By Amulya Ganguli

It might not be churlish to say that the celebration of the 75th year of Indian independence is more an official event associated with the BJP than a national occasion.

The fact that the BJP was ousted from Bihar while facing an angry opponent in Telangana showed that the festivities on August 15 would be held against the backdrop of political unrest undermining the BJP’s position.

In addition, the letter written by a number of former bureaucrats, judges and army officers against the disturbed conditions in Kashmir means that the BJP’s much trumpeted abrogation of the state’s (which is now a Union territory) special rights hasn’t paid the dividends that it expected.

Evidently, the hope in the Hindutva camp that the curtailment of Muslim-majority Kashmir’s autonomy will bring it closer to the Hindu-dominated mainland hasn’t been fulfilled. Instead, this “achievement” which was expected to be the centrepiece of the celebrations on Independence Day is unlikely to be seen as such.

What is clear, therefore, is that the 75th year of independence is being observed in a tentative, uncertain manner because the BJP is more or less alone in its celebratory mood. Only a few loyal allies outside the National Democratic Alliance led by it, notably the Biju Janata Dal of Odisha and the YSR Congress of Andhra Pradesh, are keeping it company.

This is not how it should have been. The 75th year of independence should have been a time for the BJP to bring together its friends and foes by forgetting the political differences of the past and heralding a united future. Unfortunately, the BJP made no attempt to underline its faith in federalism although it claimed at a recent Niti Aayog meeting that such togetherness marked the nation’s fight against the Covid pandemic.

That this assertion about the proximity between the centre and the states is less than true is evident from the hounding of the Congress’s Nehru-Gandhi family by the enforcement directorate as well as the needling of the Arvind Kejriwal government by the Lt. Governor of Delhi, who is a BJP appointee.

As a result, the political atmosphere has become bitter enough to induce Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to call for another “do or die” agitation against a dictatorial regime. However, the reference to Mahatma Gandhi’s “quit India” ultimatum of 1942 to the British may act as a reminder of how the wheel has turned full circle where the freedom struggle is concerned.

It can seem odd that those who played little or no part in the independence movement and were of killing the Mahatma proudly claim to be patriots today while dubbing their opponents as anti-nationals. In no other country has there been such a dramatic reversal of fortunes in the post-colonial period.

To ensure that this upside down interpretation of the events of the recent past replaces the existing version, history is being rewritten by the standard-bearers of the present ruling dispensation. They also believe that the BJP has ended one thousand years of “slavery” under the Muslims and the British and has ushered in a new India which is rooted in its Hindu past.

This outlook of the RSS-BJP group is not unique. The Islamists, too, believe that history began with the birth of Prophet Mohammed and that the pagan past of the countries which the Muslims overran in West Asia and elsewhere need to be obliterated.

Hence, the blasting of the giant statues of the Bamyan Buddhas which acted as the guardian angels of the ancient silk route in Afghanistan. It is a miracle that Mohenjo Daro dating back to Pakistan’s pre-Islamic past has survived. However, there have been occasional calls by the saffron groups in India to make Taj Mahal suffer the fate of the Babri masjid which was brought down in 1992.

It is understandable, therefore, why India is observing the 75th year of independence in a sullen mood. It is only the RSS-BJP which sees It as “amrit mahotsav”.

To the rest, it is a confirmation of a time when reckless iconoclasts are bent on moulding India in their own divisive saffron image which rubbishes the concept of a plural society based on a composite culture highlighting India’s multi-religious, multicultural, multi-lingual and even multi-culinary heritage.

What we see, therefore, are two groups comprising people who have diametrically opposite views of India’s past and future claiming to represent the country on Independence Day. It is as if two Indias are vying with each other to claim the people’s attention.

The identities of the leading lights of the two Indias are not unknown. On the side of those extolling India’s diversity are the Mahatma and Jawaharlal Nehru while their ideological adversaries are V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar.

The former argued that the Muslims and Christians are outsiders since their holy lands are in Saudi Arabia and Rome while the latter described the Muslims as “internal enemies No 1” and the Christians as “internal enemies No 2”.

It is evident that neither of these votaries of Hindutva saw India as an integral whole comprising all the communities living in it. To them, lndia is a land of, by and for Hindus.

The BJP’s electoral success may persuade it to believe that its assertion of what the country was and should be in the future has wider support than that of its opponents whose parties are derided by the BJP as family enterprises.

But India has the curious habit of springing surprises, especially on the arrogant. Hence, the fall of a would-be dictator in 1977 and the rise of the unfancied like Kejriwal. It is anybody’s guess how the BJP fares in this roller-coaster ride of Indian politics despite its claim to be able to rule for half a century. But a party which secured 31 per cent votes in the last national election cannot be too certain of its prospects.(IPA Service)

The post BJP And Sangh Parivar Had Never Any Faith In An Integrated Inclusive India first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

The enforcement directorate’s relentless pursuit of the Congress and other opposition parties can prove to be counter-productive in the long run.

For a start, the impression can grow that the supposedly autonomous  agency is being less than professional in its targeting of the non- BJP parties. The narcotic bureau’s botched inquiries into the drug-related charges against Shah Rukh Khan’s son, Aryan, can  substantiate this belief.

Besides, the Congress’s determined resistance to the probes against it can have two effects. One is to rev up the party’s generally moribund organizational structure, and the other is to spread the message of the government’s “misuse” of the so-called caged parrots against the BJP’s political opponents. It is a charge which will not be disbelieved by sizeable sections of the population.

That the BJP is uneasy about the perception of playing hooky with the rule book is evident from its irate response to the Congress’s comments on the arrests being courted by the party’s senior leaders as well as the rank and file.

Otherwise, the BJP would not have wheeled out a senior leader like Ravi Shankar Prasad to argue that the Congress’s references to inflation and unemployment were nothing but “bahana” or excuses to take to the streets to protect the Nehru-Gandhi family from the accusation of wrong-doing.

The BJP also has a ready answer to the charge against it of undermining democracy, as levelled by Rahul Gandhi. It is to recall the Emergency of 1975-77 which remains an albatross round the Congress’s neck.

However, since two wrongs do not make a right, it is doubtful for how long the BJP can depend on the references to the Congress’s misdeeds of nearly half a century ago to deflect attention from the allegations of questionable policies today.

The Congress may derive some satisfaction from its capability to mobilize fairly large number of supporters in Delhi and other towns to protest against the enforcement directorate’s action against the party’s first family.

But what is bound to bother it nevertheless is how the BJP can manage to ride the choppy waters of inflation and unemployment despite the Congress’s strenuous efforts.

None of the latter’s diatribes on the Rafael aircraft deal and the Pegasus snooping device have succeeded in unsettling the “chowkidar” (guard) who is supposed to be a “chor” (thief). Evidently, either the people pay no heed to such allegations against the BJP or the ruling party’s credibility is too solid for the charges to breach it. On both counts, the failure is the Congress’s, for it has been unable to earn the people’s trust or undermine the BJP’s reputation.

The Congress’s present tactics are, of course, defensive in nature. It is seen to be battling against heavy odds since the party has been unable to rally any other opposition party to come to its aid. A probable reason for the Congress’s loneliness is the Nehru-Gandhi family’s stranglehold on the party.

It is no secret that many of those who have drifted away from the Congress like Sharad Pawar or Mamata Banerjee or Amrinder Singh have done so because of the family’s unwillingness to accommodate them.

This is also true of Himanta Biswa Sarma and Jagan Mohan Reddy, both of whom are today chief ministers of their respective states. If the Congress had been openminded enough to give them enough political space, they might have remained in the party and made it much stronger than it is today.

