Abu Shaleh Rumi
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LOL man. Just because some Indians are protesting that doesnt mean indians became civilized...
Indian NRC/CAB reaction in Bangladesh
- Thread starter Bilal9
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God Parshuram
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Even BD government has said that they are ready to accept their citizens back if the process is done as per international norms. India is just going to do that. Why should any country have any problem in accepting their own citizens?
Bilal9
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You are welcome bhai. Instead of opening new threads on CAB/NRC and clogging up the sub-forum, I believe we should open them under this sticky thread and keep things clean here. The mods especially @Dubious is to be thanked for supporting this. Salute.
VikingRaider
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Yes bhai , agree !You are welcome bhai. Instead of opening new threads on CAB/NRC and clogging up the sub-forum, I believe we should open them under this sticky thread and keep things clean here. The mods especially @Dubious is to be thanked for supporting this. Salute.
Chhatrapati
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Abu Shaleh Rumi
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We dont have any problem. But seems like india has:
India rejects deal on return of illegal immigrants from UK amid fears of mass deportations
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...return-illegal-immigrants-uk-amid-fears-mass/
Bilal9
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https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/news/modi-defends-caa-nrc-mega-rally-1843834
12:00 AM, December 23, 2019 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:00 AM, December 23, 2019
Modi defends CAA, NRC at mega rally
Assures Muslims of no detention centres as protests swell across India
Star Report
Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday sought to reassure India’s Muslims as a wave of deadly protests against a new citizenship law put his Hindu nationalist government under pressure like never before.
At least 25 people, a majority of them in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, have died and hundreds injured in 10 days of demonstrations and violence after Modi’s government passed the law criticised as anti-Muslim. More protests took place yesterday.
Addressing party supporters in New Delhi -- who cried “Modi! Modi!” at the mention of the law -- the 69-year-old said Muslims “don’t need to worry at all” -- provided they are genuine Indians.
“Muslims who are sons of the soil and whose ancestors are the children of mother India need not to worry” about the law and his plans to carry out a national register of citizens (NRC), Modi told the crowd of thousands.
Accusing the main opposition Congress party of condoning the recent violence by not condemning it, Modi said opponents were “spreading rumours that all Muslims will be sent to detention camps.”
“There are no detention centres. All these stories about detention centres are lies, lies and lies,” he said.
He ruled out going back on the citizenship law issue and asserted the law does not have anything to do with Muslims who are Indian citizens nor does it snatch away anyone’s citizenship.
“The Citizenship Amendment Act is not for Indian citizens. This has been said in parliament (last week). The Act is not aimed at snatching anybody’s citizenship but at giving citizenship,” he said and urged the agitators not to resort to violence in the interests of the country.
“No new refugee (from the three countries) will benefit from CAA,” he said referring to the law which seeks to give Indian citizenship to those who have come to India from the three neighbouring countries till 2014.
Modi said the opposition parties were not able to reconcile with his growing acceptance in the Islamic world some of which like the UAE conferred their highest civilian honour on him and India’s strong ties with the Islamic countries like Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.
He said relations between India and Bangladesh have acquired “unprecedented depth” in recent years in areas of water and rail connectivity, and the two countries have been able to solve some of the problems like land boundary demarcation that were pending for over four decades.
“We are marching forward shoulder to shoulder with Bangladesh,” he said.
“The Congress and its allies cannot digest the Islamic countries love and goodwill for him and India because they fear that if Modi and India are loved by these countries, how will Indian Muslims continue to love them?” the PM said.
He accused the Congress, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and CPI(M) of “hypocrisy” in opposing CAA when their own leaders had in the past stated in parliament that they wanted “persecuted” Hindus from Bangladesh and Pakistan to get Indian citizenship, reports our New Delhi correspondent.
Urging the youth of the country to “read the Citizenship Act in detail and not to fall prey to rumours,” Modi further said: “it is shocking to see the kind of lies that are being spread. Some people are even saying that the CAB is against the poor people of the country.”
In the backdrop of declaration by chief ministers of states like West Bengal, Kerala, Punjab and Chhattisgarh on not implementing CAA, Modi said no state can block its implementation.
The Congress yesterday rejected the PM’s charge that the opposition was “inciting” people, and alleged that an environment of fear and uncertainty has been created by home minister Amit Shah’s statement in Parliament that the NRC will be implemented after CAA.
FRESH PROTESTS
Fresh demonstrations were planned in New Delhi for yesterday, and northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where the largest number of deaths have occurred.
Tens of thousands of protests gathered late Saturday in the southern city of Hyderabad, while other protests were held elsewhere.
