Hindu Rashtra: Will Modi's Hindutva Lead to Multiple Partitions of India?

[Riaz Haq]

Sheikh Alam, a Muslim leader of Mamta Banerjee's Trinamool Congress Party, has recently been quoted in the Indian media as saying: "We  (Muslims)  are 30% and they (Hindus) are 70% They will come to power with the support of the 70%, they should be ashamed. If our Muslim population moves to one side then we can create four new Pakistans. Where will 70% of the population go?"  

Quaid-e-Azam's Demand For Pakistan: 

TMC leader Sheikh Alam's words today are a reminder of the demand for Pakistan in 1940s. It arose from the majoritarian tyranny of the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress after 1937 elections in India. Speaking in Lucknow in October 1937, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah said the following: 

"The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last ten years, has been responsible for alienating the Musalmans of lndia more and more, by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu; and since they have formed the Governments in six provinces where they are in a majority they have by their words, deeds, and programme shown more and more that the Musalmans cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands. Whenever they are in majority and wherever it suited them, they refused to co-operate with the Muslim League Parties and demanded unconditional surrender and signing of their pledges."

Ex PM Manmohan Singh's Fears:

Former India Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh's fears of India's disintegration are much more tangible now than ever before. In an interview on BBC's Hard Talk with Indian journalist Karan Thapar in 1999, Mr. Singh: "Great Nations like the Soviet Union have perished. If we continue to mis-manage our economy and continue to divide our country on the basis of religion, caste or other sectarian issues there is a danger of that sort of thing happening".  

Today, the rise of Hindutva forces is tearing India apart along caste and religious lines as the country celebrates its Republic Day.  Hindu mobs are lynching Muslims and Dalits. A  Pew Research report confirms that the level of hostility against religious minorities in India is "very high", giving India a score of 9.5 on a scale from 0 to 10. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh's is 7.5.

Chart Courtesy of Bloomberg

Will India Break Up? 

In a book entitled "The Raisina Model",  British-Indian author Lord Meghnad Desai asks: "A country of many nations, will India break up?" The Hindu Nationalists who are blamed for deepening divisions are themselves divided on the key questions of caste, religion and trade.  Professor Walter Anderson, co-author of "The RSS: The View to the Inside" raises the specter of "a battle between Hindutva and Hinduism".

The Raisina Model:

In "The Raisina Model", Lord Meghand Desai says that India's breakup can not be ruled out. Specifically, he points to three issues that could lead to it:

1.  Cow protection squads are killing Muslims and jeopardizing their livelihoods.  The current agitation about beef eating and gau raksha is in the Hindi belt just an excuse for attacking Muslims blatantly. As most slaughterhouses in UP are Muslim-owned, owners and employees of these places are prime targets.

2. India has still not fashioned a narrative about its nationhood which can satisfy all. The two rival narratives—secular and Hindu nation—are both centred in the Hindi belt extending to Gujarat and Maharashtra at the most. This area comprises 51% of the total population and around 45% of the Muslims in India.

3. India has avoided equal treatment of unequal units. Representation in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) is proportional to population size. If anything, it is the smaller states that may complain about being marginalized, though so far none has. The larger states thus dominate both Houses of Parliament. It would be difficult for small states to object, much less initiate reform. In future, small states could unite to present their case for better treatment. Except for Punjab and Nagaland, there has been no attempt to challenge the status quo.

Map of India(s) on the eve of British conquest in 1764

Hindutva vs Hinduism:

In  "The RSS: The View to the Inside", the author Walter Anderson brings out several areas which could lead to a split within the Hindu Nationalists. These disagreements have to do with low caste Hindus, Muslims and  foreign trade and investment policies.

1. The leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is drawn entirely from the upper caste Brahmins. The RSS founder Golwalkar never spoke against the caste system. The RSS opposes affirmative action, called reservations, to benefit low caste Hindus. At the same time, they want to integrate Dalits and OBCs (Other backward classes of which Prime Minister Modi is a member) into the organization to promote Hindu unity.

Anderson believes that it will be extremely difficult to reconcile Hindutva embrace of lower castes with the entrenched Hindu caste system. He says the following:

"..there will eventually be a battle between Hindutva and Hinduism. Hindutva emphasizes the oneness of Hindus, whereas ground realities are very different. Let me give an example. Following the egalitarian ideology, Tarun Vijay, an RSS ideologue and former editor of Panchjanya and Organiser, once led some Dalits into a temple in central India, where they had not been before. He was beaten up, but few in the RSS family vocally supported him. They kept mostly quiet. As one important RSS functionary put it to me, the key question is: how do we keep our organisation intact if we do move towards an egalitarian Hindu society?"

