Nehru's Secularism Was An Aberration; Modi's Islamophobia is the Norm For India

[RiazHaq]

Nehru's Secularism Was An Aberration; Modi's Islamophobia is the Norm For India

As India and Pakistan turn 75, there are many secular intellectuals on both sides of the border who question the wisdom of "the Partition" i...

www.southasiainvestor.com

As India and Pakistan turn 75, there are many secular intellectuals on both sides of the border who question the wisdom of "the Partition" in 1947. They dismiss what is happening in India today under Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership as a temporary aberration, not the norm. They long for a return to "Indian liberalism" which according to anthropologist Sanjay Srivastava "did not exist".

India Pakistan Border Ceremony at Wagah-Attari Crossing

American historian Audrey Truschke who studies India traces the early origins of Hindu Nationalism to the British colonial project to "divide and rule" the South Asian subcontinent. She says colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India. These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by Islamophobic Hindu Nationalists but also by at least some of the secular Hindus in India and Muslim intellectuals in present day Pakistan, says the author of "Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King". Aurangzeb was neither a saint nor a villain; he was a man of his time who should be judged by the norms of his times and compared with his contemporaries, the author adds.

After nearly a century of direct rule, the British largely succeeded in dividing South Asians along religious and sectarian lines. The majoritarian tyranny of the "secular" Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress after 1937 elections in India became very apparent to Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of All India Muslim League. Speaking in Lucknow in October 1937, he said the following:

"The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last ten years, has been responsible for alienating the Musalmans of lndia more and more, by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu; and since they have formed the Governments in six provinces where they are in a majority they have by their words, deeds, and programme shown more and more that the Musalmans cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands. Whenever they are in majority and wherever it suited them, they refused to co-operate with the Muslim League Parties and demanded unconditional surrender and signing of their pledges."

Fast forward to 2021, a Pew survey in India found that 64% of Hindus see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined. Most Hindus (59%) also link Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi language. The survey was conducted over two years in 2019 and 2020 by Pew Research Center. It included 29,000 Indians.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu Nationalist BJP party's appeal is the greatest among Hindus who closely associate their religious identity and the Hindi language with being “truly Indian.” The Pew survey found that less than half of Indians (46%) favored democracy as best suited to solve the country’s problems. Two percent more (48%) preferred a strong leader.

Indian anthropologist Sanjay Srivastava sums up the current situation as follows:

"Our parents practiced bigotry of a quiet sort, one that did not require the loud proclamations that are the norm now. Muslims and the lower castes knew their place and the structures of social and economic authority were not under threat. This does not necessarily translate into a tolerant generation. Rather, it was a generation whose attitudes towards religion and caste was never really tested. The loud bigotry of our times is no great break from the past in terms of a dramatic change in attitudes – is it really possible that such changes can take place in such few years? Rather, it is the crumbling of the veneer of tolerance against those who once knew their place but no longer wish to accept that position. The great problem with all this is that we continue to believe that what is happening today is simply an aberration and that we will, when the nightmare is over, return to the Utopia that was once ours. However, it isn’t possible to return to the past that was never there. It will only lead to an even darker future. And, filial affection is no antidote for it".

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Nehru's Secularism Was An Aberration; Modi's Islamophobia is the Norm For India

As India and Pakistan turn 75, there are many secular intellectuals on both sides of the border who question the wisdom of "the Partition" i...

www.southasiainvestor.com

 

[hussain0216]

And this is the basis of partition and why partition is really the only way to fix India, you have a country filled with poison and hundreds of millions if not more of the other

 

[RiazHaq]

India at 75: How Hindu nationalism overshadows the promise of secularism
India is gradually being transformed from a secular multicultural nation to a Hindu supremacist state, activists and minority groups say.

India at 75: How Hindu nationalism overshadows the promise of secularism | DW | 12.08.2022

India is gradually being transformed from a secular multicultural nation to a Hindu supremacist state, activists and minority groups say.

www.dw.com

When India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, its founding fathers envisioned the newly free nation as a secular multicultural state.

Over the next 75 years, the South Asian country has transformed from being poverty-stricken into one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

It has also emerged as a democratic counterweight to its authoritarian neighbor, China.

India has held free elections since its independence and had peaceful transfers of power, boasts an independent judiciary and a vibrant media landscape.

But many dissidents say that under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which has been in office since 2014, there has been some backsliding when it comes to the country's secular character.

The defining credo of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 1989 has been "Hindutva," a political ideology that promotes the "values" of the Hindu religion as being the cornerstone of Indian society and culture.