As long as the family monopolises its grip on the Congress, making it impossible for anyone in the organization to rise to the top, the party will not be able to hold the BJP to account on its many faults, including the worldwide belief that its reign is eroding India’s democratic standing. It is for this reason that it is said that the family is the BJP’s greatest asset.

However, there are curious similarities between the BJP and the Congress in this respect. Just as the Congress is sorely dependent on the Nehru-Gandhis to stay afloat, the BJP cannot do without Narendra Modi. It is patent enough that the party will enter a rocky, uncertain phase in Modi’s absence.

True, virtually all Indian parties revolve round one person – whether it is the Trinamool Congress or the DMK or the Rashtriya Janata Dal. Ravi Shankar Prasad has mocked the Congress for the lack of internal democracy. But this is true of all parties.

Unless the parties develop robust organizational structures based on an ideological base – not the BJP’s polarising communalism or the Trinamool’s vacuous “ma, mati, manush” chant (the Congress’s ideology remains unclear) – they will be afraid of falling apart in the absence of a dominant figure. This fear also makes some of them susceptible to the “misuse” of investigative agencies by a ruthless adversary.(IPA Service)

The post Congress Must Stand Up To Modi Government’s ED Terrorism first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

Mamata Banerjee’s latest troubles mean that her challenge to the BJP at the national level is petering out. After the scandal involving a formerly top-ranking minister who has now been sacked, few will credit her with being a person who can give the BJP a run for its money in 2024.

Her difficulties stem from her failure to keep her party under control in West Bengal and an inability to understand the ways of the modern economy. To start with the lapses concerning her party, it is well known that two things have plagued the Trinamool Congress from the beginning. One is its inherent lawlessness and the other is its inbuilt corruption. The result is Mamata’s failure to earn the kind of respect which is necessary for a politician who wants to play a national role.

The link between the rowdy conduct of the Trinamool cadres during local polls and after the national-level elections, and the corruption associated with them, was perhaps only to be expected. The so-called “cut money” phenomenon is a manifestation of this malaise. It involves the harassment of property owners by party goons if a part of the money transactions during the real estate deals is not given to the cadres.

It is anybody’s guess whether the piles of cash as well as gold and jewellery found in the flat of an associate of the former minister who is under the enforcement directorate’s scanner is related both to the “cut money” transactions and the school jobs scam. For once, therefore, the directorate, which has generally come to be seen as the government’s political tool against the opposition, has hit the right button.

Sleaze and unruly cadres are not unknown in Indian politics. But among the roadblocks on Mamata’s path to a national role is her inability to make West Bengal relive its past glory as an industrial centre. The CPI(M) under Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya tried to undo the damage caused by the “revolutionary” rhetoric of the Marxists leading to the flight of capital by inviting the Tatas to build their Nano cars in West Bengal. Had the project continued, it might have led to the state’s industrial revival.

But Mamata scuttled it with her petty politics because she couldn’t see the bigger picture. As a result, West Bengal has remained mired in backwardness, making Nobel laureate Amartya Sen compare the empty Kolkata airport to Mughal emperor Akbar’s abandoned capital, Fatehpur Sikri. Nearly all her attempts to induce industrialists to invest in the state have been infructuous.

Mamata’s stumbles in the political-organizational and economic fields explain her inability to extend the Trinamool’s spheres of influence by securing a foothold in Goa or even in Tripura, whose large Bengali population should have been amenable to her political appeal.

Considering that West Bengal at one time was a magnet for labourers from Odisha, Bihar and eastern U.P. who flocked to the state for employment while some of the schools, colleges and Kolkata university attracted students from far and wide, West Bengal’s present sorry plight reflects poorly on the political class.

While B.C. Roy’s successors as Congress  chief ministers failed to continue with his industrial development programmes and the CPI(M)’s Jyoti Basu never fulfilled the hopes that he had initially aroused, Mamata has taken the state further downhill with the latest scandal proving to be the nadir of her tenure.

For all practical purposes, therefore, her all-India ambitions have turned to dust. Yet, the BJP is mistaken if it believes that it can fill the breach. The reason is the albatross round the party’s neck of its Hindu-Hindi background which has little appeal for the Bengalis who are rooted in their culture centred on the language.

For them, the BJP’s vegetarianism, communalism and focus on Hindi, not to mention the fetish with cow’s urine, are anathema. For the average Bengali, the Hindi heartland or the so-called cow belt is an area of intellectual darkness.

It will be extremely difficult, therefore, for the BJP to make any headway in this region which has more linguistic, musical, culinary and now also cinematic affinity with Bangladesh. The popularity of the Prime Video channel of “hoichoi” is testimony to this cultural closeness which is markedly secular.

Since the ongoing scam marks the lowest point in Mamata’s career, how she extricates herself from the mess will be watched with interest, not least by the non-BJP parties.

Among them, the CPI(M) may sense an opportunity to recover lost ground. But it appears to have lost much of its earlier appeal in the wake of the collapse of communism worldwide. The condition of the Congress in West Bengal is even worse. With the Trinamool having shot itself in the foot, the state’s political future is palpably dark. (IPA Service)

The post Mamata Banerjee Has Botched Her Chances Of Playing A National Role first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

An unprecedented event in January, 2018, saw four Supreme Court judges hold a Press conference – the first and last, in their view – to announce that democracy in India is in peril because “things are not in order” in the judiciary.

Four years later, Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, has also voiced his discontent over the state of affairs in the country where “hasty, indiscriminate” arrests are being made and laws are being passed without “detailed deliberation and scrutiny”.

The reason, according to him, is the prevailing “hostility” in politics where the space for the opposition is “shrinking”. As the chief justice has said, “these are not signs of a healthy democracy”.

Are the fears expressed by the four judges earlier coming true? Whenever misgivings are voiced abroad over the democratic conditions in India, the government routinely rubbishes them for being “biased”. Obviously, such a dismissive attitude cannot be taken with regard to the chief justice’s observations.

For the first time, therefore, since the Narendra Modi government assumed office, it is under pressure. Up until now, it has had its way on the incarceration of dissidents or peremptory steps such as the abrogation of Article 370 since the judiciary has not always intervened.

No judge had earlier described the repeated FIRs against a journalist as part of a “vicious cycle”, as Justice Ramana has now done. The result of the ease with which the police and the investigative agencies could persist with such “cycles” was that the ordinary person was virtually at the mercy of the authorities as in a banana republic.

There is a reason why the government can easily bulldoze its opponents into submission. It is the weakness of the opposition parties at the central level even if some of them are securely placed in their local strongholds. Hence, the arrogant use of bulldozers by the government to demolish the houses and shops of critics in areas where the central authorities are politically strong.

India has seen a strong central government earlier, too, notably when the Congress was in power in the decades immediately after independence. But, even then, notwithstanding the occasional misuse of the police, few were scared to speak their minds. Parliament was a forum where the opposition gained nearly as much prominence as the prime minister and the ministers.

Between 1947 and 1975, India saw itself as a model democracy. The international community also recognized it as such – “famously democratic”, as The Economist said. The election of the world’s first communist government through the ballot box in Kerala in 1957 confirmed this reputation at a time when other newly-independent countries in Asia and Africa were going under the heels of dictators.

India’s first experience with autocracy was during the Emergency between 1975 and ’77, but the country recovered its prestige when the dictatorship was overthrown – again via the ballot box. Since then, elections have been regularly held, but the lengthening shadow of authoritarianism has made critics call it an “electoral autocracy”.

The authoritarianism is the result of an overbearing centre and an opposition in disarray. For the ordinary people, the only escape route back to the earlier days when the sense of freedom was more prevalent is via the judiciary and a revived opposition. Since the second prospect appears dim at the moment, the law courts remain the only hope.

