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 

Related Links:

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South Asia Investor Review

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Vision

Disintegration of India

Dalit Death Shines Light on India's Caste Apartheid

India's Hindu Nationalists Going Global

Rape: A Political Weapon in Modi's India

Trump's Dog Whistle Politics

Funding of Hate Groups, NGOs, Think Tanks: Is Money Free Speech?

Riaz Haq Youtube Channel

PakAlumni: Pakistani Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

India arrests dozens after nationwide raids on Muslim group PFI (Popular Front of India)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/22/nationwide-raids-on-muslim...


India’s top investigation agencies arrest 45 Popular Front of India members for alleged terror links after simultaneous raids in 15 states.

Officials at India’s top investigation agencies say they have conducted nationwide raids and arrested 45 people associated with a prominent Muslim organisation for alleged terror links.

The simultaneous raids on the offices of the Popular Front of India (PFI) and homes of its members were conducted by the federally controlled National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) at 93 locations in 15 Indian states, the NIA said in a statement on Thursday evening.

NIA said the searches were conducted at the houses and offices of top PFI leaders and members in connection with five cases related to “funding of terrorism and terrorist activities, organising training camps for providing armed training and radicalising people to join banned organisations”.

“As on date, the NIA is investigating a total of 19 PFI-related cases,” said the statement.

Most of the arrests were made in the southern states. In Kerala, where PFI enjoys considerable influence in Muslim-majority areas, 19 people were arrested, the NIA said in its statement.

Arrests were also made in Tamil Nadu (11), Karnataka (7), Andhra Pradesh (4), Rajasthan (2) and one each from Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, according to the statement.

Earlier, Indian media reports said more than 100 PFI leaders and members were arrested in the raids.

The PFI was established in 2007 after the merger of three Muslim groups – the National Democratic Front in Kerala, the Karnataka Forum for Dignity in Karnataka, and the Manitha Neethi Pasarai in Tamil Nadu.

In 2009, the organisation formed its political wing, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), to contest elections.

PFI says it works for the rights of Muslims and other marginalised communities in India. But right-wing Hindu groups, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuses the group of violent attacks on its members.


‘Totalitarian regime using agencies as puppets’
Federal minister Giriraj Singh accused PFI of “working against India” and his counterpart Ramdas Athawale said the group was “linked to terror organisations”.

“We don’t have problems with running an organisation or bringing together Muslim community. But taking the name of this country and spreading terrorism, then there is a need to take action. I welcome the NIA and ED raids,” Athawale told reporters.

“PFI should change itself if they want to live in India … They should stand with India.”

But the PFI called the NIA and ED raids a “witch hunt” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

“Popular Front will never ever surrender on any scary action by a totalitarian regime using the central agencies as its puppets and will stand firm on its will for recovering the democratic system and spirit of the constitution of our beloved country,” it said in the statement shared with Al Jazeera.

The raids sparked protests in several parts of Kerala, where the PFI has called for a strike on Friday. Similar protests were also reported from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states.

Rights activists have accused the government of using investigative agencies to harass and intimidate groups critical of its policies. Muslim organisations have particularly come under attack and are often accused of terror links, they said.

“There are Hindu supremacist organisations and their leaders who are regularly giving calls of violence against Muslims. How come their organisations face no scrutiny whatsoever, let alone raids and all? Those people are allowed to go free, they are not punished,” activist Kavita Krishnan told Al Jazeera.

[Riaz Haq]

‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make Hindi national language of India | India | The Guardian

‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make #Hindi national language of #India. Tensions are rising in India over prime minister Narendra #Modi’s push to make Hindi the country’s dominant language. #BJP #Hindutva | India | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/25/threat-unity-anger-ov...

Tensions are rising in India over prime minister Narendra Modi’s push to make Hindi the country’s dominant language.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janaya party (BJP) government has been accused of an agenda of “Hindi imposition” and “Hindi imperialism” and non-Hindi speaking states in south and east India have been fighting back.