2. When RSS leader MD Deoras invited Indian Muslims to join the RSS, he argued that Muslims were mostly India-born, and therefore Indian. But he made the Muslim entry into the RSS conditional upon accepting India’s “historic culture”.  RSS leaders argue that South Indian Muslims, or Indonesian Muslims are ideal Muslims. South Indian Muslims speak the regional languages; and Indonesia, a primarily Muslim country, has the Ramayana as its national epic.

3. Many RSS ideologues oppose Prime Minister Modi's policies of promoting foreign trade and investment. They view Modi's economic policies with great skepticism.


Summary:

Sheikh Alam's talk of carving "four Pakistans" out of India is a reminder of Quaid-e-Azam's words after 1937 elections during the British Raj. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's fears of War on Indian Muslims are also becoming reality. Former India PM Manmohan Singh has warned: "Great Nations like the Soviet Union have perished. If we continue to mis-manage our economy and continue to divide our country on the basis of religion, caste or other sectarian issues there is a danger of that sort of thing happening". The rise of RSS and its affiliates in India is deepening divisions in the country along multiple fault lines, the most important being caste and religion. The RSS leadership itself is not unified on how to deal with the divisions they have created and promoted. This situation has raised the social hostilities in India to very high levels. Pew scores social hostilities against minorities in India at 9.5 on a scale from 0 to 10.  Professor Walter Anderson, co-author of "The RSS: The View to the Inside" has raised the specter of "a battle between Hindutva and Hinduism". And it has caused Lord Meghnad Desai, author of The Raisina Model, to ask the question: Will India break up?

Here's ex PM Manmohan Singh on Hard Talk with Karan Thapar: 

https://youtu.be/3IT0MRmJdh4 

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Riaz Haq Youtube Channel

PakAlumni: Pakistani Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

Is #India Headed for Anti-Muslim Genocide? #Modi’s #BJP has created a deep sense of #Hindu victimhood, stoking the othering of #Muslims via #disinformation, #hatespeech, silencing progressives, and empowering Hindu supremacist vigilante groups. #HIndutva https://time.com/6103284/india-hindu-supremacy-extremism-genocide-b...

And it is only the beginning. In neighboring Bihar, the government is asking people to report “suspected illegal migrants” and officials have been ordered to create awareness of the issue on “an urgent basis.” The state’s high court has demanded a detention center to house migrants, reminding the government that “deportation of illegal migrants is of paramount importance and in the national interest.” Bihar’s 17 million Muslims are on edge about their future. In next-door Bengal, which borders Bangladesh and is home to nearly 25 million Muslims, the BJP has been promising an Assam-like citizenship verification drive if it comes to power in the state.

The chief minister of India’s biggest and most politically important state, Uttar Pradesh, recently blamed Muslims for cornering government-subsidized food. Uttar Pradesh, along with Assam, has introduced a two-child policy blaming Muslims for a supposedly runaway population growth that officials say accounts for the backwardness of these states. The claim is not rooted in reality. Fertility rates among Muslims have in fact been falling rapidly.

But reality is no longer important. It bends to the requirements of the ruling party’s dehumanizing narrative against Muslims. As Jews in Nazi Germany were called “rats” and Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990s were called “cockroaches,” so BJP members now refer to Indian Muslims as “termites” eating away at India’s resources, denying Hindus what is due to them in their own land.

The destruction of Gandhi’s legacy
The foundations of the secular republic that Gandhi died defending are thus being hollowed out ever more frantically. While Modi pays ritualistic homage to Gandhi, BJP leaders openly glorify Gandhi’s killer, who was a Hindu fanatic. Modi’s ministers and legislators freely call on people to shoot “traitors” and start pogroms, and are promoted rather than penalized for their actions. Modi himself partly owes his fan following and ascent to his lack of remorse over the 2002 pogroms in Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister. Hundreds of Muslims were killed and thousands rendered homeless.

Noticeably, not only did the current chief minister of Assam not apologize for the police excesses, he in fact trivialized the deaths of Hoque and Farid, calling Hoque’s death “just 30 seconds” of a three minute video. He also carried on with the eviction drive and even proudly tweeted photos of the rubble of the four mosques destroyed in it.

