Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 May 2021

The West Bengal Assembly Election, 2021: Lessons for Opposition Unity

Abstract

An analysis of the results of the recently held assembly elections in West Bengal reveals that if secular parties had joined hands, the BJP would never have gotten as many seats as it did in the elections. This has significant implications for opposition unity in the rest of the country.

Introduction

In the recently held assembly elections in West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) impressively won a third term, winning 213 seats out of 292. But the other big story of the election was the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from 3 seats in the assembly in 2016 to 77 seats in 2021. The Indian National Congress (INC) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), traditionally the two strong parties in West Bengal, both drew a blank. Essentially, the BJP supplanted both the INC and the CPM as the principal opposition party.

Analysis

But if the Congress and Left had not opposed the TMC, the BJP may not have even won as many seats as they did. The “Left” in West Bengal also includes, in addition to the CPM, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the All-India Forward Bloc (AIFB). From a philosophical/ideological standpoint, all five parties – the TMC, the INC, the CPM, the RSP, and the AIFB – are opposed to the BJP. But because they did not cooperate with each other and reach a pre-poll seat agreement, the BJP was able to rise as spectacularly in the assembly as they did, at the cost of the INC and the CPM.

What the Left parties and the Congress achieved in the recent elections in West Bengal was to be “vote katuas” (i.e., spoilers) for the TMC and thereby helped the BJP. They even succeeded in ensuring the loss of Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the TMC, in the Nandigram constituency. The table below shows how this happened in West Bengal. In 42 of the 77 seats that the BJP won, the margin between the winning BJP and the losing TMC was less than the number of votes polled by the third place party, be it the CPM, the INC, the RSP, or the AIFB.

Implications

The implication is that the BJP can be defeated soundly anywhere in the country if the opposition parties come together. That this is the case was also made clear by Prashant Kishor, the election strategist of the Trinamool Congress, who said in an interview to NDTV following the TMC’s win that in his view, there is a limit to religious polarization. He said that in his analysis of elections in India over the last 70 years, what he has observed is that the most you can gain by religious polarization is 50%-55% of the votes of the community you are targeting, whatever community that may be – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, or any other. He said that this is what has happened in West Bengal as well. Bengal has around 70% Hindus, and the BJP won a vote share of 38%, which is 54% of the Hindu population. This is a very significant observation. It tells us that if the 45%-50% of the population who do not believe in religious polarization unite, they can always defeat the BJP.

The BJP won 77 seats in West Bengal when the secular parties of West Bengal were not united. But in 42 of the seats in which they won, the margin of victory was less than the number of third-place votes. What this tells us is that if the TMC and the other parties had united before the polls, the BJP would only have won 35 seats out of 292, making them quite a minority. This would have been beneficial to all involved. The TMC would have been happier without a dominant opposition party, and the Left parties and the INC would all have representation in West Bengal politics and a share of power, in sharp contrast to their current plight, in which they have been made completely irrelevant.

This observation has significant implications for opposition unity in the rest of the country. The BJP can be beaten, but opposition parties need to unite to ensure their own political relevance.

If they do not unite to defeat the BJP, they will be annihilated.

Data

Sunday, 1 March 2020

2024 (With Apologies to George Orwell's "1984")

2024 (With Apologies to George Orwell's “1984”)

Abstract

The following passage is taken almost verbatim from George Orwell’s “1984,” pages 12-17, with just a few details edited to make it relevant to India in the 21st century. It is scary how well Orwell’s template fits India in 2020. I have deliberately kept my changes to a minimum, mostly involving changing of names and adding small details to give the passage a 21st century Indian context. Otherwise the words are exactly as George Orwell wrote them 71 years ago.

It should be noted that 1984 was a political satire of its times; and so is this recasting of this passage into 2020s India. It is what I think can happen in a few years time, and therefore is a projection of the future. But I think any reasonable person who sees the news headlines realizes that this projection is not far from the truth. Many of our friends and relatives already think like the protagonist below and, as the Delhi violence and its aftermath are showing, many more are daily getting brainwashed and converted to hate. Ministers spew hate in public; ministers garland murder convicts; and there is little outcry and little action, legal or otherwise, taken against such offenders. So I do not think what you will read below is far from what can happen in a few years.

The Two-Minutes Hate

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Onkar Singh worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the center of the hall, opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate…

The next moment, a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Nehru, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little saffron-clad woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Nehru was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the evil Congress, almost on the same level as Bade Bapu (Big Daddy) today, and then had engaged in anti-national and counter-Hindu activities for all the 17 years that he ruled Bharat. This was before the birth of Bade Bapu, who would never have allowed a traitor like Nehru to become PM of Bharat one day.

The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Nehru was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of Bharat’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the country, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other, his descendants and followers were hatching conspiracies; perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of foreign paymasters; perhaps even — so it was occasionally rumoured — in some hiding place in Bharat itself.

Onkar’s diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Nehru without a painful mixture of emotions. It was the handsome face of a Kashmiri Pandit, with the traditional white cap of the Congress — a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable …

The telescreen changed from Nehru’s face to that of his great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, who was delivering his usual venomous attack on the doctrines of the Bharatiya Janata Party (or, as it was known in 2024, just “The Party,” as all other parties had been outlawed) — an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, perhaps less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Bade Bapu, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Pakistan, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the idea of India had been betrayed — and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained shuddh Hindi words; more shuddh Hindi words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life.

And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Rahul’s specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Pakistani and Chinese armies — row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull, rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Rahul’s bleating voice.

From time to time, other hated critics of the regime, such as Kanhaiya Kumar and Arvind Kejriwal, had their faces projected on screen, and a harsh voiceover shouted, “Bharat tere tukde honge, insha Allah, insha Allah!” (“India, you will be torn to bits, Allah willing.”) At another point, faces of familiar opponents of the party and enemies of Hinduism, such as Shashi Tharoor and Mamata Banerjee, and intellectuals such as Amartya Sen, Raghuram Rajan, and Romila Thapar were flashed with a loud shout from the telescreen background, “Desh ke gaddaaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko.” (“Shoot the traitors to the country.”)

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheeplike face on the screen and the terrifying power of the Pakistani and Chinese armies behind it were too much to be borne; besides, the sight or even the thought of the Nehru-Gandhi family, to which both Nehru and Rahul belonged, produced fear and anger automatically. They were objects of hatred more constant than China or Pakistan.

But what was strange was that, although Nehru and his followers were hated and despised by everybody; although, every day, and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreens, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were; in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him and his philosophy. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under the directions of the Congress were not unmasked by the Thought Police. The Congress commanded a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Congress leaders and others like Kanhaiya Kumar were the authors and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as the book. Neither The Brotherhood nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddeningly bleating voice that came from the screen. The little saffron-clad woman had turned red, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. The dark-complexioned girl behind Onkar had begun crying out “Swine! Swine! Swine” and suddenly she picked up a heavy Shuddh Hindi dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Rahul’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment, Onkar found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds, any pretense was unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

…

The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Rahul had become an actual sheep’s bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of the Chinese soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his submachine gun roaring and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the smiling face of Bade Bapu, be-spectacled, white-bearded, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Bade Bapu was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Bade Bapu faded away again, and instead the slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:

GARV SE KAHO HUM HINDU HAIN!

(“Say proudly that you are a Hindu”)

ACCHE DIN AA GAYE HAIN!

(“Good days have arrived!”)

DESH KE GADDAARON KO, GOLI MAARO SAALON KO!

(“Shoot the traitors to the country”)

HINDI HINDU HINDUSTAN, MULLAH BHAAGO PAKISTAN!

(“Hindustan (India) is for Hindi-speaking Hindus! Muslims, go to Pakistan!”)

But the face of Bade Bapu seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone’s eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little saffron-clad woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like “My Saviour!” she extended her arms toward the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.

At this moment, the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmic chant of “Mo-di!… Mo-di!… Mo-di!” over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the “Mo” and “di” — a heavy, murmorous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Bade Bapu, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.