"The Modi regime is making legislative, administrative and cultural changes that seek to transform India from a secular democratic republic to an authoritarian Hindu-supremacist one," Kavita Krishnan, of the All India Progressive Women's Association, told DW.

"That's why I prefer the term Hindu supremacy to describe Modi's politics," Krishnan said.

Hindu nationalism on the rise
Since its independence, India has been proud of its multiculturalism, even though it has occasionally struggled with bloody sectarian violence.

Hindus make up the overwhelming majority of India's 1.4 billion people, and there have been growing calls in recent years from religious right-wing groups to declare India a Hindu nation and enshrine Hindu supremacy in law.

The demands, coupled with the BJP's pursuit of a Hindu nationalist agenda, have alienated religious minorities, particularly Muslims, critics say, pointing out that there has been a marked increase in hate speech and violence targeting the nation's 210 million Muslims in recent years.

 

[RiazHaq]

#Nuclear arsenals of #China, #India, #Pakistan are growing. But it's not an arms race—yet. Combined arsenals of China (350 warheads), India (160) and Pakistan (165) are much smaller than #US's & #Russia's but exceed #British & #French stockpiles. #Nukes https://www.economist.com/asia/2022...enals-of-china-india-and-pakistan-are-growing

https://twitter.com/x/status/1558299909266149376

Yet, in many ways, all three countries were hesitant nuclear powers. China did not deploy a missile capable of hitting the American mainland until the 1980s. When India and Pakistan fought a war over Kargil, in the disputed region of Kashmir, in the summer of 1999, India’s air force, tasked with delivering the bombs if needed, was not told what they looked like, how many there were or the targets over which they might have to be dropped.

All that has changed. China has been adding hundreds of new missile silos in recent years. When Pakistan celebrated its 60th birthday in 2007 it had roughly 60 nuclear warheads. Fifteen years on, that number has nearly tripled (see chart). The combined arsenals of China (350 warheads), India (160) and Pakistan (165), though modest by American and Russian standards (several thousand each), now exceed British and French stockpiles in Europe (around 500 in total). All three countries are emulating the American and Russian practice of having a nuclear “triad”: nukes deliverable from land, air and sea. South Asia’s nuclear era is entering a more mature phase.

That need not mean a more dangerous one. A new report by Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment, a think-tank in Washington, explores the dynamics among Asia’s three nuclear powers. Since 1998, most Western attention has focused on the risk of a conflagration between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. That danger persists. Yet the risk of an arms race has been exaggerated, argues Mr Tellis, a former State Department official.

India’s arsenal has grown slowly, he observes—it remains smaller than Pakistan’s—and its nuclear posture remains “remarkably conservative”. The comparison with the nuclear behemoths is instructive. America and Russia both maintain huge arsenals designed to enable so-called counterforce strikes—those which pre-emptively target the other side’s nuclear weapons to limit the damage they might do. That means their arsenals must be large, sophisticated and kept on high alert.

In contrast, China, India and Pakistan, despite their manifold differences, all view nukes as “political instruments” rather than “usable tools of war”, argues Mr Tellis. Both China and India, for instance, pledge that they would not use nuclear weapons unless an adversary had used weapons of mass destruction first, a commitment known as “no first use”. America disbelieves China’s promise, much as Pakistan doubts India’s. But the Chinese and Indian arsenals are consistent with the pledges, insists Mr Tellis.

He calculates that if India wanted to use a tactical (or low-yield) nuclear weapon to take out a Pakistani missile on the ground, it would have to do so within a few minutes of the Pakistani launcher leaving its storage site. That is implausible. India does not have missiles that can launch within minutes of an order, nor those accurate to within tens of metres of their target. And, for now, China’s rocketeers also train and operate on the assumption that their forces would be used in retaliation. The result is that things are more stable than the swelling arsenals suggest.

 

[RiazHaq]

#IndiaAt75: #Modi is Proving #Pakistan's Case For #Partition1947. 75 years after #India split apart, the nation’s beleaguered #Muslims increasingly face the marginalization and brutal prejudice that Pakistan’s founder #QuaideAzam predicted. #PakistanAt75 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...modi-is-proving-pakistan-s-case-for-partition

Opinion by Nisid Hajari

Jinnah’s main fear was how little power Muslims would wield in a united India. That’s what drove the initial break with his former allies in the Indian National Congress party — including Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister— a decade before independence. And it’s why Jinnah retracted his support for a last-minute compromise brokered by the British in 1946, after Nehru intimated that the Congress would not honor the agreement once the British were gone.