Authorities have imposed emergency laws, blocked internet access -- a common tactic in India -- and shut down shops in sensitive areas across the country in an attempt to contain the unrest.
More than 7,500 people have either been detained under emergency laws or arrested for rioting, according to state officials, with 5,000 in Uttar Pradesh state alone.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot yesterday led a massive peaceful march against the citizenship law and demanded that the centre repeal the act, saying it is against the constitution and an attempt to divide people in the name of religion.
Thousands of supporters of Jamiat-e-Ulama, an Islamic organisation, took out a protest march in Kolkata, West Bengal yesterday.
Meanwhile, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that the cost of damage to properties during the anti-citizenship act protests would be “avenged” with fines collected from those responsible, reports Times of India online.
The administration in several districts of the state started proceedings on Saturday by identifying and sealing properties of the “rioters”.
One more person died in Rampur in a fresh spate of violence on Saturday. Another person succumbed to his injuries late on Saturday that he received during recent Kanpur clashes. So far, 18 people have lost lives during state-wide protests since Thursday.
A brilliant piece by Shashi Tharoor published by the Daily Star in Dhaka.
12:00 AM, December 20, 2019 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:00 AM, December 20, 2019
Narendra Modi’s second partition of India
Local residents sit next to bonfires as they block a road during a protest against a new citizenship law, in New Delhi, India, December 18, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi
Local residents sit next to bonfires as they block a road during a protest against a new citizenship law, in New Delhi, India, December 18, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi
Shashi Tharoor
At a time when India’s major national priority ought to be cratering economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has instead plunged the country into a new political crisis of its own making.
With its penchant for shock-and-awe tactics, the government pushed through parliament a controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill that fast-tracks citizenship for people fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh—provided they are not Muslim. By excluding members of just one community, the bill, which was quickly signed into law by President Ram Nath Kovind, is fundamentally antithetical to India’s secular and pluralist traditions. As I argued in parliament, it is an affront to the fundamental tenets of equality and religious non-discrimination enshrined in our Constitution and an all-out assault on the very idea of India for which our forefathers gave their lives.
As India’s freedom struggle neared its goal, Indian nationalists split over the question of whether religion should be the determinant of nationhood. Those who believed that it should, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his followers, advocated the idea of Pakistan as a separate country for Muslims. The rest, led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, argued passionately that religion had nothing to do with nationhood. Their idea of India led to a free country for people of all religions, regions, castes, and languages.
The implications—constitutional, political, social, and moral—of the Modi government’s betrayal of this core idea are profound. Under the approved bill, Muslim immigrants may be declared illegal. Coupled with the government’s plan to create an even more problematic National Register of Citizens, the authorities will be able to disenfranchise any Indian Muslim who is unable to prove his or her provenance in India. Many Indians, especially the poor, lack documentary evidence of when and where they were born; even birth certificates have become widespread only in recent decades. While non-Muslims would, thanks to the approved bill, get a free pass, similarly undocumented Muslims would suddenly bear the onus of proving that they are Indian.
This marks a breath-taking departure from seven decades of practice in managing an astonishing degree of cultural diversity. Foreigners—including President George W Bush—admired the fact that India had produced hardly any Islamic State (ISIS) or al-Qaeda members, despite being home to 180 million Muslims. Indians proudly pointed out that this was because Indian democracy gave Muslims an equal stake in the country’s wellbeing. We can no longer say that.
Democratic India has never had a religious test for citizenship. Muslims have served as presidents, generals, chief ministers and governors of states, ambassadors, Supreme Court chief justices, and captains of national sports teams.
The religious bigotry that led to partition and the establishment of Pakistan has now been mirrored in pluralist India. As I told my fellow parliamentarians, that was a partition of India’s soil; this has become a partition of India’s soul.
Inevitably, mass protests have erupted, particularly in the North-Eastern states bordering Bangladesh, where locals fear being swamped by Bangladeshi Hindu migrants with fast-track citizenship; in West Bengal and Delhi, where Muslims fear that they will be subject to a worsening climate of suspicion; and among Muslims and secularists nationwide. Though the protests have been mostly peaceful, the authorities have responded with force. Four demonstrators have been shot dead in Assam (and two more killed in the chaos), curfews have been imposed, police have invaded universities, and Internet and telephone services have been suspended in some areas. Over 100 people have been injured. This self-inflicted wound will take a long time to heal.
