{"id":150487,"date":"2019-12-30T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=150487"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:44","slug":"the-people-of-india-are-taking-it-to-the-streets-to-challenge-modis-bigoted-and-dishonest-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/the-people-of-india-are-taking-it-to-the-streets-to-challenge-modis-bigoted-and-dishonest-government\/","title":{"rendered":"The People of India Are Taking It to the Streets to Challenge Modi\u2019s Bigoted and Dishonest Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

23 Dec 2019 – <\/em>Every day and in every part of India, hundreds of thousands of people\u2014mainly young people\u2014gather on the streets to express their anger at the government. Their protests, like those of the protests in Chile, emerged out of one particular grievance but then have cascaded outward<\/a>. They are angry at the government\u2019s attempt to define citizenship in a narrow and bigoted way; but they are also angry at the arrogance of the government and at the disastrous way in which the government has managed the economy.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a far-right political organization that has intimate roots to India\u2019s fascist currents. The BJP\u2019s parent party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh<\/a> (RSS), was born in 1925 with close links to Italian fascism. Both the BJP and the RSS believe in a doctrine known as Hindutva, which is essentially to promote the supremacy of Hindus over other communities inside India.<\/p>\n

The animus of the BJP and the RSS is directed against India\u2019s Muslims. The way that the BJP government defined the refugee act (the Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA) and the citizenship register (National Register of Citizens, or NRC) appears directly to target Muslims, and to define Indian nationality in opposition to Muslims.<\/p>\n

Anti-Muslim<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given India\u2019s population, minority communities are considerably large. India\u2019s Muslim population, for instance, is 15 percent of the total population, which amounts to more than 200 million people. The country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia, and Pakistan and India essentially tied for second place; India\u2019s Muslims\u2014by themselves\u2014form the eighth-largest country in the world after Brazil and ahead of Nigeria.<\/p>\n

The demographic makeup of India necessitates that the country\u2019s laws and traditions accommodate all of India\u2019s cultural and social diversity. The fascistic viewpoint of the BJP and the RSS is not only immoral and unjust, but it is simply impractical.<\/p>\n

The upsurge of the population against this immoral anti-Muslim posture of the government has surprised the BJP leadership. Modi and his cabinet have become used to pushing a hard-right agenda. When Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he oversaw a pogrom in 2002 that killed more than 2,000 Muslims and disenfranchised many thousands more. The BJP\u2019s agenda was clear then; it did not take the new bills to show the face of the BJP\u2019s animosity to India\u2019s diverse social world. That was apparent in 2002.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it was apparent in 1992, when Modi\u2019s seniors in the BJP and the RSS egged on mobs to destroy a 16th-century mosque in the town of Ayodhya (on its ruins the Indian Supreme Court had earlier this year allowed a temple to be built, a vindication of the hooliganism of 1992). Since 2014, when Modi became the prime minister, violence against Muslims and against oppressed castes (Dalits) has become routine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Borders<\/strong><\/p>\n

For historical reasons, the borders between India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar have been porous. These are lines drawn by colonial rulers that made no sense to the people whose lives were divided by them. People cross these borders as they have for centuries, but they also cross them to flee oppression. Because of the violence from the government in Myanmar, over a million people of the Rohingya community have fled the country for Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The BJP\u2019s Amit Shah\u2014who is India\u2019s home minister\u2014went after the 40,000 Rohingya refugees who are in India. He wanted them deported to Myanmar.<\/p>\n

In September 2018, at an election rally in West Bengal, Shah spoke of the migrants from Bangladesh in the most horrid language. \u201cInfiltrators are like termites in the soil of Bengal,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cA Bharatiya Janata Party government will pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.\u201d This language of \u201ctermites\u201d and \u201cinfiltrators\u201d is deeply provocative, and very dangerous.<\/p>\n

In Assam, an Indian state that borders Bangladesh, the government constructed detention or concentration camps, where it held those whom it wanted to deport. Amnesty International\u2019s report<\/a> from November 2018 provides extensive documentation of the existence of these camps, and of their illegality. The report quotes BJP official Shiladitya Dev\u2019s remarks about migrants being involved in \u201ccriminal activities,\u201d and Modi\u2019s comment that people are entering Assam from Bangladesh daily. \u201cThe underlying hyperbolic,\u201d the report says, \u201cseems to be aimed at dehumanizing Bengali speaking people.\u201d The Indian Supreme Court also intervened to ask<\/a> for the detainees to be released.<\/p>\n

Lies<\/strong><\/p>\n

A clever person has set up a website called Modi Lies<\/em><\/a>. For good reason the makers of the site have not given their names or said anything about themselves. A new report<\/a> shows that during Modi\u2019s tenure there have been about 200 documented cases of attacks on journalists who tell the truth about the Modi government; 40 journalists\u2014at least\u2014have been killed in this period.<\/p>\n