One morning in November, MV Thangavel, an 85-year-old farmer from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, stood outside a local political party office and held a banner aloft, addressing Modi. “Modi government, central government, we don’t want Hindi … get rid of Hindi,” it read. Then he doused himself in paraffin and set himself alight. Thangavel did not survive.

“The BJP is trying to destroy other languages by trying to impose Hindi and make it one language on the basis of its ‘One Nation, One everything’ policy,” said MK Stalin, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, in a recent speech.

In India, one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, language has long been a contentious issue. But under Modi, there has been a tangible push for Hindi to be the country’s dominant language, be it through an attempt to impose mandatory Hindi in schools across the country to conducting matters of government entirely in the language. Modi’s speeches are given exclusively in Hindi and over 70% of cabinet papers are now prepared in Hindi. “If there is one language that has the ability to string the nation together in unity, it is the Hindi language,” said Amit Shah, the powerful home minister and Modi’s closest ally, in 2019.

According to Ganesh Narayan Devy, one of India’s most renowned linguists who dedicated his life to recording India’s over 700 languages and thousands of dialects, the recent attempts to impose Hindi were both “laughable and dangerous”.

“It’s not one language but the multiplicity of languages that has united India throughout history. India cannot be India unless it accommodates all native languages,” said Devy.

According to the most recent census in 2011, 44% of Indians speak Hindi. However, 53 native languages, some of which are entirely distinct from Hindi and have millions of speakers, are also classed under the banner of Hindi. Removing all the other languages would shrink the number of Hindi speakers to about 27%, meaning almost three-quarters of the country is not fluent.


Devy said being multilingual was at the heart of being Indian. “You will find people use Sanskrit for their prayers, Hindi for films and affairs of the heart, their mother tongue for their families and private thoughts, and English for their careers,” he said. “It’s hard to find a monolingual Indian. That should be celebrated, not threatened.”

‘Our language is who we are’
The debate over Hindi’s prominence has raged since before India’s independence. Though there are more Hindi speakers than those of any other native language in India, they are largely concentrated in the populous, politically powerful states in the north known as the Hindi belt. Hindi traditionally has very little presence in southern states such as Tamil-speaking Tamil Nadu and Malayalam-speaking Kerala, and eastern states such as West Bengal, home to 78 million Bengali speakers.

When the constitution was drawn up in 1949 it was decided that India should have no one national language. Instead 14 languages – a list which eventually grew to 22 – were formally recognised in the constitution, though Hindi and English were declared to be the “official languages” in which matters of national government and administration would be communicated.

[Riaz Haq]

‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make Hindi national language of India | India | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/25/threat-unity-anger-ov...

Attempts were made to designate Hindi the single dominant language but were all met with protest, mostly from the south. In the 1960s, after the government declared that Hindi would be the only “official language” and English phased out, there was a violent uprising in Tamil Nadu where several people set themselves on fire and dozens died in the brutal crackdown on the protests. The government backtracked. To this day, only Tamil and English are taught in state schools in Tamil Nadu.

But it was after the election of the BJP government in 2014, whose Hindu nationalist agenda has included a tangible push for the promotion of Hindi, that the issue resurfaced again, and the government was accused of imposing cultural hegemony over non-Hindi-speaking states.

“Under Modi, language has become a heavily politicised issue,” said Papia Sen Gupta, a professor in the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. “The narrative being projected is that India must be reimagined as Hindu state and that in order to be a true Hindu and a true Indian, you must speak Hindi. They are becoming more and more successful in implementing it.”

The idea of Hindi as India’s national language has its roots in the writings of VD Savarkar, the father of hardline Hindu nationalism and an icon of the BJP, who first articulated the slogan “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”, conflating nationalism with both religion and language, a phrase which is still commonly used by the right wing today.