In his first term in office, Modi attempted to create a more unabashedly Hindu India, but one that was still attractive to global investors. Six months into his second term, he seems to have given up on the latter goal. As foreigners recoil with horror at the blatant Islamophobia on display from the highest echelons of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, he has focused on criminalising the triple-talaq form of Islamic divorce, pushing for a Hindu temple on a site where a 470-year-old mosque was demolished in 1992 by Hindu protesters, and changing the constitutional status of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir and detaining its political leaders. The new citizenship law is just one more brick in an edifice of official bigotry.
It is an edifice that is leaving India increasingly isolated. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promptly cancelled a visit to India following the citizenship bill’s enactment, as have two Bangladeshi ministers. Foreign investors have already been withdrawing, thanks to Modi’s mismanagement of the economy, which has never recovered from the disastrous blows of an irresponsible demonetisation exercise and the botched implementation of a nationwide Goods and Services Tax. Banks are weighed down by bad debt, the public sector is haemorrhaging money, automobile factories are closing, unemployment is at a 46-year high, and farmers are committing suicide in record numbers.
Now, the Modi government has compounded its economic fecklessness with political recklessness, plunging India into turmoil. The combination of ineptitude and bigotry that has laid the country low has left long-time admirers of the Indian model speechless in disbelief. With the government on the warpath against the fundamental assumptions of the Indian republic, the unspoken fear among the country’s democrats is that the worst is yet to come.
Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is an MP for the Indian National Congress.
12:00 AM, December 23, 2019 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:00 AM, December 23, 2019
Modi defends CAA, NRC at mega rally
Assures Muslims of no detention centres as protests swell across India
Star Report
Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday sought to reassure India’s Muslims as a wave of deadly protests against a new citizenship law put his Hindu nationalist government under pressure like never before.
At least 25 people, a majority of them in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, have died and hundreds injured in 10 days of demonstrations and violence after Modi’s government passed the law criticised as anti-Muslim. More protests took place yesterday.
Addressing party supporters in New Delhi -- who cried “Modi! Modi!” at the mention of the law -- the 69-year-old said Muslims “don’t need to worry at all” -- provided they are genuine Indians.
“Muslims who are sons of the soil and whose ancestors are the children of mother India need not to worry” about the law and his plans to carry out a national register of citizens (NRC), Modi told the crowd of thousands.
Accusing the main opposition Congress party of condoning the recent violence by not condemning it, Modi said opponents were “spreading rumours that all Muslims will be sent to detention camps.”
“There are no detention centres. All these stories about detention centres are lies, lies and lies,” he said.
He ruled out going back on the citizenship law issue and asserted the law does not have anything to do with Muslims who are Indian citizens nor does it snatch away anyone’s citizenship.
“The Citizenship Amendment Act is not for Indian citizens. This has been said in parliament (last week). The Act is not aimed at snatching anybody’s citizenship but at giving citizenship,” he said and urged the agitators not to resort to violence in the interests of the country.
“No new refugee (from the three countries) will benefit from CAA,” he said referring to the law which seeks to give Indian citizenship to those who have come to India from the three neighbouring countries till 2014.
Modi said the opposition parties were not able to reconcile with his growing acceptance in the Islamic world some of which like the UAE conferred their highest civilian honour on him and India’s strong ties with the Islamic countries like Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.
He said relations between India and Bangladesh have acquired “unprecedented depth” in recent years in areas of water and rail connectivity, and the two countries have been able to solve some of the problems like land boundary demarcation that were pending for over four decades.
“We are marching forward shoulder to shoulder with Bangladesh,” he said.
“The Congress and its allies cannot digest the Islamic countries love and goodwill for him and India because they fear that if Modi and India are loved by these countries, how will Indian Muslims continue to love them?” the PM said.
He accused the Congress, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and CPI(M) of “hypocrisy” in opposing CAA when their own leaders had in the past stated in parliament that they wanted “persecuted” Hindus from Bangladesh and Pakistan to get Indian citizenship, reports our New Delhi correspondent.
Urging the youth of the country to “read the Citizenship Act in detail and not to fall prey to rumours,” Modi further said: “it is shocking to see the kind of lies that are being spread. Some people are even saying that the CAB is against the poor people of the country.”
In the backdrop of declaration by chief ministers of states like West Bengal, Kerala, Punjab and Chhattisgarh on not implementing CAA, Modi said no state can block its implementation.
The Congress yesterday rejected the PM’s charge that the opposition was “inciting” people, and alleged that an environment of fear and uncertainty has been created by home minister Amit Shah’s statement in Parliament that the NRC will be implemented after CAA.
FRESH PROTESTS
Fresh demonstrations were planned in New Delhi for yesterday, and northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where the largest number of deaths have occurred.