Justice Ramana’s observations, therefore, carry a lot of weight. If his obiter dicta lead to a toning down of the highhandedness of the police and investigative agencies, it will bring about a sea-change in the atmosphere of the country by making people less afraid to speak out, as the late tycoon, Rahul Bajaj, had said even about the timidity of the rich and famous.

At present, “an overwhelming culture of fear” prevails in India, according to the British-Indian sculptor, Anish Kapoor. “This is the route to fascism”, he reportedly told an Indian magazine which has refused to publish his comments.

The faintheartedness of the magazine is in keeping with the lack of spine shown by the media in general, underlining the tendency to play safe which has earned them the sobriquet of “godi media” or lapdog media from critics.

It is the opposition’s and the media’s weakness which has allowed the government to ride roughshod over civil liberties and keep scores of activists in jail. The judiciary did not cover itself with glory during the Emergency. One hopes it will make amends this time. (IPA Service)

The post Indian Judiciary Is Still Failing To Act As The Custodian Of Democracy first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

The Samajwadi Party’s defeat in two Uttar Pradesh by-elections, the Trinamool Congress’s miserable performance in the Tripura polls and the BJP’s strangulation of the ruling Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi with the help of the Shiv Sena rebels, are signs of the BJP juggernaut’s – bulldozer’s? – relentless progress in various directions.

To underline its dominance, the arrests of several activists, including two former police officers, who were involved in the cases against the BJP in the 2002 Gujarat riots, have emphasized the helplessness of the BJP’s critics in standing up to the ruling party at the centre.

As it is, a number of prominent activists – Gautam Navlakha, Anand Taltumbde – have been in jail for months even as one of them, Stan Swamy, died while in detention. Their cases seem to drag on interminably.

Therefore, whether it is the electoral politics or legal entanglements, the BJP appears to have the upper hand. The party’s forked-tongue also enables it to support freedom of speech at an international gathering while jailing activists and journalists at home.

In contrast, the BJP’s opponents appear flat-footed where tactics are concerned and clueless about ways to counter the BJP’s relentless political drive backed by an overflowing treasure chest, the indefatigable energy of the leaders and cadres and an ideological certitude based on strident Hindu nationalism and vicious Islamophobia.

In the face of such an onslaught, the opposition parties forever appear to be on the retreat. It is not only that they are palpably on the defensive with regard to offering a frontal challenge, their lethargy also continues to be their Achilles heel.

An evidence of this self-destructive lassitude was the Samajwadi Party chief, Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to stay away from the campaign for the Rampur and Azamgarh by-elections which the party, predictably, lost. If the decision was based on an overweening self-confidence in the capacity of the MY (Muslim-Yadav) vote bank to beat back the BJP, it showed a pitiful failure to assess the ground situation.

It is the kind of failure which is also evident in Rahul Gandhi’s frequent foreign trips which confirm his reputation as a part-time politician with little interest in a sustained effort to wrest power from the BJP. It’s an image which bolsters the BJP’s position just as Manmohan Singh’s weakness vis-à-vis Sonia Gandhi and her kitchen cabinet of Left-leaning activists helped Narendra Modi to build up his standing as a “strong” leader.

Unlike Rahul and Akhilesh, Mamata Banerjee is a hand-on politician who wins elections. But her influence is limited to West Bengal. As her failure to make any headway in Goa earlier this year and now in Tripura has shown, she doesn’t have the political imagination and drive to become an all-India figure.

If there was any state where she could have made an impact, it was Tripura with its large Bengali-speaking population. But she lacks the organizational skills needed to spread her wings. If she wins in West Bengal, it is because she faces in the BJP a party of Hindi-speakers who have little understanding of Bengali culture and (non-vegetarian) cuisine. Hence, her easy success in West Bengal like the DMK’s in Tamil Nadu.

But, like the DMK’s M.K. Stalin, Mamata will remain a provincial figure who will not be taken seriously outside her state in order to pose a major challenge to the BJP at the national level.

It is the same with K. Chandrashekar Rao whose writ begins and ends in Telangana. For all his recent efforts to present himself as an all-India personality who is ready to take on the BJP in the company of like-minded parties, Rao, like Mamata and Stalin, is unlikely to create splash outside his own state.

Arvind Kejriwal gave the impression at one time of outgrowing his image of being an outsider who operates beyond and above the existing constitutional system. It was a propensity which made the Union home minister of the time, Sushil Kumar Shinde, call him a “yeda (or unhinged) mukhya mantri” for sitting on a dharna on the streets of Delhi. Kejriwal had also sat on a dharna inside the Lt. Governor’s residence.

He has matured since then, apparently abandoning his former mentor, Anna Hazare’s influence who also regarded himself as being outside legal system. But, even then, Kejriwal does not seem willing to work along with other non-BJP parties. They, too, are evidently wary of accommodating an unreliable person like him. Kejriwal’s stance of a lone warrior was okay as long as he was winning elections in Delhi and Punjab. But his latest electoral defeat in Punjab has revived memories of his “yeda” days.

The BJP, therefore, appears well-placed to forge ahead at the national level even if it stumbles in state like West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. But the economy remains a problem as also the party’s heavy dependence on Modi to bring in the votes. (IPA Service)

The post Opposition Is On Backfoot Now In Offering Big Challenge To The BJP first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

A feature of the present ruling dispensation at the centre is the fear that it has generated even among the rich and famous.

The late tycoon, Rahul Bajaj, was perhaps the only one who had referred to this phenomenon of “new India” at a gathering where the BJP’s bigwigs were present. It took a lot of courage for him to do so even as his well-heeled professional colleagues remained silent. There has been no one since then among the non-politicians who has been so forthright.

Rarely before has there been a time when India has passed through such a phase of sealed lips. Only during the Emergency of 1975-77 had even the high and mighty realized the value of adhering to a period of golden silence.

As film star Naseeruddin Shah has pointed out, even the celebrated Khans of Bollywood have chosen to ignore controversial topics presumably because, as Shah believes, they have a lot to lose if they open their mouths.

The government’s supporters, however, in the tinsel town have no such fears. They have been out in full force to lend their support to the political masters. They have had no hesitations to stand shoulder to shoulder with the big shots of the ruling party while accepting tax cuts for their films and enjoying the extravagant publicity at home and abroad which only political and official clout can provide.

Their genuflexion, however, is a part of the kind of sycophancy which is inextricably linked to an atmosphere of fear. It is obvious that dread of the powerful generates a sense of obsequiousness towards the lord and master, in this case, the political boss. Outside the fawning film world, it is in the media where this abject submissiveness is most visible.

There used to be a time when the media prided on being free. Nothing was more demeaning to the print and audio-visual media than to be seen as toadies of the government. Except for the party organs, all self-respecting publications flaunted their distance from the political parties to highlight their independence. As has been facetiously said, the relationship between politicians and newspapers should be like the one between a dog and a lamp post.

This is no longer the case in India. While some newspapers still try to maintain a semblance of independence, some of the major television channels have no such pretence. They openly kowtow to the powers that be, usually acting almost like their mouthpieces, and also castigate the government’s critics, especially the opposition parties.

Is this sycophancy born of ideological affinity? Or is it fear, mainly of the owners who, like the Khans of Bollywood, have too much to lose if they take a stand contrary to what the government says or does? In all probability, it is the latter.

After emerging from imprisonment at the end of the Emergency, L.K. Advani had said that where the media barons were asked to bend between 1975 and 1977, they chose to crawl. If anything which showed that the servility which sections of the middle class had imbibed during the colonial rule had survived the end of the British raj, it was their docility during the Emergency. The same submissiveness is again evident today.

And it is unlikely that Advani, who is now safely ensconced in the higher echelons of the BJP’s margdarshak mandali or the visionary group to delineate the party’s path, will object to the present  timidity in the media or in the corporate sector which was noted by Rahul Bajaj.