Partition very nearly proved Jinnah’s case. Somewhere between 200,000 and two million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were killed within a few short weeks of independence; 14 million were uprooted from their homes. The biggest massacres arguably began with attacks on Muslim villages on the Indian side of the new border.

India’s founding fathers, however, risked their lives to undercut Jinnah’s argument. When riots spread to the Indian capital Delhi and police and petty government officials joined in pogroms targeting Muslims, Nehru took to the streets, remonstrating with mobs and giving public speeches promoting communal harmony while only lightly guarded. He insisted the government machinery exert itself to protect Muslims as well as Hindus.

With even members of his cabinet convinced that India would be better off without tens of millions of citizens suspected of split loyalties, Nehru barely prevailed. The pressure to expel Muslims only really subsided months later after a Hindu fanatic assassinated the revered Gandhi, shocking the cabinet into unity and prompting public revulsion against Hindu bigotry.

That consensus and the rights enshrined in India’s secular constitution largely preserved religious harmony in India for more than seven decades. Al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups made few inroads among Indian Muslims, even as jihadists flourished in nearby countries. While sectarian riots have repeatedly broken out, especially after provocations such as the 1992 demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya to make way for a Hindu temple, tensions have for the most part remained local and limited. And even if Indian Muslims faced discrimination and were on average poorer and less well-educated than Hindus, few doubted that they were full citizens — especially when their votes were needed at election time.

What makes the changes that have proliferated under Modi so dispiriting and dangerous is their corrosive impact on those feelings of belonging. The problem isn’t even so much the most horrific cases of bigotry, including dozens of lynchings of Muslims around the country. Those at least still draw outrage in some quarters, as well as international attention.

What’s worse is the steady and widely accepted marginalization of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims. An overheated and jingoistic media portrays them as potential fifth columnists, who should “go back” to a Pakistan most have never visited if they don’t like the new India. (Pakistani sponsorship of extremist groups that have carried out brutal attacks in India has exacerbated fears of an internal threat.) There’s widespread acceptance of hate speech, including open calls to exterminate Muslims. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has pursued laws that threaten to disenfranchise millions of them.

 

[Samurai_assassin]

For several years under the current leadership of Modi it is obvious the Hindutva have a real hatred for Pakistan and it's people. Frankly they want you dead. The racist arrogant regime sat in New Delhi has poisoned the minds of its nation through its venomous media.
Dear Pakistanis do not take the regime in india lightly, they have the most hatred for you and are inching closer to attack.

 

[RiazHaq]

Pieter Friedrich
@FriedrichPieter
On 14 April, in
@EdisonNJ
, supporters of India’s Hindu nationalist movement paraded through town on bulldozers, the latest symbol of the #Modi regime’s genocidal, Islamophobic agenda. Mayor
@SamipJoshi
, will you condemn this fascist display in your town?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1558996380147822594

 

[Wergeland]

#IndiaAt75: #Modi is Proving #Pakistan's Case For #Partition1947. 75 years after #India split apart, the nation’s beleaguered #Muslims increasingly face the marginalization and brutal prejudice that Pakistan’s founder #QuaideAzam predicted. #PakistanAt75 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...modi-is-proving-pakistan-s-case-for-partition

Opinion by Nisid Hajari

Jinnah’s main fear was how little power Muslims would wield in a united India. That’s what drove the initial break with his former allies in the Indian National Congress party — including Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister— a decade before independence. And it’s why Jinnah retracted his support for a last-minute compromise brokered by the British in 1946, after Nehru intimated that the Congress would not honor the agreement once the British were gone.

Partition very nearly proved Jinnah’s case. Somewhere between 200,000 and two million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were killed within a few short weeks of independence; 14 million were uprooted from their homes. The biggest massacres arguably began with attacks on Muslim villages on the Indian side of the new border.

India’s founding fathers, however, risked their lives to undercut Jinnah’s argument. When riots spread to the Indian capital Delhi and police and petty government officials joined in pogroms targeting Muslims, Nehru took to the streets, remonstrating with mobs and giving public speeches promoting communal harmony while only lightly guarded. He insisted the government machinery exert itself to protect Muslims as well as Hindus.

With even members of his cabinet convinced that India would be better off without tens of millions of citizens suspected of split loyalties, Nehru barely prevailed. The pressure to expel Muslims only really subsided months later after a Hindu fanatic assassinated the revered Gandhi, shocking the cabinet into unity and prompting public revulsion against Hindu bigotry.