Saturday, 23 November 2019

The Cost of Hindu Appeasement

The philosopher and essayist George Santayana famously wrote that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I fear I myself may have been guilty of this sin (forgetting the past) recently, when I wrote in a message to my friends, reacting to the SC verdict on Ayodhya, that I hoped that this verdict would take the biggest grievance and most potent weapon of the BJP for the past 30 years, viz., the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, out of their armoury, and force them to focus on issues of governance.

That in itself is not an unreasonable hope: after all, the BJP’s rise and rise began only with the Ayodhya agitation, which started in 1989, under the leadership of LK Advani, and culminated in the Supreme Court verdict of 9th November, 2019. This far-reaching verdict granted the entire land where the Babri majsid had once stood to the Hindus, even ordering the Central Government to build a Ram Temple at the spot (why this is a concern of the Honourable SC is a mystery). So to hope that the granting of the main demand of the Hindutva movement of the last 30 years might give us some respite is not illogical.

The Demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992

However, in hoping so, I had clearly forgotten what history has taught us happens when you appease those who bully and oppress. The classic case of failed appeasement, of course, is that of the Nazis before World War II.

I am thinking of how, in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler first annexed the Saarland, then the Rhineland, then enforced the “Anschluss” (union) with Austria, then annexed the Sudetenland, and finally invaded Czechoslovakia, before the rest of Europe decided that there was no end to his territorial ambitions, and declared war on Germany when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.

It is important to note that at the September, 1938 Munich agreement between Germany, Italy, France, and Britain to force Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland to Germany under the threat of imminent war, Hitler grandly announced that the Sudetenland was his “last territorial claim” in Europe.

And yet, within six months of the agreement, Germany had invaded and conquered the rest (the “rump") of Czechoslovakia. And in six more months, Hitler had invaded Poland.

It was the invasion of Czechoslovakia that told Britain and France that Hitler could not be trusted, and that the Munich agreement was a failure and a mistake.

What was the lesson of Munich for posterity? The lesson was that appeasement of an aggressor does not work; on the contrary, appeasement only encourages the aggressor to indulge in more aggression.

Fast forward to 2019.

Why did the SC rule in favor of the Hindus in the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute? And why were so many people “relieved” at the verdict?

There may be many reasons for this. It is hard for us to fathom why the Hon. SC delivered such a verdict. But certainly we can speculate on why many people have welcomed the verdict. In my view, one of the main reasons is the implicit (and often explicit) threat of violence in the event of a verdict that might be unfavourable to the Hindus. In today's hyper-aggressive posturing by the Hindu right, it does not take an Einstein to figure out that had there been an adverse verdict (for the Hindus), there could have been widespread violence, bandhs, and lynchings all over the country. Rivers of blood could have flowed in communally sensitive areas. This is not an idle speculation: Advani's “Rath Yatras” were accompanied by extensive rioting and killing. Whatever other motivations the SC might have had, this concern could not have been far from the surface, and the Court would have been very aware of the heavy responsibility that lay in its hands as it drafted the verdict. It is not inconceivable that the need to maintain public peace and order trumped other aspects of the case.

Several commentators have pointed out some of the puzzling and unexplained aspects of the verdict. For instance, Brinda Karat writes in ndtv:

The basic question which is troubling is that after the judgement accepts that the demolition of the mosque in 1992 and the placing of the idols in 1949 were “serious violations of the law,” why does the court reward the serious violators of the law by handing over the entire land to them? Are there any overwhelming issues which would support such a decision? The judgement does not provide any convincing reasons.

The judgement acknowledged, though perhaps inadvertently, the political dimensions. One of the reasons given while rejecting the Allahabad High Court judgement mandating division of the disputed land into three equal parts was that it "will not restore a lasting sense of peace and tranquility." Therefore, one can assume that the Supreme Court believed one of the aims of its judgement must be to "restore a lasting sense of peace and tranquility." This would be based more on a political assessment rather than one based on legal issues.

… the fact that the Supreme Court itself recognised that the demolition of the mosque was illegal and that placing of the idols in 1949 was a desecration of the mosque, and still gave the verdict in favour of those who believed it was originally a temple made the verdict seem contradictory. The judgment clearly states: “The destruction of the mosque and the obliteration of the Islamic structure was an egregious violation of the rule of law.”

Yet, the very act of placing the idols and destroying the mosque has been used to suggest that Muslims did not have exclusive possession of the inner courtyard of the disputed land, thus making the case stronger for Ram Lalla.

One cannot escape a sense of deja vu at the implicit expression of hope that Karat highlights in the judgment, because it reminds us of King George V's words when Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact in September 1938 with Adolf Hitler:

After the magnificent efforts of the Prime Minister in the cause of peace, it is my fervent hope that a new era of friendship and prosperity may be dawning among the peoples of the world.

"I've Got It!" British PM Neville Chamberlain proudly displays the Munich Agreement After Returning to the UK

And so, just as Europe unsuccessfully appeased Hitler to prevent a war from starting again in Europe in 1938 (it was, at the time, less than 20 years since the end of the Great War, aka WWI) and the big powers in Europe decided to cave in to Hitler's demands to prevent a second World War, we in India seem to have caved in to the demands of the Hindu right in Ayodhya to prevent further violence. Thirty years of strife and violence are enough, the Hon. Justices appear to have decided.

But just as appeasement of a bully did not work in Europe in 1938, it will not work in India in 2019.

Just as Munich was preceded by so many conquests, such as the return of the Rhineland and the conquest of Austria, Ayodhya, too, was preceded by several aggressive moves by the Hindu right — "Sabarimala; the public lynching of Muslims since 2015; the anti-“Love Jihad” campaign; the Citizenship Amendment Bill; the National Register of Citizens; vigilante “gaurakshak” groups to monitor cow slaughter; and many others. In every one of these instances, we have appeased the aggressors. Just as the Nazis had the support of a majority of Germans, the Hindu right has the support of a majority of Indians in these actions. But even those who do not support the Hindutva agenda do not oppose it lest it makes the Hindu right more agitated. I read an anecdote just the other day where someone said that they were travelling in an autorickshaw when a right-wing gang on motorbikes shouted “Jai Shri Ram” at them. The auto driver said “Jai Shri Ram” in return and counseled the lady passenger travelling with him that it is better to say what these gangs want than be dead or in the hospital. Violence works.

Time Magazine's Cover in 1938. Adolf Hitler was Chosen "Man of the Year" for the Munich Agreement

Just as Munich only encouraged Hitler to further invade Czechoslovakia and Poland, eventually leading to WWII, Ayodhya will only encourage the Hindu right to repeat its Ayodhya formula — in Kashi, Mathura, and hundreds more places where the Hindu Right believes mosques were built after destroying temples. And it will encourage the Hindu Right to continue its anti-minority agenda in other ways as well. The Citizenship Amendment bill and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) bill are slated for the next legislative session of Parliament, and it will not be long before the BJP will bring in a Uniform Civil Code. The idea behind these bills is the same: the reduction of the Muslim to a second-class citizen.

You can delay the inevitable, but you cannot stop it by appeasement.

It took a six-year destructive war that killed millions, a complete and humiliating defeat for Germans, and the total destruction of Germany, to change Germans from their virulent racism to the liberal democracy that they are today. One can only hope that it will take far less than that to change India from where it is now. Otherwise the future looks bleak.

We are staring into a bottomless abyss as a nation. We are clearly not the nation of Nehru, Gandhi, Patel, and Rajaji and, in fact, I would not be surprised if, in the near future, we formally become a “Hindu rashtra.” I have already written about my expectations of the future and the disaster such a step will bring to India. A Hindu India will be the mirror image of a Muslim Pakistan, and we all know what has happened with our neighbour in this aspect. This is a country that was unable to respect one of its own citizens, a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Abdus Salam, for the only reason that he belonged to the Ahmaddiya sect, which is a persecuted sect of Islam in Pakistan. Because of this, Dr. Salam was forced to leave Pakistan for England, and died in Oxford. Is this the sort of country we aspire to be?

