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Land of Hate Crimes

India has been put through a process of saffronisation under Hindutva.

By Shahrukh Mehboob | June 2020

Hindutva bared its fangs in its first mass display of power during the Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992 but ever since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, the Hindutva brigade has been given a shot in the arm. Many high-ranking officials in the Indian state machinery, starting from the prime minister, belong to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), while some are notoriously communal characters now in positions of power, such as Yogi Adityanath, the serving chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. The latter is known for his frequent anti-Muslim rants.

Having such individuals in the corridors of power has had a trickle-down effect on the masses. The result has been lynching of Muslims over suspicions of eating or transporting beef, cracking down on ‘love jihad’ and a general tilt of the Indian society towards the right. The political resurgence of Hindu nationalism on the basis of Hindutva constitutes a potential ideology of “Politics of supremacy through maximization and manifestation of power”. Hindutva followers believe in Chanakya’s philosophy and practical application of ‘Offensive Realism’. It strives for construction of an exclusive society through religio-political and socio-economic polarization. The violent Hindutva ideology symbolizes Indian colonialism and manifests the Indian ideology of Hindu supremacy. The march to the right is not a phenomenon limited to India; across the world, hard-right movements are gaining power and finding their way into legislatures.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Muslims have been facing mounting threats to their status in the Hindu-majority country. A couple of months ago, they were walloped by a new worrisome development. The upper house of India’s Parliament passed the “Citizenship Amendment Bill” (CAB). The legislation turns religion into a means of deciding whom to treat as an illegal immigrant and whom to fast-track for citizenship. The Bill was sent to President Ram Nath Kovind for his approval and now it has become law.

At first glance, the Bill may seem like a laudable effort to protect persecuted minorities. It says Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who came to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan won’t be treated as illegal. They’ll have a clear path to citizenship. But one major community has been left out and they are the Muslims. This is not a coincident but a conspiracy which has become an alarming threat to Muslims. The CAB is closely linked with another contentious document “India’s National Register of Citizens” (NRC). The citizenship list is part of the government’s effort to identify and weed out people it claims are illegal immigrants in the northeastern state of Assam. India says many Muslims whose families originally came from neighbouring Bangladesh are not rightful citizens, even though they’ve lived in Assam for decades.

Dangerous turn
Muslims have been facing ferocity and discrimination for the past several years under Modi’s BJP government. Indian intellectual and diplomat Shashi Tharoor, whose Congress party opposes the CAB, dubbed it “Fundamentally unconstitutional.” Under the slogan of “Everything is Fine,” the Modi government has brought chaos, religious and sexual violence in the country in the form of protest, deaths and internet blackout. The same violence has been evident for many decades in Kashmir. The main consequence of is religious prosecution , the way Hitler deprived the Jews of citizenship rights by introducing two distinct laws which were passed in Nazi Germany in September 1935 and are known collectively as the Nuremberg Laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour. These laws embodied many of the racial theories underpinning Nazi ideology. They provided the legal framework for the systematic persecution of Jews in Germany. These loopholes in India’s NRC have enough resemblance to the Nazi racist laws which caused death, rage, discrimination and violence.

What next?
First it was Kashmir, now it is Assam where a similar situation is being created by the racist Modi government. Over the last five years, India has had an outbreak of religious hate crimes, with an average of one happening every week. This is in violation of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution which states that: “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.”

If the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is the graveyard of Indian citizenship, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 is the graveyard of Indian democracy. The face of the crisis is this abyss. As once rightly noted by the historian Eric Hobsbawm, “Democracy is no measure for nature of states”. Today Indian democracy seems to have proven that just right by showing how the basic fabric of democracy can be destroyed through the system itself. The citizenship crisis in Assam, inhumanity and tyranny in Kashmir is now set to engulf the entire country, which will forever change life, politics and social trends in South Asia.

Hindutva is a fang in Indian secular ideology. Violence, and fanaticism are not a new phenomenon. India’s founding father Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in 1948 by a Hindu fanatic for having a soft corner for the Muslims. Pakistan too has its share of fanaticism. However, in India’s case, rapid saffronisation threatens the secular and democratic ethos the country has cultivated since partition. It is clear from the writings and utterances of the Sangh Parivar ideologues that theirs is a fascist ideology that accepts no pluralism or diversity. If it is a path that India wants to avoid, it needs to get rid of hatemongers and assure its religious and caste minorities that they too are equal Indian citizens.

The Citizenship Act and religious discrimination in the country is bringing to it a radical break with its history and will destroy the pluralistic fabric of India which used to project itself as a secular democratic state.

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