There was such a backlash to the BJP’s attempts to introduce mandatory Hindi in schools nationally that they were later withdrawn. In October, Shah had non-Hindi states up in arms again, this time with a recommendation that that central universities and institutes of national importance should carry out teaching and exams only in Hindi, rather than English. The rule would only apply for institutions in Hindi-speaking states. But as many pointed out, students from across the country attend these schools, including from the south and east where Hindi is not part of the curriculum.

In response to Shah’s recommendation, in Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin tabled a state parliamentary resolution against any “imposition of a dominant language” and alleged that the BJP was attempting to make “Hindi the language that symbolises power”. He is also pushing for Tamil to be designated an official language, equal in status to Hindi. In Kerala and Karnataka, groups and political parties also raised concern over the “Hindi imposition”.

Some have warned of the bloody history that language imposition has triggered in the region. Sri Lanka descended into 26-year civil war after Sinhalese nationalists tried to foist their language on the island’s minority Tamils, and it was the oppression of the Bengali language in east Pakistan that led to the 1971 war and the establishment of Bangladesh.

The BJP government says it is not using Hindi to replace other native languages, but only English, the western language of India’s colonisers. But with English so deeply engrained in the Indian system, used across everything from the courts to the job market, and the proliferation of English seen to give India an advantage in a globalised world, there is little sign of it realistically being phased out in favour of Hindi.

In response to the policies seen to promote Hindi, multiple nationalist language movements have now emerged across India, from Rajasthan to West Bengal. In West Bengal, where the Bengali language is seen as a very fundamental part of people’s cultural identity, there has been a growing Bengali nationalist movement over the past two years.

[Riaz Haq]

‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make Hindi national language of India | India | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/25/threat-unity-anger-ov...

In response to the policies seen to promote Hindi, multiple nationalist language movements have now emerged across India, from Rajasthan to West Bengal. In West Bengal, where the Bengali language is seen as a very fundamental part of people’s cultural identity, there has been a growing Bengali nationalist movement over the past two years.

“It’s Hindi imperialism,” said Garga Chatterjee, general secretary of Bangla Pokkho, a Bengali nationalist group established in 2018. “They want to transform India from a union of diverse states to one a nation state, where people who speak Hindi are treated as first-class citizens while we non-Hindi people, including Bengalis, are second-class citizens.”

Chatterjee said that, despite Bengali being the second most spoken language in India, he could not get a copy of the Indian constitution, open a bank account, book a railway ticket or a fill out tax return in his mother tongue.

“They are making Hindi the face of India and this is a direct threat to the unity of India,” he said. “We Bengalis are being talked down to in Hindi but now we are pushing back. Our language is who we are and we will die for it.”

[Riaz Haq]

Ghanznavi's Destruction of Somnath Was Not a Hindu-Muslim Issue When it Happened

It was deliberately distorted by the British colonial rulers to divide and conquer India, according to Indian historian Romila Thapar.

British distortions of history have since been exploited by Hindu Nationalists to pursue divisive policies. 

https://books.google.com/books/about/Somanatha.html?id=4-NxAAAAMAAJ

In 1026, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni raided the Hindu temple of Somanatha (Somnath in textbooks of the colonial period). The story of the raid has reverberated in Indian history, but largely during the  (British) raj. It was first depicted as a trauma for the Hindu population not in India, but in the House of Commons. The triumphalist accounts of the event in Turko-Persian chronicles became the main source for most eighteenth-century historians. It suited everyone and helped the British to divide and rule a multi-millioned subcontinent.

In her new book, Romila Thapar, the doyenne of Indian historians, reconstructs what took place by studying other sources, including local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants of the period, court epics and popular narratives that have survived. The result is astounding and undermines the traditional version of what took place. These findings also contest the current Hindu religious nationalism that constantly utilises the conventional version of this history.

[Riaz Haq]

Is Manusmriti Back With a Bang?
Subhash Gatade |


https://www.newsclick.in/manusmriti-back-bang

How to walk backwards and claim we are a world leader.

