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xhxhxhx · 4 years

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During the course of the ‘Quit India’ campaign, the authorities imprisoned 66,000 people. Another 2,500 were shot dead. That meant that during August and September 1942, forces under British control killed more civilians in India than Germans in the Western Desert. In the UK, reports of this severe reaction worried Labour and Liberal MPs. With Churchill absent in Moscow, Attlee chaired the War Cabinets that approved the plans for the movement’s suppression. Cripps and Attlee protested against the use of whipping, but in the end accepted, as Bevin put it, that ‘once the fight is joined it is no use looking back’.

Churchill, on his return, insisted to his colleagues that the Indian National Congress had failed to rally the ‘masses’ to its cause. When he spoke about events in India to the Commons on 10 September, he called it an unrepresentative ‘revolutionary movement’ that had perpetrated ‘revolting atrocities’ and which had probably been aided by Japanese fifth columnists. Thankfully, he noted, the ‘martial races’ had not been influenced, and there were plenty of ‘white soldiers’ now in India who would keep down any trouble.

This sort of rhetoric caused a lot of offence in India and America. At Westminster, it got cheers from a few Conservative diehards, but upset a lot of moderate MPs on both sides of the House. At the same time as condemning Congress, however, Churchill restated the Cripps offer of post-war independence. If, as that suggested, he recognized that concessions given could not be withdrawn, it helps to explain his increasingly aggressive tone when it came to India.

‘Quit India’ evoked the clearest expression of Churchill’s prejudices: ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ For all his misplaced faith in the ‘martial races’, he never really gave the Indian army the credit it deserved for coming back from the debacle of 1942. From this point on, mention of India in Cabinet was guaranteed to bring forth a tirade. He became even more incensed than before about India’s accumulation of sterling balances: ‘Are we to incur hundreds of millions of debt for defending India in order to be kicked out by the Indians afterwards?’ Leo Amery, secretary of state for India, could never quite get him to understand that since India paid for its defence within its borders, the rising balances showed not Indian greed but rather just how much it was contributing to the imperial war effort.

On occasion, Churchill seemed to accept that the Raj was doomed. At other times – like other British statesmen – he held out hope of holding on, perhaps as the federal force keeping the balance between Hindu and Muslim polities and the Princely States. It was hard to tell blustering intransigence from the hope that it could all just be put off until after the war. With Linlithgow due to retire, in autumn 1942 the search began for a new viceroy. According to Brendan Bracken, Churchill wanted a ‘ “tidy administration” in India and not to be bothered’. To ministers, he insisted that the British should not ‘chatter ourselves out’.

For the young Indian students who spearheaded the ‘Quit India’ movement, it had been a heroic battle for liberty. The British public, however, tended to see Indian freedom fighters as people who wanted to aid the enemy. At the start of August, the government leaked Congress’s plans for a civil disobedience campaign, ensuring that it seemed like a bit of calculated treachery. As Home Intelligence reported:

“Hostility to Gandhi – who is variously described as ‘India’s Quisling No.1’, ‘the supreme blackguard of the British Empire’ and ‘a thorough twister’ – seems to be quite widespread; it ranges from ‘dislike’ to assertions that ‘he ought to be shot or strung up’ . . . The minority who question the Government’s action do so on the ground that Home Rule for India is long overdue, and that if India were ‘allowed to rule herself, there would be an overnight transformation in India’s disloyalty to the British crown’.”

The popular view of Gandhi did not improve when, in February 1943, he went on a twenty-one-day hunger strike to protest against the Indian government’s failure to accept responsibility for the violence that had accompanied ‘Quit India’. Hoping to force moderate Indian politicians to take a tougher nationalist line, Gandhi fasted ‘to capacity’ – only taking what fluid and sugared fruit juice he needed to survive – rather than to death. By this point, fasting was deeply embedded as part of Gandhi’s political and spiritual practice, serving as a means for him both to demonstrate the self-control he enjoined on others and to embody the sufferings of his fellow Indians. On this occasion, unusually, it was covered in some detail by the British press. The colonial authorities not only monitored Gandhi’s condition closely, but also carefully released to journalists details of his plush prison accommodation in the Aga Khan Palace and the nature of his limited nutritional intake. As a result, rather than depicting Gandhi as a suffering mystic, or attempting to understand the appeal he was trying to make to his followers, most British newspapers – with the significant exception of the more sympathetic Daily Herald – portrayed him sceptically, as a politician performing austerity in luxurious surroundings in an attempt to undermine the war effort. As the Daily Mail proclaimed: ‘The nation which refused to be intimidated by HITLER, MUSSOLINI and TOJO was never likely to surrender to GANDHI. The days of appeasement are over . . . the dark days of struggle for existence have shown us who are our true friends and who the false.’

Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: A New World, 1942-1947 (Oxford, 2020), 229-31.

#quotes #yikes etc

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nihal-mangrati · 4 years

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THE PARALLAX VIEW:

The State ( Nation-state today), had always attempted to make a society legible and to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state function of taxation, conscription and prevention of rebellion. These inextricable processes and interventions, which were often crude and daunding were deferentially resisted by the ensembles. Many of the categories that we most take for granted and with which we now routinely apprehend the social world had their origin in State projects of standardization and legibility. Be it Standarization of language, uniformity of the means of measurement, cadastral mappings, permanent surnames or traffic regulations, the buried accentuation and justification of the State however was " Social Legibility". As James Scott writes, "The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts is to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in imperial rhetoric, as a civilizing mission." The conflated State objective on the case of an Authoritarian government ignored the social dimension and its complexities, which on the other hand resulted in the anti-government/State feeling accentuated further by the incidence of the resulting Social hierarchies. ' What was simplifying to the State was mystifying to its population'.

With the apparent rise of the conflated spectre of a Hindu Nationalism- Capitalist government in India, we could apparently juxtapose some of its daunding and discriminatory legibility process with that of the Pre-Modern and Modern State side by side. One of the most controversial and draconian act related to it was NRC/CAA, that focused on the uniformity of a certain community solely destituting the beauty of diversity. However, from the State's perspective, it was a process of Social legibility (however exclusive), like a God's eye-view of an absolute ruler that involved miniaturization legible for collecting taxes, conducting a census, putting down a riot, etc. These kind of uniformity was also vehemently accentuated during the middle ages and with the State's focus on geometrical city-planning intended at military efficiency in suppressing oppositions. In both the cases, as in Today's India or in the middle ages, these slothish and controversial acts were met with requisite resistance. The said process is moreover rendered with conformity and punishment by the State in case of disapproval or resistance.

With the " so called liberal ideas" of citizenship which implied voting rights and conscription also contributed to the legitimacy of State's status-quo.

The great cultural barriers imposed by a National Language is perhaps one of the most effective guatantee that a social world, easily accessible to insiders, will remain mystery to the outsiders. Of all the State simplifications, the imposition of a single, national language may be the most powerful paradigm of State coercion intend to uniformity.

Hindu- Nationalist Government in India from its inception within RSS was inextricably pathogenic with their propaganda of "Hindi, Hindu and Hindutva". After its major victory in 2014, with Narendra Modi as their Supreme, this very propaganda is now pushing the utmost boundaries with accentuated focus on Hindi as the national language, New Education Policy ( Hindi as compulsory medium juxtaposing regional language), hastenly changing the names of various cities and places with the characters often than not embodying Hindu Nationalist ideologies which bears a distinctive history, culture, literature, and mythology. These process should probably viewed as 'Eugen Weber' suggests in the case of France, as one of the domestic colonization in which various non-speaking states are linguistically subdued and culturally depauperated.

In case of France, those at the periphery who lacked competence in French were rendered marginal and outsiders. They were now in need of a local guide to the new state culture, which appeared in the form of lawyers, teachers, clerks and soldiers. It is a kind of state coercion that promises to reward those who complies with its logic and to penalize those who ignores it.

With the Nationalist State's efficacy in India, the process of uniformity and simplification is also perpetuating apprehensions about the Outsiders in the private as well as public spatio. Example could be given of the Kashimiris, South Indians, North-East Indians, Mulsims and the immigrants or migrant labourers, who all defy and inhibit the process of State's legibility.

Today of course, there are many other State-impelled standard designations that have vastly improved the capacity of the State in destituting the diversity and identify an individual. The creation of birth and death certificates, more specific location trackers, identity cards, passports, Aadhar cards, fingerprints and recenty announced Digital cards. But I strongly believe Diversity and certain forms of complexity, apart from their attractiveness have deferential advantages which in India is one of its underpinning paradigm of "Unity in diversity".

#socio political #politics #police state #india

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therewasabrowncrow · 4 years

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I watched Ex Machina last year and wanted to explore the possibility of an RSS fem bot called Durga --who shares many similarities with android Ava.

In Ex Machina, Ava’s purpose I believe is to successfully pass an intelligence test which is “dependent on the machine’s ability to deceive its human interrogator – a sign of artificial intelligence that is made analogous with gender performance”..i.e. femaleeeessss use deception

In popular mythology, Durga was created to destroy an "evil” Asura- here Mahisasura- the buffalo king who waged a war against the gods (devas). Since no man could kill Mahisasura, the gods conjured up Durga in their celestial laboratory. She used deception too.

Durga’s gender performance is patriotic motherhood and has roots in anti Muslim rhetoric in Hindu nationalist movements since the 19th century.

“The distinction between automaton and post-human subject in Ex Machina is drawn along racial lines” where an Asian “android-coolie” (Kyoko) is contrasted with white Ava whose process of self actualization--exploring poetry, philosophy, art, and ultimately- self sufficiency or freedom- comes at the sacrifice of the non-speaking android.

The distinction between good and evil in Durga’s case is drawn along 1) caste 2) xenophobic and religious lines. Asuras are the Tribal and Dalit communities such as Bagdi, Santhalis, Mundas and Namasudras for whom Mahisasura is a martyr.

In Hindu nationalism the outsider (ghuspetia) is the Muslim citizen. Since Durga has been appropriated by Brahmin paramilitary outfits like the RSS, she could be a product of its IT cell, part of the world's largest experiment in social-media-fueled terror.