Supporters of this regime might question the parallel with WWII Germany: after all, we are not engaged in a military life-or-death war of global domination, they might say. Why or how might we be utterly destroyed as Germany was in 1945? But destruction of a nation need not be physical or political. It can also be economic and moral. We are already seeing many signs of the decay of this country in the last five years.

One look at the trajectory of the economy in the last three years should be proof enough. You may wonder what this has to do with the right-wing policies of the government. There are two connections. One is that people of talent stay away from reactionary governments such as these. It is a well-known and oft-commented fact that the Modi administration seems to have an obvious lack of talent and ability. Its ministers seem to have been chosen not because of any exceptional ability demonstrated in the past but because of their servile disposition and their singular ability to carry out their master’s orders without question.

The other is the supreme leader’s own distaste for any feedback that might be even remotely critical of his government or policies. The last five years have seen highly qualified people in the finance ministry, such as Drs. Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian, Viral Acharya, and Urjit Patel leave the administration because the government could not handle constructive criticism from them. People of ability cannot function under such constraints. A policy is either right or it is wrong; a wrong policy cannot be certified as right simply because the supreme leader thinks it is right or cannot handle criticism. But in the current political climate, such disagreements are not tolerated.

The net result is disastrous policies such as demonetization and GST, which are the primary causes of the tailspin the Indian economy is currently in. After stoutly denying any crisis in the economy, the government has finally at least admitted that there is a crisis today. But the crisis is far deeper than the government dares to admit. The real GDP growth rate might be far lower than the 5% or so that is currently estimated to be the current annual growth rate. Unemployment is at its highest level in decades. Things are so bad that the government is refusing to release its own reports, be they of unemployment or consumer spending. Even the measures the government is implementing are flawed, as the government is focusing on supply-side measures, whereas the problem is one of demand. This is again indicative of the incompetence in the government and the inability of this government and its leaders to listen to contrarian positions even at a time of crisis.

Another reason why economic performance must suffer under this government is that the very raison d'etre of the government has changed. In 2014, the Modi Sarkar was ostensibly elected to bring in “vikas” (development). By 2019, that promise lay in tatters, and yet the Modi Sarkar was voted to power with a stronger mandate. Clearly the vote was a vote of confidence in the government's majoritarian policies, and in turn, Mr. Modi has rewarded his constituency, the Hindu right, by instituting the most hard-line Hindutva policies to date, with promises of further upping the ante.

When a government is going to be judged on its majoritarian policies, it is obvious that economic policies and performance on economic metrics will take a backseat. So, if anything, we should expect the economy to slide even further.

This is just the beginning of a snowballing crisis. The ghosts of those who died waiting in the demonetization queues in November and December 2016 have come to haunt the Indian economy, and they will take down those who did not die along with them. This story does not have a happy ending.

So, utter destruction of a country need not be by war. It can also be the complete economic destruction of a country, the hollowing out of its productive capacity, the resulting virtual slavery, and the selling out of the country to foreign powers. It is this reality that is staring us in the face.

And when all of it finally happens, it will be because we appeased Hindu majoritarianism for the last five years and continue to do so.

Sunday, 1 September 2019

When Bigotry and Stupidity Combine – The NRC Mess in Assam

When Bigotry and Stupidity Combine — The NRC Mess in Assam

Abstract

The story of the NRC in Assam is that of two competing streams of bigotry — one of Assamese chauvinism and the other of Hindu chauvinism. It had its roots in the Assam movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which ended in the misbegotten Assam Accord of 1985. One of the provisions of the Assam Accord was the fateful decision to expel foreigners from Assam. Successive governments since 1985, both at the Centre and at the State level, including Rajiv Gandhi’s own government, had wisely refrained from actually implementing the provisions of the Assam Accord. But the BJP and the AGP have, through their vote-bank activism (the former for the Hindu vote-bank and the latter for the Assamese vote-bank), opened the Pandora’s Box of strict implementation of the Assam Accord, with unpredictable consequences for the peace and stability of Assam, not to mention the profound humanitarian costs of declaring millions of people as noncitizens — people who have known no other country than India from the time of their birth.

This entire push to implement the Assam Accord in letter and spirit is irresponsible, cynical, and heartless; and now the crows have come home to roost, with the National Register of Citizens mentioning in its second count that 1.9 million people in Assam have been identified as foreigners and will have to be expelled from India.

The verdict has pleased no one. The BJP is unhappy because the NRC count has revealed that a large number of Bengali Hindus are illegal immigrants, and that a large number of Assamese Muslims have been identified as citizens — something that busts their narrative of India being inundated by waves of Muslim immigrants. The AGP is unhappy that more Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims, have not been identified as foreigners. And, of course, those who have lived their entire lives in India and are suddenly being told that they are no longer Indians but foreigners are not happy.

The issue that no one in the more-than-hundred-year-old history of the Assam agitation seems to have thought of — be they political parties, leaders, or courts — is where the so-called foreigners will be expelled to — because no country will accept them. This is the stupidity and short-sightedness of the entire movement that, when combined with the bigotry of the prime movers in the issue — the BJP and the AGP — has led to a complex and unpredictable situation in Assam today. To make matters worse, the BJP is threatening to pass the Citizenship Amendment Act — a backdoor way to make illegal Hindu immigrants legal in Assam — something that will certainly lead to chaos and violence in the entire Northeast.

Background of Immigration Into Assam

Most people in India must have heard of the NRC in Assam by now. The NRC is the National Register of Citizens. Even though the name has “national” in it, this register pertains only to the state of Assam.

The NRC is a list of “legitimate citizens of India” in the Indian north-east state of Assam. The purpose of this list, according to the people who were responsible for it, is to identify who are legitimate citizens of India and who are illegal immigrants (specifically, from Bangladesh — or East Pakistan, as that region was known before 1971). This list was first created in 1951 in Assam. On January 1, 2018, the first revised list of the NRC in nearly 70 years was published. It identified 4.1 million people as non-citizens of India in Assam. Following this, the government said that this list was not final; that people could appeal their exclusion and a second list would be created after further checking. That second list came out on August 31, 2019, and it has now identified 1.9 million people as illegal immigrants; the petitions of around 2.2 million people to be included in the list have been accepted.

The purpose of this article is to tell you what this NRC is all about and why these 1.9 million people are going to be made stateless.

The issue of illegal immigrants, or “foreigners,” moving in to Assam is an issue dating to 1886, when the British, after defeating the Burmese in the First Anglo-Burmese war of 1824, gradually took control over Assam and then opened Assam up to migrants from the rest of the British Raj in India, particularly Bengal. This was followed by various waves of immigration into Assam, fuelled mainly by the tea estates which the British had established in Assam, for which the British brought in Bengali workers.

Although immigration to Assam was continuous during British rule, involving both Hindus and Muslim immigrants, there were two important waves post-Independence. The first wave came during Partition, when Hindus migrated to India from East Pakistan following persecution by the Muslim majority there. It is estimated that around 500,000 immigrants from East Pakistan came in to Assam during Partition. Many of these settled in Assam. There was serious concern about the changing demographics of Assam. In response, the Indian Government passed the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. This act came into effect on 1 March 1950. It mandated the expulsion of illegal immigrants from Assam. But how was the Government to know whom to expel? For this purpose, it created the first National Register of Citizens in Assam in 1951 as part of the 1951 census. The implicit assumption in the Act was that the Indian government would be able to send immigrants from East Pakistan back there. Nobody seems to have considered the possibility that East Pakistan might refuse to take these people back. In the event, no one was actually sent back, so the hypothesis was never tested.

The second wave came to India because of the crimes committed against Bengalis in 1971 in the events leading up to the Bangladesh independence war. Since then, both Hindus and Muslims have continued to migrate from Bangladesh to India.

Things came to a head when, following the death of Hiralal Patwari in 1978, by-elections had to be held in the Mangaldoi assembly constituency in Assam. It was noticed that the number of registered voters had risen dramatically since the previous election – much more than could be explained by population growth. This triggered a popular outrage against the “takeover” of Assam by foreigners, spearheaded by the All-Assam Students Union (AASU), led by Prafulla Mahanta.