In recent weeks, a debate has raged about 17th-century poet-saint Tulsidas’s epic poem Ramcharitmanas and its’ allegedly unfair and humiliating treatment of women and so-called lower castes. Voices to edit such books and scriptures or scrap them have grown louder. Yet, the Banaras Hindu University, a premier central university in Uttar Pradesh, has proposed something that, instead of settling the controversy, muddies the waters more.

The university’s Department of Dharmashastra and Mimansa, whose curriculum already includes studying the Manusmriti among ancient Indian scriptures, has proposed researching the “applicability” of Manusmriti in Indian society. It plans to use the funds received under the Centre’s Institutes of Eminence scheme, which provides research and development grants of up to Rs 1,000 crore each to ten select public-funded institutions.

The BHU’s proposal seems anachronous—and not just because it involves spending money on an esoteric subject, while public universities face a severe fund crunch forcing them to cut down even on essential expenses.

Nearly a century ago, during the first Dalit revolt of its kind in modern times, Dr BR Ambedkar, the legendary leader of the oppressed, symbolically burnt the Manusmriti in a public programme held at Mahad. On 25 December 1927, at the Mahad Satyagraha, he said in the presence of thousands of people from different parts of the Bombay province, as it was then known, that the text was a “gospel of counter-revolution”.

The resolution read out during the symbolic public “cremation” of the Manusmriti, proposed by Ambedkar’s associate Gangadhar Neelkanth Sahasrabuddhe, emphasised the intent of the organisers of the conference. After considering the verses of the Manusmriti, it said, the conference had formed the “firm opinion” that it “undermined the Shudra caste, thwarted their progress, and made their social, political and economic slavery permanent”. The resolution said the context of the text is unworthy of a religious or sacred book. That is why participants performed the “cremation” rites of the book at the conference. The resolution even described the book as “divisive” and a “destroyer of humanity”. All these facts are recorded in public intellectual Anand Teltumbde’s book, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt, published by Navayana in 2017.

Nearly a quarter-century later, while dedicating the Constitution to the nation, Ambedkar, who headed its drafting committee, famously declared that the Constitution had “ended the rule by Manu”.

However, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) never saw eye-to-eye with a modern Constitution for India. Their leaders made their objections to modernising Indian tradition clear as their fascination for the Manusmriti. In the late sixties, Maharashtra witnessed a massive movement of Dalits and other democratic sections to protest the RSS supremo’s comments praising the Manusmriti in an interview with the Marathi newspaper, Nava Kaal.

Yet last year, Justice Pratibha Singh of the Delhi High Court spoke of the Manusmriti in glowing terms at a programme held under the auspices of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry or FICCI. She said scriptures like Manusmriti give women “a very respectable position”, a remark that created a furore, earning her much criticism for promoting regressive ideas filled with “casteism and classism”.

[Riaz Haq]

Is Manusmriti Back With a Bang?
Subhash Gatade |


https://www.newsclick.in/manusmriti-back-bang

How to walk backwards and claim we are a world leader.

In recent weeks, a debate has raged about 17th-century poet-saint Tulsidas’s epic poem Ramcharitmanas and its’ allegedly unfair and humiliating treatment of women and so-called lower castes. Voices to edit such books and scriptures or scrap them have grown louder. Yet, the Banaras Hindu University, a premier central university in Uttar Pradesh, has proposed something that, instead of settling the controversy, muddies the waters more.

The university’s Department of Dharmashastra and Mimansa, whose curriculum already includes studying the Manusmriti among ancient Indian scriptures, has proposed researching the “applicability” of Manusmriti in Indian society. It plans to use the funds received under the Centre’s Institutes of Eminence scheme, which provides research and development grants of up to Rs 1,000 crore each to ten select public-funded institutions.

The BHU’s proposal seems anachronous—and not just because it involves spending money on an esoteric subject, while public universities face a severe fund crunch forcing them to cut down even on essential expenses.