Tens of thousands of protests gathered late Saturday in the southern city of Hyderabad, while other protests were held elsewhere.
Authorities have imposed emergency laws, blocked internet access -- a common tactic in India -- and shut down shops in sensitive areas across the country in an attempt to contain the unrest.
More than 7,500 people have either been detained under emergency laws or arrested for rioting, according to state officials, with 5,000 in Uttar Pradesh state alone.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot yesterday led a massive peaceful march against the citizenship law and demanded that the centre repeal the act, saying it is against the constitution and an attempt to divide people in the name of religion.
Thousands of supporters of Jamiat-e-Ulama, an Islamic organisation, took out a protest march in Kolkata, West Bengal yesterday.
Meanwhile, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that the cost of damage to properties during the anti-citizenship act protests would be “avenged” with fines collected from those responsible, reports Times of India online.
The administration in several districts of the state started proceedings on Saturday by identifying and sealing properties of the “rioters”.
One more person died in Rampur in a fresh spate of violence on Saturday. Another person succumbed to his injuries late on Saturday that he received during recent Kanpur clashes. So far, 18 people have lost lives during state-wide protests since Thursday.
A brilliant piece by Shashi Tharoor published by the Daily Star in Dhaka.
12:00 AM, December 20, 2019 / LAST MODIFIED: 12:00 AM, December 20, 2019
Narendra Modi’s second partition of India
Local residents sit next to bonfires as they block a road during a protest against a new citizenship law, in New Delhi, India, December 18, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi
Local residents sit next to bonfires as they block a road during a protest against a new citizenship law, in New Delhi, India, December 18, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi
Shashi Tharoor
At a time when India’s major national priority ought to be cratering economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has instead plunged the country into a new political crisis of its own making.
With its penchant for shock-and-awe tactics, the government pushed through parliament a controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill that fast-tracks citizenship for people fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh—provided they are not Muslim. By excluding members of just one community, the bill, which was quickly signed into law by President Ram Nath Kovind, is fundamentally antithetical to India’s secular and pluralist traditions. As I argued in parliament, it is an affront to the fundamental tenets of equality and religious non-discrimination enshrined in our Constitution and an all-out assault on the very idea of India for which our forefathers gave their lives.
As India’s freedom struggle neared its goal, Indian nationalists split over the question of whether religion should be the determinant of nationhood. Those who believed that it should, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his followers, advocated the idea of Pakistan as a separate country for Muslims. The rest, led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, argued passionately that religion had nothing to do with nationhood. Their idea of India led to a free country for people of all religions, regions, castes, and languages.
The implications—constitutional, political, social, and moral—of the Modi government’s betrayal of this core idea are profound. Under the approved bill, Muslim immigrants may be declared illegal. Coupled with the government’s plan to create an even more problematic National Register of Citizens, the authorities will be able to disenfranchise any Indian Muslim who is unable to prove his or her provenance in India. Many Indians, especially the poor, lack documentary evidence of when and where they were born; even birth certificates have become widespread only in recent decades. While non-Muslims would, thanks to the approved bill, get a free pass, similarly undocumented Muslims would suddenly bear the onus of proving that they are Indian.
This marks a breath-taking departure from seven decades of practice in managing an astonishing degree of cultural diversity. Foreigners—including President George W Bush—admired the fact that India had produced hardly any Islamic State (ISIS) or al-Qaeda members, despite being home to 180 million Muslims. Indians proudly pointed out that this was because Indian democracy gave Muslims an equal stake in the country’s wellbeing. We can no longer say that.
Democratic India has never had a religious test for citizenship. Muslims have served as presidents, generals, chief ministers and governors of states, ambassadors, Supreme Court chief justices, and captains of national sports teams.
The religious bigotry that led to partition and the establishment of Pakistan has now been mirrored in pluralist India. As I told my fellow parliamentarians, that was a partition of India’s soil; this has become a partition of India’s soul.
Inevitably, mass protests have erupted, particularly in the North-Eastern states bordering Bangladesh, where locals fear being swamped by Bangladeshi Hindu migrants with fast-track citizenship; in West Bengal and Delhi, where Muslims fear that they will be subject to a worsening climate of suspicion; and among Muslims and secularists nationwide. Though the protests have been mostly peaceful, the authorities have responded with force. Four demonstrators have been shot dead in Assam (and two more killed in the chaos), curfews have been imposed, police have invaded universities, and Internet and telephone services have been suspended in some areas. Over 100 people have been injured. This self-inflicted wound will take a long time to heal.
