As corona threat grows; time to unite, not divide
The BJP-led government’s focus after its 2019 reelection has been on its majoritarian electoral agenda — triple talaq, eliminating the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and Citizenship (Amendment) Act. As a result, relations between the majority community and the Muslim minority, estimated at 15 per cent of the population, were on edge. The backdrop was the elections in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. During the February 2020 Delhi election, the BJP used the Shaheen Bagh peaceful sit-down women’s agitation to polarise the electorate.
The Delhi election was important for the BJP, having lost Jharkhand. It was equally a dress rehearsal for trouncing Mamata Bannerjee in West Bengal in 2021. Home minister Amit Shah alleged in Parliament that there was a conspiracy to create chaos during US President Donald Trump’s visit on February 24-25. It equally was bad policing. For instance, when a defeated BJP candidate’s threat to protesters in Delhi’s trans-Yamuna colonies was ignored. Whatever the truth, global attention was once again drawn to the communal tension in India under Prime Minister Modi, and his similar inability or unwillingness in 2002 to control the carnage.
President Trump avoided any comment on the Delhi violence, occurring as he took media questions at the US ambassador’s residence. His remark that it was “up to India” to take remedial measures let India off the hook, but it was criticised by his rivals back home. However, India couln’t totally avoid international ramifications. First Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia criticised India for not protecting its minorities. Then followed the Iranian foreign minister and eventually Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,
who on March 5 urged India to “confront extremist Hindus & their parties & stop the massacre of Muslims in order to prevent India’s isolation from the world of Islam”. India reacted swiftly to the foreign minister’s remarks but was restrained after Ayatollah Khamenei’s sharp comments. The US-Taliban accord in Doha five days earlier had altered the geostrategic environment. India needs Iran to play any meaningful role in a post-US Afghanistan as it controls land access and maintains relations with all factions.
More worrisome was the office of Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights, seeking to join the CAA writ before the Supreme Court. She is a two-term former President of Chile, imprisoned along with her mother during the dictatorial rule of Auguto Pinochet. She brings a tremendous personal reputation to defending human rights, reviving debate about the conflict between sovereignty and international oversight of human rights record of UN members. India can berate and ignore her, but at the cost of its moral authority globally. She is in any case echoing Indian constitutional experts’ opinion that the CAA breaches the Constitution’s secular core. The US resigned in 2018 from the UN Human Rights Council, reformed and reconstituted with 47 members in 2006, seeking more changes. America’s angst was over UNHRC often targeting Israel’s building activities in occupied West Bank. Although undeniably some gross abusers of human rights do occasionally get elected as its members, it still remains an agent of good.
However, developments in India have a global context. Anti-globalisation and anti-immigration forces have deepened the political divide in most western liberal democracies. Francis Fukuyama in his latest book Identity feels parties on the Left and Right are moving to extremes. He says the Republican Party under Mr Trump has veered towards the extremist views of the Tea Party, and the Democratic Party to its left, explaining the rise of Bernie Sanders. From multi-culturalism, there is a transition towards new identity politics. Consequently, political correctness is passé — racist or homophobic remarks that people never made in public are now freely voiced. This has coarsened the public debate, and amongst elected leaders President Trump leads. The same has happened in India, where even senior BJP leaders use public rostrums to openly or subliminally feed communal passions. Fukuyama claims that much of Mr Trump’s public articulation, in the past, “would have ended the career of any other politician”.
At the root lies the CAA, as passed by the government, though rules have so far not been framed. The government argues it is solely intended to benefit the minorities in three neighbouring nations who are victims of religious persecution. This is untenable. First, the same was achievable by a law specifying that refuge was available to all victims of religious persecution, without listing religions and excluding Muslims. Has not India for decades given refuge to Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen? Deductively, Bangladeshi Muslims are the real targets. India’s image in Bangladesh and bilateral ties are being impacted. It also undermines Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government, one of the friendliest in the neighbourhood. The home minister’s assurance in the Lok Sabha goes halfway towards allaying concerns as he has not delinked a future
National Register of Citizens from National Population Register data.
Additionally, Mr Amit Shah, in umpteen election speeches, repeatedly linked the CAA to the NRC and NPR. The problem is the criteria being devised to ascertain nationality. Neither passports, obtained after due police and intelligence verification, nor Aadhaar cards, created after crores of public expenditure, or other such documents are reportedly acceptable as proof of citizenship. Globally, citizenship is determined under jus soli, by place of birth, or jus sanguinis, depending on descent. France uses a third method of loyalty to the republic: the French language. India now threatens to use jus sanguinis, exempting nonMuslims from the consequences of deficient documents to prove descent. Muslims thus fear a majoritarian cleansing exercise that the home minister colourfully called extermination of “termites”.
What is the solution? America has 11-12 million suspected illegal immigrants. Fukuyama argues it is ridiculous to think all these people can just leave unless the US undertakes a “project on that scale… worthy of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Nazi Germany”. He suggests an amnesty and gradual assimilation. Two centuries of nationbuilding and a civil war finally created first US President George Washington’s idea of the US as “open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions”. Trumpian politics betrays this vision as the BJP too attempts to curtail the idea of India as enshrined in our Constitution. The coming US election is an inflexion point for liberal democracies globally, as a re-elected Trump can be their death-knell. More important, with the coronavirus tsunami upon us, isn’t it time to unite rather than divide? Mr Trump and Mr Modi are likely to be asked that question over the next few months.
The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry. He tweets at @ambkcsingh.
Political correctness is passé... Fukuyama claims that much of Mr Trump’s public articulation, in the past, ‘would have ended the career of any other politician’.