While the Bidens of this world still talk about Gandhi, India’s role models have changed. So have the standards of acceptable discourse in public and social life. Genocide is now openly demanded at public rallies. The “need” for ethnic cleansing can pop up in casual conversations on politics among friends or family. Death threats are used like punctuation marks in debates on social media.

On Oct. 2, Gandhi’s birthday was celebrated with much fanfare as the International Day of Non-Violence. Two new books on his assassination in 1948 were launched. In Karnataka, meanwhile, a 25-year-old Muslim man was found beheaded for his affair with a Hindu girl, allegedly by a local Hindu vigilante group.

Gandhi continues to be killed in a million ways in today’s India. Bijoy Baniya just added a flourish to it.

[Riaz Haq]

Tilak-Jinnah #Lucknow pact of 1916 embodied #interfaith harmony that is much needed in modern-day #India. Initially, #Jinnah was a member of both Congress & #Muslim League. He was popularly known as an “ambassador of #Hindu-Muslim unity”. https://scroll.in/article/968926/the-tilak-jinnah-pact-embodied-com... via @scroll_in


The 1916 Lucknow pact
Around the same time, in 1913, Jinnah had finally joined the Muslim League. Remarkably, he continued to be a member, simultaneously, of the Congress, which he had joined in 1906. He was held in high esteem in both Congress and Muslim League circles, and was popularly known as an “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”. Tilak and Jinnah had already worked together in the previous decade. Hence, a confluence of India’s two main political streams led to the historic Lucknow Pact in 1916.

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When we look back at India’s freedom movement, we see two milestones when Hindu-Muslim cooperation reached its zenith. One was the 1857 War of Independence, when the two groups fought shoulder to shoulder against “Company rule” – the colonial advancements of the East India Company – from Peshawar to Dhaka. The other was the Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League in December 1916, whose principal architects were Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

How did such a remarkable pact between two apparently dissimilar parties, which would be unthinkable in today’s highly-polarised and intolerant atmosphere, happen? For any major breakthrough to happen in politics, two propitious developments, one objective and the other subjective, have to come together. There has to be a turn in the external circumstance conducive for a bold move to be made. There also has to be an internal resolve among leaders to conduct a new experiment.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 created such a situation, which made the British government seek cooperation of Indian public and political parties in its war effort. This naturally entailed a willingness to give some concessions in the form of constitutional reforms.

Around the same time, a few highly significant changes had taken place in the political situation in India. Tilak had been released in 1914 after he completed his six-year imprisonment in Mandalay, Burma, after being convicted in a sedition case in 1908. The following year, he was re-admitted into the Congress.

Thus, the bitterness of the split in the Congress between the “extremists” and “moderates” at its 1907 session in Surat was now a thing of the past. Tilak had emerged as an even more popular and respected leader of the Congress because of his imprisonment. The prolonged prison experience had further steeled his belief that Hindu-Muslim unity was a pre-requisite for the advancement of the Indian demand for Swaraj. He also concluded that Britain’s deep involvement in the First World War had opened a new window of opportunity to seek constitutional reforms for self-rule.

[Riaz Haq]

The Indian economy is being rewired. The opportunity is immense And so are the stakes

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/05/13/the-indian-economy-is-...

Who deserves the credit? Chance has played a big role: India did not create the Sino-American split or the cloud, but benefits from both. So has the steady accumulation of piecemeal reform over many governments. The digital-identity scheme and new national tax system were dreamed up a decade or more ago.

Mr Modi’s government has also got a lot right. It has backed the tech stack and direct welfare, and persevered with the painful task of shrinking the informal economy. It has found pragmatic fixes. Central-government purchases of solar power have kick-started renewables. Financial reforms have made it easier to float young firms and bankrupt bad ones. Mr Modi’s electoral prowess provides economic continuity. Even the opposition expects him to be in power well after the election in 2024.

The danger is that over the next decade this dominance hardens into autocracy. One risk is the bjp’s abhorrent hostility towards Muslims, which it uses to rally its political base. Companies tend to shrug this off, judging that Mr Modi can keep tensions under control and that capital flight will be limited. Yet violence and deteriorating human rights could lead to stigma that impairs India’s access to Western markets. The bjp’s desire for religious and linguistic conformity in a huge, diverse country could be destabilising. Were the party to impose Hindi as the national language, secessionist pressures would grow in some wealthy states that pay much of the taxes.