The Assam Accord and the IMDT Act

The Assam movement of 1979-1985 became extremely violent and, to put an end to this, former PM Rajiv Gandhi agreed to the “Assam Accord” that he signed with Prafulla Mahanta on 15 August, 1985. One of the key provisions of the agreement was that those immigrants who came in to Assam before March 25, 1971 would be considered legal immigrants, whereas those who had entered Assam on or after March 25, 1971 would be deemed illegal and expelled. To enforce this, the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, also known as the IMDT Act, 1983, was used. This act provided the mechanism by which people could be identified as either citizens or illegal immigrants. Prafulla Mahanta subsequently founded the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) party, the political incarnation of the AASU, and subsequently became the Chief Minister of the State of Assam.

This was an unwise agreement, despite having had the effect of stopping the violence, because no thought was given to what would be done with those deemed illegal immigrants. Deporting them to Bangladesh was the likely thought in the minds of the Assamese, but the Assam accord was drafted without ever taking consent from Bangladesh, and so there was never any assurance that anyone identified as a Bangladeshi immigrant by India would ever be accepted back by Bangladesh. In fact, Bangladesh has recently reiterated that under no circumstances would it accept anybody back from India.

Despite this fact, the Assam Accord did not result in large-scale deportation of illegals, because the IMDT act had many safeguards for the immigrants that made deportation difficult. The most important among these was that the onus of proving that someone was an illegal immigrant was on the accuser, not the accused. If someone was accused, they could prove their citizenship by simply providing a ration card as proof. If the case still went further, it would be brought before a tribunal of retired judges who would decide on it. The central government also had the option to decide to throw out any petition for naming someone as an illegal immigrant on the grounds that the petition was frivolous. All this provided substantial safeguards for immigrants.

The End of the IMDT and the Revival of the NRC

It should be noted that the IMDT Act had some key differences with the Foreigners Act, 1946, which applied to the rest of India. Under the Foreigners Act, 1946, the onus of proving citizenship is on the accused and not on the accuser. Under the IMDT Act, on the other hand, the onus is on the accuser to prove that the accused is not a citizen. Because of this, very few people were actually deported under the IMDT act.

To change this, Sarbananda Sonowal of the AGP (now of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP) challenged the IMDT Act in the Supreme Court in 2005 and won the case. The Supreme Court said in its observation that because of the generous safeguards in the IMDT Act, less than 0.5% of all cases filed under it resulted in deportation, and struck down the IMDT Act as unconstitutional. The Court said in its judgement that “the Bangladesh nationals who have illegally crossed the border and have trespassed into Assam or are living in other parts of the country have no legal right of any kind to remain in India and they are liable to be deported.”

However, the honourable SC does not seem to have seriously considered the question of where the said illegal immigrants were to be deported, given that no country would accept so many migrants back into their country. Furthermore, the decision on whether someone was an illegal immigrant or not was to be decided by India, not Bangladesh. Why any country would accept the verdict of another country on a matter regarding those it would be forced to accept as its own citizens is hard to imagine.

With the disbanding of the IMDT Act, the question of how illegal immigrants were to be identified and dealt with came back to the fore. The issue was finally settled by the Supreme Court in 2013 in its judgement in response to writ petitions by Assam Public Works and Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha & Ors. In its judgement, the SC ordered that the NRC should be updated to identify illegal immigrants, and the illegals should be expelled.

Accordingly, the process of updating the NRC was begun in 2015, and the first draft of the revised NRC finally made it on 1 January 2018. This was then revised, taking appeals and objections into account, and the revised list was announced on August 31, 2019.

Hindu vs Muslim Immigrants

One of the central poll planks of the BJP had always been that Muslim migration from Bangladesh to India had been unchecked and had led to a rise in the Muslim population of India. They had always accused the Congress of not doing enough to stop the immigration because Muslims formed a useful vote bank for the Congress. The BJP had promised that, if elected, they would put a stop to illegal Muslim immigration into India.

To this end, they decided to support the AGP. A political alliance was formed between the BJP and the AGP to form a government in Assam. The BJP reasoned that the AGP was against immigration into Assam, and the BJP was against immigration into Assam as well, and so this was a natural partnership.

But this was anything but a natural partnership.

The AGP’s objection to immigration was ethnic. They were opposed to the immigration of anyone who was not ethnic Assamese. This included both Hindus and Muslims. In particularly, the AGP was violently opposed to Bengali Hindu immigrants living in Assam. The AGP’s prime consideration was that Assamese culture was being wiped out due to Bengali influence.

The BJP’s objection to immigration was religious. They were opposed only to the immigration of Muslims into Assam (and into all of India.) The BJP had no problems with Bangladeshi Hindus who had settled in Assam.

The alliance between the BJP and the AGP was, therefore, an unholy marriage of convenience on a shaky foundation.

The Citizenship Amendment Act

The BJP realized this problem and, to solve it, introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act. This act would confer Indian citizenship on all Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi, and Jain immigrants, but would specifically exclude Muslims. This suited the BJP’s strategy of hate politics very well, because it selectively excluded Muslims. But it was absolutely unacceptable to the majority of the Assamese, because the Assamese correctly saw the Citizenship Amendment Act as a means to legalize illegal Hindu migrants into Assam through the back door. The BJP tried to pass the bill in Parliament, but was unable to because of the opposition to the bill.

Despite all this, the BJP went ahead and encouraged the creation of the NRC to determine who was an Indian citizen and who was not, in line with the Assam accord. In doing so, the BJP was supremely confident that most of those who were about to be classified as foreigners would be Muslims.

The whole thing is ugly on both sides. On one side of the coin is ethnic hatred, of Assamese for Bengalis; on the other side is religious hatred, of Hindus for Muslims.

Now the revised list has been published, and according to most reports, a large percentage of the identified illegal immigrants are Hindus, in contrast to the BJP’s expectation that most identified illegal immigrants would be Muslim. This is why the BJP frantically (and unsuccessfully) tried to delay the publication of the NRC list, because when a large number of Hindus are denied Indian citizenship, it will hurt the BJP’s Hindu vote bank.

The surprise that the BJP has expressed is evidence of its ignorance — after all, at the time of India’s independence, nearly a fourth of all Assamese residents identified themselves as Muslim; so the fact that a large number of Muslims in Assam are legitimate residents of Assam should not be a surprise to anyone who had done the minimum research on the demographics of Assam.

If the leaders of the BJP had actually done some demographic research, they would have realized that this was going to be the outcome of the NRC. The facts have been in the public domain for a long time. But apparently, they believed their own rhetoric, which they used to whip communal frenzy among the people of India and win elections — that Muslim immigrants were streaming through the border and were going to make Hindus in India a minority. Their ideology blinded them to the fact that the community that was going to be affected most by the NRC in Assam was the Bengali Hindu community.

It is astonishing that the BJP could not see the writing on the wall. The officials conducting the NRC drive are all Assamese, and bear no loyalty to the BJP’s religion-based agenda. Now the BJP will have to deal with the backlash from the Bengali Hindu community. Their only hope to avoid this is to bring in the citizenship amendment bill in Parliament. Just as they finagled their way with the Triple Talaq bill and the abrogation of Article 370, they might be able to pass this law in Parliament as well. But while they may succeed in Parliament, Assam will likely erupt in revolt if they indeed pass the Citizenship Amendment Bill to save the Bengali Hindus facing an uncertain future after being excluded from the NRC. One wonders if the government will send another 100,000 paramilitary forces into Assam to “maintain the peace” as they have done in J&K for the last month, and introduce the Citizenship Amendment Act in as stealthy a fashion as they did the abrogation of article 370. Will yet another state be put under martial law, with curfew for weeks, the state leaders imprisoned, and all communication cut off, in order to fulfil the BJP’s political objectives?

One further point needs mention. The issue of “foreigners” is a sensitive one not only in Assam but in the entire Northeast. This is because of colonial history; when the British ruled in Northeast India, most of the administrative cadre came from Bengal. This has led to a lot of anti-Bengali resentment in many parts of the Northeast. Therefore, any attempt by the BJP to bulldoze its way with the Citizenship Amendment Act will have consequences not only in Assam but in the entire Northeast. Meghalaya and Tripura are prominent examples.