During these current protests, the correspondent of The Hindu<\/em>\u2014Omar Rashid\u2014was picked up by the police<\/a> in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, a state governed by the BJP. Rashid was beaten and threatened with violence, including being told that the police would tear off his beard. This is the climate for journalists. It is also chilling to hear the volume of lies from the government. It\u2019s hard to be a journalist when you are confronted by a deluge of untruths. No wonder the Modi Lies<\/em> site is anonymous.<\/p>\n

On December 22, Modi gave a 90-minute speech<\/a> at a public rally in Delhi. He repeated a volley of lies, but two of them are worth highlighting:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. There is no National Register of Citizens.<\/strong> In his speech, Modi said that since his government took power in 2014, \u201cthere has never been a discussion on this NRC.\u201d The BJP\u2019s election manifesto from this year, however, says<\/a>, \u201cWe will expeditiously complete the National Register of Citizens process in these areas on priority\u201d (page 11). On December 9, Modi\u2019s home minister told the parliament, \u201cRest assured, NRC will be brought in soon.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. There are no detention camps.<\/strong> Modi said, \u201cRumors of detention centers raised by Congress and urban naxals\u201d are lies. The term \u201curban naxals\u201d is used by the BJP to disparage protests and dissenters; it refers to Maoists, and is used against anyone who disagrees with the government. Here, as we have seen, Amnesty International did a report on these camps, and the Indian Supreme Court has intervened regarding them. There are news reports of camps not only in Assam, but of government action to build camps in Maharashtra<\/a> and in Karnataka<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These are flagrant lies. Neither photographic evidence (as with the camps) nor transcripts of actual statements made (as with Amit Shah\u2019s statement in Parliament) are sufficient to undermine the prime minister\u2019s fantastic statements.<\/p>\n

    But Modi is not alone here. He has good company in Trump, in Erdogan, in Bolsonaro, in Boris Johnson and in a host of other world leaders for whom lying is part of their agenda. Arguments based on reason are not their mode of conversation; their mode is emotion. They speak in an emotional register, in which they claim to be victims of a large conspiracy (\u201curban naxals\u201d) and in which they reach into the grievances and humiliations of sections of the population and pretend that their hideous policies are a solution.<\/p>\n

    The BJP has deepened the economic crisis and has deepened further the employment problem; it has offered no solutions. But, like Trump, Modi has suggested that if he can tackle the migration problem, he will both secure the country and produce jobs\u2014it is the migrants who are terrorists and job-stealers. This kind of thought process does not need to be logical. It needs to be emotional. To prove that Modi has lied does not solve anything. It is not the lie that is important to his form of communication. What is important is the simplicity of his emotional statement: if I can build the wall, says Trump, I can get you jobs; if I can corral Muslims, says Modi, I can get you jobs.<\/p>\n

    The lying is maddening. It is what will continue to bring more and more people to the streets. They can see the lie. Outside the circles of those who are on the streets, however, are millions of people who accept the lie. It is not that they are being hoodwinked, but that the lie is a salve against the hopelessness of their social condition. They believe the lie because the lie suggests the possibility of a future for populations who have been taught to think of themselves as the majority in a society.<\/p>\n

    Other possibilities need to be presented to undercut the emotional resonance of the lie. To say that Modi or Trump is lying is not enough. What alternative is there before those who want the lie, what other argument is there to provide hope against the stagnation of the present? Those on the streets have begun to construct that hope. It will form a utopia, one that has to undermine the emotional power of the Lie of the Strongman.<\/p>\n

    The BJP\u2019s political power is depleting. In March 2018, it ruled 13 of India\u2019s 29 states, and was in a coalition government in six other states; now, after recent defeats in Maharashtra and in Jharkhand, the BJP rules only eight states and is in alliance in eight more. This uprising has further weakened the BJP.<\/p>\n

    _______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/em>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at <\/em>Globetrotter<\/a>, a project of the <\/em>Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of <\/em>LeftWord Books<\/a> and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. <\/em>He is the author of 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations: A People\u2019s History of the Third World<\/a> (The New Press, 2007),<\/em> Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), <\/em>The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South<\/a> (Verso, 2013),<\/em> The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution<\/a> (University of California Press, 2016) and<\/em> Red Star Over the Third World<\/a> (LeftWord, 2017).<\/em><\/p>\n

    This article was produced by <\/em>Globetrotter<\/a>, a project of the <\/em>Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 independentmediainstitute.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    23 Dec 2019 – Every day and in every part of India, hundreds of thousands of people\u2014mainly young people\u2014gather on the streets to express their anger at the government. Their protests, like those of the protests in Chile, emerged out of one particular grievance but then have cascaded outward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[239,1713,120,101,276,609,267,892,487,759,866,634,335,1638,109,287,1378,107,1639,985,953,99],"class_list":["post-150487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-brics","tag-cab-citizenship-amendment-bill","tag-conflict","tag-cultural-violence","tag-democracy","tag-demonstrations","tag-geopolitics","tag-hinduism","tag-human-rights","tag-india","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-islam","tag-muslims","tag-narendra-modi","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-protests","tag-religion","tag-right-politics","tag-social-justice","tag-south-asia","tag-structural-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265981,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150487\/revisions\/265981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}