That consensus and the rights enshrined in India’s secular constitution largely preserved religious harmony in India for more than seven decades. Al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups made few inroads among Indian Muslims, even as jihadists flourished in nearby countries. While sectarian riots have repeatedly broken out, especially after provocations such as the 1992 demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya to make way for a Hindu temple, tensions have for the most part remained local and limited. And even if Indian Muslims faced discrimination and were on average poorer and less well-educated than Hindus, few doubted that they were full citizens — especially when their votes were needed at election time.

What makes the changes that have proliferated under Modi so dispiriting and dangerous is their corrosive impact on those feelings of belonging. The problem isn’t even so much the most horrific cases of bigotry, including dozens of lynchings of Muslims around the country. Those at least still draw outrage in some quarters, as well as international attention.

What’s worse is the steady and widely accepted marginalization of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims. An overheated and jingoistic media portrays them as potential fifth columnists, who should “go back” to a Pakistan most have never visited if they don’t like the new India. (Pakistani sponsorship of extremist groups that have carried out brutal attacks in India has exacerbated fears of an internal threat.) There’s widespread acceptance of hate speech, including open calls to exterminate Muslims. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has pursued laws that threaten to disenfranchise millions of them.

Hindu supremacists may have won parts of British India, but they lost two most valuable strategic wings, forever.

South Asia may have been united, had it not been for their short-sighted historical revanchism.

India is more or less a Island nation now, locked on three sides by land powers it cannot seem to fully overcome.

In some peculiar ways the geostrategic internal situation in India today, resembles the setup in the post-classic period, before advent of Turkic Islamic conquests.

 

[Wergeland]

My prediction is a increasingly economically powerful South India, wich will forge closer trading links with South East Asia and littoral parts of Bay of Bengal.

As South India becomes more prosperous, people there will become more reluctant to transfer wealth to Northern states, increasing the internal pressure on central rule.

A renewal of Kannauj Triangle may not be that unlikely, with power centers in South India (Dravidian), West India - likely centered around Gujarat Mumbai axis, and finally Eastern Subcontinent aka. Greater Bengal. All three competing with eachother for influence.

 

[-=virus=-]

So, apart from the "un ko kapday se pehchaan saktay hain"

what are some other examples of Modi's Islamophobia ?

Gujarat riots me he has plausible deniability when people claim he said so and so... not admissable in a court of law without a recording etc

Honest question, for I do not think I've ever seen him have a go at Muslims, or even dog whistle to any anti x/y/z sentiment that he may be looking to tap into.

 

[RiazHaq]

#IndiaAt75 OpEd by #Indian-#American Prof Akhila Ananth: "As a Hindu, I can’t stay silent about injustices committed in India — in the name of our faith" #secularism #HindutvaTerror #Hindutva #Islamophobia #casteism #Modi #India - Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/sto...ependence-narendra-modi-hindu-nationalism-bjp

Modi has waged a political war against poor people, farmers, Indigenous and caste-oppressed groups and Muslims, and because of that, Hindu nationalists now feel free to brutalize those communities. In 2019, he abrogated the semi-sovereign status of Kashmir, the territory trapped between Indian and Pakistani military rule. Thousands of people protested when Modi’s government approved a bill that set religion as a condition for citizenship by only granting citizenship to non-Muslims fleeing neighboring countries.


------

We in the diaspora have a role to play against Hindu fundamentalism. The California State University system, where I work, now includes caste as a protected category, which means that students, staff or faculty can report caste-based discrimination they face on campuses to university administrators for internal investigations. That was a result of years of activism from Dalit students, who are from historically oppressed communities of the caste system, and their supporters. Just like the millions of activists in India, there is also a growing movement of progressive South Asian Americans, including Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Nepalis in the U.S. forming coalitions across religious and ethnic lines to advocate for better living conditions in the U.S. and to resist conservative policies in our homelands.

Last month, a group of us walked through the Lotus Festival honoring India at Echo Park with signs protesting Modi’s rule. We were met with many curious and supportive Angelenos, but also with Hindu conservatives, invited guests of the festival, aggressively calling us liars. One Indian woman lunged toward us before her friend pulled her back. This time, I did not smile politely. I yelled back.