Both Ava and Durga (the brahmin woman) self actualize in their fortresses/caste bubbles -incidentally “durga” literally means fort in Sanskrit!- While the “android-coolies” do the upkeep, with very little agency.

“Bahujan labour was and is an indispensable way through which the feminist “independence” of working Brahmin women like my mother and grandmother has been enabled”- Pallavi Rao

I noticed Ava being considered a feminist icon- here as Ava the Alpha and a lot is written about Durga’s masculine power-but both Ava and Durga are nothing but constructions of white, Brahmin womanhood. Ava doesn’t help Kyoko escape the facility and Durga is specifically built as a shield against Brahminism’s caste and xenophobic anxieties

“Feminism is not about getting equal rights. It is about abolishing all systems of exploitation that also use gender as a means to demarcate a small ruling class of humans as worthy and everyone else as deserving of suffering and death on a scale.”-- obaa_boni

In that respect they’re are not feminist at all. Both are artificial women created in a lab in the mountains- with the explicit purpose of forwarding their patriarch’s agenda.

References: Dismembered Asian/American Android Parts in Ex Machina as ‘Inorganic’ Critique -- Danielle Wong

The Brahmin Mistress and the Bahujan Maid --Pallavi Rao

Ex Machina: A (White) Feminist Parable for Our Time-- J.A. Micheline

The Rise of a Hindu Vigilante in the Age of WhatsApp and Modi - Wired

#Exmachina #fanart #clipstudiopaint #illustration #technoorientalism #hindutva #feminism #transhumanism

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militant-holy-knight · 5 years

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Islamophobia: A “Zionist Plot”?

In response to Hating Muslims, Loving Zionists: Israel a Far-Right Model, where Al Jazeera gets everything wrong

Al Jazeera penned an opinion piece trying to lump anti-Muslim terrorism, rational critics of Islamism with Zionism of all things. The “logic” goes that “x Israeli politician is a far-righter”, many leading political figures in far-right politics that criticize Islam have expressed affection and approval for Israel; Palestine is oppressed by Israel and as such all of these things are related to each other. They even used the censored picture of Brenton Tarrant to drive the point home that “See? if you hate Islam, you are also just like this guy and oh, you support Israel too”.

I can’t even begin pointing out what is wrong with this “some x are y, some y are z, therefore x are y” fallacy, I am even more surprised that right-winged critics of Israel didn’t even try to debunk it. In one hand, it’s pretty observable that support for Israel is strong among mainstream conservatism than other movements across the political spectrum. On the other hand, there is one figure who is never discussed when the topic of alt-right and Zionism overlap, being very little-known outside of Israel.

This is Meir Kahane, a ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbi from the USA who migrated from to Israel and was a co-founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach political party. Also known as “Israel’s Ayatollah”, he urged the establishment of a Jewish theocracy codified by Maimonides (a Reconquista-era Spanish Jew), the immigration of all American Jews to Israel before a “second Holocaust” could take place and was very vocal about advocating the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, violence against Palestinians and those he deemed as “anti-semites”. He was extremely divisive: there were people who found his Jewish supremacist rhetoric intolerable and equated him to the Nazis, while in other camp you had those who supported him largely because of Arab aggression as The Los Angeles Times reported that “[he] is a reaction to the wanton murders of innocent men, women and children in Israel” (which you can find many parallels with modern day politicians supported by the alt-right). Kahane was arrested at least 62 times by Israeli authorities for inciting hatred.

While in prison, Kahane wrote a manifesto titled “They Must Go” where he advocates the complete exile of Palestinians and the necessary process how to do it arguing that if they didn’t they’d begin outbreeding the Jewish population and take over Israel in 20 years (he wrote it in the 80s). His manifesto reads a lot like the anxiety Europeans feel about Muslim migrants which isn’t alleviated in the slightest by them speaking out in the open how they will establish a European caliphate.

Kahane was popular enough with the Israelis that he was elected with one seat to the Knesset. However, he was never really popular with his fellow parliamentarians, whom he regarded as “Hellenists” (Jews who assimilated into Greek culture after being conquered by Alexander the Great), since Kahane thought they weren’t Jewish enough. Most of his proposed laws included: imposing compulsory religious education, stripping citizenship status of all non-Jewish citizens (including Christians) and demanding that relations with Germany and Austria being cut but monetary compensation for the Holocaust being kept.

In 1990, Kahane was assassinated by an al-Qaeda member (it’s believed he was one of the first victims of the terrorist group), who was initially cleared of the murder, but was arrested later for being implicated in the 1993 WWC bombing attempt, where he confessed his first crime and was jailed to life imprisonment. His death made him a martyr leading to Kach member Baruch Goldstein to swear revenge and in 1994, he walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs on the West Bank and shot up the place, killing 30 Muslims before being lynched by the survivors. Given the Cave of the Patriarch status as a important religious site to Islam, this atrocity would have provoked probably worse reactions than Christchurch.

While researching about these things, I couldn’t help but see so many parallels between that and the Christchurch mosque incident. Kahane’s manifesto reads a lot like Tarrant’s own. Even if they were not familiar with Kahane’s own views, it was probably not lost to those that really read into Tarrant’s manifesto that not once he denounces the State of Israel for the current state of Europe - instead he blames Angela Merkel, Reccep Erdogan and Sadiq Khan, straight up calling for their deaths. This seemed enough for many people to conclude Tarrant was an Mossad agent.

To those reading this you may be asking: you listed so many things in common with the alt-right, Islamophobia and Zionism, so what did Al Jazeera get wrong?

Ah, if you actually paid attention to the fringe discourse, you realize that nothing discredits you faster than declaring yourself far-right and voicing support for Israel. I sincerely doubt that white supremacists would have liked a Jewish supremacist like Kahane, specially his demands that Germany to continue paying reparations forever. The fringe right actually finds lots of solidarity with Palestinians and common ground with the liberal left than either side cares to admit. Sure many right-wing politicians happen to be Zionists, but those are the mainstream old guard.

I also observed that they also are overwhelmingly in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in large part because he is an authoritarian model that stands up against Israel. Does it mean that all people who support Assad are also the same? No. Many support Assad because he is considered a bulwark against Islamism (even though he is a Muslim himself, albeit not considered one by terrorist extremists because he is Alawite). Despite his many flaws, normal people are willing to stand up for him because he represents stability in Syria.

I also take huge issue with Palestinians being referred to as exclusively Muslim because it erases their small and long-suffering Christian minority, which is never on anyone’s minds every time someone discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that Palestinian Christians played a huge role in resistance against Israel before the rise of Islamism ended up alienating them and Christians across the Middle-East aren’t necessarily thrilled about Israel either, not even Israeli Christians themselves.

It’s probably no coincidence that Al Jazeera, who denounces both Israel and the Assad regime who are antagonistic to each other, also happen to be big Islamist apologists which explains why they insist in portraying the Palestinian cause as a religious struggle rather than a nationalist one. It’s in their interest to denigrate critics of Islamism who run across the board in the political spectrum from atheists like Bill Maher and Sam Harris, Christians like David Wood, Brother Rachid and Zacharias Botros and Muslims like Majid Nawaz, Ed Hussein and Mohammed Tawid and many, many, many people worried about the dangers of Islamism, which they use so vociferously the term “Islamophobia” coined by the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization disguised as political party. This way they can lump all the opposition into one camp and paint them as Zionist Islamophobes.

With all that said, the rise of conservatism and nationalism across the world is co-related with the modern liberal left’s weakness to confront the Islamist Question. One of the key reasons that led to Donald Trump’s election were fears of Hillary Clinton increasing immigration as observed by the skyrocketing of sexual abuse cases in Western Europe. Even though he is a more despotic and authoritarian figure than Trump, Erdogan from Turkey is subjected to much less scrutiny from the Western media when he locks up more journalists anywhere in the world.

And this isn’t contained to the West either, the Bharatiya Janata Party characterized as Hindu nationalist and anti-Islamic continues being elected into power because of India’s spats with Pakistan and being formed in the first place because of Indian secularists appeasing to Muslims. And if the future is any indication, you can expect more persecutions of Muslims in Sri Lanka by Buddhists and Christians after the Easter bombings from this year. Those has less to do with Zionism and more with the fear of Islamism.

There is a good reason why I brought up Kahane into this editorial: much like modern day politicians, he was considered too radical by the status quo of the time yet gained the support of a silent majority like modern day because the current status quo proved intolerable. The same thing happened in my country with Jair Bolsonaro, who was already saying absurd things as early as the 90s and would never be considered as President of Brazil yet here we are, though Kahane was assassinated before he got the chance of being Prime Minister.

How many times are we going to deflect the problem like Al Jazeera before we confront it straight in the eye?

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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Long before the Indian strongman Narendra Modi became prime minister of the world’s largest democracy, he was a prominent leader of the Hindu right. He rose as a public figure through the nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, whose ideologyincludes a desire to carve out a Hindu nation in which Muslims and Christians are considered second-class citizens. It was a well-known activist who once had links to the RSS who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, accusing him of appeasing Muslims during the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent.

That anti-Muslim sentiment has been a major driving force of Modi’s political career in the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. In 2002, when Modi was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, he oversaw an outbreak of violence by Hindu nationalists against the minority Muslim population that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people. Local and international fact-finding groups accused Modi of complicity in the killings, charging that he did not do enough to contain the violence. Indian courts eventually exonerated him for a lack of evidence, but his image was pilloried. The United Kingdom and some European countries refused to deal with him and in 2005, the United States barred him from entering the country.

Modi’s ascent has normalized nationalist rhetoric, the silencing of dissent, and violence against religious minorities in India — and it’s also had global implications. Elected prime minister in 2014, he was one of the first of a class of populist autocrats who’ve risen to power in recent years. That group includes Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was elected in the same month as Modi; Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who’s been in office for more than a decade but has been increasingly consolidating power; Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whose war on drugs has killed thousands of people; Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected in October despite his pro-military dictatorship stance; and, of course, America’s Donald Trump.

In the United States, Modi’s reputation has been helped by a group of Hindu-American supporters with links to the RSS and other Hindu nationalist organizations, who’ve been working in tandem with a peculiar congressional ally: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, the first Hindu in Congress.

