliament enacting a new law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which grants 'special access to Indian citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants and refugees from neighboring Muslim-majority countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
It also said Muslim candidates notably won 27 of 545 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, up from 22 five years before in 2014. However, this amounted to just five percent of the seats in the Lower House of Parliament even when Muslims make up over 14 percent of the population.
"Do you want a truthful answer? It is hypocrisy. We have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval," Jaishankar told a TV journalist.
He also accused these organizations of inventing “their rules, their parameters, pass their judgements and make it look as though it is some kind of global exercise.”
But Congress lawmaker Rahul Gandhi, great-grandson of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, also said "India is no longer a democratic country.” Gandhi now represents in parliament the Muslim-majority Wayanad constituency in communist-ruled Kerala.
The value judgement from an opposition leader who lost two consecutive polls to Modi could be little far-fetched. But it is also true that over the years due to a plethora of reasons, electoral mandate being one of them, India is generally being pushed towards a pro-Hindu majoritarianism.
Even Kerala state’s communist Chief Minister P. Vijayan and Mamata Banerjee, who leads a regional party in eastern state of West Bengal, have tried to run extra mile to be on the right side of the majority Hindu voters.
Banerjee has visited more than half a dozen Hindu temples and chanted Hindu mantras in public places and election rallies on the day she filed her nomination for the March-April state elections. She has an image of a Muslim appeaser and has in the past kept herself away from Hindu rituals.
In Kerala, detractors of Marxist leader Vijayan say he tinted the red flag of the communists with the hues of saffron, the color of the pro-Hindu BJP flag.
Aiming not to offend Hindus in Kerala, which goes to the polls in April, Vijayan’s Marxist-led government dropped the idea of pressing for the entry of women of reproductive age into a popular temple against Hindu tradition.
It is argued that the communist regime is feeling the pressure of BJP's growing acceptability in Kerala, and antagonizing the Hindus may become politically detrimental to the communist parties.
One of the BJP's most chauvinistic leaders, Yogi Adityanath, a monk-turned-Chief Minister of India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, said it bluntly: "It is our success that Mamata Banerjee is now forced to chant Hindu Mantras. This is the change we talk about. This is New India."
A "new India" was the electoral promise of BJP and its leader Modi in 2014 and also five years later in 2019.
Many say the negative commentary made in Freedom House and V-Dem Institute precisely reflects the “new India” Modi and other leaders in his party envisioned.
But this pro-Hindu India has electoral sanctity, goes another argument.
While many could find such a description an odd phenomenon and path breaking, it is worth mentioning that in the 1990s itself when Indian politics entered an era of coalition regimes, veteran BJP leader L.K. Advani had floated the idea of a presidential form of government against the parliamentary democracy that India took up since its independence in 1947.
But there is another interpretation to the entire plot. Columnist Rana Ayyub, a Muslim, wrote in the Washington Post: "I see the Freedom House report as an important historical document. I hope it provides solace to the young and the restless and the disillusioned, even while our own people, our media, our popular figures decide to ignore the truth. Some seem to be reveling in the criticism like a badge of honor. But the world is indeed watching".
Minorities including Christians have been feeling the heat of a Hindu majoritarianism. Naga Christian leader K. Therie of Congress party said the BJP and its electoral success have pushed India towards “religious polarization.”
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| anti-CAA protest ! |
The federal Home Minister Amit Shah, a trusted lieutenant of PM Modi, said in 2019 that if his party returned to power in the general elections, it would be in office for next 50 years.
In 2019, the BJP made its pro-Hindu stance clear when it fielded Sadhvi Pragya Thakur who was accused of terrorism over a deadly bomb blast targeting Muslims in 2008. Another hardliner BJP leader Sakshi Maharaj, who has been re-elected from Uttar Pradesh, had said after 2019 polls he believed there would be 'no elections in 2024'.
However, what is of more importance in terms of getting India's polity corrected is not mere criticism of the Prime Minister and his governance. The two general elections - 2014 and 2019 - and numerous provincial poll results across the vast geographical space including Christian-dominated states like Nagaland show people have been giving thumps up to Modi’s style of governance - the Hindu majoritarianism or single party domination.
But what is of more concern is the reality today reflects gross ineffectiveness of the Congress party and other opposition parties.
BJP leader in West Bengal, Dilip Ghosh says, "Opposition parties do not have any concrete political issues and so they try to target us over non-issues....Across India, we have been winning and will continue to win because “people have reposed faith in BJP's honesty, nationalism and the last-man-delivery mechanism".
“People of my state West Bengal and India on the whole want development, they want good roads. Earlier, corruption delayed and bogged down all these projects. People are happy with what they got under Prime Minister Modi — the gas cylinders, rural houses and toilets". he said.
One major reason of concern is Congress party's and especially its leader Rahul Gandhi's 'consistent failure' to strike right chord with Indian voters.
"Rahul is a leader who often tries to sell fridges to Eskimos. My point is mere glib talks do not help. Indian politics is getting more complex by the day. To fight Modi now, first one needs to bring reforms and changes in the manner India's main opposition the Congress should function," says Ramakanta Shanyal, a political scientist in West Bengal.
