India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, swept to power last year with the support of about 240 million Indians or 37% of the votes cast. In the past month or so, about an equal number of Indians have erupted in protest across the country, including in pro-Modi states, rejecting his two citizenship bills that discriminate against Muslims. The protestors are predominantly young and comprise students, civil society activists, progressive men and women. This is a spontaneous citizens’ protest without any charismatic leader. In fact, the leading opposition parties are only now beginning to grasp its significance and formulate a strategy to gain advantage. A few states have officially passed resolutions against the new laws. Several civil society organizations and at least one state (Kerala) have petitioned the Supreme Court to strike the laws down as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the ruling BJP is wielding the baton to put down the protestors – over 50 have died so far – and the jails are bursting at the seams. Going forward, it’s important to recognize some other facts.
The Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is a far cry from the same party nearly two decades ago under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishan Advani. The latter were content to explode the “Hindu” bomb in 1998 and join the cosmology of Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Atheist “civilizations” as equal global partners while seeking a stable détente with Pakistan. But the former leaders want a radical transformation of Indian state and society which negates the very “idea of India” – secular, pluralist, democratic, unity in diversity – rooted in the Nehruvianism of independence. The new nationalist-civilizational India of Modi and Shah is based on the ideas of V D Savarkar advocated in his 1921 classic “Essentials of Hindutva”. Savarkar’s vision of modern India was pegged to three core planks: first, an end to the caste system; second, aggressive, assertive territorial loyalty of its citizens of “Hindu” religions, that included Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc., but excluded Muslims and Christians whose loyalty was suspect because their religions and civilizational symbols originated outside India in the Middle East; third, the use of revisionist history that glorified Hindu rulers and reviled Muslims and Christian conquerors in order to cement the past with the future. The RSS founders clutched at the second and third dimensions of Savarkar’s nationalist philosophy and ditched the first. Modi and Shah are faithful practitioners of this truncated Savarkar vision of India.
Seen in this light, Modi’s policies fall in place. Muslim Pakistan is the implacable enemy bogey which was used to sweep the elections. Muslim Kashmir is Pakistan’s terrorist outpost that must be locked down, crushed, and absorbed into the mainland. The two Citizenship Acts must be enforced to put the Muslims in their place. The state apparatus, army and police, must be politicised to do Modi’s authoritarian bidding. Should civil resistance build up, a diversionary limited war with Pakistan may be launched to bring the Hindu nation together again.
It would be a mistake, however, to see this explosion of resistance only through the prism of Modi’s two Citizenship Acts. The necessary condition of revolt is the dismal state of the economy. The much-vaunted “Gujerat model” has failed. Economic growth is the lowest in 42 years. There are not enough jobs for the 20 million new entrants – part of the demographic youth bulge – every year in the market. The myth of globalizing “Shining India” is in shreds. The internet has enabled young, especially marginalized sections of civil society, to watch how youthful protestors worldwide are challenging the new world order, and inspired them to follow suit at home. The sufficient condition is the stark realization that the anti-Muslim policies of the Modi regime are a forerunner of a new “idea of India” that is authoritarian, exclusivist, divisive, unequal and violent. Young, educated Indians, regardless of party affiliations, are not ready to abandon their long held notions of what India and its perks and freedoms means to them as well as to the world.
But without an acknowledged leader and specific political goals, this resistance may not have sufficient strength to withstand the force of Modi’s state. Meanwhile, the possibility of conflict with Pakistan should not be ruled out. It is curious that the agent provocateur, DSP Davinder Singh, who trapped Afzal Guru has now been caught in a similar situation with two Muslim “terrorists”. Whether this local “capture” was inadvertent and whether this was another Intel agency plot to contrive a conflictual situation with Pakistan is not yet clear. But Narendra Modi will certainly need to manufacture a big distraction to weather his mounting economic and political woes.
The battle for the soul of India is on. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry of resistance, as in “Hum Dekhaein Gay”, is resonating across India, inspiring hope across borders. But, in the end, India’s destiny may rest on the Supreme Court’s willingness to judge the “nation’s conscience” – as it did in the case of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency or, in the opposite vein, in the case of Afzal Guru – to thwart or uphold Hindutva.
The Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is a far cry from the same party nearly two decades ago under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishan Advani. The latter were content to explode the “Hindu” bomb in 1998 and join the cosmology of Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Atheist “civilizations” as equal global partners while seeking a stable détente with Pakistan. But the former leaders want a radical transformation of Indian state and society which negates the very “idea of India” – secular, pluralist, democratic, unity in diversity – rooted in the Nehruvianism of independence. The new nationalist-civilizational India of Modi and Shah is based on the ideas of V D Savarkar advocated in his 1921 classic “Essentials of Hindutva”. Savarkar’s vision of modern India was pegged to three core planks: first, an end to the caste system; second, aggressive, assertive territorial loyalty of its citizens of “Hindu” religions, that included Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc., but excluded Muslims and Christians whose loyalty was suspect because their religions and civilizational symbols originated outside India in the Middle East; third, the use of revisionist history that glorified Hindu rulers and reviled Muslims and Christian conquerors in order to cement the past with the future. The RSS founders clutched at the second and third dimensions of Savarkar’s nationalist philosophy and ditched the first. Modi and Shah are faithful practitioners of this truncated Savarkar vision of India.
Seen in this light, Modi’s policies fall in place. Muslim Pakistan is the implacable enemy bogey which was used to sweep the elections. Muslim Kashmir is Pakistan’s terrorist outpost that must be locked down, crushed, and absorbed into the mainland. The two Citizenship Acts must be enforced to put the Muslims in their place. The state apparatus, army and police, must be politicised to do Modi’s authoritarian bidding. Should civil resistance build up, a diversionary limited war with Pakistan may be launched to bring the Hindu nation together again.
It would be a mistake, however, to see this explosion of resistance only through the prism of Modi’s two Citizenship Acts. The necessary condition of revolt is the dismal state of the economy. The much-vaunted “Gujerat model” has failed. Economic growth is the lowest in 42 years. There are not enough jobs for the 20 million new entrants – part of the demographic youth bulge – every year in the market. The myth of globalizing “Shining India” is in shreds. The internet has enabled young, especially marginalized sections of civil society, to watch how youthful protestors worldwide are challenging the new world order, and inspired them to follow suit at home. The sufficient condition is the stark realization that the anti-Muslim policies of the Modi regime are a forerunner of a new “idea of India” that is authoritarian, exclusivist, divisive, unequal and violent. Young, educated Indians, regardless of party affiliations, are not ready to abandon their long held notions of what India and its perks and freedoms means to them as well as to the world.
But without an acknowledged leader and specific political goals, this resistance may not have sufficient strength to withstand the force of Modi’s state. Meanwhile, the possibility of conflict with Pakistan should not be ruled out. It is curious that the agent provocateur, DSP Davinder Singh, who trapped Afzal Guru has now been caught in a similar situation with two Muslim “terrorists”. Whether this local “capture” was inadvertent and whether this was another Intel agency plot to contrive a conflictual situation with Pakistan is not yet clear. But Narendra Modi will certainly need to manufacture a big distraction to weather his mounting economic and political woes.
The battle for the soul of India is on. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry of resistance, as in “Hum Dekhaein Gay”, is resonating across India, inspiring hope across borders. But, in the end, India’s destiny may rest on the Supreme Court’s willingness to judge the “nation’s conscience” – as it did in the case of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency or, in the opposite vein, in the case of Afzal Guru – to thwart or uphold Hindutva.