Whither Human Rights?

No matter how the NRC is conducted — whether the target is all non-Assamese or whether it is only Muslim immigrants into Assam — the entire idea is completely heartless and cruel. Not only is the standard of proof being demanded unusually stringent, in a country where the standard of record-keeping is so poor that a large number of people do not even possess birth certificates, but the entire process seems to have been conducted without any endgame plan in mind. That any court, let alone the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court, even allowed this register of citizens to proceed without careful consideration of the consequences is astonishing in the extreme.

For, the entire NRC exercise offers no enlightenment as to what is to be the fate of those declared non-citizens of India. The Bangladesh government has made it clear that it considers the entire matter an internal matter of India, that it does not consider anyone who does not make it to the list of Indian citizens a Bangladeshi citizen, and has clearly said it will not take back any of these people. So what is the plan for these people? Does the government, and does the SC, propose to make these people who were hitherto living freely as Indian citizens prisoners and house them in internment camps? And for how long? No country will take them. If India will not accept them as Indian citizens, does India intend to keep 1.9 million people in jails for the rest of their lives? That would constitute an appalling violation of fundamental human rights.

It is also worth noting that 2019 is a long way away from 1971. Think of someone who may have moved from Bangladesh to India in 1972 – 47 years ago. If this person was in his mid-thirties in 1972, he might not even be alive now. But his children might have been born and might have lived in India for nearly half a century. India is the only country they know. If you suddenly pronounce them non-citizens, where will they go? It is extreme cruelty to send them to another country at this age, even assuming that you can find another country to accept them in the first place.

Incidentally, it is worth pointing out that getting “legal documents” in India is not very difficult if you have the money. Those with the money, even if they are illegal immigrants, whether Hindu or Muslim, would have found it fairly easy to establish their domicile in a country like India, where everything from birth certificates to passports to news can be faked. The present climate must have been a bonanza for forgers in Assam, as the going rates for fake documents must have gone up at least tenfold. The people who will be affected most, therefore, will be those without the means to buy their freedom.

The entire issue of the NRC is a monumental, national disgrace for the people of India. It was a compulsion that forced Rajiv Gandhi to agree to the ethnic basis of the Assam Accord, but he did it as a stopgap bandaid to stop the violence. He also linked the Accord with an instrument like the IMDT Act that would actively nullify the Accord. It would have remained as an unfulfilled promise, had not the greed of the BJP for votes based on dividing people on the basis of religion gotten the better of them.

This entire ugly affair is a stark reminder of what happens when a base impulse – bigotry – is combined with a lack of intelligence to see the consequences of that bigotry.

The story does not end here. We have come so far in this tragedy that we must soldier on to the bitter end. There is no happy ending to this story. Hatred, once allowed free rein, always has victims. Allowing our basest instincts to rule our actions can and will only result in tragic consequences, and the NRC drama is no exception to this rule.

Sunday, 26 May 2019

A Farewell To Arms

Abstract

The 2019 General Election in India represents a fundamental shift in Indian thought. The foundation of the Indian state in 1947 was secularism, that India was a country for people of all religions, in sharp contrast with Pakistan, which was conceived as a state for Muslims alone. India’s founding fathers wanted to prove that Pakistan was a mistake; that Muslims could live and thrive in a Hindu-majority India. India was conceived as a rejection of the “two-nation” formula on which Pakistan was predicated. That era is over now, and India is now a de facto Hindu nation if not de jure. It will become a Hindu nation in law in a few short years as well. And in such a state, there is no space for a secular party such as the Congress of old to survive.

The Three Cassandras

Five years ago, I formed a Facebook chat group with two of my close friends. The name I gave the group then, though we changed it later, was “The Three Cassandras.”

For those who don't know, Cassandra is a character in the Trojan war, in the epic by Homer, the Iliad. She is the daughter of the Trojan king Priam, and is a priestess of the temple of Apollo. It seems that the god Apollo (the Sun god) was infatuated by her, and wanted her to be his lover, and as an inducement gave her the gift of seeing the future. But even after getting the gift, Cassandra refused to become his lover. An angry Apollo cursed her, saying that her gift of prophecy would be useless to her, because nobody would believe her prophecies from that time on.

So, when the Greeks pretend to leave Troy after 10 years of fighting, and leave a huge wooden horse on the beach as a gift to Apollo (but within which Greek warriors were hiding) — the famous Trojan Horse — Cassandra realizes this is a false gift, and warns the Trojans not to bring the wooden horse inside the walls of Troy, which the Greeks could not breach for 10 years. But because of the curse of Apollo, nobody believes her. The result is that the Greeks come out of the horse at night and kill all the Trojans.

Now I think that name I gave the group was very accurate. The three of us were certainly Cassandras — nobody listened to us as we pointed out the dangers of majoritarianism and of electing an unlettered and ignorant person as the PM. Now the Troy that is India is going to be saffronized, irreversibly. To me that is as good as destroying India. India without its secular fabric and scientific temper — and a religious state is the very antithesis of scientific temper — is as good as dead. A religious state, by definition, implies that there is only one version of the truth, and that everyone must conform to that version, under pain of punishment, and such dogma is antithetical to scientific thinking.

IAC as My Inspiration for Blogging and Facebook Posting

I was inspired to write by the political movement of the IAC — the India Against Corruption movement led by Anna Hazare in 2011. Until then, I was one among most Indians who was only worried about making my life more comfortable. I did read the news in the paper, but not very critically or analytically. The 2011 movement started the process in my life when I started reading the news more critically, started examining whether what politicians were saying was true or not, started delving into various domains like law, the Constitution, the history of independent India, economics, etc.

While I lost my fascination for IAC and the AAP a little later, I continued to examine issues critically. I started writing a blog, and that started right at the time of the IAC agitation, because I realized, after even participating in an IAC rally in Pune where I shouted slogans like “Ek sur, ek taal, Jan Lokpal, Jan Lokpal,” that street politics and organization were not my cup of tea. So I started thinking about how I could contribute — and I realized that maybe writing about issues was a way to contribute, since I could write. But I knew I could not sit idle — I had to do something. I was inspired by what Gandhi had said: “Be the change you wish to see.”

Although I was initially fascinated by Modi in 2013 and 2014 (I was not very familiar with what had happened in 2002, because I was away in the US then and not at all connected to Indian politics then — it was a different time, with little internet access), I gradually found my voice as a liberal. To me, it is the only position that an educated and critical thinker can have. The idea that all humans are essentially equal, no matter what their differences are, is a powerful one, and so I became opposed to majoritarianism of any kind.

Being a Liberal In The Modi Years

And so I found myself in constant opposition to the policies of this government. I found myself repeatedly horrified by the silence of Prime Minister Modi in the face of repeated public lynchings of innocent Muslim men. To me, that was and still is tacit encouragement of violence towards minorities, and no amount of whataboutery can change that. Or the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which seeks to treat Muslims as the “other” — it is hard to think of a policy that is more polarizing than that. And telling me that well, the people of India voted for Mr. Modi again, does not change that. If a principle is wrong, it is wrong, no matter how many people support it. And a liberal is all I can be, no matter how much the environment around me changes. I cannot find myself discriminating against someone else because he or she belongs to a different religion, or supporting anyone who does.

I realize the current political environment does not offer choices in terms of principled politics. Is there a single party that resonates with my liberal ideology? No. The Congress Party had adopted a line of soft Hindutva in these elections that seemed to serve it well in Kerala, but not in the rest of the nation. Clearly, pandering to soft Hindutva in the matter of Sabarimala helped them unseat the Left. Digvijay Singh publicly performed a puja to help him in his re-election with the help of “Computer baba,” but was defeated by Pragya Thakur, a terror-accused out on bail.

How about the AAP? This was the party that forced Bollywood composer Vishal Dadlani to apologize for criticizing the Jain monk Tarun Sagar giving a sermon to the Haryana legislature.

