May 21, 2021
Catastrophe
Modi has been a catastrophe for India, which only became readily apparent during the pandemic that has ravaged his country. Both diminished India. The Covid outbreak there is the worst in the world, according to BBC News.
Post-Partition, India had leaders like I K Gujral, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, who all believed in a semblance of inclusivity. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee had the daring to reach out to Pakistan.
Modi is the transparent embodiment of exclusivist majoritarian tyranny, which served as a key catalyst for the launching of the Pakistan Movement. His tenure has been a continuing reminder of why Pakistan came into being.
He is a modern-day Pied Piper whose sloganeering and constant vilifying campaigning came at the expense of governing. Beneath the braggadocio of Hindutva lay sheer incompetence, which has been laid bare by the Covid crisis, and proving to be a nightmare for Indian citizenry. It is damning in that it elicited a broad array of support even among the bulk of so-called educated sophisticates.
In the Los Angeles Times of May 9, Professor Prerna Singh of Brown University wrote: “Because of Modi’s politics, COVID-19 has brought India to its knees.”
Expressing disgust at the existing trajectory in India, Vir Sanghvi opined in the Hindustan Times of May 6: “Not only has the system failed but we have regressed to becoming a hate-filled, medieval society where we take pride in superstition and celebrate prejudice.”
Modi’s biggest casualty has been India itself.
Many Indians have been duped into believing that Muslims were having an easy ride and were beneficiaries of appeasement from Delhi. Concurrent with that were unrealistic ambitions of a global reach, partly fueled by India being eagerly embraced by Washington as part of the so-called Quad including the US, Australia, and Japan, poised to flex its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Covid calamity has exposed the lack of judgment, preparation and, more significantly, commonweal to take care of its citizens. While Covid was ravaging India, the IPL cricket tournament – driven by sheer commercial avarice – was being played devoid of crowds. Having it juxtaposed amidst a sweeping carnage was an obscenity, which was halted perforce when Covid started infecting players and staff. It has been a failure of basic common sense.
It is ironic that quite a few people of Indian descent who live in the States and benefit from its inclusive bounties have been swamped by the pernicious virus of Hindutva, which has found a nesting place in America. Behind the secular veneer of ‘the world’s largest democracy,’ Hindutva has been bubbling all along.
When L K Advani, the founder of the BJP Party, visited Pakistan 17 years ago, he feared that he would encounter hostility because of his key role in precipitating the demolition of Babri Masjid in December 1992. Instead, he was feted warmly and also given special escort to the Hindu holy site of Katas Raj in Chakwal, where renovations were afoot. He melted and took the dramatic step of visiting the mausoleum of the Quaid in Karachi, where he declared Mohammed Ali Jinnah to be a great man, prompting a massive backlash in his own party. Advani mentioned this in his book, “My Life, My Country” (2008).
Appearing on CBS “60 Minutes” on May 2, the novice US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked of a “rules-based order.” He comes from a Ukrainian Jewish background wherein his paternal ancestors had to endure pogroms. Yet, the Biden Administration has chosen for pragmatic reasons to turn a blind eye to the Modi-engineered 2002 Gujarat pogroms of Muslims when he was then its Chief Minister. For his complicity, Modi was banned from entering the US for 10 years. Had Modi acted in this fashion against Christians and Jews would he then be embraced with such gusto?
In December 2019, the Indian Parliament passed a law providing a fast-track to citizenship for non-Muslim irregular migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; Muslims would be deemed illegal migrants. Human Rights Watch reported, in April 2020, fears that millions of Indian Muslims, including many families who have lived in the country for generations, could be stripped of their citizenship rights and disenfranchised.
Modi has put India on a downward slope. But this needn’t have been so. Standing tall in Indian history is the reformist figure of Ram Mohan Roy, who died in 1833. He was a Renaissance man who was educated in a madrassa, studied Arabic, and was fluent in Persian. In 1804, he wrote a book in Persian called “Tuhfat-ul-Mowahhidin” (Gift to Monotheists). Ahead of his time, he incurred the wrath of his community by taking a stand against the evils of Sati, dowry, and child marriage. Today, his statue stands in Gloucestershire, England. India would do well to rekindle his transcendental vision.
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