India’s turn towards intolerance
NARENDRA Modi’s landslide victory as prime minister of India in 2014 was borne on his promises to unleash his country’s economic potential and build a bright future while he played down the Hindu nationalist roots of his Bharatiya Janata Party.
But, under Modi’s leadership, growth has slowed, jobs have not materialised, and what has actually been unleashed is virulent intolerance that threatens the foundation of the secular nation envisioned by its founders.
Since Modi took office, there has been an alarming rise in mob attacks against people accused of eating beef or abusing cows, an animal held sacred to Hindus. Most of those killed have been Muslims. Modi spoke out against the killings only last month, not long after his government banned the sale of cows for slaughter, a move suspended by India’s Supreme Court. The ban, enforcing cultural stigma, would have fallen hardest on Muslims and lowcaste Hindus traditionally engaged in the meat and leather industry.
It would also have struck a blow against Modi’s supposed priorities: employment, economic growth and boosting exports. The $16 billion industry employs millions of workers and generated $4 billion in export income last year.
More disturbing was his party’s decision to name Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu warrior-priest, as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and a springboard to national leadership. Adityanath has called India’s Muslims “a crop of two-legged animals that has to be stopped” and cried at one rally, “We are all preparing for religious war!”
This development led the analyst Neerja Chowdhury to observe: “India is moving right. Whether India moves further right, and Modi begins to be looked upon as a moderate, I think that only time will tell.”
On Tuesday, India’s film censor board, headed by a Bharatiya Janata Party stalwart apparently intent on protecting Modi and the party from criticism, ruled that a documentary film about one of India’s most famous sons, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, cannot be screened unless the director cuts the words “cow”, “Hindu India”, “Hindutva view of India” – meaning Hindu nationalism – and “Gujarat”, where Modi was chief minister at the time of deadly antiMuslim riots in 2002.
This might seem like merely a farcical move by Hindu fanatics, if it were not so in line with much else that is happening in Modi’s India, and if the implications for India’s democracy weren’t so chilling. But this is where Modi has brought the nation as it prepares to celebrate 70 years of independence on August 15.