Once the largest democracy, now the purveyor of religious hate

Dec 24, 2019 Editorial

How quickly the mighty fall from grace, especially when powered by the hubris of impatient, intolerant men. That is the story of India today, once hailed as the largest democracy with the largest potential. It is now the largest society with the largest hatreds leading to the largest divisions.
At the helm proudly stands one Narendra Modi, who once transfixed the world in the words of Barack Obama, as a true “reformer-in-chief”, but who has degraded into the bigot-in-chief by being his nation’s abuser-in-chief.
All of this is captured very well and conveyed piercingly through the “new narrative about India” which is alarming the world. (Bloomberg, December 8). It is mostly negative, and speaks volumes, as to how driven men develop agendas that harm their peoples, hurt their country’s image, and hurl their societies into the chaotic.
Additionally, on December 2, the New Yorker carried an article titled, “Blood and soil in Narendra Modi’s India” which tells all in great detail. It is of all that is of the wrong thinking approached by wrong methods as enforced by the wrong people.
Those people would be supremacists and fanatics allowed to roam freely under an increasingly violent, unchecked, tide of Hindu Nationalism.
The proving ground was Gujarat, the targets, Muslims. Modi was the man in charge at the time. While the riots raged, he shielded under a cloud of invisibility. That was part of his strategy: no hands means clean hands. But his hands were there, and they were dirty.
According to the New Yorker, as the riots intensified, “he summoned the Indian Army but held the soldiers in their barracks as the violence spun out of control.”
Senior federal official at Gujarat, Harsh Mander, was stunned by the “official negligence. This was a state-sponsored massacre.” Those were the beginnings of “official negligence” leading to “a state-sponsored massacre” and the man in charge was Narendra Modi.
The New Yorker shared that “India is ruled by cold-blooded ideological fanatics” who “pervert the media, judiciary and military to anti-Muslim pogroms, targeted assassinations of critics, and collective punishment of those found objectionable.”
To furnish further context, the New York Times on November 10, presented “India’s soundtrack of hate, with a pop sheen.” The Indian pop star, Laxmi Dubey, screamed into her microphone before a frenzied audience: “Every house will be saffron!” which is the color of Hinduism.
“We have to make terrorists run from our blessed land!”
The crowd cheered when she added a throat-slitting hand gesture. Ms. Dubey, with one song amassing 50 million followers in YouTube is one of the biggest stars driving the rise of Hindutva pop music in India. Her songs “openly call for the slaughter of nonbelievers, forced conversions, or attacks on Pakistan.”
During Hindu festivals, processions engaged in shows of intimidation, with songs chanting “Jai Shri Ram!” (Hail Lord Ram). Muslims who refuse to sing along have been attacked or intimidated into submission.
In her songs, Ms. Dubey exhorts Hindus to “perform ceremonies with bullets,” and “fight proudly against ungodly religions” as well as “cut off the tongues of enemies who talk against Ram.” There is a religious fever, definitely battles, maybe even war unfolding.
As if all of this is not evidence of the growing intolerance in so-called democratic India, there is now a new citizenship law. It is law based on religion, with one targeted for special discriminatory treatment.
Undocumented Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan cannot apply for citizenship, but Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who illegally migrated to India from these countries can.
Next on this religious-fueled drive (read anti-Muslim) is a National Register of Citizens. The official purpose is aimed at the undocumented, but the fear is that even the native-born Muslims may come under the radar and targeted for some nefarious purpose.
Muslims are busy rummaging their papers so that if called upon, they can prove that they are of the land going back generations.
This is all troubling and intolerance of any kind is not only unacceptable, but damnable, regardless of the source.

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