Fascism not necessarily in India's future
Extreme nationalism always looks foolish or even deranged to those who have not caught the virus, but in India it's now official.
In January, India's Defence Ministry started setting up 822 “selfie points” at war memorials, railway stations and tourist attractions where people can take photos with a cardboard cutout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The timing was no coincidence. The national election began Friday and runs until June 4, when the result will be declared. (With almost a billion voters, the country votes one region at a time.) The outcome is known — Modi will win — but the Hindu fanatics who provide his core vote have the bit between their teeth.
India's 200 million Muslims, about one-seventh of the population, are targeted deliberately by Narendra Modi's militantly Hindu BJP (Indian People's Party).
Some Hindus nurse an historical grievance because most of India was ruled for five centuries by Muslim conquerors originally from Central Asia, but that ended two centuries ago. Hindus were already in the ascendant under British rule, because they were readier to collaborate with the new conquerors — and even that ended 77 years ago.
“Hindutva,” the aggressive modern version of Hindu nationalism, is largely a contemporary ideology created for political purposes, but it dominates the Indian political scene. It has given Modi licence to turn an imperfect but functional democracy into a “soft” fascist state.
This will be Modi's third straight term, and many Indians believe it will complete his transformation of India. They fear a BJP one-party theocracy will emerge, nastier than Orban's Hungary or Erdoğan's Turkey, though perhaps not as vicious as Khamenei's Iran.
Why are you all asleep? You are 73 per cent of the population.
It may come to that. Even now, opposition politicians are routinely jailed on false charges, most media are cowed into obedience, and Muslims face intimidation or actual violence with almost no hope of police protection. Some courts are still independent, but the rule of law is definitely in retreat.
Yet it's too soon to give up on India's democratic traditions. The BJP, for all its bombast and swagger, only got 37 per cent of the popular vote in the last national election five years ago. Its apparent “landslide” win was only due to the opposition being divided into many smaller parties.
Hindutva is all-powerful in northern India's “Hindi belt,” but first-language Hindi speakers are only 40 per cent of the population. Southern and eastern India speak other languages and have different preoccupations. And one topic could unite them against the BJP: caste.
The BJP is dominated by upper-caste Hindus who have convinced many other Hindus they're all in the same boat, but they're not. Socially, economically and educationally, lower castes trail far behind. The opposition, or at least the Congress Party, has finally realized they need these voters.
Rahul Gandhi, scion of the family that has given India three prime ministers, has begun demanding a “caste census” in every state, to reveal how small a share of the national wealth lower castes actually get.
No such census had been published in India since the 1930s. But Bihar, an opposition-governed state, did one, revealing last year that 73 per cent of its 130 million people belong to “backward” or marginalized castes.
So now Gandhi's election speeches sound like this: “Are any of you Dalits (“untouchables”) or other low castes in the judiciary? Are any of you in the media? Do any of you own even one of India's 200 top companies?”
“Why are you all asleep? You are 73 per cent of the population. What kind of society is this where you don't make any decisions?”
The idea all Hindus share the same grievances and goals is just “culture war” lies, and caste is finally taking its rightful place on India's political agenda. It may be too late to turn back the BJP juggernaut this time, but fascism is not necessarily India's future.