Gabbard — a member of the House committees on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services, and co-chair of the India Caucus — is an oddity in American politics. Ever since her 2016 resignation from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders for president, she has been a rising star in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Last year, she racked up endorsements from groups like Progressive Democrats of America and Our Revolution, and she sailed to re-election.

But she has also become a polarizing figure. Her progressive domestic politics are at odds with her support for authoritarians abroad, including Modi, Sisi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. As right-wing nationalism rises across the globe, it is beginning to be recognized as an existential threat to a world order rooted in liberal democratic values, and Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, is now being pushed to choose sides. (Gabbard did not respond to The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment.)

Gabbard was embraced early on by pro-Modi elements of the Hindu-American diaspora in the U.S., who have donated generously to her campaigns. But as she flirts with the idea of running for president, she has publicly cut ties with those fervent supporters on at least one occasion, while continuing to court them in private.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #tulsi gabbard #progressive #nationalism #narendra modi

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

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The RSS was founded ninety years ago, in 1925, on an uncannily Gramscian principle that enduring political power can arise only on the basis of a prior cultural transformation and consent, and this broad based cultural consent to the extreme right’s doctrines can only be built through a long historical process, from the bottom up. What follows from this ideological articulation of the long-term strategy is that if the RSS succeeds in constituting a certain sort of social subjectivity for the great majority of Hindus in India who are said to constitute some 80 per cent of the Indian population (we shall come later to this claim) and if they can all be unified, positively, in pursuit of a civilisational mission, and, negatively, in permanent opposition to a fancied enemy (Muslim and Christian minorities in the countries), as the Nazis sought to unite the German nation against the Jews, then the demographic majority can be turned into a permanent political majority. In that case, what the left might designate as the extreme right could rule comfortably through the institutions of liberal democracy in India that have already adjusted themselves to low-intensity but punctual use of violence against religious minorities.

...The RSS has also sought to address in practice a historic dilemma regarding the possibility of revolution in the liberal age, whether from the left or the right. Gramsci is, of course, the great thinker who addressed this dilemma at great length and with great intellectual splendour. However, he addresses it conceptually, never on the organisational level: how could he, organisationally, from inside a prison? The RSS has addressed the dilemma in its organisational practices, over decades, through trial and error, with remarkable success so far, even though it is unclear whether or not they will be entirely successful eventually. That dilemma has been posed to the Leninist tradition in the following terms: revolutions are made by cadre parties, the ones who are able to create something of a counter-state against a state seen by the people as illegitimate (Czarism; the colonial master), able to counter state violence with revolutionary violence, and, in a moment of ultimate revolutionary crisis, able to seize power through frontal attack, dismantle that state, erect a state of a new type. However, once a liberal democratic system of representative government in all its intricacies has been erected, universalising a bourgeois political subjectivity which believes in norms of liberal legality and the primacy of representative democracy, the revolutionaries face a situation in which they can either refuse to participate in this "bourgeois democracy" and get politically marginalised, or they can participate in the electoral world of liberal democracy, renouncing the ambition of creating a vanguard revolutionary party and committing themselves to socialist transformation through electoral means. This is a real, inescapable dilemma. In India, Maoism chose the path of revolutionary violence, condemning themselves thus far to political marginalisation and internal degeneration. The parliamentary left, as represented by both communist parties, CPI and CPI(M), chose the electoral way, effectively recognising the legitimacy of the liberal state and the specific form of Indian constitutionality, thus foreclosing the revolutionary option, rhetorical stances notwithstanding. There has been a blockage at both ends.

The RSS addressed that question from the extreme right, not theoretically but organisationally. Their documents are at best turgid and unreadable for the stupidity of their content. Their organisational practices, by contrast, have often been frighteningly brilliant.

...The RSS arose not as a unique expression of what came to be known as "Hindu nationalism" (as contrasted to the canonical "secular nationalism" of Gandhi, Nehru, etc.), but as one of many. Founded in 1913, some twelve years before the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha remained by far the larger organisation of that kind well into the 1950s when it began to decay and many of its members got assimilated into the RSS and its affiliates. Ironically, the Mahasabha continued to function from inside the professedly "secular" Indian National Congress until 1938; and after Independence, Shyama Prashad Mukherjee, one of its illustrious leaders, resurfaced as a minister in the cabinet of none other than Nehru himself. Certain strands of Hindu extremism and conservatism were thus not entirely alien to what I have called India’s canonical nationalism and which never tires of asserting its purportedly pristine secularism.

...Parenthetically, we should note that even today the RSS is by far the most important organisation of the Hindu right but by no means has any exclusive monopoly of it. There are many outside its own umbrella (or family — parivar — as its fronts like to be called). The most notable is the Shiv Sena, but countless small groups of the most violent sort keep cropping up all the time, and it is not always possible to know which of them are covertly RSS outfits and which are not.

Nor were the Mahasabha and the RSS the first originators of this outlook, or the first political expression of it. Certain upper caste clusters in late nineteenth century Bengal had provided a rather impressive nursery for the incubation of revivalist longing and nostalgia for a Hindu Golden Age in the classical past; some of these ideas had played a powerful role in the Swadeshi movement in early years of the twentieth century. At the other end of the country, highly influential political, social and educational movements were emerging already in late nineteenth century Maharashtra to combat the Brahminical caste order, for advancement of the untouchable castes and so on. This challenge to Brahminism served to unite much of the Brahmin elite to defend their caste privileges but, predictably, as defenders of "Hindus" as such. It was recalled that the Peshwai kingdom of the Maharashtrians was the last to have been defeated by the British in India; as such, the Maharashtrian elite had not just the duty but the right to devise and lead a new kind of nationalism, a "Hindu nationalism" that excluded the Muslim usurpers and that would resurrect the ancient glory of the Hindus, purifying the culture of the land. The majority of the founders and early leaders of the RSS turned out to be Maharashtrian Brahmins. ...In its formative phase, Hindu nationalist ideology had three distinctive components. First, there was the nationalism of "blood and soil" descended from right-wing Romanticisms of the European nineteenth century which got re-inscribed in terms of race and religion in many nationalisms of the twentieth century, including the cultural nationalism of the Hindu right. Second, right-wing nationalism also inherited a colonialist reading of India’s history, already canonised by James Mill in his iconic six-volume The History of British India that started appearing in 1817, as comprising three historical periods: that of the Hindu Golden Age; that of the defeat and fall of Hindu civilisation at the hands of Muslim tyranny; and the then-dawning phase for which the British were represented as liberators of Hindus from that tyranny. The latter element accounts for the great ambivalence of Hindu nationalism toward colonialism and imperialism. When Hindutva ideologues speak of the Hindus having suffered under "foreign rule", they routinely refer to the period of the Muslim dynasties, not to the British. And although they would like to claim some anti-colonial lineage, there is scant evidence of their actually having participated much in those struggles. Thanks to these powerful ideological legacies, their nationalism of today is remarkably devoid of any anti-imperialist positions and, thanks to the neoliberal consensus, devoid even of the sort of ideologies of self-reliance that Gandhian/Nehruvian variant of nationalism had envisioned for the development of Indian capitalism. ...The "blood-and-soil" nationalism and mythologies of Muslim tyranny were combined with something else as well: anxieties among large sections of the upper caste elites as they were pressed by the upsurge of the lower castes from one side, and the rise of a multi-religious, multi-caste nationalism that was fast becoming a veritable mass movement with Gandhi’s shepherding of the Congress, especially after 1919. Ideas of the Hindu Golden Age and Muslim tyranny were elements often imbibed from colonial education, hence widespread among the educated Hindu elites. In that respect, Hindu nationalism could appeal to them quite credibly. The intensities of Brahminical caste anxieties were a different matter, however, and those remained a major source for the isolation of the RSS in the heyday of the anti-colonial movement, 1919-47, and during the early decades of the Republic.

...The Anthropological Survey of India holds that the Indian population is comprised of thousands of distinct communities, sociologically so defined by custom, speech, location, cuisine, spiritual belief, caste, sub-caste, occupation, what have you. The RSS is the only organisation in India which has the ambition to have fronts for as many of these diversities as possible and does indeed go on creating more and more of them. In this sense, it is a spectacular missionary organisation, and the mission is religious, cultural, social, economic, educational and of course political. The heart of this problem for the RSS is that even though the word "Hindu" is used by all as if the word referred to some homogeneous religious community or a unified social category, the reality is that all these diversities even immense differences of custom and religious belief exist among precisely the 80 per cent of the Indians who are considered "Hindu". Contrary to this reality, the RSS has fairly precise ideas of what it means to be a Hindu, based on its own doctrine that being a Hindu is not merely a religious category, divorced from other kinds of subjectivity or conduct, but an entire way of life, from cradle to grave. It wants to make sure that the ideal type it has invented becomes the normative standard among that 80 per cent. Its commitment to creating a cultural homogeneity out of this ocean of diversities, and to translate that cultural homogeneity into a unified political will, means that it wishes to become both church and state simultaneously. That ambition is at the heart of its fight against secular civility and the specific content of its authoritarianism. That so comprehensive a civilizational project would wholly succeed appears implausible. The undertaking is audacious, however, and the success so far, although partial, is also undeniably impressive.

...In this situation the proper stance is not: watch out, Nazis are coming. The real question is the one that Kalecki posed at the time of Goldwater’s bid for the US presidency in the 1960s: what would fascism look like if it came to a democratic industrial country that had no powerful working-class movement to oppose it? That is the general question, and I think it applies with particular force to the India of today: the far right need not abolish the outer shell of the liberal democratic institutions because these institutions can be taken over by its own personnel altogether peacefully and because most others are quite willing to go along with it so long as acts of large-scale violence remain only sporadic and the more frequent low-intensity violence can be kept out of general view, by media monopoly combined with mutual agreement between liberalism and the far right. Meanwhile, the communists are now too small a force to be considered even for a ban. Of course, the question of fascism of the classical type may well resurface if a powerful socialist movement were to be re-founded, on whatever new premises and strategic perspectives that may now be necessary for that act of re-founding and reconstruction.