Nearly a century ago, during the first Dalit revolt of its kind in modern times, Dr BR Ambedkar, the legendary leader of the oppressed, symbolically burnt the Manusmriti in a public programme held at Mahad. On 25 December 1927, at the Mahad Satyagraha, he said in the presence of thousands of people from different parts of the Bombay province, as it was then known, that the text was a “gospel of counter-revolution”.

The resolution read out during the symbolic public “cremation” of the Manusmriti, proposed by Ambedkar’s associate Gangadhar Neelkanth Sahasrabuddhe, emphasised the intent of the organisers of the conference. After considering the verses of the Manusmriti, it said, the conference had formed the “firm opinion” that it “undermined the Shudra caste, thwarted their progress, and made their social, political and economic slavery permanent”. The resolution said the context of the text is unworthy of a religious or sacred book. That is why participants performed the “cremation” rites of the book at the conference. The resolution even described the book as “divisive” and a “destroyer of humanity”. All these facts are recorded in public intellectual Anand Teltumbde’s book, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt, published by Navayana in 2017.

Nearly a quarter-century later, while dedicating the Constitution to the nation, Ambedkar, who headed its drafting committee, famously declared that the Constitution had “ended the rule by Manu”.

However, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) never saw eye-to-eye with a modern Constitution for India. Their leaders made their objections to modernising Indian tradition clear as their fascination for the Manusmriti. In the late sixties, Maharashtra witnessed a massive movement of Dalits and other democratic sections to protest the RSS supremo’s comments praising the Manusmriti in an interview with the Marathi newspaper, Nava Kaal.

Yet last year, Justice Pratibha Singh of the Delhi High Court spoke of the Manusmriti in glowing terms at a programme held under the auspices of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry or FICCI. She said scriptures like Manusmriti give women “a very respectable position”, a remark that created a furore, earning her much criticism for promoting regressive ideas filled with “casteism and classism”.

[Riaz Haq]

If we were racist, why would we live with South Indians, black people around us: BJP’s Tarun Vijay

https://scroll.in/latest/833983/if-indians-were-racist-why-would-we...

He has apologised for the statement, which he made during an interview on Al Jazeera on the attacks on African nationals in Greater Noida.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Tarun Vijay is facing criticism for responding to a question on the allegedly racist attacks on African nationals in Greater Noida by saying if India was, indeed, racist, we would not “live with” “black people around us”. “If we were racist, why would....all the entire South – you know, Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka – why do we live with them?” He added, “We have blacks...black people around us.”

He made the statement during a discussion on TV channel Al Jazeera, while responding to another Indian panelist, Bengaluru-based photographer Mahesh Shantaram, who asked, “Why are people saying Indians are racist? Why are Indians saying Indians are racist? Why are people abroad and those who visit our beautiful nation feeling that Indians are racist?”

Vijay’s remarks triggered outrage soon after the interview was shared on social media. He took to Twitter to clarify his statement. “In many parts of the nation, we have different people, in colour and never, ever did we have any discrimination against them...My words, perhaps, were not enough to convey this,” he said, apologising to those who felt he spoke “differently from he meant”.

The BJP leader also said that Indians were the “first to oppose any racism and were, in fact, victims of the racist British”. Vijay explained that he had meant to convey how Indians did not face racism even though the country has “people with different colour and culture”. “I can die, but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly-framed sentence,” he said, further claiming that he never called South Indians “black”.

[Riaz Haq]

Has Modi Pushed Indian Democracy Past Its Breaking Point?
With the media and judiciary already under attack, the Prime Minister’s main opponent was just banned from Parliament.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/has-modi-pushed-indian-democ...

New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner: Modi is probably the most popular leader in the world. His party has amassed incredible power to a degree not seen in India in many decades. Yet, at the state level, especially in the south, you see regional parties keeping the B.J.P. out of power. How has this been possible?