The quality of decision-making could also deteriorate. Prickly and vindictive, the government has co-opted the bureaucracy to bully the press and the courts. A botched decision to abolish bank notes in 2016 showed Mr Modi’s impulsive side. A strongman lacking checks and balances can eventually endanger not just demo cracy, but also the economy: think of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, whose bizarre views on inflation have caused a currency crisis. And, given the bjp’s ambivalence towards foreign capital, the campaign for national renewal risks regressing into protectionism. The party loves blank cheques from Silicon Valley but is wary of foreign firms competing in India. Today’s targeted subsidies could degenerate into autarky and cronyism—the tendencies that have long held India back.

Seizing the moment
For India to grow at 7% or 8% for years to come would be momentous. It would lift huge numbers of people out of poverty. It would generate a vast new market and manufacturing base for global business, and it would change the global balance of power by creating a bigger counterweight to China in Asia. Fate, inheritance and pragmatic decisions have created a new opportunity in the next decade. It is India’s and Mr Modi’s to squander. ■

[Riaz Haq]

The biggest crisis that India is facing today is the “possible collapse of the Indian nation”, Nobel laureate and renowned economist Amartya Sen said recently in Kolkata. https://youtu.be/IqKVHVpgXJI

He paraphrased American poet Ogden Nash who said any schoolboy can love like a fool but hate is an art that has to be cultivated. Without naming Modi or BJP, he said some people have cultivated hate in India to serve their own interests.

"I think if someone asks me if I'm scared of something, I would say ‘yes’. There is a reason to be afraid now. The current situation in the country has become a cause for fear," the well-known economist said.

"I want the country to be united. I don't want division in a country that was historically liberal. We have to work together," Sen added.

“The world came to know of Upanishads because of a Muslim Prince. Dara Sikhoh, Shah Jahan's son, learnt Sanskrit and translated some of the Upanishads into Persian", he added.

Asserting that India cannot belong only to the Hindus or to the Muslims, Sen stressed on the need to stay united in line with the country’s traditions.

"India cannot be (a country) of Hindus only. Again, Muslims alone cannot make India. Everyone has to work together," Sen added.

[Riaz Haq]

#India: Narratives of division & #hate. A documentary looks at rising intolerance & xenophobia in India. #Toxic narratives flood the airwaves and the #internet. #Hindutva – #Hindu supremacy – ascending, spreading division and hate speech.

 

https://aje.io/791j8a via @AJEnglish

[Riaz Haq]

#IndiaAt75: #Modi is Proving #Pakistan's Case For #Partition1947. 75 years after #India split apart, the nation’s beleaguered #Muslims increasingly face the marginalization and brutal prejudice that Pakistan’s founder #QuaideAzam predicted. #PakistanAt75 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-14/india-s-75th-...

Opinion by Nisid Hajari

Jinnah’s main fear was how little power Muslims would wield in a united India. That’s what drove the initial break with his former allies in the Indian National Congress party — including Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister— a decade before independence. And it’s why Jinnah retracted his support for a last-minute compromise brokered by the British in 1946, after Nehru intimated that the Congress would not honor the agreement once the British were gone.

Partition very nearly proved Jinnah’s case. Somewhere between 200,000 and two million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were killed within a few short weeks of independence; 14 million were uprooted from their homes. The biggest massacres arguably began with attacks on Muslim villages on the Indian side of the new border.

India’s founding fathers, however, risked their lives to undercut Jinnah’s argument. When riots spread to the Indian capital Delhi and police and petty government officials joined in pogroms targeting Muslims, Nehru took to the streets, remonstrating with mobs and giving public speeches promoting communal harmony while only lightly guarded. He insisted the government machinery exert itself to protect Muslims as well as Hindus.

With even members of his cabinet convinced that India would be better off without tens of millions of citizens suspected of split loyalties, Nehru barely prevailed. The pressure to expel Muslims only really subsided months later after a Hindu fanatic assassinated the revered Gandhi, shocking the cabinet into unity and prompting public revulsion against Hindu bigotry.

That consensus and the rights enshrined in India’s secular constitution largely preserved religious harmony in India for more than seven decades. Al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups made few inroads among Indian Muslims, even as jihadists flourished in nearby countries. While sectarian riots have repeatedly broken out, especially after provocations such as the 1992 demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya to make way for a Hindu temple, tensions have for the most part remained local and limited. And even if Indian Muslims faced discrimination and were on average poorer and less well-educated than Hindus, few doubted that they were full citizens — especially when their votes were needed at election time.

