{"id":52635,"date":"2019-12-18T11:40:24","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T00:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52635"},"modified":"2019-12-18T11:40:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T00:40:24","slug":"the-end-of-gandhis-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-end-of-gandhis-india\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of Gandhi\u2019s India?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

On 2 October, the world marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand \u2018Mahatma\u2019 Gandhi\u2014the greatest Indian of modern times. In a New York Times<\/em> op-ed<\/a> for the occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most powerful living Indian, duly praised his country\u2019s independence leader. Between recalling the admiration for Gandhi of Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and others, Modi saw fit to tout his own government\u2019s commitment to sanitation and renewable energy.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of ground to cover. Yet for me, the commentary was most striking in what it didn\u2019t say. There was not a word about the cause for which Gandhi lived\u2014and sacrificed\u2014his life: interfaith harmony. From the 1890s, when he was an organiser for a small community of diaspora Indians in South Africa, to his death in 1948, by which time he was the acknowledged \u2018Father\u2019 of a nation of over 300 million people, Gandhi worked to build unity and solidarity between Hindus and Muslims. While he was in South Africa, many of the meetings he organised to protest against discriminatory laws were held in mosques. And when he returned to India, he fasted and embarked on several long pilgrimages to build trust between Hindus and Muslims.<\/p>\n

Gandhi had fought the British, non-violently, for an independent and united India. In the end, he achieved independence but not unity. When the British finally gave up the subcontinent in August 1947, they partitioned it. Pakistan was explicitly created as a homeland for Muslims. But, owing to Gandhi\u2019s efforts, India itself was established as a nondenominational state: the new constitution forbade discrimination on religious grounds; the Muslims who remained were to be treated as equal citizens.<\/p>\n

For the first two decades after independence, minority rights in India were carefully safeguarded, chiefly because of the determination of the country\u2019s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to prevent India from becoming a Hindu Pakistan. In more recent times, however, India\u2019s large (and mostly poor) Muslim minority has come under increasing attack. This is partly because, after Nehru\u2019s death, the ruling Congress Party shunned progressive Muslim voices in its efforts to cultivate the ulema<\/em> (Muslim clergy) for votes. But it\u2019s also because the traditional opposition party, Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has emphatically rejected Gandhi\u2019s and Nehru\u2019s vision of political and religious pluralism.<\/p>\n

From the mid-1980s, the country was riven by a series of communal riots in which Hindu mobs taunted their Muslim compatriots with the slogan \u2018<\/em>Pakistan ya Babristan!\u2019<\/em> (\u2018Go to Pakistan, or be sent to the graveyard!\u2019) The bloodiest riot was in 2002, in Gujarat, where Modi was then serving as chief minister. The episode badly tarred Modi\u2019s image, and even resulted in his being barred from entering the United States for a while.<\/p>\n

But having rebranded himself as a Vikas Purush<\/em> (Man of Development) and devised a platform promising inclusive growth, Modi was able to prevail in the 2014 general election. That outcome led to another wave of hate crimes against Muslims, which Modi proved either unable or unwilling to prevent. His first term in office yielded nothing for the economy, so he and the BJP contested the 2019 elections on a platform of jingoistic nationalism. Pakistan was depicted as the \u2018enemy without\u2019, and Indian Muslims and secular liberals as the \u2018enemies within\u2019.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding Modi\u2019s public posturing in the pages of Western newspapers, he and his party remain committed to the idea of a Hindu Rashtra<\/em>: a state run for and by Hindus. There\u2019s currently just one Muslim among the BJP\u2019s 300-odd members of the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India\u2019s parliament). Worse, senior BJP leaders routinely insult and intimidate Indian Muslims without provocation, demanding that they prove their \u2018loyalty\u2019 to the motherland.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no accident that Modi failed to mention Hindu\u2013Muslim harmony even when praising Gandhi. His silence speaks for itself. Meanwhile, on 1 October, Modi\u2019s right-hand man, Amit Shah, the home minister and current BJP president, offered his own implicit message to India\u2019s Muslims. \u2018I today want to assure Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Christian refugees, you will not be forced to leave India by the Centre\u2019, he said<\/a> in a speech in Kolkata. \u2018Don\u2019t believe rumors\u2019, he added<\/a>. \u2018We will bring a Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will ensure these people get Indian citizenship.\u2019<\/p>\n

Notably absent from Shah\u2019s remarks was any reassurance for Muslim refugees, including those from Bangladesh, whom Shah previously referred to as \u2018termites\u2019. The purpose of his speech was clear: Indian Muslims should be careful what they say, or they could find themselves stripped<\/a> of citizenship and deported.<\/p>\n

On 11 December, the bill<\/a> amending the citizenship act passed the parliament, sparking massive demonstrations in Delhi and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

As Gandhi\u2019s biographer\u2014and as an Indian citizen who is committed to pluralism\u2014I am deeply worried about the escalating demonisation of my Muslim compatriots. The democratic, secular republic that Gandhi fought for is being transformed into a Hindu majoritarian state.<\/p>\n

Yet as a historian, I have no illusions about what we are witnessing. India, once an exception, is now converging towards the South Asian norm. Sri Lanka and Myanmar are both Buddhist majoritarian states, and their minority populations\u2014Tamil Hindus and Rohingya Muslims, respectively\u2014are treated as second-class citizens (and much worse). Likewise, Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim majoritarian states, where Hindus (and sometimes Christians) have historically been persecuted.<\/p>\n

As we enter a new decade, it is clear that Modi, Shah, and the BJP are committed to joining the club of ethno-nationalist states. In pursuit of that end, they have decisively repudiated the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, inaugurating a dark new chapter in the history of modern India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 2 October, the world marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand \u2018Mahatma\u2019 Gandhi\u2014the greatest Indian of modern times. 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