So no, there is no party in the country that actually completely subscribes to a liberal ideology. But as a practical matter, what does a liberal do when these are his choices? The only thing possible is to vote for the lesser evil. With all its flaws and hypocrisies, the Congress is still the lesser of the evils. And its manifesto for these elections was a breath of fresh air, and a clear departure from the past — exactly the things a liberal would wish for — and so I hoped the Congress would win. It was not to happen.

The Congress Party’s Shifting Ideologies

Several articles criticizing the Congress Party have appeared in the print and online media following their loss in the 2019 general elections. Many of my friends are in denial, but the points need to be seriously considered. Think, for example, about the point that the Congress does not have a consistent ideology. Isn't this true today? It used to be that the Congress was the secular alternative, and some might say with some justification that they went too far in trying to be secular.

But after seeing the BJP inflict drubbing after drubbing on them in state elections after 2014, the Congress decided to rework itself into a soft Hindutva party. Shashi Tharoor even justified it in an interview by saying we are a democratic party and so we have to cater to what our constitutents want. So essentially, when the people of India moved to the right — and I don't think any clear-headed person will dispute that — then the Congress party, in order to represent them and so win elections, decided to move to the right as well. Rahul Gandhi proclaimed that he was a “janeu-dhari” (someone wearing the Hindu sacred thread) Brahmin and a Shiva bhakt, and went on a pilgrimage of holy shrines to prove it to the public.

The problem with that is that the party is seen to have no fixed ideology.

Compare that with the BJP. They have had a consistent ideology for decades. Hindu Rashtra. Ram Temple at Ayodhya. No Muslim appeasement. End the subsidy for Muslim travelers to the Haj pilgrimage. End Reservations. etc. etc. No change in any position, just keep hammering away at it until it happens.

Even the regional parties have more consistent ideologies than the Congress. BSP stands for Dalit upliftment, DMK stands for Dravida upliftment, and the SP stands for OBC upliftment. Caste based parties have a clear ideology. They exist to uplift the condition of the people from their caste, be they Jat, Patidar, Yadav, Bodo, or whatever else.

The Changing Face of India And The Irrelevance of Secularism Today

Why did the Congress abandon its long-standing philosophy of secularism? Because they were losing.

And there is the rub. India is changing. While there is still some room for caste-based politics (Hindutva does not mean the end of selfishness), there clearly is no room for a secular philosophy, a liberal philosophy, in India today. To be clear, the people of India at large are not interested in oppressing or killing Muslims. They just want a better life. But if oppression or killing does happen, they don't care any longer. Who is responsible for this? The blame should fall on the shoulders of the people of India for the unsympathetic attitude they have taken. But this does not mean that politicians are not responsible. The RSS has been propagating the poison of intolerance ever since Independence, but this was taken to new heights by Advani and Vajpayee during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the late 80s and early 90s. While people still bear the responsibility for their actions, the hate speeches of the BJP leaders during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, culminating in the destruction of the Babri masjid, definitely poisoned the minds of countless Indians. When you constantly hear about how someone like Aurangzeb oppressed our Hindu ancestors, and when you hear a big leader like Advani equate the Mughals with the ordinary Muslims of today, not everyone possesses the discrimination needed to understand that a leap of logic has suddenly been made. The hardline intolerance of most Indians today definitely owes a lot to the speeches of Mr. Advani and his companions, such as Uma Bharti.

The BJP tradition of stoking the anger of the Hindus at wrongs committed centuries ago and blaming the Muslims of today continued over the years and found a new messiah in Narendra Modi after the 2002 riots. Modi is infamous for having given a sspeech in Ahmedabad mocking the Muslim community for its birth rate with his infamous “Hum paanch, hamare pacchees” (“We are five, our family is 25”) speech. More relevant is his speech during the 2014 election campaign, where he said in a speech: “We have heard of the green revolution, we have heard of the white revolution. But under the rule of the Congress party, they have created the pink revolution” referring to the slaughter of cows for beef and the implied suggestion that Muslims are responsible for this. When the atmosphere is constantly vitiated by hate speech such as this, is there any surprise that cow vigilantism has been a major issue during Modi's first term? Supporters of Modi ask me how Modi can be held responsible when someone decides to lynch a Muslim - can he be monitoring every citizen? No, but all this violence is a consequence of the hate he spewed against Muslims in his speeches. People don't forget.

And so, while it is the people who are responsible for their choices, politicians do make things considerably worse. Since winning the elections on the 23rd of May, Modi has made fairly inclusive speeches. And I am inclined to believe he is sincere now about not wanting to target minorities. As a Prime Minister, widespread violence in the country does him no good. But the problem is the Jekyll-Hyde character of Mr. Modi. Modi the campaigner is a different animal from Modi the Prime Minister. PM Modi would like Hindus and Muslims to fight poverty and not each other. Campaigner Modi would like to further cleave apart faultlines between Hindus and Muslims because it helps unite the Hindus to vote for him. Unfortunately, the two cannot coexist. What has happened is that the continuous infusion of hate for the last 30 years from the BJP has fundamentally altered the character of the Indian people. I have actually criticized Modi for his silence when an Akhlaque or a Pehlu Khan or an Afrazul was killed and people of his party support the killings or garland the murderers. But Modi is silent for a reason — and it is not that he wants these people killed.

Modi is silent because if he criticizes those who commit these atrocities, he risks losing his support. After having been egged on to think of Muslims as the enemy for decades, if his followers now commit acts of violence against the Muslims and if he criticizes them, he will be seen by them as a turncoat. Modi is a keen student of history. He has seen how his mentor, LK Advani, fell from grace not too long ago. Advani was the darling of the right wing, and it was a given that if and when the BJP came to power again, he would be the PM since Vajpayee would retire soon. But he ruined his chances in one moment of weakness — in a visit to Pakistan in 2005, he visited Jinnah's tomb and publicly praised him as a secular person and as an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. That moment of weakness cost Advani the Prime Ministership and future leadership of the BJP. It was a key factor in the BJP cadre deciding to support Modi over Advani in 2013. Modi was seen to not be weak like Advani. And so, if, in the interest of a stable country, Modi actually chides his followers for committing acts of violence against Muslims, the backlash against him will be severe. Already the right wing of the BJP is upset that so many promises are pending, such as the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. That's why he will make token noises about “never forgiving Pragya Thakur for her comments against Gandhi,” but he will never take concrete action.

In fact, as I have stated many times on social media, the big mistake the liberals in India have made is to imagine Modi as this villain who is solely responsible for all the ills happening in India. Modi is simply an agent. Even though liberals do not like to acknowledge it, democracy is alive and thriving in India, even under Modi. Elections in India are never perfect, but I do believe that Modi being elected is the full expression of a democratic country. I am not a believer in EVM conspiracy theories, and I do not believe that 2019 was a stolen election. And that is, to me, the scary part. Modi said in his victory speech that the 2019 victory was a positive mandate for the good things he did. I am not arguing with the idea that many people voted for him because they thought he was the Messiah who would make India a great country. My only point is that none of the people who voted for him was the slightest perturbed about the persecution of minorities and the total silence from the ruling government on the atrocities. Nobody was bothered in the least as a Union minister garlanded murder convicts who were released on bail, or when another minister draped the body of a man who was part of a lynch mob that murdered a Muslim (for allegedly eating beef) in the national flag and paid homage to him on his death. To me, these things represent the death of secularism in India.

Some of my friends might disagree with my analysis because the Congress’ vote share has actually gone up by around 2.5% in this election compared to the 2014 election. Isn’t that a vindication of secularism, one might ask. But then you would forget the fact that in this election, the Congress abandoned secularism as their platform. I would argue that the Congress did so well only because it abandoned secularism — that if it had continued to talk about secularism and the protection of minorities, it would have done worse than it actually did.

Media has played a major role in this election — and in fact, for the past 5 years. And this is not just because of the large sums of money that Mr. Amit Shah has given them. Most of media is owned by upper caste Hindus, and most of them are sympathetic to the Hindutva cause. Just one look at the coverage of the election campaign by the various TV channels would have made that abundantly clear. Media anchors were behaving like cheerleaders for Modi. This is why a major scam like Vyapam, in which 40 people died (tell me how many people died in 2G?) was quietly swept under the rug. Just imagine — a scam is so big that 40 people are killed to prevent them from speaking up — and yet the media hardly spoke about it. Would this have happened if the Congress Party was ruling the country?

