Messages of hate and Hindu dominance

Early this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a new Ram temple in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. It was built on the site where fanatic Hindu-supremacists tore down the centuries-old Babri Mosque in 1992. The event triggered deadly riots across South Asia, claiming some 3000 lives in India alone.

Back then, Modi’s party, the BJP, had led the agitation. Today, it is doing its best to turn the new temple into a symbol of national pride.

No one doubts that the inauguration was timed to support Modi in the ongoing election campaign. Indeed, his government is doing more to convey its anti-secular credentials. It has recently put in force the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which was passed before the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the time, this policy had sparked a nation-wide protest movement. The CAA grants refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh a fast track to Indian citizenship if they fled for religious reasons, but explicitly excludes Muslims, even though Ahmadi or Shias often suffer religious discrimination in those countries. Critics also warn the law can be used to deprive Indian Muslims of their citizenship if their families lack documents to prove that they lived in the country before partition in 1947.

Unpatriotic nationalists 

The BJP belongs to a network of Hindu-supremacist organisations which is dominated by the RSS, a right-wing cadre organisation that wants India to be a Hindu nation. 

It did not support the independence struggle, the leaders of which wanted India to be secular nation that accepts all religious faiths. The murderer of Mahatma Gandhi was an RSS follower. In spite of this unpatriotic history, the RSS and the BJP are now claiming to be India’s true nationalists. Should Modi win another term as Prime Minister, India’s secular democracy will be further eroded.

D+C/E+Z