In his first term in office, Modi attempted to create a more unabashedly Hindu India, but one that was still attractive to global investors. Six months into his second term, he seems to have given up on the latter goal. As foreigners recoil with horror at the blatant Islamophobia on display from the highest echelons of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, he has focused on criminalising the triple-talaq form of Islamic divorce, pushing for a Hindu temple on a site where a 470-year-old mosque was demolished in 1992 by Hindu protesters, and changing the constitutional status of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir and detaining its political leaders. The new citizenship law is just one more brick in an edifice of official bigotry.
It is an edifice that is leaving India increasingly isolated. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promptly cancelled a visit to India following the citizenship bill’s enactment, as have two Bangladeshi ministers. Foreign investors have already been withdrawing, thanks to Modi’s mismanagement of the economy, which has never recovered from the disastrous blows of an irresponsible demonetisation exercise and the botched implementation of a nationwide Goods and Services Tax. Banks are weighed down by bad debt, the public sector is haemorrhaging money, automobile factories are closing, unemployment is at a 46-year high, and farmers are committing suicide in record numbers.
Now, the Modi government has compounded its economic fecklessness with political recklessness, plunging India into turmoil. The combination of ineptitude and bigotry that has laid the country low has left long-time admirers of the Indian model speechless in disbelief. With the government on the warpath against the fundamental assumptions of the Indian republic, the unspoken fear among the country’s democrats is that the worst is yet to come.
Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is an MP for the Indian National Congress.
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Bilal9
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Modi in Kolkata to have talks with Mamata - backpedaling on CAB/NRC continues as Mamata stands form on her proclamations and non-cooperation stance with Indian Center govt. Kolkata folks shouting "Go Back Modi!"
Bilal9
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It’s like the Emergency without the Emergency being declared: Sumit Ganguly
Debaashish Bhattacharya | Updated on January 16, 2020 Published on January 16, 2020
Strength in numbers: The protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act have been widespread, cutting across religious and caste lines - AADESH CHOUDHARI
American political scientist Sumit Ganguly on the dangers of a ruling party with a clear majority pushing its agenda, and no opposition to speak of
American political scientist Sumit Ganguly, a distinguished professor at Indiana University, is worried about the situation in India. Ganguly, who holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, believes that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a “vicious ideological agenda”, while the Opposition is “dispirited, disorganised and unimaginative”. The 65-year-old strategic affairs expert who has written five books, including the Oxford Short Introduction to Indian Foreign Policy (2015) and Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (2016), and edited 15 others, describes the protests over a new citizenship law as “profoundly disturbing”. Over a cup of his favourite Darjeeling at the crowded Flurys tearoom during a recent visit to his hometown, Kolkata, Ganguly — who writes for a host of American newspapers and journals — discusses future political scenarios with BLink. Excerpts from the freewheeling conversation:
What do you think of the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens (NRC)?
What’s going on is profoundly disturbing. The BJP obviously has a clear-cut majority in Parliament and now feels empowered to do almost anything it pleases. You have a completely dispirited, disorganised and unimaginative Opposition, which cannot muster any meaningful pushback against the BJP and this is enabling the BJP to carry out its vicious ideological agenda without any form of parliamentary restraints.
The CAA is completely dishonest for the simple reason that the BJP has suddenly woken up to the fact that there is an oppression of minority in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Is this a novelty? Somehow, this is a great discovery for them. If they are so concerned about minorities, why not then include the Rohingyas and the Ahmadis in Pakistan, who are also oppressed minorities? Why not the Shias of Afghanistan? This notion that the BJP is a champion of the oppressed and persecuted minorities simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
If you appease a particular electoral constituency that is easily moved by these kinds of appeals to religion, the careful exclusion of Muslims from the CAA suggests that there is a clear-cut agenda. This is to cause further domestic divisions or an exclusionary policy directed towards Muslims. That’s the real issue here.
Will it polarise votes or end up counterproductive for the BJP?
It could prove to be counterproductive. But in the short term, there is no question that it will polarise the Hindu voters even further and inflame passions between Hindus and Muslims. But if the protests that have taken place nationwide or in particular parts of the country can be sustained for a period of time and the people do not give up their opposition (to the CAA and NRC), then the BJP could discover that they may have bitten off far more than they can chew.
But what the BJP leadership is counting on is this: Even though the protests have been quite vociferous and quite vigorous, the fact is that the vast majority of people will have to return to their everyday lives, and deal with the issues that concern them routinely. Quite apart from repression, simply devoting time to protests in a sustained manner is exceedingly difficult. This kind of movement dies out because such collective action is very difficult to sustain over time, and that’s precisely what the BJP leadership is counting on. Yes, there will be a surge and then it will taper off.