Needless to say, such a feeble attitude among sizeable sections of the people, including the elite, does not augur well for the democratic system which requires an environment where bold views can be expressed, including criticism of the government. If this milieu comes under stress, as it did during the Emergency, then political upstarts can come to the fore as could be seen in the rise of Sanjay Gandhi, who was described as “wayward” and “uneducated” by his uncle, B.K. Nehru.

The independence movement was marked by the presence of highly educated individuals who were not only scholars in their own right, but also known for their moral integrity. The fall in the standards of education and morality has been precipitous since the days of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar. A majority of the politicians of today are not only known for their dubious background – nearly 50 per cent of the MPs have criminal records – but also poor educational qualifications. It’s a return to the Indira-Sanjay era made even more unwholesome by an atmosphere of thuggery. Hence, the prevalence of fear and its concomitant of sycophancy. (IPA Service)

The post Fear And Sycophancy Stalking Present India Under BJP Regime first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

After three decades of political success across the length and breadth of the country from the west to the north to the centre to the north-east, the Hindutva juggernaut led by the BJP has run into heavy weather.

Yet, it was a setback which was waiting to happen. Given the BJP’s anti-Muslim worldview, dating back to the foundation of the party’s mentor, the RSS, nearly 100 years ago, it was only a question of time before the BJP stumbled over the egregious observations of its spokespersons on  Prophet Mohammed.

However, its remedial action to contain the damage caused by the offensive comments has the potential to lead the BJP into deeper trouble. The reason is that sizeable sections in the party are unhappy with the disciplinary action taken against the two offenders. The resentment of the dissenters is all the greater because they believe that it is a genuflexion before the Islamists.

Hence, the BJP M.P. Subramanian Swamy’s comment that the party had bent before the Chinese in Ladakh, the Russians in Ukraine and the US in Quad, and now before tiny Qatar as well. There have been others, notably the feisty film star Kangana Ranaut and hardliners like Uma Bharati, Sadhvi Pragya and Sadhvi Prachi, who have said that there is nothing wrong with what the spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, has said about the Prophet. Not surprisingly, the Islamophobic Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, has also expressed support for Sharma along with the Pakistani-Canadian critic of the Islamists, Tarek Fatah.

The BJP will not find it easy, therefore, to quell dissent in its ranks on the issue. The party’s matriarch, Vijaya Raje Scindia, had once boasted how it had survived the demolition of the Babri masjid without a tremor. As is known, only Atal Behari Vajpayee had serious reservations about what happened in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. Now, it is different since the internal cracks appear to be wider.

The difference between 1992 and 2022 is that the BJP today has much greater stakes than ever before. It is a much larger party and hopes to become even larger by winning a third term in office at the centre in 2024. Furthermore, its admirers in the party and outside expect it to advance resolutely towards a Hindu rashtra which, according to the RSS sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, can be achieved in the foreseeable future.

This is not the time, therefore, for the party to fall flat on its face because of a debilitating confrontation with the Gulf countries where Indian products are  being withdrawn from the supermarket shelves and where millions of Indians earn their daily livelihood. The faceoff has the potential to hurt India all the more if the Arab perception of Indian Islamophobia is shared by others, including the US which has officially noted the attacks on Muslims and their places of worship in India.

The BJP’s various tactics to wriggle out of the mess may not be successful.  One of them is to charge with treason those who are supposedly instigating the Gulf countries against India, as has been suggested by the information commissioner, Uday Mahurkar. With the sedition laws currently under the Supreme court’s scrutiny, it is doubtful if the government will follow the commissioner’s advice which appears too drastic any way.

The other is to spin stories about how well the Muslims are faring in India in order to dispel the belief about the BJP’s anti-Muslim stance. The Union minister, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, is foremost among those with such narratives. He has followed up his earlier claim about India being a “heaven” for Muslims to trot out figures in the wake of the controversy over the comments on the Prophet to say how well the community is doing in all spheres of life.

If these efforts fail to make any headway in erasing the BJP’s anti-Muslim taint, the reason is the way in which Hindutva extremists like the party’s M.P, Tejasvi Surya, have been lambasting the Muslims. According to Surya, the period of the Muslim presence in medieval India was no different from what the Jews experienced during the Holocaust.

This is a far cry from the secular contention about how Hindu-Muslim cohabitation produced a composite culture (also known as the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb) which led to the intermingling of the salient features of the lifestyles of the two communities in art, architecture, music and culinary practices.

For the BJP, however, the concept of the two communities having lived in comparative peace and harmony is anathema. Instead, the saffron brotherhood would like to present a picture of the Hindus and Muslims having been constantly at loggerheads. Hence, the frenetic rewriting of history and now even the production of films to portray a strife-torn past.

The fatuity of the BJP’s claim in the wake of the latest row that the party respects all religions will be widely recognized within the party and outside just as its assertions about sabka saath-sabka vikas (development for all) have never been taken seriously by the rank and file in general and the hardliners in particular. (IPA Service)

The post Latest Prophet Row Has Put BJP Leadership In A Delicate Situation first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

Occasionally, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is seen to be engaged in calming down the Hindutva hotheads. What prompts him to undertake such an exercise is generally beyond the understanding of impartial observers. But the Sangh Parivar leader’s effort is laudable and undeniable.

His latest observation that there is no need to look for a holy Shivling under every mosque falls in this category of. soothing tempers. What internal calculations made him call for a truce by reining in the rampaging saffron storm-troopers can only be surmised.

It cannot be that he has been influenced by US secretary of state Anthony Blinken’s latest statement about the attacks on the places of worship of the minorities in India. Normally, the BJP government dismisses such criticism as the comments of the uninformed or the biased. The RSS will be aware of such knee-jerk reactions of the BJP.

Even then, the RSS must have sensed that the continuing petitioning of the judiciary to dig deeper under almost every mosque in search of the remnants of temples has the potential of a communal flare-up with damaging consequences for the country’s social fabric and investment climate.

The RSS may have also surmised that the relentless targeting of mosques is only strengthening the hawkish elements in the saffron brotherhood, thereby straining the discipline of the RSS and its affiliates like the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Such a breakdown of discipline had led to the demolition of the Babri masjid. The BJP may have gained politically from the discretion, but it resulted in the Hindus being identified as intolerant and criticized on the lines of Blinken’s admonition.

It has to be remembered that earlier, too, Bhagwat had sought to douse the communal flames by arguing that the Hindus and Muslims share the same DNA and are, therefore, brothers under the skin.

That his advice did not have the desired effect is evident from the latest saffron drive to right the “historical wrongs” by breaking mosques just as the Muslim invaders had broken temples in medieval times. But what may have passed muster in an anarchic world half a millennium ago when the norms of conduct lacked today’s sobriety is unacceptable in the 21st century.

In recent times, only Nazi Germany made it a practice of destroying Jewish synagogues and the Ku Klux Klan took to burning churches run by the blacks in America. After them, only the BJP among modern political parties has been associated with attacks on the places of worship of a “rival” faith.

Rather than the RSS chief, it would have been better if senior BJP leaders had called for restraint against the targeting of mosques. But if they did not do so, the reason perhaps is that they expect a political dividend from the ratcheting up of communal tension, especially on the eve of the forthcoming assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

Another reason why the senior BJP leaders may have left it to the RSS sarsanghchalak to instill sense in the minds of the Hindutva Gestapo is that they are not sure if their advice or reprimand will be heeded. Arguably, the storm-troopers can no longer be controlled. Once the genii of toxic fundamentalism is allowed to come out of the bottle to serve a political purpose, no ghar wapsi is possible for the demon.

As it is, the parivar’s game plan has been to “liberate” the Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura shrines out of the estimated 3,000 temples which were destroyed by the “invaders”. But the saffronites maintain that if the Muslims hand over these three, then the others will be spared.

