Deep state threatens India’s national unity | Arab News
SEEMA SENGUPTA
Indian Premier Narendra Modi’s fervent appeal to the international leadership to wholeheartedly reject any linkage between religion and terrorism, while formulating a genuine partnership in the fight against terror perpetrators must have left every sane Indian perplexed. Known for his no-holds-barred
anti-Muslim tirades, Modi’s virtual about-turn is nothing but a conscious attempt to conceal a
horrendous politico-religious agenda that his government and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have unleashed on an inherently secular India. And some of India’s brightest security minds have been effectively converted into suitable fulcrum for securing the support of the strategic intelligence community to initiate a
vicious anti-Muslim propaganda.
The ultimate objective is to
establish Hindu-supremacy across South Asia and provide the
Hindu nationalists with necessary impetus for pushing the Indian Muslims to the wall so much so that they are forced to seek refuge under the saffron umbrella. That an administration led by Modi will be without an
anti-Muslim tinge is absolutely unimaginable. The atmosphere of fear and suspicion that is being gradually build-up in the name of Muslim infiltration from neighboring Bangladesh, for example, is a prelude to raising the bogey of “Hinduism under threat from Islam,” albeit tangentially. The systematic dissemination of disinformation about Bangladeshi-Muslim infiltrators gobbling up Indian land and job with the help of provincial administration brings back memories of a sensational report submitted to the Indian president by a retired military officer, while serving as the governor of a northeastern Indian state decades ago.
This sustained, yet, unfounded propaganda has helped create a false impression in people’s mind that Muslim exodus from Bangladesh will force New Delhi to
surrender a large tract of territories to Dhaka sometime in the future. Little do the ordinary citizens realize this disinformation campaign — remotely controlled by Modi’s extra-constitutional “Deep State” — has a hidden political agenda of securing the
entrenchment of Hindutva forces in India’s eastern political landscape. Keeping pace with the BJP’s frantic effort to impose a
Hindu national identity, the Indian Home Ministry is also corroborating the Hindutva asseveration of a plot to produce profound demographic changes along the frontier for facilitating the creation of a mythical “Greater Bangladesh.”
The flight of migrants from Bangladesh (including some identity-less Rohingyas) is no longer seen in the context of natural movement of poor to a relatively affluent place in search of livelihood. Fertile brains in India’s security establishment assist the
Hindu nationalist discourse by mindlessly identifying these hapless impoverished people as crucial pawns for the creation of pockets of mini-Pakistan within India. Such discreet propaganda war is making some people’s (including scribes and intelligentsia) imagination run riot. They are not even sparing a democratically elected Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal. Without providing an iota of credible proof Mamata is being roundly accused by this section of hobnobbing with anti-national elements. The local media is full of sensational stories nowadays, planted by Modi’s “Deep State,” which insinuates about Mamata’s so-called link with “Greater Bangladesh” proponents.
Intriguing it is that the same over-assertive media shows little interest in highlighting the true historical perspective of “Greater Bangladesh” — which in today’s context is a myth and has no connection with aspirations of territorial expansion to create a strategic buffer zone. Originally, it was linked to a pre-independence effort to prevent Bengal’s partition along religious lines in order to preserve the province’s socioeconomic prosperity. This very idea of a sovereign “United-Bengal,” proposed by political stalwarts like Shaheed Suhrawardy, Sarat Chandra Bose and Kiran Shankar Ray is now being extrapolated to cleverly chalk-out a fictitious narrative of radical Muslims trying to carve-out a Greater Islamic Bangladesh, inimical to India’s core strategic interest.
Unfortunately, Modi’s “deep state” actors, who have manipulated the 2014 electoral-coup of Hindu nationalists clandestinely, shows no inhibition in mixing the nation’s strategic interests with that of the parochial agenda of BJP. Not many are even aware that it is due to these shadowy peoples’ (comprising retired intelligence professionals, soldiers, bureaucrats, academic intellectuals, entrepreneurs and even self-proclaimed saints) tremendous effort the Hindu middle-class, high and mighty in the Indian industry as well as a large section of the expatriate community have become Modi’s fellow travelers in establishing Hindu-majoritarianism. Most worryingly, Modi’s “Deep State” aides are not only ruining India’s unique secular social fabric by abetting the Hindutva ideal of subordinating the sensitivities of minority communities to the destiny of Hindu majorities, they are sowing the seeds of hatred in a sensitive border region too. It is not that the Muslims are the sole sufferers. A Christian leader of the BJP in the western Indian State of Goa is the latest victim of religious apartheid practiced by Hindutva ideologues as he was deprived of Chief Ministership because of his faith. Perhaps it is time, the nation wakes up to the dual danger of majoritarianism and a flourishing extra-constitutional secrecy industry strengthening the already embedded anti-democratic power structure within Modi regime.
Unless confronted, this very smoky edifice — having its root in
ultra-Hindu-nationalism, anti-minoritism, anti-liberalism and crony-corporatism — operating beneath the veneer of democracy will ruin India’s secular ethos and unity in no time. After all, the Hindu nationalist forces, since pre-independence days, have a history of subverting mainstream nationalism. While Veer Savarkar, a Hindu nationalist, gave a call for militarizing the Hindus to reinforce British effort of suppressing Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent struggle, there is documentary evidence of BJP ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s advice to the Imperial Bengal Governor on possible ways of breaking the morale of freedom fighters.