Has the Modi government’s latest action dented India’s image in the US?
There is no question about it. It may not have dented India’s image with the Trump administration, which couldn’t care less about the minorities in the US, so why should it care about their plight in India. But India’s image has been dented in the American Congress, in the legislature where people on the senate foreign relations committee or on the house foreign affairs committee — individuals there have spoken out. The major newspapers — The Washington Post and The New York Times — have carried both news stories and harsh editorials.
Meanwhile, there are real worries on the economic front…
The Indian economy seems to be in free fall at the moment. In the last quarter, growth fell to 4.5 per cent. So, I think this will lead to a loss of business confidence in India. If the social tension, combined with the economic decline, continues, the grand hopes about India will begin to fade away.
Vandalism accompanied the protests, with railway stations and buses set ablaze and policemen attacked in states such as West Bengal. Wouldn’t all this damage their own cause?
Absolutely. Violence will be counterproductive. The people who are burning buses, attacking the police and destroying property are doing untold damage to their own cause. They are playing directly into the hands of the BJP. Even those supporting them will turn their back on them. So far, I have been very heartened by the fact that the protests seem to be cutting across religious and caste lines. But if they take significantly violent turns and the minority community gets implicated, god help us all.
Recently, General Bipin Rawat, then Army chief, made what was widely criticised as a political statement in a public forum...
India has long prided itself on an apolitical military. One should not politicise the military, because once you do that you are headed in a very dangerous direction.
Are we going to see a Pakistan-type situation in India in the future, with the army brass being politicised?
Not in the foreseeable future, partly because India is so large and diverse, unlike Pakistan. But it may lead to a situation where the military becomes identified with a particular government rather than a neutral force, which is the last thing one wants in India.
In India, when all else fails you turn to the military. An army flag march seems to have an extremely salutary effect on quelling a civil disobedience or unrest. I saw that after the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. I was in Kolkata then. Also, think about divisions within the military. It happened already once in 1984 (during anti-Sikh riots). A certain number of army officers and men rebelled and had to be arrested. Do we really want to see that happen again?
I think all democratic institutions are under assault — the free press, judiciary, the investigating agencies... You name it. It’s like the Emergency without an Emergency being declared.
Is Modi still hugely popular with the Indian diaspora in the US?
A large number of people in the Indian diaspora were deeply disappointed with the Congress party. The country was completely adrift under the Congress. Modi five years ago looked like someone decisive, had the image of being free from the taint of corruption. He was someone who had a clear vision for India and came across as a muscular leader. And so they reposed a lot of hope and faith in him. Some of that has worn off. But the diaspora still has not recognised that he has failed to deliver on most of his promises and that he has been long on promises but short on delivery.
Where do you think the Congress party went wrong?
The Congress has to end its fascination with the Gandhi family. Else it cannot emerge as a viable opposition force. Rahul Gandhi is clueless. I don’t care how well-meaning he is. The party is so sycophantic that they are unable to shed the aura of the Gandhi family... For God’s sake, this country does not lack talent, but the talent must be allowed to flourish sometimes.
You don’t think Rahul Gandhi is capable of leading the party?
He is laughable. He cannot connect with the masses the way Modi does, and it has been demonstrated time and again.
What do you think the Congress ought to do?
The Congress must find a way to open up the ranks of its leadership and it also has to assert its distinctive set of policy priorities. It cannot come up with anaemic responses to the BJP. It has to vigorously sketch out its alternative vision for India. And the worst thing that the Congress has done is to play the soft-Hindutva line. It somehow thinks it can steal away the BJP voters, but it’s not going to work.
The Congress is not at all free of taints. It was in power when the Babri mosque was demolished. What did the Congress do when the Sikhs were being attacked in 1984? If anything, many of its leaders actively took part in the mob attacks. After the Babri demolition, I once spoke to Hamid Ansari. He had just retired from the Foreign Service and was not vice-president of India then. He said all he asked for was to be treated as an equal citizen of India, which I thought was an eminently reasonable position.
Do you see the Congress making a comeback at the Centre?
There are talented individuals in the Congress. But these people are not allowed to come up, to speak and act independently. I noticed that even my old friend Shashi Tharoor was extremely careful when asked about the leadership in the Congress.
I know you follow Bengal politics in the US. How do you look at Mamata Banerjee?
Mamata Banerjee is striking the right notes. She is doing so because she has her own constituency to cater to. Suddenly, she has become a great champion of the minorities and supporter of dissenters. But she has her own record of always having suppressed dissent. People have been arrested in Bengal for writing critically of her on Facebook. Suddenly, she has become a champion of civil rights. She is not doing this out of any moral convictions. I wish that was the case. You need to understand her politics to understand this.