Christophe Jaffrelot: He’s not as popular as he claims. The B.J.P. never got more than thirty-seven per cent of the vote nationally. They control half a dozen big states, and most of them are in the Hindi Heartland. [These are states in the northern and central parts of the country.] If you look at the periphery, if you look at the states which are outside the Hindi Heartland—they do not control Tamil Nadu and they will never control Tamil Nadu. They do not control Kerala and they will never control Kerala. Look at West Bengal and Punjab, and even Maharashtra, which is not a finished story. There is a kind of exaggeration of the control they exert. And they exert control not because of the popularity of the B.J.P.; they exert control largely because Modi gets the B.J.P. elected every five years, which means that, after him, the B.J.P. may be in trouble. They have so much power because of their totalitarian modus vivendi, not because of their popularity.

NY: I’m looking at Morning Consult’s global approval-rating tracker for world leaders. Modi is currently at seventy-six-per-cent approval. That is fifteen percentage points higher than any other world leader.

CJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you go by the voting patterns of Indians, which is for me the real measure of popularity, Indians in more than half of the country’s states do not vote for the B.J.P. and for Modi when he is the candidate.

In that case, how do you understand this dynamic, where Modi himself is personally popular but he can’t yet lead the B.J.P. to take control of a majority of states?

There are very strong regional identities that are not represented by the B.J.P. The B.J.P. is seen as a North Indian, Hindi-speaking party. It’s also seen as an upper-caste party. So those who are not Hindus—in Kashmir, of course, and Sikh people in Punjab—do not vote for the B.J.P. And those who are not Hindi speakers in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala cannot share this ideology of the B.J.P.’s.

[Riaz Haq]

#India’s Indigenous people pay price of #Modi's #tiger conservation. Only 1% of over 100 million #Indian #Adivasis have been granted land rights despite gov't forest rights law of 2006, which aims to “undo the historical injustice”. #BJP https://aje.io/szw7n0 via @AJEnglish

Officials were celebrating just hours away from several of India’s major tiger reserves when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in the southern city of Mysuru that the country’s tiger population has steadily grown to more than 3,000 since its flagship conservation programme began 50 years ago over concerns that the numbers of the big cats were dwindling.

“India is a country where protecting nature is part of our culture,” Modi said in his speech on Sunday. “This is why we have many unique achievements in wildlife conservation.”

Modi also launched the International Big Cats Alliance, which he said will focus on the protection and conservation of seven big cat species: the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.

But Indigenous people, known as Adivasi in India, say wildlife conservation projects have displaced members of their community over the past half-century. Adivasi communities in Karnataka organised protests last month to highlight how their people, who have lived in forests for centuries, have been kept out of conservation efforts.

Project Tiger began in 1973 after a census of the big cats found India’s tigers were quickly going extinct through habitat loss, unregulated sport hunting, increased poaching and retaliatory killings by people. Lawmakers and officials tried to address these issues, but the conservation model centered around creating protected reserves where ecosystems can function undisturbed by people.

Several Indigenous groups say the conservation strategies, deeply influenced by American environmentalism, have meant uprooting numerous communities who had lived in the forests for millennia.


Members of several Adivasi groups set up the Nagarahole Adivasi Forest Rights Establishment Committee to protest against evictions from their ancestral lands and seek a voice in how the forests are managed.

“Nagarahole was one of the first forests to be brought under Project Tiger, and our parents and grandparents were probably among the first to be forced out of the forests in the name of conservation,” said JA Shivu, 27, who belongs to the Jenu Kuruba tribe. “We have lost all rights to visit our lands, temples or even collect honey from the forests. How can we continue living like this?”

The fewer than 40,000 Jenu Kuruba people are one of the 75 tribal groups whom the Indian government classifies as particularly vulnerable.

Jenu, which means honey in the southern Indian Kannada language, is the tribe’s primary source of income. Its members collect it from beehives in the forests to sell. Adivasi communities like the Jenu Kurubas are among the poorest in India.