But who will guarantee that the rampage of the Rambhakts will stop after the acquisition of the Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura sites? Will not the destructive appetite of the karsevaks be whetted once all the three places of worship are “liberated”, of which Ayodhya is already in the bag?

It is also clear that it will not be possible for anyone outside the saffron brotherhood, such as the secularists, to give a call for moderation as the RSS chief has done. If anyone in the secular camp gives such a restraining advice, he will be roundly condemned by the Hindutva group as pro-Muslim and anti-national.

It is up to the Parivar, therefore, to bring its own house in order. Otherwise, it is entirely possible that the crusading zeal of the Hindu zealots will not only endanger national unity, but also shake the RSS-BJP structure to its foundation. (IPA Service)

The post Is The RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat Trying To Tame The Saffron Hawks? first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

With the world waking up to the possibility of the temple-mosque disputes in India becoming yet another religious flashpoint, as the BBC has said, the worst fears of the country’s well-wishers are coming true.

The apprehension that the BJP’s rise to power will increase the communal temperature is proving correct. The fond belief that the responsibilities of power will curb the party’s anti-Muslim outlook hasn’t been fulfilled.

Beginning with low-key campaigns against the Muslims with ghar wapsi (reconversion) and love jehad programmes decrying interfaith marriage, there has been a gradual increase in the saffron brotherhood’s communal venom, leading to the lynching of Muslim cattle traders and suspected beef eaters.

Now, another menacing stage has been reached with the targeting of mosques in keeping with the slogans that were raised at the time of the Babri masjid destruction in 1992 – yeh toh pehli jhanki hai, Kashi, Mathura baki hai, meaning that the Babri demolition was only the first step, Kashi (Varanasi) and Mathura (mosques) will be the next ones.

For the BJP, the focus on the Babri masjid from the late 1980s was an ideal way to whip up anti-Muslim sentiments by charging the minorities with building a mosque at the birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya. Prior to that, the BJP did not have an emotive issue to enthuse the rank and file.

The injection of religion in the 1990s into the tirades against Muslims yielded high political dividends for the BJP and foxed the “secular” parties which were at a loss on how to counter such an appeal. The BJP hasn’t looked back since then. Having achieved its goal of building a temple at Lord Ram’s birthplace, the party is now turning to achieve similar feats at Varanasi and Mathura.

However, the problem for it is that the world will be wary of more attacks on mosques on the lines of what happened in Ayodhya and the resultant outbreak of riots. As it is, India’s position is said to be “much below” among the indicators of the World Bank’s world governance report because of the “negative commentary on India by think tanks, survey agencies and international media”, according to India’s own assessment. The negativity will hurt India even more in the event of Hindu-Muslim clashes.

It took a long time for the BJP to recover from the blow inflicted on its prestige by the 2002 Gujarat riots. The recovery was aided by the party’s decision to turn the spotlight away from communalism to economic growth.

But with the developmental prospects slowing down because of high unemployment and high inflation, the party has resorted to playing its trump card of stoking Hindu-Muslim animosity by paying the Muslims back in their own coin by breaking mosques in retaliation for their acts of breaking temples in the medieval times.

In the modern age, the Nazis were the only ones who targeted their religious adversaries by setting on fire the synagogues of the Jews. The BJP’s attacks on mosques are the second instance of such vandalism. However, with the BJP’s democratic credentials under fire from organizations like the Freedom House of the US and V-Dem Institute of Sweden, the party cannot afford to let communal discord further blacken its record.

Even if the targeted mosques are not immediately attacked, the outpouring of hate on the social media is showing how far India has moved away from the days of Nehruvian secularism when the minorities – mainly the Muslims, Christians – generally had little to fear and went about their daily business without let or hindrance.

As for the other minorities like the Jains or Sikhs or Zoroastrians, they never had any doubts about being an integral part of India. There were no books by saffron writers identifying them as “internal enemies” as M.S. Golwalkar of the RSS (1906-73) did with reference to Muslims and Christians.

It was only in 1984 that the Sikhs faced Hindu enmity after Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. But that was a one-off tragedy which has receded into the background although groups of Sikh extremists or Khalistanis are still around in Pakistan, America and Canada. Otherwise, the old Hindu-Sikh amity has been restored.

Arguably, Hindu-Muslim friendship would also have been restored if the BJP did not find it politically convenient to talk incessantly about righting the “historical wrongs” of the Muslim invaders of the medieval times destroying temples. As long as the party scratches old wounds to draw blood, India will not know peace. (IPA Service)

The post Sangh Parivar Is Targeting Mosques To Keep Communal Fires Burning first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

The one significant outcome of the Congress’s recent Chintan Shivir in Rajasthan was Rahul Gandhi’s acknowledgement that the party has lost touch with the people. Nothing demonstrated this disconnect more than the steep fall in the party’s Lok Sabha tally to 44 in 2014 and 53 five years later.

However, what the Congress’s uncrowned king did not care to explain was the reason why the party was so summarily rejected by the people. Given its stellar pre- and post-independence history till the early 1970s, the party’s ignominious decline calls for serious introspection.

There is nothing to indicate, though, that the Congress has undertaken any such exercise in recent years. Instead, it has seemingly attributed the party’s dismal performance to the people’s inability to appreciate its intrinsic value and has apparently been waiting for them to realize their mistake and return the party to power.

It is for this reason that the Congress has tended to regard the BJP as a usurper which will be relegated in the not too distant future to its rightful place on the margins of Indian politics where it had languished for decades from its Jan Sangh days. The Congress will then casually take the reins of power once again in its hands.

The line in the celebrated song in a Raj Kapoor film – mera joota hai Japani – which says, hum singhasan par ja baithey jab jab Karen eradey, typifies this feudal attitude of the natural-born owner to ascend to the throne whenever he likes. It is this arrogant mindset which has come in the way of the Congress analyzing the causes of its setback.

It is only now after the drubbing in the recent assembly elections that the Congress appears to have sensed the popular disenchantment with it. Even then, notwithstanding Rahul Gandhi’s belated admission, what is missing is an understanding of why the party is in such dire straits. This inability to assess the reasons for the party’s weakness is behind Rahul Gandhi’s fatuous [DG1] belief that only the Congress can take on the BJP and not the regional parties.

The people desert a party because of the flaws of the leadership. Unless the Congress focusses on these defects, there is little hope of it recovering lost ground. Perhaps the party should realize that one of the reasons for its current predicament is that it lacks the three ingredients of the BJP’s success – energy, articulation and a clear-cut ideology.

On all these counts, the BJP is way ahead. Its energy is apparently boundless as its leaders at various levels are constantly on the move, visiting virtually all corners of the country. They are also highly effective speakers even if the main reason for their success in forcefully presenting their viewpoint is their unending emphasis on Hindu nationalism liberally sprinkled with anti-Muslim rhetoric. Indeed, it is the latter which remains the cornerstone of the BJP’s worldview.

The Congress is patently at a disadvantage in this respect for it is unable to make up its mind on how to counter the BJP on this issue. If the Congress toes the saffron party with a “soft” Hindutva stance, it will alienate the minorities and the liberals while if it adopts a hard, secular position, it may disenchant a sizeable section of the Hindus.

The confusion on the ideological front is the Congress’s bane and if the Chintan Shivir did nothing to dispel it, the reason is that the Congress at present simply does not have the intellectual acumen to formulate an unambiguous policy on the subject.

It is not only with regard to secularism that the Congress has seemingly lost its way, it is in the same quandary about “socialism” as well. In fact, its embracement of socialism even after the doctrine’s worldwide demise after the fall of the Berlin wall made the party take the foot off the accelerator of economic reforms, as P. Chidambaram said, and pave the way for Narendra Modi’s rise. If Manmohan Singh had continued what he had started in 1991, the BJP would have remained in the doldrums.