Do you think the BJP has a chance of coming to power in Bengal in 2021?
They won a number of seats in the 2019 general elections in Bengal. There is a real danger, particularly in these extremely polarised times.
Well, many in Bengal trace their roots to what is now Bangladesh. Those from refugee families carry bitter memories of being persecuted and evicted from their land of ancestors...
Those memories can be stoked and revived. There is a latent anti-Muslim sentiment in Bengal based upon historical memories. They can be revived and channeled into votes. The perceived appeasement of a community can boomerang on the ruling party in Bengal. There is a real danger of that.
Published on January 16, 2020
Debaashish Bhattacharya | Updated on January 16, 2020 Published on January 16, 2020
Strength in numbers: The protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act have been widespread, cutting across religious and caste lines - AADESH CHOUDHARI
American political scientist Sumit Ganguly on the dangers of a ruling party with a clear majority pushing its agenda, and no opposition to speak of
American political scientist Sumit Ganguly, a distinguished professor at Indiana University, is worried about the situation in India. Ganguly, who holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, believes that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a “vicious ideological agenda”, while the Opposition is “dispirited, disorganised and unimaginative”. The 65-year-old strategic affairs expert who has written five books, including the Oxford Short Introduction to Indian Foreign Policy (2015) and Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (2016), and edited 15 others, describes the protests over a new citizenship law as “profoundly disturbing”. Over a cup of his favourite Darjeeling at the crowded Flurys tearoom during a recent visit to his hometown, Kolkata, Ganguly — who writes for a host of American newspapers and journals — discusses future political scenarios with BLink. Excerpts from the freewheeling conversation:
What do you think of the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens (NRC)?
What’s going on is profoundly disturbing. The BJP obviously has a clear-cut majority in Parliament and now feels empowered to do almost anything it pleases. You have a completely dispirited, disorganised and unimaginative Opposition, which cannot muster any meaningful pushback against the BJP and this is enabling the BJP to carry out its vicious ideological agenda without any form of parliamentary restraints.
The CAA is completely dishonest for the simple reason that the BJP has suddenly woken up to the fact that there is an oppression of minority in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Is this a novelty? Somehow, this is a great discovery for them. If they are so concerned about minorities, why not then include the Rohingyas and the Ahmadis in Pakistan, who are also oppressed minorities? Why not the Shias of Afghanistan? This notion that the BJP is a champion of the oppressed and persecuted minorities simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
If you appease a particular electoral constituency that is easily moved by these kinds of appeals to religion, the careful exclusion of Muslims from the CAA suggests that there is a clear-cut agenda. This is to cause further domestic divisions or an exclusionary policy directed towards Muslims. That’s the real issue here.
Will it polarise votes or end up counterproductive for the BJP?
It could prove to be counterproductive. But in the short term, there is no question that it will polarise the Hindu voters even further and inflame passions between Hindus and Muslims. But if the protests that have taken place nationwide or in particular parts of the country can be sustained for a period of time and the people do not give up their opposition (to the CAA and NRC), then the BJP could discover that they may have bitten off far more than they can chew.
But what the BJP leadership is counting on is this: Even though the protests have been quite vociferous and quite vigorous, the fact is that the vast majority of people will have to return to their everyday lives, and deal with the issues that concern them routinely. Quite apart from repression, simply devoting time to protests in a sustained manner is exceedingly difficult. This kind of movement dies out because such collective action is very difficult to sustain over time, and that’s precisely what the BJP leadership is counting on. Yes, there will be a surge and then it will taper off.
Has the Modi government’s latest action dented India’s image in the US?
There is no question about it. It may not have dented India’s image with the Trump administration, which couldn’t care less about the minorities in the US, so why should it care about their plight in India. But India’s image has been dented in the American Congress, in the legislature where people on the senate foreign relations committee or on the house foreign affairs committee — individuals there have spoken out. The major newspapers — The Washington Post and The New York Times — have carried both news stories and harsh editorials.
Meanwhile, there are real worries on the economic front…
The Indian economy seems to be in free fall at the moment. In the last quarter, growth fell to 4.5 per cent. So, I think this will lead to a loss of business confidence in India. If the social tension, combined with the economic decline, continues, the grand hopes about India will begin to fade away.
Vandalism accompanied the protests, with railway stations and buses set ablaze and policemen attacked in states such as West Bengal. Wouldn’t all this damage their own cause?