Or think about demonetization. What a massive scam that was! The bank in which Amit Shah was a director made a killing. Dozens of BJP functionaries were found with hundreds or thousands of crores of freshly minted 2000 rupee notes in their possession. Yet, was there a national outcry about corruption due to demonetization? No.

But is it only the media? How many of you have the guts to go to your offices and criticize Modi and the BJP when you go for a tea break? Just try it, and 20 people will descend on you like hawks on a mouse. Some of them will gently tell you you are deluded and falling for “sickular” propaganda, others will denounce you outright as an “anti-national.” What does that tell you? Forget whether you are right or wrong. It tells me that Modi has wide public support.

Or go to the villages. I have seen interviews in which villagers would rationalize on Modi's failures. Such as saying, “Yes, the stray cows ate my entire crop, and caused me huge financial loss, but I will still vote for Modi. I think he will fix all this.” There were others who blamed the state leadership even though demonetization was a central measure.

As some in the media have commented, some of Modi’s development initiatives may have had an effect. But that is not my focus here. I am not going to argue here on whether there has been enough progress in the country or not, or enough rural development. I have done enough of that, in excruciating detail, elsewhere.

My key point, as a liberal, is that secularism is no longer an issue in India. And that was obvious even before the election. That we could see a Shambhulal Regar could torture and kill Afrazul in front of a camera, and then see people protest his arrest in Rajasthan, spoke volumes of the change in values of this country. Similarly, that a Pehlu Khan, clearly an innocent, was publicly slaughtered in Alwar by cow vigilantes, with someone filming the killing, and the police letting the killers off, citing lack of evidence, tells you how deep the rot in values is.

There are many more instances, and the point here is not to discuss who was responsible for the killings or for the inaction in prosecution. More importantly, it is to highlight the complete indifference of the public to these public murders. The nation as a whole was not shocked or stunned. No candlelight vigils. No protests on the street demanding that the government of the day should do more in protecting its minority citizens. Nothing. About all that happened was that a bunch of liberal commentators wrote articles about it in the media and hyperventilated in debates on TV. Nobody cares in India about murdered Muslims any longer. Once they had a national party called the Congress that cared. Now the only party that cares is Asaduddin Owaisi’s MIM.

And there is a cautionary tale in that observation. If Muslims feel that there is no moderate party like the Congress that will stand up for their rights, and if the Congress has vacated its role as a guardian of secular values, then some other party will step into that vacuum — and the new entrant may not be moderate at all (I am not referring specifically to the AIMIM). This bodes ill for religious harmony in India in the coming years. Mr. Modi might find the lack of the use of the secularism slogan in this election something to gloat about, as he did in his speech on the evening of the 23rd, but this very thing can come back to bite his government in the times to come.

The Existential Crisis of the Congress Party

Many have analyzed this election as a failure in leadership of the Congress Party, and have put the blame on Rahul Gandhi. But is this the right diagnosis? The big news today was that Rahul Gandhi had given the Congress Working Committee his resignation and they had rejected it, but that he was firm on resigning anyway.

One of the things blamed on Rahul Gandhi is his failure to stitch together an alliance with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, along with the Rashtriya Lok Dal, in Uttar Pradesh. But look at the vote shares of all the parties. The BJP got nearly 50% of the vote share in UP. The BSP got 19%, the SP got 18%, the RLD got less than 2%, and the Congress got around 6%. Add them all up, and you still have only 45%. They could still not have beaten the BJP. So the Mahagatbandhan could not have won UP even if the Congress had joined them.

Or take Delhi. Again, Rahul was blamed for not being able to reach an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the elections. But look at the vote shares: the AAP got 18% of the vote, and the Congress got 22% of the vote. In comparison, the BJP got nearly 57% of the vote!!

In Karnataka, by mighty striving, with phone calls almost daily, Rahul managed to save the alliance with the JD(S). What happened? The BJP got 51% of the vote. The Congress managed only 32%, and the JD(S) 10%. Even with the alliance, they could not beat the BJP. Or take Haryana, where the BJP itself polled 58% of the vote. Even if all the other parties had united in an alliance, they could not have beaten the BJP.

No. There are larger forces at work here — and it is beyond your and my poor power to add to or to detract from the damage these forces can cause and are causing.

The larger problem the Congress faces is not one of leadership, but of philosophy. They can replace Rahul with, say, Shashi Tharoor — but will that solve their problems? I don’t think so.

Why? Because the foundational philosophy on which it rested for 70 years since Independence — secularism and inclusiveness — has become irrelevant in today’s India. There was a reason why India became a secular country whereas Pakistan became a Muslim country. It was Jinnah's contention that Hindus and Muslims could never live together, and that was the basis of his demand for Pakistan. This is popularly known as the “two-nation theory” — one nation for Muslims alone and another for Hindus alone. The founding fathers of India, in contrast — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad — all felt this was a wrong prescription, that India could be a successful secular state that accommodated all religions, and argued that this is why partition was a bad idea. This prescription worked well for 70 years. But now Indians, by and large, have rejected secularism – a point not lost on PM Modi who, in his victory speech on the 23rd, proudly said that in this entire election campaign, not one person had the guts to say the word “secularism.”

Mr. Modi is a very smart man politically. He knows what is at stake here, and what the BJP is fighting for. And he knows they have achieved their objective.

The Congress understood this shift in the Indian polity, but its response — an attempt to reinvent itself as a soft Hindutva party — was destined to fail. In Tamil, there is a saying that translates to “selling halwa to Tirunelveli.” Tirunelveli is a town in Tamil Nadu that is very famous for its halwa (a sweet). So selling halwa to a person from Tirunelveli is a metaphor used when you are trying to compete with an expert in the topic he is already an expert in. There is no way on earth the Congress could have competed with the BJP on Hindutva and won — the BJP practically invented the term.

Some may say the Congress won in Kerala using soft Hindutva, especially in its position on Sabarimala. But Kerala is a very different state from the rest of India. Hindus, Muslims, and Christians have been living in harmony in Kerala from the time of the Arab seafarers and Vasco da Gama. It has never been invaded by Muslim invaders. So what works in Kerala will not work in the rest of India. Sabarimala was more of an issue of Kerala culture than of gender equality under the law. The fact is that although the SC verdict was legally correct, the people of Kerala really did not care about it. The ban on menstruating women was a tradition that had to be respected in Keralite society. And the Congress understood this.

Concluding Thoughts

So where does all this leave the Congress – and India? The Congress Party has clearly no future in present-day India. It is not about Rahul Gandhi’s leadership. Many other parties have a clear ethnic basis for their existence. But not the Congress and its offshoots, such as the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of Sharad Pawar, which also lost heavily in this election. The writing is on the wall for another Congress Party offshoot, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, where the BJP made astounding inroads this election. And why is this? Because all of these parties are secular. And secularism has become a dirty word in India today. The BJP even made inroads in Telangana, which has a Chief Minister, K. Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR), who is always traveling on pilgrimages, spends public money on renovating private temples, and spends public money on conducting “yagnas” for the long life of his government. That's because there is a difference between Hinduism and Hindutva. KCR is a devout Hindu. But it is not enough to show that you are deeply religious in today's India. You have to be seen as capable of putting the fear of God in the Muslims. That is Hindutva - Hindu majoritarianism. And KCR cannot afford to do that (or thinks he cannot afford to do that) because Telangana has a large Muslim minority whose support he believes he needs to win elections. The BJP, in contrast, believes it does not need a single Muslim vote to win an election — because 80% always trumps 14%.