Ironically, the Congress’s love affair with socialism has curbed the BJP’s enthusiasm for market-oriented policies and made it emulate the Grand Old Party, thereby making Arun Shourie mock the BJP by saying that it is ”Congress plus the cow”.

But while the BJP uses cow and communalism to push ahead, the Congress is either marking time or retreating. The Congress’s earlier success was due to the presence of charismatic leaders – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi – and pro-industrial policies exemplified by the construction of steel plants (“dams are the temples of modern India”, as Nehru said) and the setting up of the IITs.

The termination of the licence-permit-control raj in 1991 marked the next stage of the party’s forward movement. But a fascination with socialism and dislike of capitalism ensured that the party could not push forward with economic reforms. Hence, its present stagnation even as the BJP’s mix of populism and communalism is turning India into a Hindu rashtra. (IPA Service)

The post Even After Udaipur Chintan Shivir, Congress Is Groping For Its Role first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

The Delhi police’s initial reluctance to book saffron activists for their hate speech against Muslims, and the centre’s certificate to the sedition laws before the Supreme Court, are typical signs of authoritarianism. Left unchecked, such an official attitude is bound to pave the way for an intolerant, pro-Hindu state.

The only saving grace at the moment is the judiciary which is why the police have had to overturn their earlier clean chit to the hate-mongers and may even put some of them behind bars. The verdict on the sedition case is still awaited. But there is little doubt that the government will fight tooth-and-nail to retain it on the statute book, given its utility in harassing critics.

What these developments show, however, is the thin line on which the nation is walking to safeguard its democracy. There is little doubt that any misstep will usher in a totalitarian regime. The danger is all the greater because apart from the judiciary, there are virtually no bulwarks against a steep descent into autocracy.

While parties such as the Trinamool Congress, the DMK, the Congress, the CPI(M), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Aam Admi Party (AAP) are likely to resist the authoritarian trends, there are others like the Janata Dal (United), the Biju Janata Dal and the YSR Congress which will tamely go along with the BJP.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi is threatening to take on the BJP, but it is a lone ranger. Moreover, its past bonhomie with the BJP can raise doubts about its future plans.

Similarly, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen has been accused of being the BJP’s “B” team although its leader, Asaduddin Owaisi, has been sharply critical of the saffron party. But its Muslim background makes the “secular” parties ware of associating with it for fearing of alienating the Hindu voters. The ghost of Jinnah still haunts the Indian political scene.

That leaves few credible challengers to the BJP, leaving it an open field. Besides, the challengers themselves do not always inspire confidence because of their many flaws. Mamata Banerjee, for instance, lacks sophistication. The DMK’s M.K. Stalin, too, is a provincial figure who can only speak Tamil. The CPI(M) is confined to Kerala, having frittered away its earlier strongholds in West Bengal and Tripura, and the RJD to Bihar.

The AAP at the moment appears capable of giving the BJP a run for its money in states outside the Hindi belt such as Gujarat. But the AAP’s ideology is woolly and its politics is marked by opportunism where taking a firm stand against the BJP’s minority-baiting is concerned.  As its pro-Hindu slogans suggest, the AAP is careful about its stance vis-à-vis the majority community.

Where the BJP is concerned, therefore, it appears to be well-placed on the road to a Hindu rashtra. Given the present political trends, the RSS can look forward with great elation to a successful celebrating of its centenary year in 2025. What seemed unattainable in the years of Nehru and Indira Gandhi is now apparently well within reach.

Against the backdrop of establishing a Hindu rashtra, the existing difficulties with regard to inflation and unemployment will appear minimal and even inconsequential. What will matter to the average Hindu is the possibility of achieving a dream where the minorities – Muslims and Christians – will be totally marginalized, being unable to exercise any influence in the fields of music and movies, as the Muslims have done for long, or in the fields of education and a westernized lifestyle which have been associated with the Christians.

It is not accidental, therefore, that there is a row over replacing English with Hindi as the link language and an attempt is being made to drown out the sound of the azaan – the Muslim liturgy of prayers – with loud chants of Hindu religious invocations. It is also not accidental that bulldozers are being deployed to destroy the supposedly illegal shops and establishments of the Muslims since these mechanical monsters tend to create fear among the bystanders.

The hesitancy shown by the Delhi police to act against the hate-mongers till the judiciary intervened is not seen in the audio-visual media which is full of saffron bloggers and anchors. They rarely lose an opportunity to praise the ruling dispensation and criticize its opponents. Not since the Emergency have such large sections of the media been so subservient except for a few notable exceptions. Whether it is the police or the bureaucracy or the media, therefore, authoritarianism is rampant.  (IPA Service)

The post BJP Is Facing Little Challenge From Its Rivals Now In National Politics first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

When the US-based commission for international religious freedom branded India as a country of “particular concern” because of its poor human rights record. a pro-BJP newspaper described the American outfit as “India-hating”.

The casual dismissal of the criticism showed what external affairs minister S. Jaishankar has hailed as a confident assertion of “who we are” as India charts its own course in world politics and does not want to be a “pale imitation” of others.

However, within days of the American think-tank’s unflattering observation, the Indian supreme court directed the Himachal Pradesh government to act against any “hate” speech against Muslim at a gathering of Hindu fundamentalists and more than 100 former civil servants urged the prime minister to speak out against the prevailing “frenzy of hate-filled destruction”. Neither the judiciary nor the ex-bureaucrats wanted the ongoing events to demonstrate to the world “who we are” since their view apparently is that India is different from what the hate-mongers propagate.

Soon afterwards, an organization of Hindus living in America came out with a statement, saying that Hindus have a special responsibility to denounce hate speech. Evidently, not every Indian, whether at home or abroad, agrees with the external affairs minister’s perception of “who we are”, with a not inconsequential group in favour of imitating those who extol human and, especially minority, rights.

There is little doubt that the minister’s views are in line with the BJP’s ideas about what the nation is and should be. For the BJP, the last one thousand years  were an era of darkness when the foreigners – Muslims and the British – ruled and tried to turn India into a “pale imitation” of their way of life.

The BJP refused to acknowledge that these thousand years were less a period of strife between the native Hindus and the invading outsiders than a time when the coexistence of the two groups led to the evolution of a composite culture which permeated all walks of life from art and architecture to music and cuisine in addition to heralding a form of governance under a constitution which extolled the nation’s diversity.

It isn’t surprising that one of the objectives of the first BJP government under Atal Behari Vajpayee was to abolish the constitution by setting up a commission for the purpose. Unfortunately for the BJP, the commission under a former chief justice of India refused to toe the BJP’s line. But that does not mean that the party has given up its efforts to mould the nation in its own Hindu-centric image where the minorities will be increasingly relegated to the status of second class citizens.

Hence, the attempts to dictate what they should wear – no hijab – what they should eat – no halal meat – how they should pray – no loudspeakers in the mosques. It is these impositions of the majority community which the liberal democracies are noting as matters of “particular concern” because they militate against the generally accepted norms of interaction between various religious communities.

Before the BJP’s ascent, India had always taken pride in its secularism. Under the BJP, however, secularism has become a “dirty word” – the Hindutva groups dub it as “sickularism” – and India is lapsing into a majoritarian country where the minorities are shunned as the BJP’s proposal to change all the Muslim names in the Delhi area shows. Already, several prominent Muslim names like that of Allahahad and Mughal Sarai in U.P. have been turned into Hindu ones.

It is unlikely that sizeable sections of Hindus will be pleased with this wholesale obliteration of Muslim names (which relect a composite past) and hold up the exercise as an example of “who we are”. To them, this is not the kind of “us” that we want to be if only because such linguistic vandalism shows Hindus as mean-minded bigots.