Aijaz Ahmad, India: Liberal Democracy and the Extreme Right

#*#aijaz ahmad

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xtruss · 3 years

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The Future of American Power

Arundhati Roy on America’s Fiery, Brutal Impotence

The US leaves Afghanistan humiliated, but now faces bigger worries, from social polarisation to environmental collapse, says a novelist and essayist

— September 3rd, 2021

— By Arundhati Roy

This By-invitation commentary is part of a series by a range of global thinkers on the future of American power, examining the forces shaping the country's standing.

IN FEBRUARY 1989 the last Soviet tank rolled out of Afghanistan, its army having been decisively defeated in a punishing, nearly decade-long war by a loose coalition of mujahideen (who were trained, armed, funded and indoctrinated by the American and Pakistani Intelligence services). By November that year the Berlin wall had fallen and the Soviet Union began to collapse. When the cold war ended, the United States took its place at the head of a unipolar world order. In a heartbeat, radical Islam replaced communism as the most imminent threat to world peace. After the attacks of September 11th, the political world as we knew it spun on its axis. And the pivot of that axis appeared to be located somewhere in the rough mountains of Afghanistan.

For reasons of narrative symmetry if nothing else, as the US makes its ignominious exit from Afghanistan, conversations about the decline of the United States’ power, the rise of China and the implications this might have for the rest of the world have suddenly grown louder. For Europe and particularly for Britain, the economic and military might of the United States has provided a cultural continuity of sorts, effectively maintaining the status quo. To them, a new, ruthless, power waiting in the wings to take its place must be a source of deep worry.

In other parts of the world, where the status quo has brought unutterable suffering, the news from Afghanistan has been received with less dread.

The day the Taliban entered Kabul, I was up in the mountains in Tosa Maidan, a high, alpine meadow in Kashmir, which the Indian Army and Air Force used for decades to practise artillery and aerial bombing. From one edge of the meadow we could look down at the valley below us, dotted with martyrs’ graveyards where tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims who had been killed in Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination are buried.

In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist group, came to power cunningly harnessing post-9/11 international Islamophobia, riding a bloody wave of orchestrated anti-Muslim massacres, in which thousands were murdered. It considers itself a staunch ally of the United States. The Indian security establishment is aware that the Taliban’s victory marks a structural shift in the noxious politics of the subcontinent, involving three nuclear powers: India, Pakistan and China, with Kashmir as a flashpoint. It views the victory of the Taliban, however pyrrhic, as a victory for its mortal enemy Pakistan, which has covertly supported the Taliban in its 20-year battle against the US occupation. Mainland India’s 175m-strong Muslim population, already brutalised, ghettoised, stigmatised as “Pakistanis”—and now, increasingly as “Talibanis”—are at even greater risk of discrimination and persecution.

Most of the mainstream media in India, embarrassingly subservient to the BJP, consistently referred to the Taliban as a terrorist group. Many Kashmiris who have lived for decades under the guns of half a million Indian soldiers, read the news differently. Wishfully. They were looking for pinholes of light in their world of darkness and indignity.

The details, the nuts and bolts of what was actually happening were still trickling in. A few who I spoke to saw it as the victory of Islam against the most powerful army in the world. Others as a sign that no power on Earth can crush a genuine freedom struggle. They fervently believed—wanted to believe—that the Taliban had completely changed and would not return to their barbaric ways. They too saw what had happened as a tectonic shift in regional politics, which they hoped would give Kashmiris some breathing space, some possibility of dignity.

The irony was that we were having these conversations sitting on a meadow pitted with bomb craters. It was Independence Day in India and Kashmir was locked down to prevent protests. On one border the armies of India and Pakistan were in a tense face-off. On another, in nearby Ladakh, the Chinese Army had crossed the border and was camped on Indian territory. Afghanistan felt very close by.

In its scores of military expeditions to establish and secure suzerainty since the second world war, the United States has smashed through (non-white) country after country. It has unleashed militias, killed millions, toppled nascent democracies and propped up tyrants and brutal military occupations. It has deployed a modern version of British colonial rhetoric—of being, in one way or another, on a selfless, civilising mission. That’s how it was with Vietnam. And so it is with Afghanistan.

Depending on where you want to put down history’s markers, the Soviets, the American- and Pakistan-backed mujahideen, the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, the unspeakably violent and treacherous warlords and the US and NATO armed forces have boiled the very bones of the Afghan people into a blood soup. All, without exception, have committed crimes against humanity. All have contributed to creating the soil and climate for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and their affiliates to operate.

If honourable ‘intentions’ such as empowering women and saving them from their own families and societies are meant to be mitigating factors in military invasions, then certainly both the Soviets and the Americans can rightly claim to have raised up, educated and empowered a small section of urban Afghan women before dropping them back into a bubbling cauldron of medieval misogyny. But neither democracy nor feminism can be bombed into countries. Afghan women have fought and will continue to fight for their freedom and their dignity in their own way, in their own time.

Does the US withdrawal mark the beginning of the end of its hegemony? Is Afghanistan going to live up to that old cliché about itself—the Graveyard of Empires? Perhaps not. Notwithstanding the horror show at the Kabul airport, the debacle of withdrawal may not be as big a blow to the United States as it is being made out to be.

Much of those trillions of dollars spent in Afghanistan circulated back to the US war industry, which includes weapons manufacturers, private mercenaries, logistics and infrastructure companies and non-profit organisations. Most of the lives that were lost in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (estimated to be roughly 170,000 by researchers at Brown University) were those of Afghans who, in the eyes of the invaders, obviously count for very little. Leaving aside the crocodile tears, the 2,400 American soldiers who were killed don’t count for much either.

The resurgent Taliban humiliated the United States. The Doha agreement signed by both sides in 2020 for a peaceful transfer of power is testimony to that. But the withdrawal could also reflect a hard-nosed calculation by the US government about how to better deploy money and military might in a rapidly changing world. With economies ravaged by lockdowns and the coronavirus, and as technology, big data and AI make for a new kind of warfare, holding territory may be less necessary than before. Why not leave Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran to mire themselves in the quicksand of Afghanistan—imminently facing famine, economic collapse and in all probability another civil war—and keep American forces rested, mobile and ready for a possible military conflict with China over Taiwan?

The real tragedy for the United States is not the debacle in Afghanistan, but that it was played out on live television. When it withdrew from the war it could not win in Vietnam, the home front was being ripped apart by anti-war protests, much of it fuelled by enforced conscription into the armed forces. When Martin Luther King made the connection between capitalism, racism and imperialism and spoke out against the Vietnam war, he was vilified. Mohammad Ali, who refused to be conscripted and declared himself a conscientious objector, was stripped of his boxing titles and threatened with imprisonment. Although war in Afghanistan did not arouse similar passions on American streets, many in the Black Lives Matter movement made those connections too.

In a few decades, the United States will no longer be a country with a white majority. The enslavement of black Africans and the genocide and dispossession of native Americans haunt almost every public conversation today. It is more than likely that these stories will join up with other stories of suffering and devastation caused by US wars or by US allies. Nationalism and exceptionalism are unlikely to be able to prevent that from happening. The polarisation and schisms within the United States could in time lead to a serious breakdown of public order. We’ve already seen the early signs. A very different kind of trouble looms on another front too.

For centuries America had the option of retreating into the comfort of its own geography. Plenty of land and fresh water, no hostile neighbours, oceans on either side. And now plenty of oil from fracking. But American geography is on notice. Its natural bounty can no longer sustain the “American way of life”—or war. (Nor for that matter, can China’s geography sustain the “Chinese way of life”).

Oceans are rising, coasts and coastal cities are insecure, forests are burning, the flames licking at the edges of settled civilisation, devouring whole towns as they spread. Rivers are drying up. Drought haunts lush valleys. Hurricanes and floods devastate cities. As groundwater is depleted, California is sinking. The reservoir of the iconic Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, which supplies fresh water to 40m people, is drying at an alarming rate.

If empires and their outposts need to plunder the Earth to maintain their hegemony, it doesn’t matter if the plundering is driven by American, European, Chinese or Indian capital. These are not really the conversations that we should be having. Because while we’re busy talking, the Earth is busy dying.

— Arundhati Roy is a novelist and essayist.

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Cows are sacred to India’s Hindu majority. For Muslims who trade cattle, that means growing trouble.

By Annie Gowen, Washington Post, July 16, 2018

MAHABAN, India--In the year since an extremist Hindu monk was tapped to lead one of India’s biggest states, the country’s Muslim cattle traders have seen their lives change in ways they could not have imagined.

First mobs of Hindu vigilantes emboldened by the monk’s victory began swarming buffalo trucks on the road, intent on finding smugglers illegally transporting cows, which are sacred to the Hindu faith and protected from slaughter in many places in India. Some Muslim men were killed by lynch mobs, as recently as June 18.

Then dozens of slaughterhouses and 50,000 meat shops were closed, severely limiting access to red meat, a staple of the Muslim community’s diet. Hundreds from the Qureshi clan, Muslims in the meat trade for centuries, lost their jobs.

Recent moves led by the Hindu nationalist party of Narendra Modi to tighten “cow protection” laws have contributed to a 15 percent drop in India’s $4 billion beef export industry, until recently the largest in the world, disrupting the country’s traditional livestock economy and leaving hundreds without work at a time when India needs to add jobs, not lose them.

The changes in the cattle industry mirror what’s happening nationally for many of India’s 172 million Muslims, for whom lynchings, hate speech and anti-Muslim rhetoric from a host of legislators from Modi’s party have taken a toll. In Mahaban, the Muslim cattle traders say their way of life is being slowly strangulated by the policies of a government and its allies intent on establishing Hindu supremacy.

“It’s undeniable that the last four or five years, it has become much worse for Muslims in India,” said Nazia Erum, the author of a recent book about Muslim families. “It’s okay to hate now. Hatred has been given a mainstream legitimacy.”

Bhurra Qureshi, 40, loaded the last of the buffaloes on the truck, having negotiated the terms of their passage from the village’s livestock market to the meat-processing plant in Aligarh, about two hours away.