On the 75th anniversary of India’s independence from Britain, I am as inspired by my progressive South Asian community as I am by the words of India’s constitution. The preamble, written by B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit scholar and freedom fighter, proclaims that the people of India will create a secular democratic republic that secures for all its citizens: “JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity.” These are the ideals that I’ll be celebrating and that I’ll continue building toward, even if they feel out of reach right now.

 

[mulj]

Bharatiland is nazi hellhole and should be monitored closely

https://twitter.com/x/status/1559451914458251265

 

[RiazHaq]

#India-#Pakistan nuclear war would kill 2 billion. #US-#China, 5 billion. Even a limited-scale exchange between India & Pakistan could have catastrophic consequences for global food supplies and trigger mass death worldwide. #IndiaAt75 #PakistanAt75 https://sc.mp/dkza?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=share_widget&utm_campaign=3189013 ​

• The researchers mostly considered a hypothetical nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan as they believed such a conflict was the most likely
• Tens of millions of immediate fatalities in the war zone would be followed by hundreds of millions of starvation deaths around the globe, they found

As escalating tensions among the United States, Russia and China revive old fears of nuclear war, some researchers are warning that even a limited-scale exchange between such nations as India and Pakistan could have catastrophic consequences for global food supplies and trigger mass death worldwide.
A nuclear conflict involving less than 3 per cent of the world’s stockpiles could kill one-third of the world’s population within two years, according to a new international study led by scientists at Rutgers University. A larger nuclear conflict between Russia and the US could kill three-fourths of the world’s population in the same time frame, according to the research published on Monday in Nature Food.--​

 

[PAKISTANFOREVER]

#IndiaAt75 OpEd by #Indian-#American Prof Akhila Ananth: "As a Hindu, I can’t stay silent about injustices committed in India — in the name of our faith" #secularism #HindutvaTerror #Hindutva #Islamophobia #casteism #Modi #India - Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/sto...ependence-narendra-modi-hindu-nationalism-bjp

Modi has waged a political war against poor people, farmers, Indigenous and caste-oppressed groups and Muslims, and because of that, Hindu nationalists now feel free to brutalize those communities. In 2019, he abrogated the semi-sovereign status of Kashmir, the territory trapped between Indian and Pakistani military rule. Thousands of people protested when Modi’s government approved a bill that set religion as a condition for citizenship by only granting citizenship to non-Muslims fleeing neighboring countries.


------

We in the diaspora have a role to play against Hindu fundamentalism. The California State University system, where I work, now includes caste as a protected category, which means that students, staff or faculty can report caste-based discrimination they face on campuses to university administrators for internal investigations. That was a result of years of activism from Dalit students, who are from historically oppressed communities of the caste system, and their supporters. Just like the millions of activists in India, there is also a growing movement of progressive South Asian Americans, including Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Nepalis in the U.S. forming coalitions across religious and ethnic lines to advocate for better living conditions in the U.S. and to resist conservative policies in our homelands.

Last month, a group of us walked through the Lotus Festival honoring India at Echo Park with signs protesting Modi’s rule. We were met with many curious and supportive Angelenos, but also with Hindu conservatives, invited guests of the festival, aggressively calling us liars. One Indian woman lunged toward us before her friend pulled her back. This time, I did not smile politely. I yelled back.

On the 75th anniversary of India’s independence from Britain, I am as inspired by my progressive South Asian community as I am by the words of India’s constitution. The preamble, written by B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit scholar and freedom fighter, proclaims that the people of India will create a secular democratic republic that secures for all its citizens: “JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity.” These are the ideals that I’ll be celebrating and that I’ll continue building toward, even if they feel out of reach right now.

......there is no such thing as a collective "south asian" community........

 

[Bilal9]

Pieter Friedrich
@FriedrichPieter
On 14 April, in
@EdisonNJ
, supporters of India’s Hindu nationalist movement paraded through town on bulldozers, the latest symbol of the #Modi regime’s genocidal, Islamophobic agenda. Mayor
@SamipJoshi
, will you condemn this fascist display in your town?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1558996380147822594

@RiazHaq bhai - I wonder how their back-office/pharma and other companies and their business interests will be able to do business and function in innocuous manner when these Hindutva people show their true racist communal colors as Indians.

Which is totally at odds with US principles of non-discrimination and equal opportunity.

I talk to my friends in NYC and NJ (half of them whites actually) who are aghast at these people's Hindutva chest beating and supremacy garbage in NJ. They all have some choice words for Modi and his followers in the US.

Word is spreading about Hindutva supremacy in the US and no amount of propaganda will save Indian companies from losing customers and markets.