The chances are that it will not be easy for the external affairs minister to sell this “idea” of  India with its inherent vicious communalism even if as a newcomer to the BJP, he may want to be more loyal than the king to consolidate his position in the party. However, since the continuing “frenzy” of hate is bound to keep Hindu-Muslim (and even Hindu-Christian) relations on the boil, the country’s foreign policy will tend to be singed by as much of the heat as the domestic scene. The concept of who we are may then have to be modified. (IPA Service)

The post Mr. Jaishankar – You Can Find Out What BJP Fringe Groups Are first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

Sharad Pawar was not revealing a state secret when he accused the BJP of creating a communal situation in the country. Ever since the hijab-halal-azaan row in Karnataka and elsewhere, the BJP’s intention of raising the communal temperature has been obvious.

However, the purpose is unclear. Is it related to the over-confidence which the party is feeling after its victories in the four state assembly elections or is it because of a sense of unease about the next round of contests in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh this year and in Karnataka early in the next? Any setback in these four states, as in the recent by-elections in West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, will take the shine off the BJP’s victories in U.P. and elsewhere

But for the reasons such as these, it is difficult to understand why the BJP should light the communal fires in several states all at once of which Delhi is the latest. Moreover, the method the party has chosen to fan the flames, viz. the use of bulldozers to destroy the houses and shops of the suspected rioters in Muslim-inhabited areas is clearly intended to show the minorities that “strong” men are now in charge who will not hesitate to take stern action against the miscreants.

The message is loud and clear – that the Hindu rashtra is totally different from the namby-pamby “sickular” (secular) dispension of the Congress and other non-BJP parties which tend to pander to the Muslims. Nothing demonstrates the BJP’s wish to assert the predominance of the Hindutva forces than the attack on the Delhi chief minister’s residence followed by the felicitation of the vandals at the BJP office just as a lynch mob was once garlanded by a Union minister after they had thrashed Muslim cattle traders.

The reckless use of bulldozers in several BJP-ruled states is in keeping with the party’s muscular approach when dealing with the minorities. The latter are also being maligned under various labels – ghuspetiyas (infiltrators), Rohingyas – which have been added to villifications like jehadis and Babur ki aulad or the children of the Mughal invaders which the BJP has been hurling at the Muslims for years.

These disparagements have long been a part of the BJP’s anti-Muslim campaign. The difference is that these are now being reinforced on the ground by the power of the state, of which the bulldozer is the latest symbol. Time will show what gains (or losses) the BJP makes from such muscle-flexing. But what is immediately clear is that the party’s image will take yet another beating in the international media where India’s democratic credentials have already come under a cloud.

Even if the BJP is not overtly bothered about what the  westerners say, it must know that even if governments in Europe and America hesitate to intervene in India’s domestic politics, except for the Biden administration occasionally voicing concern over the human rights situation, industrialists will be wary of investing at a time when Hindu-Muslim relations are seen to be steadily deteriorating.

After the BJP government’s deployment of bulldozers in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi, much of the delight of a saffron TV anchor who asked whether more bulldozers will have to be manufactured or imported, the judiciary has finally called it a halt. But a BJP spokesman was surprised how the ghuspetiyas could mobilize well-known lawyers and the Supreme court acted so quickly. If only a Hindu rashtra was in place in the corridors of power  to prevent such “interference” !

It is clear by now that only the judiciary stands in the way of the saffron dispensation trampling rough-shod over Muslim sensibilities. The Hindutva group is also hand-in-glove with a section of the audio-visual and print media whose anchors and writers unabashedly engage day in and day out in praising the BJP and its leader, the “vishwaguru”, the world leader. Both the saffronites and their admirers in the media are sure that they have decades before them to implement their majoritarian agenda.

If they have read their tea-leaves right, it means doomsday for India’s secular democracy. The last time when the concept of freedom was in danger was during the Emergency of 1975-77. A fortuitous election saved the nation by evicting the autocrats. Liberals will hope, therefore, that popular will prevails once again as in 1977. (IPA Service)

The post Bulldozer Is The New Weapon Of The Ruling Hindu Right In India first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

The RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has spelt out the geographical contours of the proposed Hindu rashtra along with the warning that those opposing the Akhand Bharat concept will either be pushed aside or eliminated.

This is probably the first time that such an unequivocal admonition has been issued against those who do not share the Hindu outfit’s grandiose vision. Previously, only the overall plan was articulated without either any overt threat to possible opponents or a timeline for the completion of the project.

Now, not only is the Hindutva brotherhood’s approach to the issue marked by belligerence, but the period during which the project will be completed has also been clarified. It is being said by none other than the RSS chief that unlike the astrological prediction of an Akhand Bharat being formed within the next 25 years, he now expects that undivided India will be constituted in 8/10 years.

The speed of the project’s completion has been explained by his belief that India is currently like a vehicle with an accelerator but no brakes! The concept of a carriage with no brakes hurtling towards its goal may be exhibilirating for the supporters of the Sangh parivar, but terrifying for the others.

It is obvious that behind this near-apocalyptic vision is the conviction in the saffron camp that India is now more powerful than ever before, as defence minister Rajnath Singh reiterated recently with a veiled message to China not to mess with Narendra Modi’s “new” India.

The muscularity is also visible from the uninhibited use of bulldozers to demolish the properties of suspected Muslim rioters in various BJP-ruled states. Not surprisingly, the RSS chief has also said that while non-violence is par for the course, India must also carry a “big stick”.

In view of this no-nonsense attitude, the incorporation of India’s neighbouring countries under the Akhand Bharat’s umbrella is very much on the cards so far as the parivar is concerned. It is not only Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) which is sought to be assimilated in the proposed nation as those in the corridors of power keep on saying, but also Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and others. How this massive amalgamation is to be carried out in the absence of a  war is unclear. But, unless all this is a day-dream intended to boost the BJP’s electoral prospects in the next round of elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, the implementation of the saffron lobby’a high-flying policy prescription may not be a smooth affair.

Much of what has been said has always been a part of the Hindutva brigade’s plans, including changing the Indian constitution for which a commission was set up by a reluctant Atal Behari Vajpayee government to bring the document in line with the parivar’s Hindu nationalistic ideals. Of all such wishes of the saffron group, it is only the construction of the Ram temple and the abrogation of Article 370 which have so far been achieved. But those successes, along with the recent electoral victories, seem to have persuaded the parivar to go for the next big item on its agenda – an Akhand Bharat which will include all the lands which were “ours” at the time of the Mahabharata.

How the Modi government will go about implementing the RSS’s fantasy is not known. History has seen many illusory and failed attempts to redraw maps such as Hitler’s lebensraum dream for a Greater Germany. The current endeavours of the Hindu Right’s favourite strong man among foreigners, Vladimir Putin, to convert Russia into another Soviet Union by taking over Ukraine belong to this category. The price to be paid in terms of the loss of lives and property doesn’t seem to bother the ambitious strong men.

Among India’s neighbours, China can also be said to be engaged in such ventures as its acquisition of Tibet and Hongkong, the casting of a baleful eye on Taiwan and the nibbling of India’s northern territories show. All such plans are driven by a desire to correct supposed historical wrongs or replicate past, usually imaginary, glory.

The RSS game plan is not unrelated to the parivar’s view that after a thousand years of slavery under Muslim and British rules, India is rising under the Modi dispensation to regain its rightful place in the subcontinent when the Hindus will reign as in the Vedic ages when, according to this school of thought, the non-Aryan Indus Valley Civilization was also a part of the Hindu/Vedic ecosystem. Needless to say, an Akhand Bharat ranging from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka is seen as a part of this system.