He points out despite all criticism of the Modi regime vis-a-vis minorities, the BJP has been able to do business with Christians and Muslims.
"BJP has a deputy Chief Minister and a Christian in Nagaland. Recently, a prominent Christian leader Father Rodney Borneo of Calcutta Archdiocese joined the saffron outfit.
Rev B. Sangthanga of Mizoram People's Forum, a body of church leaders, has said in 2018 that the 'money factor' was possibly one reason that helped BJP find as many as 37 candidates including six women for the 60-member assembly.
It is altogether a different matter that in Mizoram, the BJP could not make a mark electorally.
In other words, Indian political history has certainly shed its status quo under BJP rule.
But it goes without saying that world's largest democracy is waiting for an effective mechanism to fight Modi and his brand of politics where there is a good synthesis of Hindu ideology, development and possible use of money and state power.
The BJP has securely affirmed its place, it is Indian parliamentary democracy which is at crossroads.
In other words, has Indian political history certainly shed its democratic status quo under BJP rule ? How soon will India a political mechanism to challenge the situation?
(memory tale)
It was on March 21, 2019; BJP decided to field Amit Shah from Gandhinagar
New Delhi, Mar 21, 2019
Finally, by anointing the mercurial leader and BJP national president Amit Shah as the party candidate for the prestigious Gandhinagar parliamentary seat, the saffron outfit and perhaps even the RSS gave a clear message to veteran LK Advani that it is time for forced retirement.
It is ironical that it was Mr Advani, the 'Loh Purush' - who had co-founded the BJP along with the illustrious colleague Late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been denied a party ticket.
For someone who had joined the RSS at the age of 15 in undivided India, the 21st of March 2019 has come as a day full of paradox. The missive from the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo and also the RSS leadership in Nagpur was clear - that his time in the party and also in electoral politics - if not in Indian Parliament - is over.
It is also like the proverbial coming back of the hands of the clock. The 91-year-old old warhorse had faced similar fate on June 9, 2013 when the Sanghparivar and the saffron party had given the nod to name Narendra Modi - Advani's onetime protege as the BJP's campaign committee chairman.
Mr Advani has been winning Gandhinagar seat since 1998.
Mr Advani creditably nurtured the second generation of party leaders - the likes of Modi himself and also Pramod Mahajan and Sushma Swaraj. It was through his sheer leadership punctuated with the branding of Hindutva and the exploits of the Ram Temple movement that the party could form a government at the centre which once had just two lawmakers in the Lok Sabha.
Ironically, he missed the first 13-day government of Vajpayee. In 1998, he was in the cabinet. It was Mr Advani as the the Deputy Prime Minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee - he had defended Mr Modi more than once for the 2002 anti-Muslim mayhem.
Known as a hard task master and with a hardliner Hindutva leader personality, Mr Advani also proved his political flexibility when during the alliance between the Left, BJP and the National Front - he had safe guarded well the BJP's distinct identity. The onetime BJP 'mascot' used to regularly dine with CPI-M satrap Harkishen Singh Surjeet and the then Prime Minister V P Singh - along with the likes of Madhu Dandavate and George Fernandes to discuss government policies and strategies.
But the BJP's basic constituency vis-a-vis three controversial commitments - Article 370 for Kashmir, Uniform Civil Code and Ram Temple remained paramount in his mind.
It may not be appreciated by the new generation leaders, but it certainly goes to the credit of L K Advani that the BJP did not quite give up those three contentious issues at any point of time. In the later stages into power after 1999 - the BJP did make a climb down often and go into occasional compromises.
Then came building the alliance and Mr Advani cemented a strong partnership with parties like the Shiv Sena, TDP, AGP, Akali Dal and the rest. Even National Conference was part of the NDA-I.
It may be mentioned under Vajpayee, he became the Home Minister of the country - the tenure by no standards was extra ordinary but Mr Advani's imprint on the running of the NDA-I regime was impeccable. It goes without saying that the former Deputy Prime Minister did make a big difference to Indian politics.
If history of Indian politics around 1990s is written – the veteran Advani would always be remembered for bringing about major transitions.
"What BJP is today, is due to the immense organizational ability of Advani. It is rather unfortunate that he had virtually vanished from the main political arena," said a BJP leader in moist eyes as news of Amit Shah becoming new BJP face from Gandhinagar went viral on television.
The opposition Congress took a dig at Mr Modi. ''First, Mr Lal Krishna Advani was forcibly send to the 'Marg Darshak Mandal', Now even his Lok Sabha seat was taken away from him". In June 2013 when in Goa conclave, the BJP made Narendra Modi the saffron party’s chairman of election committee – a prelude to BJP’s PM-candidate – it was almost a “forced retirement” for the 'Loh purush'.
The book ‘Ayodhya: Battle for Peace’ published in 2011 sums up succinctly, - “It goes without saying that Ayodhya movement and L K Advani’s name would go synonymous with each other”.
And in a way Advani, not the usual run-of-the-mill politician, had found his “political roots in Ayodhya’s Ram”.
That was 1990s…but 29 years later the story has changed. It became more of melancholy.
ends
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