He was happy to get $80 to transport the 14 hulking black buffaloes because his hauling business was way down. Buffaloes can be legally slaughtered in this part of India, where cows cannot, and it is buffalo meat that drives India’s beef export industry. But when he climbed into the rig, Qureshi’s mind turned to the pitfalls of the drive ahead.

There is new danger on State Highway 80, the only way to Aligarh. Once a sleepy backwater of religious pilgrims and camel carts, it has become a minefield of Hindu zealots waving bamboo sticks and police allegedly exacting hefty bribes.

“I’m always apprehensive before I start,” Qureshi said. “My wife asks me to stop driving and do something else, but I tell her I know no other work.”

Traders who run buffaloes legally--buffaloes are not revered in India as cows are--have been beaten and thrown in jail, and their animals and trucks confiscated by either Hindu activists or the police, risks that have contributed to a 30 percent rise in transportation costs in the past year, according to Fauzan Alavi, vice president of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association.

To buy “peace on the highway,” as he puts it, these middlemen are paying less to the farmers in livestock markets and charging more to the meat exporters upon delivery.

Qureshi piloted the rusty truck through the village, past its three mosques, past tiny shops, past out-of-work men on stoops, past the sherbet-orange Hindu temple. He hung a left at the cow shelter at the end of the road, a sort of Humane Society for bovines, overflowing these days since farmers can no longer sell their old cows to smugglers because of government crackdown and have begun turning them loose in the streets.

His first test came at the railway junction at Bichpuri, where khaki-uniformed police stopped the truck and asked: “What are you doing? Where are you taking this truck?”

To Aligarh, he told them politely. They waved him on, but a man on a motorcycle followed the truck and exacted a small bribe.

Even as India attempts to move beyond its rigid social order of caste, critics charge that elite upper-caste Hindus, many of whom eschew meat, are increasingly imposing their vegetarian culture on a country where many eat meat and where buffalo is a cheap source of protein for Muslims and those from lower castes. Modi once derided India’s soaring meat exports as a “pink revolution.”

When Yogi Adityanath--known for his inflammatory statements about Muslims--came to power last year, he ordered slaughterhouses closed, and 50,000 meat shops also shut their doors. Some but not all of the butchers were unlicensed, part of India’s thriving informal economy.

The move has had long-standing repercussions for the 2,200 Muslims of Mahaban, a third of whom lost their jobs. The local slaughterhouse run by the municipal council was closed, along with four meat shops. Since then, Adityanath’s government has made it harder for slaughterhouses to reopen, rescinding laws that required municipalities to run them and mandating that they be moved outside cities for hygienic reasons.

“The government has sent a message: Whatever facilities we were providing to Muslims, we’re not going to provide them anymore,” said Yusuf Qureshi, president of the All India Jamiatul Quresh Action Committee, a civil society group. Adityanath’s chief spokesman defends the move, saying they were enforcing existing environmental norms mandated by the courts in 2015. He also noted that the state is modernizing its 16,000 madrassas, or Islamic schools.

“Adityanath ordered a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses, it was not an ‘anti-Muslim’ drive,” Mrityunjay Kumar, the chief spokesman, said in a statement to The Post. “There was some disruption, but then nobody can make a case for unlicensed butcher shops. After the initial hiccups, the meat business is back on track.”

But the villagers disagree, and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, known as Ramzan in India, the traders were outraged that their evening meal did not include beef. The town butcher, Yunis Qureshi, who closed his shop last year during the crackdown, now sells fried snacks on the side of the road.

“We’ve been forced to become vegetarians!” he said.

Worse, he said, the government’s actions have deepened the divide in the village between Hindus and Muslims.

“Ever since this government has come in, I feel like people look at me and see a Muslim for the first time,” the butcher said. “They’ve shut down our businesses, changed the food we eat. ... Of course we’re going to feel persecuted because we’re Muslims.”

As Bhurra Qureshi’s truck rattled through the small town of Iglas, he was glad to see that the dusty lot where the Hindu cow vigilantes normally lie in wait next to a sign that says “Yogi’s Army”--with bamboo sticks at hand, saffron scarves obscuring their faces--was empty.

A few miles after that post comes the Aasna police station, where two dozen traders said in interviews that police officers have begun demanding bribes and beating them if they refuse to pay. Outside, officers man a barricade and wave the truckers to stop. Inside, beyond the temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, an officer sits behind a desk, writing dozens of tickets.

The traders have a fistfuls of these tickets for offenses such as reckless driving or speeding, even though the police have no radar equipment and the closed-camera television monitor shows only the front of the station, where the trucks are already stopped. One day in May, half of the screen was obscured by a giant spider.

“We are estimating,” explained R.N. Tiwari, the sub-inspector in charge, who denied that he or his officers roughed up the traders or asked for money above the ticketed amount.

“Everybody says we take more money, but we don’t,” Tiwari said. “Whatever tickets we cut, that is the money we take, and that goes into government coffers.”

He said police are just following state officials’ orders: “We’ve been told to cut as many tickets as possible.”

Qureshi alleged that officers attempting to negotiate a bribe recently beat him with a baton and forced him to squat like a chicken, with his arms woven through his legs and gripping his ears--a common punishment for schoolchildren. He left the station humiliated, wondering again whether he should leave this work.

Just as Qureshi approached the city limits of Aligarh, he was stopped again and asked for cash by a state police officer parked in a black sport utility vehicle under the highway overpass. (The officer later denied taking money.)

By the time Qureshi arrived at the gates of the meat-processing plant, the temperature soared to 105 degrees, but his face shone in relief. He had to pay only $6 in bribes this trip, which dented but didn’t wipe out his day’s pay of $80. He would drive again the next day, Qureshi said, and began pulling the buffaloes off the truck. He was smiling as the animals lumbered to their fate.

#India #Indian Muslims #cow protection squads #Hindu vigilantes

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expatimes · 4 years

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How will Indian Americans vote on November 3?

South Asian Americans are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the United States, and their participation in politics has increased significantly in recent years.

Bobby Jindal served as the governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016, and Nikki Haley was Trump's first choice for the role of US ambassador to the United Nations. Huma Abedin was Hillary Clinton's right-hand woman during her presidential campaign, and Saqib Ali served as a state delegate in Maryland when Obama was president. Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna are serving in Congress, and the number of South Asian Americans active in local politics is also on the rise. Belal Aftab is running for city council in California, and last year, Sadaf Jaffer became the first South Asian female mayor in America. Most importantly, Kamala Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, is the first-ever Black and South Asian vice presidential nominee.

While South Asian Americans are now more visible on the political stage than ever before, their loyalties remain diverse, resisting easy classifications.

Recent polls have shown that while most Indian Americans will vote blue in the upcoming election, 28 percent gravitate towards Trump, a notable jump from the 16 percent that voted red in the last presidential election.

Despite Trump's hostile rhetoric towards minority communities and immigrants, the support he continues to receive from a significant percentage of Indian Americans is not surprising.

Unlike South Asian Americans who come from Muslim countries, Indian-Americans, especially those who are not Sikh or Muslim, have not been subjected to the same levels of racialised surveillance as part of the US government ongoing global “war on terror”. While Indian-Americans have certainly faced racism, their roots in secular India afforded them a level of acceptance in America that Muslims fundamentally lack. As a result, while most Muslim Americans oppose Trump for his pernicious Islamophobia, Hindu Indian-Americans are more open to pledging their support to him.

Trump, after all, has pandered to the Indian-American vote, forming a close political friendship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi has built his entire political career on the basis of Hindu nationalism (also known as “Hindutva”), an exclusionary ideology that asserts India is a homeland principally for Hindus, and consequently denigrates marginalized religious groups, ethnicities and castes.

Earlier this year, Trump embarked on a two-day visit to India, where he praised Modi for protecting “religious freedoms” in the country and underscored the importance of US-India ties in the fight against “radical Islamic terrorism.” When Trump reached New Delhi, the city was burning in a pogrom against Muslims, which left more than 50 people dead. The violence came on the heels of nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), laws that institutionalise exclusion of Muslims from Indian citizenship and violate the country's secular constitution.

In 2019, Modi was re-elected as prime minister by stoking nationalist sentiments - threatening war with Pakistan and revoking the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, which its inhabitants consider to be under military occupation. That same year, Trump welcomed Modi in a Houston stadium, drawing 50,000 Indian-Americans in rapturous support.

Today, the spike in Indian-American support for Trump is likely linked to the political alliance between Trump and Modi that was built on their shared hatred of Muslims, policies of increased neoliberal privatisation, and right-wing populism.

But while Trump and Modi's diplomatic friendship is now at the center of US-India relations, support for Hindu nationalism, and normalization of its adherents in US politics, is not limited to conservative circles.

Liberal politicians from the Democratic Party, who claim to champion democratic values, inclusion and multiculturalism, also have deep ties to Modi, which is reinforced by the network of Indian-American organizations that support him. These organizations are linked to the Sangh Parivar, an umbrella term that encompasses Hindu nationalist groups, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its paramilitary progenitor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Democratic nominee Joe Biden, widely celebrated as the antidote to Trump, or viewed as the lesser evil in yet another election that fails to offer new options for American voters, may not appear to be as enthusiastic in cooperating with the Indian prime minister as his conservative opponent. But Trump was not the first president to honor Modi with an invitation to the White House.

In September 2014, just a few months after Modi's ascent to the top of India's government, then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden welcomed Modi to Washington, DC, with full fanfare, including a visit to the Martin Luther King, Jr memorial and A lunch prepared by an Indian-American chef at the State Department.

The day before, 19,000 Indian-Americans had greeted Modi at Madison Square Garden in what Secretary of State John Kerry called “a rock-star reception”. Prominent liberal Indian-American personalities, such as Nina Davuluri, the first South Asian American Miss America and contributor to Michelle Obama's public health campaign, and Hari Sreenivasan, a PBS anchor, hosted the gathering.