Just as the basis of this idea is nebulous with no solid grounding in history, the proposed expansionary outlook is a mirage which will recede into the background as time passes. (IPA Service)

The post RSS Chief’s Akhand Bharat Fantasy Has Got Dangerous Implications first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

It is easy to understand the mindset of Narendra Modi’s acolytes. Their devotion is clearly propelled by his strongman image. What is less easy to comprehend is the admiration of the right-wing in India for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That this adoration for machismo is a rightist phenomenon is obvious. But while the Indian prime minister is seen as a bulwark against China, Pakistan and jehadi elements at home and abroad, the reason for lauding the Russian president is far from clear.

His masculinity cannot be the only explanation. Nor is Ukraine a Muslim-majority country like Palestine to arouse the Hindu Right’s animus. Yet, the outpourings of some of the reputed commentators on Indian TV are not dissimilar to their diatribes against the secularists and jehadis who are usually seen to be in the same camp.

However, the Indian public in general as well as some TV stations do not seem to harbour the same ill-will towards Ukraine. Instead, Ukraine is seen as the victim of a madman’s fury. If a section of the commentators has taken a different stance, the explanation appears to lie, first, in the innate anti-American attitude of the Indian establishment and, secondly, in the proclivity towards hero-worship which has no time for democratic niceties.

The anti-American stance is a legacy of the cold war and the non-alignment movement which grew out of it. Yet, India was never really truly non-aligned since it leant towards the Soviet Union, especially during the Bangladesh war. It wasn’t until Manmohan Singh initiated the moves towards the nuclear pact with the US that India’s attitude began to change although even at that time Sonia Gandhi tried to scuttle the nuclear deal, citing the Leftists’ objections to it.

The Indian Right is merely carrying on that tradition although the Western world suspects that India is choosing the wrong side of history in doing so because of its military ties with Russia. Time will show whether this is indeed the case. But what is immediately relevant is that veneration for the strong man goes side by side with the master race concept. It was so in Nazi Germany when the Deutchlanduberalles comprised the blond Aryans. It is so in Putin’s Russia where the militaristic “Z” sign represents the new Swastika. It is so in America of the Republican Right/Ku Klux Klan of the white supremacists. And it is so in Hindu supremacist India of the RSS/BJP.

The only difficulty of Putin’s admirers in India is their realization that they should alienate America too much at a time of mutual requirements for checkmating China. If this dependence on America and the Quad made up of America, Australia, Japan and India was not there, the Indian commentators would have been even more gung-ho about Russia and critical of NATO for having pushed Russia into a corner and forced it to act against Ukraine.

However, what may have upset their pro-Russian posturing is the surprising resistance put by the previous unfancied Ukraine under the country’s valiant President Volodymyr Zelensky who was hardly known in India. It is Zelensky’s grit and determination against a supposedly far more powerful enemy which has earned him unstinted praise. At a time when heroes are hardly to come by, the world has suddenly found someone who answer to that description in every sense of the term. Pitted against him, Putin emerges a disreputable bully.

During World War II, Russia, or rather the Soviet Union, earned the unstinged approbation of virtually the entire world for standing up to Nazi Germany. The film, The fall of Berlin, won the heart and mind across the globe. After the war, the Soviet Union was seen as the saviour, especially the so-called Third World countries, from rampant American imperialism. During the Vietnamese resistance to the US invasion, the chant in communist-minded West Bengal, “amarnam, tomarnam, Vietnam,Vietnam,” was widely echoed.

Today, it has all changed. Russia has lost its hallowed place as a country to be applauded and acclaimed as a superpower which had the inner moral strength to overthrow its own brutal communist rulers and embrace democracy. But, unfortunately, the end of communism did not mean the end of autocracy. The old Czarist tradition of an imperial Russia which regarded the small nations surrounding it assert has reasserted itself under Putin. But the fatal fallacies of the earlier centuries, including the 20th, have run their course. It is a new world now where might is not always right. As Ukraine stands its ground, Putin is learning the bitter lesson which earlier would-be conquerors had learnt about the loss of thousands of lives of their own countrymen and of their neighbours. (IPA Service)

The post Russia-Ukraine War: India In Danger Of Being On The Wrong Side first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Amulya Ganguli

“It’s the economy, stupid!” was the phrase used during the 1992 US presidential contest to emphasize the challenge faced by Bill Clinton during his campaign. In India today, the BJP’s opponents have to realize that the party’s success is the result of its clever use of Hindu-Muslim animosity to advance its prospects.

While analysts have outlined several factors behind the BJP’s victories in four out of the five states which went to the polls recently, the main among them is the blatant communalism which is the basis of the BJP’s politics. “It’s communalism, stupid !” is the stark truth which the BJP’s critics will have to understand.

True, it is not the only arrow in the BJP’s quiver. There are a number of others which the party fires at regular intervals to confuse its adversaries and make them overlook the BJP’s primary, if often subterranean, focus on communalism.

The hidden aspect of the BJP’s communal tactics was evident when it advised the party’s firebrand leader, Tejasvi Surya, to desist from advocating the reconversion of Muslims and Christians lest it had a damaging impact on the party’s electoral prospects. Yet, ghar wapsi or reconversions used to be one of the crucial planks of the BJP’s pro-Hindutva campaign not long ago with the blessings of the RSS.

But the BJP’s politics of careful adjustments ensures that it keeps switching back and forth between various points of its agenda in a game of smoke and mirrors which is beyond the capacity of the other parties. The ghostly distortions which its politics fosters are also amplified by the assertions of the RSS that Hindus and Muslims have the same DNA and, therefore, are brothers under the skin.

However, even as the BJP ignores the RSS’s formulation and stokes animus against the minorities – reconversion, anti-conversion laws, excoriating “love jehad” to scuttle Hindu-Muslim marriage – the party also persists with its welfare programmes – free rations, drinking water, toilets – with the result that it keeps the lower middle class on its side while pandering to the anti-Muslim sentiments of the upper  middle class.

The opposition has no answer to this “double engine” of polarization and populism. Although the BJP’s pursuit of right-wing policies leads to an erosion of its international standing with its democratic credentials taking a hit – the party now ranks 93rd out of 179 in this respect according to Sweden’s V-Dem Institute – the BJP does not seem to care as long as it keeps winning elections with its authoritarian pro-Hindu agenda which undercuts the democratic rights of the minorities and of political dissenters.

The BJP’s advantages in this respect are, first, that it has been able to persuade a large section of the media about the correctness of what can be regarded as a drive towards the establishment of a Hindu rashtra. And, secondly, a weakened opposition is unable to offer a serious challenge at the national level on account of ideological and organizational deficiencies.

There may be pockets of resistance to the BJP’s advancement in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab where the regional parties have been putting up a doughty show. But as long as the BJP retains its hold on the centre, it will have little difficulty in undermining the country’s secular heritage and moulding the nation in the party’s fundamentalist image in line with the fascistic chant – one nation, one people, one culture – which echoes the Nazi slogan of ein Reich, ein volk, ein feuhrer.

The successes in U.P., Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur may get a further boost later in the year when elections are held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. For the opposition, countering the BJP’s communal plank is problematic because the party loses no time in branding its critics as anti-nationals who side with the Muslims. For the BJP, the Indian Muslims are ipso facto pro-Pakistani and are, therefore, disloyal as are their supporters in the secular camp.

The BJP, therefore, is in a win-win situation in the north, the north-east and parts of western southern India. The party has realized that the ingrained anti-Muslim sentiment among sizeable sections of the Hindus is its trump card. It has no time, therefore, for Gandhiji’s practice of recitations from Hindu, Muslim and Christian scriptures at his prayer meetings. Such conciliatory gestures which are mocked as minority appeasement by the BJP have no place in the present-day “new” India. (IPA Service)

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