What makes the changes that have proliferated under Modi so dispiriting and dangerous is their corrosive impact on those feelings of belonging. The problem isn’t even so much the most horrific cases of bigotry, including dozens of lynchings of Muslims around the country. Those at least still draw outrage in some quarters, as well as international attention.

What’s worse is the steady and widely accepted marginalization of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims. An overheated and jingoistic media portrays them as potential fifth columnists, who should “go back” to a Pakistan most have never visited if they don’t like the new India. (Pakistani sponsorship of extremist groups that have carried out brutal attacks in India has exacerbated fears of an internal threat.) There’s widespread acceptance of hate speech, including open calls to exterminate Muslims. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has pursued laws that threaten to disenfranchise millions of them.

[Riaz Haq]

#IndiaAt75: #Modi is Proving #Pakistan's Case For #Partition1947. 75 years after #India split apart, the nation’s beleaguered #Muslims increasingly face the marginalization and brutal prejudice that Pakistan’s founder #QuaideAzam predicted. #PakistanAt75 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-14/india-s-75th-...

Indeed, an Indian state once convinced of its duty to protect minorities now seems unremittingly hostile. Prejudice has seeped into the courts and the police, as well as all levels of government. Laws have accepted at face value ludicrous conspiracy theories such as “love jihad” — the idea that Muslim men are romancing Hindu women in order to convert them. Modi’s decision to strip Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, of its constitutionally guaranteed autonomy has made clear that even enshrined protections are vulnerable.

Meanwhile, at the federal level, Muslims’ share of political power is dwindling. Though they make up more than 14% of the population, they account for less than 4% of members of the lower house of parliament. Among the BJP’s 395 members of parliament there isn’t a single Muslim.

True, India remains a democracy not an authoritarian state, with powerful regional politicians and some brave and independent activists and journalists. In states where Muslims make up a larger share of the voting population, they have been better able to defend their rights. Nor is India the only country where politicians and media figures are fanning ethno-nationalism for partisan gain.

Yet the trend lines are ominous. India’s political opposition is weak and divided. The mainstream media has caricatured Muslims to a degree that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The northern Hindi belt is bursting with millions of undereducated, underemployed and angry young men. Politicians there and elsewhere know it is far easier to direct those frustrations at defenseless scapegoats than it is to fix schools and create jobs.

Modi likes to call India the “mother of democracy.” But the central test of a democracy is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens — whether their rights are protected and their views heard. Nehru and India’s other founding fathers saw it as their most basic duty to prove Jinnah wrong, forging a pluralistic India that would thrive because of its diversity not despite it. Three quarters of a century later, Indians should ask themselves whether they, not their former brethren across the border, are the ones now making a mistake.

[Riaz Haq]

Dr. Audrey Truschke
@AudreyTruschke
What might India look like under a #Hindutva constitution?

Christians and Muslims not allowed to vote
Gruesome physical punishments
Caste as the law of the land
Arms training for all citizens
Attacks on multiple other South Asia nations

https://twitter.com/AudreyTruschke/status/1560046552193941506?s=20&...

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‘Hindu Rashtra’ draft proposes Varanasi as capital instead of Delhi
India News
Updated on Aug 13, 2022 10:52 AM IST
Elaborating on the document, president of the Varanasi-based Shankaracharya Parishad said people of every caste will have the facility and security to live in the nation and that people of other religious faiths will not be allowed to vote

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/seers-prepare-constitutio...

A section of seers and scholars are preparing a draft of the ‘Constitution of India as a Hindu nation’, said people familiar with the matter, adding that the document is scheduled to be presented at the ‘Dharam Sansad’ that will be organised during Magh Mela 2023.

During this year’s Magh Mela, held in February, a resolution was passed in the ‘Dharam Sansad’ to make India a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ with its own “constitution”.

Now, a draft of this “constitution” is being prepared by a group of 30 people under the patronage of Shambhavi Peethadheeshwar, said Swami Anand Swaroop, president of the Varanasi-based Shankaracharya Parishad.

