Not the era of religious bigotry

Three issues have dominated India and drawn international attention recently. The first is the two-part BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’ -- or more so, the unwise ban on it, which spurred its awareness far and wide. The burden of Part 1 of the documentary, which covered Narendra Modi’s years as Chief Minister of Gujarat, was the then British Foreign Office’s ‘investigation’ and conclusion that Modi was personally responsible for the horrific Gujarat riots in which Muslims were targeted following the equally horrific Godhra train massacre in which Hindus were killed. The burden of Part 2 of the documentary, which covers the period since 2014, is that under Modi as Prime Minister, Muslims have been reduced to second-class citizens, and they have been made vulnerable to State violence as well as Hindutva vigilantism, encouraged by the demagoguery of the zealots in the ruling party and Modi’s selective and studied silence.

It must be pointed out that Modi was investigated for his role in the Gujarat riots by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and the Supreme Court did not find evidence to hold Modi guilty of either abetment or wilful dereliction of duty.

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The issues the BBC raises are larger and more significant and must be seen beyond the narrow prism of an individual – Modi the man and Modi the Prime Minister. The bigotry sown by leaders among their cadre and the dark forces unleashed by them soon grow beyond their control and destabilise society.

The second issue is the report on the Adani Group by Hindenburg Research charging that Adani had committed accounting fraud and other misdemeanours and had benefited from its proximity with Modi, and that the institutions beholden to the ruling party did not exercise due oversight on the company. From the rapid rise the Adani companies had seen since 2014, the combined market value of its listed companies tanked by $150 billion in the aftermath of the report. Adani’s image, and that of the country as an attractive investment destination, has been dented due to the perception of increasing cronyism in India.

The above events were followed by a blistering attack on Modi by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi while on a speaking tour of the UK, including in the British Parliament. His running theme covered the communally divisive politics of the Modi government and the spreading of hatred against Muslims. He compared the RSS, the BJP’s ideological parent, to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. He said Modi was undermining and capturing the institutions of democracy, including the judiciary, and posed a threat to free speech, disallowing debates in parliament. He charged that Modi had lied on Chinese intrusions on our borders, tapped the phones of Opposition leaders, including his own phone, using the Israeli Pegasus spyware.

The BJP belittled Rahul as immature and accused him of being anti-national, denigrating his own country abroad. In the eyes of the BJP an attack on Modi is an attack on India.

Amidst all this, there have been a flurry of raids, arrests and detentions by the CBI and ED, of Opposition leaders. It started with Congress leaders in Karnataka and then of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, TMC in West Bengal, AAP in Delhi, and RJD in Bihar. AAP leader and Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia was arrested for an alleged scam in liquor policy in the state of Delhi, and Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao’s daughter Kavita, a sitting legislator of the BRS, was summoned to Delhi for questioning. All of them are accused of corruption and money laundering.

The message -- the Opposition is corrupt. They will be hounded and jailed. Join BJP, which is lotus white, and you can roam free.

Also Read: Rahul Gandhi 'Mir Jafar' of Indian politics, says BJP's Sambit Patra

The people are astute and can see through all politicians and parties.

Underlying all this din, a few things stand out -- rising authoritarianism and spread of venomous religious fundamentalism; continuing crony capitalism – with a new set of cronies rising to the top with change of the party in government; and an Opposition no less corrupt and autocratic than the ruling party and driven as much by the lust for power.

The Indian republic is facing a serious crisis from increasingly assertive religious fundamentalists demanding dominant status for Hindus. It is no longer the maverick Hindutva fringe, those who celebrate the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, who lynch Muslims over cattle and beef or for wooing a Hindu girl. The fringe has moved right to the front and centre, in your face. The intent to replicate the National Register of Citizens (NRC) from Assam across the country, the Citizenship Amendment Act, etc., clearly reveal the antipathy towards Muslims.

Senior RSS functionaries, who have perfected the art of sophistry, often declare that “India is already a Hindu Rashtra, which is a cultural concept and does not need to be established by the Constitution”. They wish to present a fait accompli. In this conception, Muslims can live in India on the sufferance of the majority.

Prof Mohan Gopal, a former Vice Chancellor of the National Law School of India and director of the National Judicial Academy of India said in an interview recently that the Modi government has an explicit mission to overthrow the present republic and establish a Hindu Rashtra, by appointing theocratic judges who will find sources of law in religion and ancient religious texts. It may be a far-fetched idea, but it sends ominous signals. Democracy is to be subverted through legal subterfuge, without a classic coup d’etat, through legislative approval, by maintaining the veneer of a republic while eviscerating its institutions through subtle means.

Historian Edward Gibbon called ‘fanatics’ all those whose religious convictions form the basis of their actions. Religion, he showed, was closely linked to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. History is replete with examples of fanatics, after gaining victory, killing more of their own faith than their enemies. With increasing Christianisation, the old faithful killed more Christians who were considered heretics than people from other religions during the Inquisition in Europe. In Islam, Sunnis and Shias have shed more blood of each other than did the Christian Crusades against Islam. The same can be said of those wedded to ideologies like Communism, who killed millions of their own citizens over the last hundred years.

The question looms, will a Hindu Rashtra, where religious bigotry rules the heart and mind, be any different? Pakistan offers a cautionary tale.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, expecting Modi to win the 2024 elections, that he fears “an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist Modi will eclipse a technology-loving, economy-boosting Modi.” We must hope for a nation-building and people-binding Prime Minister.

Modi drew international applause as a statesman when he told Vladimir Putin that today’s era is not an era of war. Can he now declare that neither is this an era of religious bigotry, that he pledges to usher in an era of communal harmony in India?