Throughout Modi's visit, neither the members of the Obama administration nor the Indian-Americans celebrating his arrival, tried to take Modi to task for his actions during the Gujarat pogroms. Modi had been banned from entering the US for nine years - from 2005 to 2014 - due to his alleged complicity in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in his home state of Gujarat, which left more than 1,000 people dead. The policy was implemented thanks to the efforts of Indian-American Muslims and Sikhs, according to Kashmiri-American intellectual Hafsa Kanjwal, but was swiftly overturned when Modi became prime minister.

America's diplomatic alignment with Modi - or any leader at the helm of Indian democracy, even as it slips rapidly into fascism - remains bipartisan, and Biden himself has been at the center of efforts to form a strong economic and security partnership with India since days as a senator. The Democratic presidential hopeful was one of the primary architects of the US's nuclear trade agreement with India in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which laid the foundation for the current political and economic partnership between the two countries. During this time, India started to receive aircraft, naval ships and other defense technology exports from the US.

In 2014, Biden praised Modi's “support for economic reforms” which, as of 2018, enabled a trade relationship worth $ 142b between the two countries. To this day, India remains the fifth-largest market for American defense exports.

Biden is the only alternative to four more years of a Trump presidency, and his acceptance of Modi and lack of sensitivity to Kashmiri, lower-caste and Indian Muslim suffering appear still to be as strong as they were six years ago.

In February, the Biden campaign appointed Amit Jani, an Indian-American political organizer with strong family and political links to Modi and the BJP, as director of outreach for the Asian-American Pacific Islander community; His duties included Muslim outreach.

Jani's ties to the BJP surpass mild apologia or well-intended ignorance of Indian politics. His father, Suresh Jani, is a founder of the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP), an organization lobbying for Modi's BJP in the West. In 2019, his mother, Deepti, actively campaigned for Modi's re-election in India. When Modi visited the US, he stayed at the Janis' Jersey City home.

Amit Jani does not dissociate himself from his parents' ideology or activism. In fact, he appears to support it. In a 2014 article for The Huffington Post, Jani glorified Modi for reviving interest in Indian politics among the diaspora and compared his election win to that of Obama.

In May 2019, Jani was listed as an organizer for an event celebrating the Indian government draconian decision to revoke the special status accorded to Indian-administered Kashmir in its constitution. As Jani was working to organize the celebratory event, Modi had already put Indian-administered Kashmir under lockdown, cutting the region's internet and electricity, and thousands of troops there to quash protests.

Given Biden's strong political relationship with India and past praise of Modi, his appointment of Jani, a Modi supporter, was hardly shocking, but it poured salt in the wound of Muslim Americans, especially those of South Asian descent, as well as Dalit Americans.

A hashtag calling for his dismissal, #RejectAmitJani, trended on Twitter and Equality Labs, a South Asian progressive organization, published an open letter calling for Biden to “terminate Amit Jani's employment from the campaign”, which drew signatures from several grassroots Asian-American groups and respected academics.

Following the backlash, Jani was relieved of his duties and a former Muslim adviser to the 2016 Clinton campaign, Farooq Mitha, was assigned to do outreach within the Muslim American community. Mitha's appointment also stirred some controversy, as he is a board member of the controversial organization Emgage, which has been criticized for its ties to pro-Israel lobbies that have tried to censor the work of Palestine solidarity activists.

Biden has since catered to the Muslim American vote by name-dropping various atrocities against Muslims around the world in his online agenda for Muslim-American communities, such as the Uighur internment camps in China, the Saudi war in Yemen, and human rights violations in Kashmir. In July, Biden's foreign policy adviser promised the presidential hopeful would put pressure on India to change its policies regarding Kashmir and the civil liberties of Indian Muslims.

Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate, has also criticized Modi's annexation of Kashmir and has said that American cooperation with India is possible only with an appreciation for human rights and "religious pluralism." Harris is of Indian descent, but traces her roots to Tamil Nadu in South India, while most of the BJP's base is concentrated in the northern part of the country.

However, despite rhetorical support for progressive activists fighting the BJP's fascism, the constant underlying factor in both Biden and Harris's views is the importance of the US-India partnership.

If Biden truly wanted to hold Modi accountable for human rights violations, he probably would not have elevated an open Modi supporter on his campaign team. Biden aims to win both Hindu-American and Muslim-American votes, especially when lobbies, community leaders, and organizations in each demographic are powerful, moneyed donors to political campaigns.

Modi will be in power for the next few years, if not more, and a Biden-Harris presidency will inevitably broker an alliance with him, regardless of whether he changes his policy minorities facing occupation and / or marginalized by Hindu nationalism.

For liberals and leftists, who want all voting Americans to unite against the evil of Trump on the day of the election, the siren song of Modi's fascism is too far away to inspire any real outrage. Perhaps it is an indication of the conservatism of the dominant political system that both Biden and Trump possess equal proximity to a right-wing populist encouraging violence against India's minorities and steamrolling military occupation in Kashmir.

But all is not lost. The assault on minorities in India has inspired progressive Democrats to take a stand. Ro Khanna, an Indian-American congressman from California, stated that Hindu-American politicians have a “duty” to reject Hindutva. Pramila Jayapal introduced a resolution recognizing human rights abuses in Kashmir and also sponsored a Congressional hearing on caste oppression in the US, and Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have criticized the Modi government for its violence against Kashmir and Indian Muslims.

Thousands of South-Asian Americans and their allies protested against Modi this year, and a multicultural resistance demonstrated in solidarity with Kashmir when Modi spoke at the UN last year.

The mobilisation to seek unity against Trump will end on November 3. Once that happens, young South Asian Americans will focus less on voting, and return their efforts and attention to movement-building instead.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Prime Minister Modi is a year into his second term. He’s still the only game in town for India

During his campaign, Modi faced questions about India’s mixed economic performance in the previous five years, but he won over voters with promises to shore up national security and by pushing a Hindu nationalist agenda.

In the past six months, he’s faced two significant challenges: nationwide protests over a controversial citizenship law, which led to violent attacks on Muslims, and the threat of thousands of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.

His handling of the latter has earned praised at home and abroad. But the biggest test is arguably to come — reopening the country while keeping its 1.3 billion people safe.

Element of surprise: a Modi hallmark

At 8 p.m. on March 24, Modi gave just four hours’ notice of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, sending millions of people scrambling for groceries, medicines and other essentials.

Perhaps worst affected were the millions of migrant workers who travel from rural areas to work in cities each year. In the lockdown, work suddenly dried up, leaving many of them stranded without pay. Many were forced to walk vast distances due to the public transport shutdown — and not all of them made it.

Modi’s sudden decision — accompanied by poor planning and execution — left local administrations confused over what was and wasn’t allowed, such as exemptions for online grocery deliveries amid the halt on all e-commerce operations.

“This is a part of his governing style and it can work during normal times but it’s not a good way to operate in a time of crisis where you throw surprises at 1.3 billion people,” said Vivek Dehejia, a professor of economics at Carleton University in Ottawa.

This, of course, was not the first time Modi has made a snap announcement. On November 8, 2016, Modi declared 500 rupee ($7.50) and 1,000 rupee ($15) notes worthless, which made up about 86% of the cash in circulation, in a bid to switch the country to digital payments to stop corruption and tax evasion.

“In each case, there was a four-hour window for people to react and absolute pandemonium broke out,” said Dehejia.

The result was massive lines at banks, change was nearly impossible to find, and some businesses resorted to barter, with India’s poor and most vulnerable bearing the biggest impact. People in remote places missed the window to exchange years’ worth of savings in old currency notes.

“You need to think about the consequences and how this will impact millions of people,” said Meghnad S, an associate editor for Newslaundry, an independent online news outlet.

Distracting from the economy

“Good days are coming,” was Modi’s campaign slogan, as he secured his first term in 2014 on the back of grand plans for the country’s economy.

But the lacklustre figures had little bearing on the 2019 election results, which saw Modi return to power with a bigger mandate.

India’s unemployment rate hit 8.75% in March, up from 7.03% in May last year — and is even higher after the coronavirus shutdown.

Furthermore, during his term, his government has committed funds to vanity projects, such as the world’s tallest statue or bullet trains, when priorities such as healthcare, infrastructure and sanitation persist.

And with the economic destruction wreaked by the pandemic things are unlikely to improve.

As the country nears the end of a near 10-week lockdown, as of Friday, India had more than 165,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 4,700 deaths.

In his last national address on May 12, Modi announced an additional financial package to help the economy.

The new stimulus package, along with previous measures taken by the Indian government, would account for about $266 billion, which is around 10% of the country’s GDP, according to Modi.

His government later said this would include $40 billion to help small businesses affected by the outbreak, $20 billion to strengthen the agricultural industry and $5 billion for migrant workers and small-scale farmers.

Furthemore, for many Modi’s demonetization strategy built a narrative that he is a strongman who took on black money, and therefore has taken successful economic action.

“Despite the amount of pain caused, a lot of people still love the fact he did something like that,” says Vivek Kaul, an economic commentator and author. “If the idea was to get black money out, there are lots of ways to do that, but that would have involved a lot of work.”

Promoting Brand India

Modi is renowned as a master of public relations.

He’s become known for his bear hug-embraces of world leaders, while his slogan “Make in India” signaled his intention to rebrand the country as the world’s next manufacturing hub. In February, he packed the world’s largest cricket stadium for a rousing welcome rally for the US President Donald Trump, taglined “Namaste Trump.”

Modi’s flair for PR has been evident during the pandemic, with India promoting its role as a global leader in pharmaceuticals.

A number of world leaders lined up to thank India for its work supplying generic drugs like hydroxychloroquine to meet a rise in demand during the pandemic — including President Trump.

“Extraordinary times require even closer cooperation between friends. Thank you India and the Indian people for the decision on HCQ. Will not be forgotten!” Trump tweeted.

Modi responded: “Times like these bring friends closer. The India-US partnership is stronger than ever … We shall win this together.” Medical journal The Lancet has since reported that Covid-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine are more likely to die or develop dangerous irregular heart rhythms.

Modi also heavily promoted the country’s decision to fly 20,000 citizens home from foreign countries during the pandemic. According to Meghnad, from Newslaundry, it was an example of Modi’s external PR efforts to present India’s success to the world — internal migrants’ troubles during the lockdown received much less attention.