Absolutely. Violence will be counterproductive. The people who are burning buses, attacking the police and destroying property are doing untold damage to their own cause. They are playing directly into the hands of the BJP. Even those supporting them will turn their back on them. So far, I have been very heartened by the fact that the protests seem to be cutting across religious and caste lines. But if they take significantly violent turns and the minority community gets implicated, god help us all.
Recently, General Bipin Rawat, then Army chief, made what was widely criticised as a political statement in a public forum...
India has long prided itself on an apolitical military. One should not politicise the military, because once you do that you are headed in a very dangerous direction.
Are we going to see a Pakistan-type situation in India in the future, with the army brass being politicised?
Not in the foreseeable future, partly because India is so large and diverse, unlike Pakistan. But it may lead to a situation where the military becomes identified with a particular government rather than a neutral force, which is the last thing one wants in India.
In India, when all else fails you turn to the military. An army flag march seems to have an extremely salutary effect on quelling a civil disobedience or unrest. I saw that after the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. I was in Kolkata then. Also, think about divisions within the military. It happened already once in 1984 (during anti-Sikh riots). A certain number of army officers and men rebelled and had to be arrested. Do we really want to see that happen again?
I think all democratic institutions are under assault — the free press, judiciary, the investigating agencies... You name it. It’s like the Emergency without an Emergency being declared.
Is Modi still hugely popular with the Indian diaspora in the US?
A large number of people in the Indian diaspora were deeply disappointed with the Congress party. The country was completely adrift under the Congress. Modi five years ago looked like someone decisive, had the image of being free from the taint of corruption. He was someone who had a clear vision for India and came across as a muscular leader. And so they reposed a lot of hope and faith in him. Some of that has worn off. But the diaspora still has not recognised that he has failed to deliver on most of his promises and that he has been long on promises but short on delivery.
Where do you think the Congress party went wrong?
The Congress has to end its fascination with the Gandhi family. Else it cannot emerge as a viable opposition force. Rahul Gandhi is clueless. I don’t care how well-meaning he is. The party is so sycophantic that they are unable to shed the aura of the Gandhi family... For God’s sake, this country does not lack talent, but the talent must be allowed to flourish sometimes.
You don’t think Rahul Gandhi is capable of leading the party?
He is laughable. He cannot connect with the masses the way Modi does, and it has been demonstrated time and again.
What do you think the Congress ought to do?
The Congress must find a way to open up the ranks of its leadership and it also has to assert its distinctive set of policy priorities. It cannot come up with anaemic responses to the BJP. It has to vigorously sketch out its alternative vision for India. And the worst thing that the Congress has done is to play the soft-Hindutva line. It somehow thinks it can steal away the BJP voters, but it’s not going to work.
The Congress is not at all free of taints. It was in power when the Babri mosque was demolished. What did the Congress do when the Sikhs were being attacked in 1984? If anything, many of its leaders actively took part in the mob attacks. After the Babri demolition, I once spoke to Hamid Ansari. He had just retired from the Foreign Service and was not vice-president of India then. He said all he asked for was to be treated as an equal citizen of India, which I thought was an eminently reasonable position.
Do you see the Congress making a comeback at the Centre?
There are talented individuals in the Congress. But these people are not allowed to come up, to speak and act independently. I noticed that even my old friend Shashi Tharoor was extremely careful when asked about the leadership in the Congress.
I know you follow Bengal politics in the US. How do you look at Mamata Banerjee?
Mamata Banerjee is striking the right notes. She is doing so because she has her own constituency to cater to. Suddenly, she has become a great champion of the minorities and supporter of dissenters. But she has her own record of always having suppressed dissent. People have been arrested in Bengal for writing critically of her on Facebook. Suddenly, she has become a champion of civil rights. She is not doing this out of any moral convictions. I wish that was the case. You need to understand her politics to understand this.
Do you think the BJP has a chance of coming to power in Bengal in 2021?
They won a number of seats in the 2019 general elections in Bengal. There is a real danger, particularly in these extremely polarised times.
Well, many in Bengal trace their roots to what is now Bangladesh. Those from refugee families carry bitter memories of being persecuted and evicted from their land of ancestors...
Those memories can be stoked and revived. There is a latent anti-Muslim sentiment in Bengal based upon historical memories. They can be revived and channeled into votes. The perceived appeasement of a community can boomerang on the ruling party in Bengal. There is a real danger of that.
Published on January 16, 2020
VikingRaider
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BD govt says that if their is really any illegal Bangladeshi in India, then we are ready to take them back. But first you have to prove them they are really illegal Bangladeshi, otherwise no reason to recognize anyone as so called illegal Bangladeshi!
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