“The constitution will be of 750 pages and its format will be discussed extensively now. Discussions and debates will be held with religious scholars and experts of different fields. On this basis, half the constitution (around 300 pages) will be released in the Magh Mela-2023, to be held in Prayagraj, for which a ‘Dharam Sansad’ will be held,” added Swaroop.

He said 32 pages have been prepared so far spelling out aspects related to education, defence, law and order, system of voting, among other topics.

“As per this Hindu Rashtra Constitution, Varanasi will be the capital of the country, instead of Delhi. Besides, there is also a proposal to build a ‘Parliament of Religions’ in Kashi (Varanasi),” added Swaroop.

The group preparing the draft comprises of Swaroop; Hindu Rashtra Nirman Samiti chief Kamleshwar Upadhyay; senior Supreme Court lawyer BN Reddy; defence expert Anand Vardhan; Sanatan Dharma scholar Chandramani Mishra and World Hindu Federation president Ajay Singh, among others.

The document, reviewed by HT, features a map of ‘Akhand Bharat’ on the cover page. “An attempt has been made to show that the countries which have been separated from India like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, among others, will be merged one day,” said Swaroop.

Elaborating on the document, Swaroop said people of every caste will have the facility and security to live in the nation and that people of other religious faiths will not be allowed to vote.

“According to the draft of the constitution of the Hindu Rashtra, Muslims and Christians will also enjoy all the rights of a common citizen, barring the right to vote. They would be welcome in the country to do their businesses, get employed, education and all the facilities that are enjoyed by any common citizen, but they won’t be allowed to use their franchise”, said Swaroop.

[Riaz Haq]

‘Hindu Rashtra’ draft proposes Varanasi as capital instead of Delhi
India News
Updated on Aug 13, 2022 10:52 AM IST
Elaborating on the document, president of the Varanasi-based Shankaracharya Parishad said people of every caste will have the facility and security to live in the nation and that people of other religious faiths will not be allowed to vote

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/seers-prepare-constitutio...



According to Swaroop, the right to vote will be attained by citizens after completing 16 years of age while the age of contesting elections has been fixed at 25 years. A total 543 members will be elected for the ‘Parliament of Religions’, the seer said, adding that the new system will abolish the rules and regulations of the British era and everything will be conducted on the basis of the ‘Varna’ system.

The judicial system of punishment would be based on that of the Treta and Dvapara yugas, he said.

“The Gurukul system will be revived and education in Ayurveda, mathematics, nakshatra, Bhu-garbha, astrology etc. would be imparted,” he added.

Moreover, every citizen will get compulsory military training and agriculture would be made completely tax free, he added.

[Riaz Haq]

The World Ignored Russia’s Delusions. It Shouldn’t Make the Same Mistake With India.
Hindu nationalist ideologues in New Delhi are flirting with a dangerous revisionist history of South Asia.


https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/08/india-akhand-bharat-hindu-nati...

By Sushant Singh, a senior fellow with the Centre for Policy Research in India.
Leaders have long relied on manufactured history to justify invasions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied the existence of an independent Ukrainian state in his bid to take over the country and restore Russia’s perceived greatness. Chinese President Xi Jinping argues that the state must recover what his party sees as historical territory to overcome its so-called century of humiliation. Neither leader seems to care that Russia and China were never previously politically contiguous states.

Others around the world harbor similar irredentist dreams that are sometimes mocked by observers. We ignore these ambitions at our own peril. For decades, India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—the Hindu nationalist organization with close links to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—has put forward the idea of Akhand Bharat or an “unbroken India.” The proposed entity stretches from Afghanistan on India’s western flank all the way to Myanmar to the east of India as well as encompassing all of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has mentioned the idea: In a 2012 interview, when he was still the chief minister of Gujarat, he argued that Akhand Bharat referred to cultural unity.

Last month, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told a public gathering that India will become Akhand Bharat in 10 to 15 years, providing the first timeline for a Hindu nationalist pipe dream. Besides heading the RSS, Bhagwat is a very powerful figure in today’s India because of his personal relationship with Modi. The BJP is one of a few dozen institutions that comes under the direct control of the RSS, which now holds the most power since it was founded in 1925. Modi was a full-time RSS campaigner before it assigned him to the BJP, and he considers Bhagwat’s late father to be a mentor. Indian corporate leaders and foreign diplomats recognize Bhagwat’s clout, visiting him at RSS headquarters in Nagpur, India. His words must be engaged with seriously, not dismissed offhand as the fantasies of an old man.