Secularism has been comprehensively rejected by the people of India in the last five years. And the result is that the Congress Party has lost its moorings. It cannot try to ape the BJP and become a Hindu party, no matter how many pilgrimages Rahul or Tharoor do. Because, as I said above, it is not enough to show that you are a devout Hindu. You must also show that you are capable of frightening the Muslims so that they can be “put in their place.” It requires an ability to be silent when people lynch Muslims in broad daylight, with full video recording of the act, and pretend that the murder never occurred. And since the Congress cannot bring itself to do this, it will die, because it is this kind of “toughness” that the people of India want — a hard, ruthless, unbending attitude towards Muslims. Narendra Modi’s dream of a “Congress-mukt Bharat” (A Congress-free India) will become a reality very soon. But Modi has succeeded not just in killing the Congress party; he has succeeded in destroying the very foundations of the nation that Gandhi and Nehru built. If Gandhi or Nehru had been alive today, they would have been denounced as anti-nationals. And there is no point in blaming Modi or the BJP for this degeneration of values. They are only doing what the people of India want. They have learned, sooner and better than others, that a tough and ruthless attitude towards minorities is necessary if one is to win elections in India comprehensively. Just look at the high-profile lynchings of Muslims that have happened in the past five years — Mohammad Akhlaque, Pehlu Khan, Afrazul, Junaid Khan — think of how many BJP leaders publicly supported these killings; and then think of the fact that the overall vote share of the BJP has jumped from 31% in 2014 to 37.4% in 2019. If the people of India were repelled by these murders, they certainly did not show their disgust at the ballot box.

India appears all set to become a Hindu nation. The wish to transform India from a secular to a Hindu nation has been clearly articulated by several BJP leaders in the last five years, and no one should be in doubt. Most of today's BJP leaders have been raised in the RSS, which considers the secular Constitution of India an insult to Hinduism and to Hindus. They have said so publicly too many times to recount. Several BJP MPs, such as Anant Kumar Hegde, have publicly said that the Constitution should be changed. Modi himself has been a lifelong pracharak of the RSS, and there is no reason to think that he differs with his colleagues on this matter.

All that stands between them and their dream is numbers. To change the Constitution to make India a Hindu-majority state, you need a 2/3rds majority in the Lok Sabha, a 2/3rds majority in the Rajya Sabha, and the approval of 50% of the states. With 350 seats in the NDA, the coalition is only marginally short of a 2/3rds majority of the total strength of the house (543), which is 358. After this resounding victory, more allies will join the NDA, and the BJP will have the requisite 2/3rds majority in the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha will be reconstituted in 2020 and 2022, since 1/3rd of its members are replaced every 2 years. Given that the BJP controls most of the state legislatures, a 2/3rds majority in the Rajya Sabha will also be achieved by 2022 at the latest. The BJP already has governments in most of the states, so getting 50% of the states to approve the amendment is easy.

Some will point out that there is something known as a “basic structure doctrine” of the Constitution that will prevent this. But I will simply remind them that the Judiciary, too, come from the same mass of Indians, and they, too, have been infected with the same Hindutva virus. If you have doubts about this, think of this election. The role of the Election Commission is to ensure a free and fair election. And yet, this was the most biased Election Commission in history. Every complaint against Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah was summarily dismissed, and opposition leaders were being pulled up for minor offenses. So if the Election Commission, which is supposed to keep elections free and fair, will not properly discharge its duties, why do you feel that the Supreme Court, which should protect the Constitution from being tampered with, will do the right thing as we see it? Remember that these are all judgment calls: what constitutes an element of the basic structure is a matter of interpretation. If the government proposes a bill to amend the Constitution, somebody will definitely challenge it. Then it is up to the SC to decide if the amendment is violative of the basic structure doctrine. If the SC then decides it is not, then there can be no further challenge. If a hate speech that is clearly violative of the Model Code of Conduct can be given a clean chit, then so can a Constitutional Amendment that is violative of the basic structure doctrine. People should at least now give up their naivete.

And so India, by 2022, will become a Hindu rashtra. There will not be much outcry about this, because a majority of Indians have voted for this. They will say that they did not vote for a Hindu rashtra, but for Swacch Bharat or Ujwala or whatever. But they were under no illusions that this was the intent of the BJP - several MPs and MLAs have made it very obvious that if they returned to power, they would make India a Hindu rashtra. So you may have voted for Modi because you think he will make India a “vishwa guru,” but you also ignored the clear signal that the BJP intends to make India a Hindu rashtra — it was not important enough for you. Some liberals will shout until they are hoarse when this happens, but it will matter little. I have already written about what this entails for India. And anyone who reads that will realize that even many of those who are celebrating today will mourn in a few years. But they will only learn through bitter experience.

And, as for me, I now know that there is no space for a liberal commentator in India. The problem with Cassandra was that she kept advising the Trojans, even though nobody was listening to her. That only causes pain. Five years of writing about this has not yielded much result for me. I have only managed to convert one person in five years to my point of view – and that is one more than most liberal commentators can boast of doing. I spent so much energy on my blog and on social media because I hoped to help avoid the eventual transformation of India into a Hindu state. But now I see that it is inevitable, and am giving up my struggle. It will not change who I am as a person, but clearly speaking about this has not helped in changing minds. Will I stop posting on social media? I don’t know, I still might through force of habit, but eventually you can only bang your head on a concrete wall until it starts hurting. But the fight has gone out of me, because I realize that what is coming in a few years is inevitable. Our last chance was the 2019 election, and now it is over.

One thing I must mention is that in many ways, India’s rightward tilt was inevitable — after all, this is a global phenomenon. From Erdogan to Trump to Brexit to the AdF in Germany to the neo-Nazis in Austria, the right has been gaining ascendancy everywhere. And there is a reason for that.

Right-wingers unite very easily, and they operate very cohesively. It is very easy to get 10 million people to like a toxic and hateful post that targets minorities on the basis of outright lies. The post may be badly written and badly composed — this is often seen in India where English is not the first language of many of the people who post this. But nobody cares. Every right-winger cooperates in spreading the message. Right-wingers in any country do not worry about differences of opinion. If I hate someone, and you hate someone else, it doesn’t matter. We’ll add him or her to our list, too.

But trying to get liberals to share a post is asking for the moon. I know a friend who will not share a post if there is a single typo or grammatical mistake in it. Every liberal has his own fetish. If two liberals agree on 99% of all issues — the economy, environment, trade, helping the homeless, universal health care, acceptance of minorities — you name it, but have a difference of opinion on one issue, say, abortion, one of them might block the other for it. Liberals can be incredibly petty about small differences of opinion. Most of them are highly educated, and fight on largely irrelevant and minor points of difference. And so liberals are never united in their causes, and make easy targets for conservatives, who gloss over such fine details. That is what has happened in India as well.

India is sinking into a deep abyss. Only the people of India, if they can one day get out of this madness in their majoritarian thinking, can change things. That might take a very long time — perhaps decades — Iran is still unable to get out of the control of the mullahs, 40 years after their Islamic revolution. I fervently hope that day will come before I die — if not for me, at least for the next generation.

Welcome to Seshadri Kumar's Web Home

Thursday, 6 May 2021

The West Bengal Assembly Election, 2021: Lessons for Opposition Unity

The West Bengal Assembly Election, 2021: Lessons for Opposition Unity

Abstract

Introduction

Analysis

Implications

Data

Sunday, 1 March 2020

2024 (With Apologies to George Orwell's "1984")

2024 (With Apologies to George Orwell's “1984”)

Abstract

The Two-Minutes Hate

Saturday, 23 November 2019

The Cost of Hindu Appeasement

The Cost of Hindu Appeasement

Sunday, 1 September 2019

When Bigotry and Stupidity Combine – The NRC Mess in Assam

When Bigotry and Stupidity Combine — The NRC Mess in Assam

Abstract

Background of Immigration Into Assam

The Assam Accord and the IMDT Act

The End of the IMDT and the Revival of the NRC

Hindu vs Muslim Immigrants

The Citizenship Amendment Act

Whither Human Rights?

Sunday, 26 May 2019

A Farewell To Arms

A Farewell To Arms

Abstract

The Three Cassandras

IAC as My Inspiration for Blogging and Facebook Posting

Being a Liberal In The Modi Years

The Congress Party’s Shifting Ideologies

The Changing Face of India And The Irrelevance of Secularism Today

The Existential Crisis of the Congress Party

Concluding Thoughts

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