Dehejia believes there is “a huge cognitive gap between the rhetoric and the reality” of Modi’s vision of India as a growing economy and an important player in international affairs, after recent events dented the country’s soft power and image as a vibrant democracy.

“This was well before the (coronavirus) crisis when anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests were taking off. That was not good for India’s brand as a liberal democracy. The migrant crisis has further damaged the brand,” says Dehejia.

Marginalizing Muslims

Modi has not been shy about his pro-Hindu religious policies and has lived up to pledges made on the campaign trail.

Last August, he made the surprise decision to scrap a constitutional provision that granted Jammu and Kashmir relative autonomy, which sent the region into turmoil and saw tens of thousands of new troops deployed.

Then in November, his government granted Hindus permission to build a temple at the centuries-old Ayodhya holy site, previously claimed by Hindus and Muslims. The next month, India passed a bill to give Indian citizenship to immigrants from three neighboring countries — but not if they are Muslim.

The pandemic has provided more opportunity to marginalize Muslims, after a March gathering in New Delhi of the Tablighi Jamaat, a conservative Muslim missionary group, resulted in a large cluster of cases.

Reports of Islamophobic attacks, both online and on the streets, began to surface, with Muslims being accused of spreading the virus.

Some members of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began comparing the incident to terrorism.

On Twitter, the head of the BJP’s information and technology unit, Amit Malviya, called the gathering part of an “Islamic insurrection” while Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the BJP’s Minister for Minority Affairs accused the event organizers of a “Talibani crime.”

Like previous incidents, most recently seen in February when violent communal clashes broke out in the capital New Delhi, the government failed to take stringent action.

“Modi did put out a tweet on harmony but it felt like an afterthought. There’s a lack of communication and it’s more obvious because otherwise he tweets about everything under the sun,” said Meghnad, from Newslaundry.

“Obviously, they (Tablighi Jamaat) are at fault and action should be taken but to paint an entire community and the conflation of the actions of a few is ridiculous. The government should actively come out but they let it turn into the monster that it did,” he added.

Priorities on spending

While Modi’s government has announced $266 billion in relief packages during the pandemic, Dehejia, from Carleton University, points out that much of what was announced in a week-long series of press conferences by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had already been committed.

“Part of the Modi government brand has been to make these big announcements over things that they’ve already been doing or what previous governments have done and brand it as a new package … The amount of new money committed is essentially quite small,” he said.

Sitharaman’s penultimate press conference highlighting reforms to sectors such as mining, defense and the country’s space program raised eyebrows over the relevance of the announcement during the current situation.

“Tone-deaf is the only charitable explanation,” said Dehejia. Many felt more should have been invested in the country’s creaking healthcare infrastructure, which has been an issue regardless of the party in power.

According to the World Bank, in 2017, India allocated around 3.5% of its GDP towards health. This compares to the United States, which spent 17% of its GDP on healthcare and poorer nations such as Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, which set aside 13.4% and 12% respectively in the same year.

Looking ahead, spending wisely and investing in the right parts of the economy will be crucial — though experts say Modi has such a strong mandate that he’s essentially free to do what he wants.

And India’s next election isn’t due until 2024.

The bigger issue is the lack of credible opposition. The 2019 election dealt a sharp blow to the India’s main opposition Congress party, which won just 52 seats compared to the BJP’s 303. To win, a party needs 272 elected seats out of 543.

The result marked the Congress party’s second-worst showing ever in a general election.

“A crisis of any kind greatly empowers the incumbent. Whether it’s Trump’s nightly news conferences or Boris Johnson’s or Modi’s announcements, that’s what’s visible to the public and opposition parties struggle to make an impact or appear on the evening news,” said Dehejia.

“What is the credible alternative at the national level? Modi’s the only game in town for India.”

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electionsintheworld · 7 years

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Elections and Nationalism - Andy Wilson

Because many of us were not alive to witness how these behemoths of international interconnectivity manifested, it would sometimes seem as though they are innocuous. However, the rise of isolationist and nationalist tendencies stemming from the elections of great western powers threaten this stability.

Typically, such trends are observed when the U.S. turns away from it’s founding liberal principles. This can be examined thoroughly when reviewing the recently elected U.S. administration.

Trump has started rejecting these principles as he has honed in on historically protectionist attitudes. These sentiments are responsible for his growing antipathy towards multilateral agreements like NAFTA, which follow the same justifications of the implementation as other historically protectionist policies, such as the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act (June 17, 1930). In summation, this act attempted to protect domestic farmers and manufacturers by passing a series of tariffs resulting in a 20% tax on multiple imported goods. Subsequently, it invited other nations to do the same. Within two years nearly a dozen countries adopted similar “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies.[1] Channeling these sentiments, Trump has threatened similar protectionist policies that have caused other nations to respond in kind. While this political rhetoric energizes a candidate’s base, it has similar effects on the nations such policies touch.

Already, Mexico has already threatened retaliatory measures towards Trump’s suggestion of increasing tariffs on Mexican imports by proposing their own tariff on American Textiles, a $6.5 billion trade industry.[2] While these contentions usually become resolved, they leave scars of xenophobia behind.

When these formal relationships begin to deteriorate, it reverberates down to micro-levels. The populations within these states, which are most affected by such measures, perceive it as an attack on their own identity. This subsequently creates resentment within their nation, thus manifesting their own isolationist and nationalist sentiments. Such a trend can largely be seen in Muslim majority nations, which after decades of anti-middle eastern policies., increasingly led to these populations having an unfavorable view of the United States and causing them to embrace their own nationalist ideologies.[3]

Immigration policy is a large contributing factor to this. When candidates from western powers gain traction from resisting the tides of immigration, historical trends show that other states will follow. No better context demonstrates this than the growing resistance from far-right nationalist candidates in the U.S. towards asylum seekers escaping conflicts in the Middle East, and the paralleling restrictive immigration policies of the 1920’s. Many political parties within Europe, in both instances, looked to U.S. policy to justify their own.

An early examination of this trend can be seen after the Quota Acts of 1921 and 1924, which saw the rise of scientific racism and xenophobia lead to the rejection of international cooperation within the U.S., and causing other European powers to adopt similar policies.[4] This trend is still evident today. In the recent Austrian presidential election, Norbert Hofer, of the Freedom Party of Austria, called for restricting Austria borders (primarily to Muslims), and protested liberal trade agreements made with the European Union; all policies which mirror those of President Trump.[5]

An analysis of the 2015-17 elections indicate that these isolationist sentiments are fielding an unprecedented number of far right, ultra-nationalist candidates. From extremely starch conservative nationalists in Europe, like French candidate Marine Le Pen and Dutch candidate Geert Wilders, to rising nationalist tides in Russia, and South Asian states like India’s Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) groups, the global community is seeing a noticeable resurgence of these sentiments.[6] The election of Donald Trump has established American policy as the new torch bearer for the legitimacy of this nationalist political wave. For example, May Norbert Hofer’s anti-immigrant Freedom Party came close to winning the presidency with 49.7% of the vote, one of many nationalist candidates in Europe who almost won in 2016.[7]

An omen that should be recognized is the dichotomy between this push for isolationism and the rise of nationalism. As resentments form against global interconnectivity, nationalistic tendencies will materialize. Trends have shown that this will then spread. Europe saw this trend occur multiple times after the Napoleonic wars, the first of which in the late 19th century with the dissolution of feudalism, and again in the 1930’s with the rise of fascist regimes in places like Italy, Germany, and Spain.[8] Without the trust built between nations from interconnectivity, they will return to a state of nature, threatening the fragile global tranquility we have spent generations fostering.

The success of these complex, multilayered, institutionalized relationships, is predicated on the participation of the United States in the process. If the United States allows their own politics to relegate itself to a hermetical hegemon, it will eventually seep into the elections of even more nations. If history has shown us anything, this is a dangerous precedent.

[1]The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2 Aug. 2016, <www.britannica.com/topic/Smoot-Hawley-Tariff-Act>

[2] Gillespie, Patrick. “Mexico Warns Trump on Tariffs: We’ll Respond ‘Immediately’.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, 14 Jan. 2017, <money.cnn.com/2017/01/14/news/economy/donald-trump-mexico-tariffs-response/index.html.>

[3] Rosentiel, Tom. “Arab and Muslim Perceptions of the United States.” Pew Research Center, 9 Nov. 2005,

<www.pewresearch.org/2005/11/10/arab-and-muslim-perceptions-of-the-united-states/>

[4] Massey, Douglas S, and Karen A. Pren. “Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-1965 Surge from Latin America.”Population and development review 38.1 (2012): 1–29. Print.

[5] Ulansky, Elena, and William Witenberg. “Is Nationalism on the Rise Globally?” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 31 May 2016, <www.huffingtonpost.com/elena-ulansky/is-nationalism-on-the-ris_b_10224712.html.>

[6] “League of Nationalists.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, 19 Nov. 2016

<www.economist.com/news/international/21710276-all-around-world-nationalists-are-gaining-ground-why-league-nationalists>

[7] Hirsh, Michael, et al. “Why the New Nationalists Are Taking Over.” POLITICO Magazine, 27 June 2016, <www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/nationalism-donald-trump-boris-johnson-brexit-foreign-policy-xenophobia-isolationism-213995.>

[8] Germani, Gino. Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism. Transaction Books, NP: 1978.

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/asia-pacific/young-indians-helped-put-modi-in-power-can-he-count-on-them-again/

Young Indians Helped Put Modi in Power. Can He Count On Them Again?

INDORE, India — At an engineering college in the middle of India, three first-time voters stretched out on classroom benches and debated whether to re-elect Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Monika Khichi supported Mr. Modi, arguing that he was fashioning India into a new world superpower. Her friend, Ajay Kirar, was a bit less sure of how he would vote, describing the election as a “political drama” dominated by two large, flawed parties.

Arunoday Singh Parmar, a budding social activist, grimaced at the idea of giving the prime minister another term. He weighed the rise of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party against shrinking space for India’s minorities.

“India is a secular country, but for political benefits, they are trying to make it a Hindu country,” he said. “I am anti-Modi.”

