The demise of India’s reputation

Next week, India will begin its extended month-long national elections led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

I have followed Indian national affairs since 1953, when I was fortunate to be a member of the World University Service’s (WUS) seminar at Mysore University in southern India, followed by weeks of travel throughout India and parts of Pakistan.

A leading member of the WUS group was Marc Lalonde, later one of Pierre Trudeau’s most valued ministers, and a close friend, who regrettably died last year. He led our meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, who has been my political idol ever since.

In my exchange with Lalonde over the ensuing years, I am sure that he would share my deep concerns about Modi’s apparent objective — namely, to reduce the Muslim population of India by discriminatory laws and practices.

At the time of Nehru’s leadership, the Hindu/Muslim friction had been reduced, although not eliminated, by the creation of East and West Pakistan. While the interracial conflict continued, serious efforts were made by Nehru and his successors to control it without violating human rights.

This effort has continued under succeeding leaders with varying degrees of success, until Modi entered public life and ultimately became prime minister.

The origin and history of Modi’s party is dealt with in an April 12 article published on Foreign Affairs magazine website by Hartosh Singh Bal entitled “The End of Secular India: Modi’s Quest to Entrench Hindu Nationalism.”

This article cites specific steps that have been taken by the BJP under Modi’s leadership to strengthen Hindu nationalism by imposing targeted legal impediments on over two million Muslims from continuing to hold their existing valid Indian citizenship.

Extracts from the article include the following assertions:

■ The BJP-controlled states have enacted bills that make it extremely difficult for Hindus and Muslims to marry, for anyone to convert to Islam and for Muslims to purchase property in Hindu-dominated areas.

■ Since 2019, Modi’s government has advanced many large-scale legal changes that were once considered out of bounds for even hardcore Hindu nationalists. Modi, has for instance, revoked the special status of Kashmir — once India’s only Muslim-majority state.

■ Uttarakhand, a state under BJP control, has implemented a civil code that, while quashing Muslim’s access to laws of their own, still allows Hindus to access specific tax provisions that result in significant savings.

■ The Modi government has overseen the construction of a Hindu temple atop the ruins — by a Hindu-supporting group — of a Muslim medieval mosque.

Last month, both the U.S. government and the United Nations expressed concerns about a contentious religion-based citizenship law in India, which the UN called “fundamentally discriminatory in nature.”

Human rights advocates have joined the U.S. in criticizing this 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act. Specifically, the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International assert that it clearly discriminates against Muslims.

Modi’s party has been pushing to implement the law, which makes it easier to get Indian citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from three Muslim-majority South Asian nations, namely Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. A spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had said, “We are concerned that this act is fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India’s international rights obligations.”

The Modi government denies the law is anti-Muslim and says it was needed to help minorities who suffered persecution in neighbouring Muslim-majority nations — a defence clearly not accepted by the UN.

Last September, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Indian agents might have been involved in the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada. India denied the allegation and Canada withdrew its 41 diplomats, following an Indian threat to unilaterally revoke their status, a position which Trudeau characterizes “contravening a very basic principle of diplomacy.” Apart from that, I am not aware of any other Canadian government critique of Modi.

In any event, we now have the globe’s largest country — its over four billion population now exceeds that of China’s — led by a prime minister and government with no respect for international human rights.

To see India moving so clearly away from the opposite approach of its first globally respected leader Nehru and his successors is, to say the least, profoundly depressing.

Human rights advocates have joined the U.S. in criticizing India’s 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act. Specifically, the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International assert that it clearly discriminates against Muslims