Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described as “unfortunate and unwarranted” the lynching of a man in Dadri over rumours of storing and eating beef and opposition to Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali’s concert. He was speaking to the Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika. “The Dadri incident or the opposition to Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali, are sad and undesirable. But what is the role of the central government in these incidents?” Modi told the daily in an echo of what a clutch of central ministers have been telling newspapers over the last few days. After all, as the leader of India’s most popular party and a lead campaigner to put an end to India’s ‘pink revolution’, how can the man at the centre of the Indian Union be in any way responsible for the actions of his supporters and party members for behaving in a manner consistent with the ideology he espouses? Modi’s denials about being responsible for the escalation of communal violence and India’s increasingly alarming flirtations with fascism because he is sitting at the centre while these actions are taking place on a supposedly local level are ludicrous. Modi, as a product of RSS, is directly responsible for enabling a distinctly anti-democratic and fascist climate in which extremist hardliners flourish. His credentials as a Hindu nationalist were confirmed when a Shiv Sena MP responded to his mild statement of condemnation with disappointment, implying that such a condemnation didn’t behove a PM who was “known and respected due to Godhra and Ahmedabad” – two cities that saw the worst anti-Muslim violence in the 2002 Gujarat riots when Modi was the Chief Minister. This is the history of India’s PM and these are the partners he chooses for himself. It seems as if India’s descent into full-blown fascism under the premiership of Narendra Modi is frighteningly only a matter of time. However, in all the doom and gloom, India’s long history as a democratic and constitutionally secular country ensures that there will be pushback against this rising tide of fanaticism. This beacon of hope is evident in the severe political opposition being mounted by other parties who are taking Modi to task, and certain segments of the media that are also following suit. The world of arts is doing its part too, with a number of prominent writers and artists returning their government awards to protest the suffocation of free expression and climate of religious intolerance. The fascism apparent in India is still only in its embryonic stages and can be quashed. It is hoped that the voting public will wake up to the dangers inherent in another Modi regime and prevent his party from being re-elected.
pk.shafaqna.com