Five years ago, young voters turned out in large numbers for the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., seeing in Mr. Modi a soaring orator whose pro-development record suggested he could meet one of the biggest challenges facing India: how to sustain an economy that absorbs hundreds of thousands of new workers every month.

Exit polls found that turnout in that election among Indians ages 18 to 25 surpassed that of the general population for the first time, hovering around 70 percent. India’s youngest voters were the most likely of any age group to support the B.J.P.

Over the next few weeks, as Indians head to the polls in the world’s largest election, young people will once again mostly back Mr. Modi, according to a pre-election survey. But conversations with them suggest they have some reservations.

High unemployment, the spread of Hindu nationalism and a spike in hate crimes against Muslims are among the issues on the minds of newly eligible voters, who number about 130 million nationwide, according to census data. Activists and analysts say India is more divided today than when Mr. Modi was elected.

“In 2014, Modi undoubtedly represented hope,” said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of political science at Brown University in Rhode Island. “In 2019, Modi represents a mixture of fear and hope — fear that the state would punitively hurt and repress those who dissent and disagree, and hope for those who still think he can take India higher.”

The demographics are favorable for Mr. Modi in Madhya Pradesh, a vast, mostly Hindu state that votes throughout this month before results are announced on May 23.

Some of the prime minister’s youngest supporters in Indore, the state’s largest city, said the B.J.P. had proven itself capable of remaking India from the ground up. They could see it right in front of them.

Not too long ago, Indore resembled other crowded Indian cities, with a population of about two million. Mangy animals roamed streets piled with garbage. Waste management was abysmal.

Over the past few years, an aggressive cleanup campaign led by the B.J.P.-controlled local government — and supported by Mr. Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India Mission — changed that.

Residents now gush about the improvements, highlighting Indore’s high livability ranking and recent experiments with technology, including a traffic intersection managed by a giant robot.

“Indore is the No. 1 cleanest city in India,” said Aaradhya Bhatt, 18, who plans to cast his first vote for the B.J.P.

By contrast, Mr. Modi’s primary opponent, Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Gandhi-Nehru political dynasty, was seen by some voters in Indore as worse at governing, speaking Hindi and relating to ordinary Indians.

In 2014, Mr. Modi shoveled disdain on Mr. Gandhi’s Indian National Congress, which was mired in corruption scandals. The party’s reputation for slippery deals persists: Mr. Bhatt said that Congress would “give us potatoes and keep gold” if voted into power.

Mr. Modi’s young critics agreed that Mr. Gandhi was a tough sell. But mostly they wanted to talk about jobs.

Rajat Sharma, 20, who comes from a family of B.J.P. supporters, said he was torn about whom to support after it emerged earlier this year that Mr. Modi’s government had suppressed a report showing a 45-year high in unemployment.

Recent data from the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy, a research company in Mumbai, showed that India lost as many as 11 million jobs in 2018. The competition for employment is often impossible: Last year, 19 million people applied for 63,000 menial jobs with India’s railways.

“Employment is one of my biggest concerns,” Mr. Sharma said. “The Modi government is hiding data from us.”

Others said that the B.J.P.’s effort to improve infrastructure by building millions of toilets and electrifying villages was hardly different from policies supported by the Indian National Congress.

What did differentiate the two main parties, they said, was the B.J.P.’s interest in furthering Hindu nationalism in India.

Mr. Modi rose to political power through Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a far-right Hindu nationalist group. Though he played down that history in the 2014 election, more recently he has embraced a Hindu-first agenda, using a military confrontation with Muslim-majority Pakistan to stoke nationalist sentiment with fervent religious rhetoric.

It remains unclear if Mr. Modi’s strategy will work with voters. In December, the B.J.P. suffered its worst defeat in years in elections held across five states, including Madhya Pradesh. Some analysts saw those elections as a referendum on campaigning appealing to communal divisions that had previously worked for the B.J.P.

Over breakfast one morning in April, three generations of Mr. Sharma’s family sat on couches behind his aunt’s clothing boutique and pondered the place of religion in Indian politics.

Mr. Sharma said hate speech had gotten worse under the B.J.P. as India underwent a “rightward shift.”

His uncle, Prem Sharma, 44, saw no problem with the B.J.P.’s muscular assertion of Hindu identity. He viewed it as protectionist. In India’s majority-Hindu neighborhoods, he said, Muslims were not pressured to assimilate, but in a reverse scenario, “Hindus would be forced out.”

From the doorway, Seema Sharma, 38, Rajat’s mother, quietly interjected.

“Not all Muslims are the same,” she said.

Similar conversations drifted through Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, a public university with several thousand students, where Ms. Khichi, 22, and Mr. Parmar, 22, assessed the last five years under Mr. Modi.

They thought it was a mistake for the B.J.P. to appoint Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk with a history of demonizing Muslims, as the leader of Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest state.

They agreed that the party’s attempt to rout out black money by invalidating most of India’s currency, known as demonetization, had not really worked.

But the question of whether Mr. Modi was responsible for his government’s more polarizing moments divided them.

Ms. Khichi, a senior who plans to work for the consulting company Deloitte after graduating, said “bad people” in Mr. Modi’s party were taking advantage of his popularity to insert religion into politics.

“It is not Modi who is promoting Hinduism,” she said. “It is the people behind him.”

Mr. Parmar raised the case of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist and critic of the government, who was murdered in 2017 by members of a militant Hindu group.

After her death, a man who described himself on Twitter as a “Hindu nationalist” wrote: “One bitch dies a dog’s death all the puppies cry in the same tune.” Mr. Parmar pointed out that Mr. Modi was following that person.

“It means Modi is supporting him,” he said.

The third person in the classroom, Mr. Kirar, 23, said he was still undecided. Choosing between the B.J.P. and the Indian National Congress, he said, was like picking one of two snakes.

Regardless of which gets chosen, he said, “they are both going to bite you anyway.”

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2whatcom-blog · 5 years

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India pupil chief 'a logo of protest' towards PM Modi

A district in considered one of India's poorest states has made nationwide headlines within the ongoing normal election after a firebrand pupil chief determined to run for a seat there. Kanhaiya Kumar, who was charged with "sedition" for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans and spent a couple of weeks in jail in 2016, is a candidate from Begusarai constituency the place voting was held on Monday. Neha Thirani Bagri stories. It's early morning within the Bihari village of Bihat, when Kanhaiya Kumar emerges from his house. He's instantly swamped by younger males speeding to shake his hand, asking to take selfies with him, carrying t-shirts emblazoned together with his picture. Mr Kumar, who grew up right here, shot to fame in 2016 when he was arrested and charged with sedition. Then a pupil union chief at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru College, he was accused of chanting anti-India slogans at a campus occasion to commemorate the anniversary of the hanging of Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man convicted of plotting the 2001 assaults on the Indian parliament. His arrest turned the rallying cry for critics of the Hindu nationalist politics of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), with pupil protests organised throughout the nation. Mr Kumar remains to be preventing the cost of sedition, a colonial-era statute that has been used to clamp down on dissent in India, which he calls "completely false propaganda." "Kanhaiya Kumar has become a symbol of protest against the politics which is represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi," stated Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Examine of Creating Societies. Mr Kumar has since accomplished his PhD. On Monday, he had his first foray into politics, when he ran for election within the constituency of Begusarai within the fourth part of polling within the Indian election. Votes will solely be counted in late Might. The constituency was as soon as a communist stronghold often known as the "Leningrad of Bihar." "This was not a choice, to enter politics. It was a forced responsibility," Mr Kumar stated throughout a full day of campaigning earlier than his constituency went to the polls. Mr Kumar is from the Communist Social gathering of India (CPI), the affect of which has been waning over the previous few years.

India votes 2019

"Our constitution talks about a secular country. If they are attempting to invoke a particular religion and change the character of the state, then, of course, we will oppose this." Whereas Mr Modi swept to a historic victory in India's final election in 2014 on the promise of higher days forward, many rural Indians have been upset with rising unemployment and an agrarian disaster. Mr Modi and different BJP leaders have been criticised for spouting communally-charged rhetoric and remaining silent within the face of accelerating spiritual violence. The primary opposition Congress celebration has struggled to mount a powerful problem, although gained some momentum with victories in key state elections final yr. Bihar, India's third most populous state, elects 40 members out of 545 to India's decrease home of parliament. Within the 2014 normal election, the BJP received 22 of the 40 seats. On Monday, Mr Kumar went up towards BJP's Giriraj Singh, who as soon as stated that those that oppose Mr Modi ought to go to Pakistan. It was a three-way contest with the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which has fielded a Muslim candidate. "Right now, people's real issues have vanished from the conversation," stated Mr Kumar. He has grow to be recognized for sometimes emphasising schooling, jobs, public healthcare, and minority rights in his speeches. Mr Kumar has garnered the help of civil rights campaigners, activists, and celebrities from throughout India. His outsized social media presence has additionally made him significantly well-liked with younger individuals, a lot of whom are drawn in direction of Mr Kumar's charismatic character, fiery oratory, and native roots.

'Join with the younger'

Movies of his speeches, usually essential of the BJP and right-wing politics, have garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and Fb. "Kanhaiya's thinking connects with us young people," stated Pankaj Kumar, 24, including that he usually shares the politician's speeches together with his pals on WhatsApp. "If Kanhaiya wins at least we will have pride - it was because of him that Begusarai became famous in India and even the whole world." Mr Kumar's speeches have additionally attracted a sizeable variety of Muslim voters - many within the district had been vocal supporters of him. "People with power in this country are only thinking about how to create religious division," stated Mohammed Shoaib Alam. "Kanhaiya will raise his voice for the issues of poor people," he added. Whereas Mr Kumar's recognition has drawn nationwide consideration to the competition for the parliamentary seat from this distant constituency, his victory is much from sure. "All odds are against him," stated Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow on the Centre for Coverage Analysis, including that Mr Kumar didn't profit from having the backing of a giant political celebration or coalition or the consolidated vote from one neighborhood. "If he pulls this off - and he is massively popular on the ground - it would just be a testament to his individual political skill." Neha Thirani Bagri is an unbiased journalist Read the full article

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