By pursuing an ultra-nationalist agenda, Modi has validated the two-nation theory that formed the rationale of dividing British India to create Pakistan as a Muslim homeland
Colonial India’s Muslim leaders shivered at the thought of being perpetually controlled by Hindus in a united India once the British left the country, unless there were safeguards enshrined in the Constitution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proven them right. By pursuing a populist ultra-nationalist agenda, he has unwittingly validated the much-maligned “two-nation” theory that formed the rationale behind dividing British India to create Pakistan as a Muslim homeland.
His policy pits Hindus against Muslims, an unfortunate schism that all of his predecessors fought against. Seven decades after the blood-soaked Partition, hyper-nationalist Modi won a landslide re-election victory in May, donning the saffron-coloured garb of Hindu gurus and allowing divisiveness based on Islamophobia.
His crown is made of two emotion-filled explosive elements: Kashmir and migration, both having a common thread of bias and suspicion against Muslims. They have roots in the century-old vision of Hindutva, or Hinduness, outlined in the 1920s by VD Savarkar, a violent revolutionary-turned-ultra-nationalist. Savarkar, a British-trained lawyer and avowed atheist, espoused several ideas to deal with India’s minorities, mimicking Adolf Hitler’s racist solution to Germany’s Jewish question.
Since his re-election, Modi’s administration has aggressively moved on both Kashmir and the alleged illegal migration from Bangladesh, which is India’s most friendly neighbour. In early August, keeping local leaders in detention and deploying nearly a million security personnel in Kashmir, it abolished a decades-old law that granted Kashmiris special rights — their own flag, own laws and land rights. Meanwhile, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, who heads Modi’s nationalist BJP and is widely expected to succeed him as Prime Minister, is pressing ahead with his agenda to deport fictitious 40 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
Clash over Muslim migrants: This idea has provoked a sharp backlash from Bangladesh. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan has dismissed the BJP’s assertion, noting that Bangladesh’s economy is at par with India’s, so no one from his country’s stays illegally in India. Still the matter turned acrimonious enough during Shah-Khan talks in Delhi in August to prevent them from issuing a customary joint statement.
India, nevertheless, seems determined to push ahead its agenda. It has started a campaign to round up Muslims unless they can prove they have lived in India way before 1971 when Bangladesh was created. They will be put in concentration camps, which ironically the migrants themselves are building now.
Of India’s 1.3 billion people, 14 per cent are Muslim. Modi’s party does not target migrant Bangladeshi Hindus, classifying them as refugees and minorities from neighbouring countries. But it seeks to deport Muslims. In fact, India has already deported Rohingya Muslim refugees to Myanmar and detained hundreds of them. Modi faced global criticism for the Godhra massacre in 2002 in his home State of Gujarat. He ruled Gujarat for 13 years before becoming Prime Minister in 2014.
What is most disturbing in this government’s policy is its anti-minority agenda. It is this very posture of the professedly secular Indian National Congress party and its paramount leaders — Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — that propelled British India’s Muslims to demand a separate homeland as they feared that the Hindus would perpetually control the Muslims once the British left.
The Congress balked at granting special rights and Britain created Pakistan in 1947. But problems surfaced soon afterward with semi-autonomous princely States, including Kashmir. The picturesque Himalayan region encompasses roughly 135,000 square miles, almost Germany’s size, with about 18 million people. India controls 85,000 square miles, Pakistan 33,000 and China 17,000. Both Pakistan and India claim the entire area as their own.
In 1948, after a Indo-Pakistan fight, India raised Kashmir in the United Nations Security Council, which called for a referendum on the territory’s status. It asked Pakistan to withdraw troops and India to cut military presence to a minimum. A ceasefire came into force but Pakistan refused to pull out. Kashmir has remained partitioned ever since.
Until Hindutva swept Modi to power, India assuaged minorities by pursuing a policy that emphasised on national unity. In contrast, Modi began his tenure by killing a centuries-old Muslim marriage law. Even the Mughals and the British left Indian personal law untouched. The government voided the Muslim law but kept similar laws for other minorities intact.
What’s behind Hindutva politics? To boost his re-election bid, Modi fired up his anti-Muslim rhetoric and took the crusade to India’s northeastern State of Assam, plagued by a half-century-long hate-based politics. The politics that originated with a demand to drive out non-Assamese quickly turned into an anti-Bangladeshi outcry at the BJP’s instigation. Modi has vowed to rid the State of all the alleged Bangladeshi migrants.
Following his re-election, the National Register of Citizens, which verifies citizenship, after several flawed counts, has classified nearly two million long-term residents as non-citizens or stateless. Most of them are at the bottom of the economic ladder. They will be detained in camps with limited rights, considering that the government has promised not to send anybody back to Bangladesh, which fears a reverse influx.
Unfortunately for the Hindutva brigade, the citizenship count has become a boomerang. Of the two million designated non-citizens, 1.2 million unexpectedly turned out to be Hindu. Modi’s followers are now crying foul, demanding a recount. The BJP had expected to find four million migrants in Assam, most of them Muslim.
Assam’s neighbour West Bengal, which shares a common language and a rich culture with Bangladesh, is gearing up to play political hotball against the BJP. The hardliners want to replicate the citizenship drill in West Bengal but Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party has vowed to fight it. State BJP chief Dilip Ghosh, who is seeking to deport the alleged migrants, remains adamant because rhetoric is the magic wand for his party to win votes.
Muslims foresee the BJP’s game: Ironically, while Ghosh wishes to expel them to an unnamed country — presumably Bangladesh — Modi is urging Hindus to flock to Muslim-majority Kashmir, which barred non-Kashmiris from owning land until New Delhi scrapped its autonomy in August.
The BJP prescription to push more Hindus into Kashmir is intended to change the demographic balance in the restive territory of 12 million people. Modi’s arbitrary action is the mother of several repugnant ideas. This is exactly the kind of capriciousness on the part of the overwhelming Hindu majority that British India’s Muslim leaders feared most.
One of those leaders, Liaquat Ali Khan, the right-hand man of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, articulated this concern while talking with George Merrell, then America’s highest-ranking diplomat in India, on December 27, 1946. Liaquat believed that the Congress was “determined to seize power without regard for Muslim rights.” Now, 73 years later, Modi’s Hindutva agenda, which calls for a Muslim-free India, has proven Liaquat right. By scrapping Kashmir’s status, the Prime Minister has taken a highly risky gamble in challenging the secular matrix and embedding a majoritarian consciousness.
(The writer is an established author on Bangladesh-related issues.)