Special to BuzzFlash by Muhammed Jahfer: Is Indian Prime Minister Modi Another Donald Trump, or Worse?
April 8, 2021
Indian Prime Minister Modi at the United Nations. (The United Nations)
By Muhammed Jahfer
“Howdy’” a colloquial expression, predominantly used in Texas and other southwestern states in America, means “Hello, How do you do?”. Months after being re-elected with a thumping majority, Narendra Modi was received by 50,000 Indian Americans in Houston, where he declared “ab ki baar trump sarkar” - "Next time, [a] Trump government." The phrase resembled the election slogan of Modi when he first ran for prime ministership in 2014.
His visit was in the backdrop of a ferocious crackdown on the political and cultural autonomy of Kashmir, perhaps the most militarized region in the world. Stripped of its statehood and bifurcated into two territories directly under the watch of the center, the internet was shut down and any possibility to reach the outside world was at a bare minimum. Nonetheless, the treatment meted out to the Muslim majority area has only increased Modi’s popularity as a strongman who dared to take a “radical” step in the Hindu heartland.
Though Trump and Modi triumphed using divisive identity politics with glimpses of majoritarian rants, the latter continues to win elections in provinces and at the center as the actively dedicated ideological foot soldiers constantly work for him.
Modi and his Turkish counterpart Erdogan have a consistent record in intimidating legacy media, infusing ideological portions in school textbooks, and scapegoating institutions to marginalize critics. Despite political and economic disasters, both survive and continue to sit on the throne. Although Trump received tremendous support from Fox News and was successful in tampering with Supreme Court appointments, but he was unable to pull off a rigged election for a second term.
While Hindu nationalists in India and right-wing Islamists in Turkey share similar traits in governance, there is a fundamental difference in their earlier trajectories. The Turkish president began his first decade with incredible economic transformation and a liberal view of Turkish life joining the European Union and so on.
Here, Modi kicked off his political career with a pogrom and was banned from entering America for the same reason till the moment he became prime minister. Soon after being elected as the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, he aggressively pursued his Hindu nationalist agenda which led to the disenfranchisement and ghettoization of Muslims that made him fit to rule the country roughly after a decade.
Hailing from an ideologically committed religious nationalism that aspires to transform India into a Hindu nation, Modi often expressed disdain for the established liberal political system finding himself as an outsider in the elite circle. During the 2014 general election, he launched an intense campaign to reach out to the masses during which he made references to his humble background of being a tea seller at a railway station.
The emergence of Hindu nationalism has to be identified with the reinterpretation of traditional cultural values to cope up with the threat posed by colonial modernity. Ideology is shaped through an active engagement of cultural beliefs and values, it is meant to defend them while at the risk of being shot down. The perceived threat of Abrahamic monotheism and the normatively egalitarian nature of the ‘foreign’ religions posed a calamitous fear of being lost amidst the advent of European modernity among the upper-caste Hindus.
Their fear and choice are reflected in ethnic nationalism which essentially is a Brahmanical notion of being recognized as a cultural unit.
When the subcontinent was divided along religious lines, Pakistan became an Islamic republic while India remained a secular democracy. Decades after being born out of a bloody war and communal negotiations, India is no longer a democracy but an electoral autocracy.
Hindu nationalism succeeded in India not merely because of the deficiencies of democracy but a series of clearly crafted campaign strategies, intense fight for space, sites, and rituals that together constituted symbols of national culture and pride and distorted fictional narratives of single Hindu culture attributed primarily by orientalism. Over a period, the Indian and the Hindu nationalists modified, organized and interpreted the narratives to fit the political contexts.
In other words, the triumph of the Hindu nationalist movement has to be seen through a historically shaped notion of ‘Hinduness’ reproduced and re-circulated at a political juncture.
The Modi-led National Democratic Alliance's re-election confirms the success of self-perpetuation to garner incredible support among the major communities. A permanent ideological revolution has been underway since the beginning of his second term. Muslims are being threatened with disenfranchisement, Kashmir has been caged for a year now and a brutal crackdown on dissent continues to threaten the democratic fabric.
Despite all these concocted attempts, Modi’s legitimization relies on the popular will which Hindu nationalism has successfully accommodated.
On December 12, 2019, after receiving assent from the President of India, the much controversial and unconstitutional citizenship amendment act came into existence. In the previous night of the same, around twenty thousand residential students began their hunger strike and boycotted dining halls at the Aligarh Muslim University, a premier minority educational institution in the country. The law came into effect to give amnesty to non-muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan and has violated article 14 of the Indian constitution which guarantees equality before the law.
Armed with thick blankets, songs of resistance, and warm cups of tea in the coldest month of the year, women from Muslim families marched onto the streets and occupied the highway from Delhi to Noida. Hence, the iconic Shaheen Bagh model of protest emerged. They demanded to revoke the Citizenship Amendment Act that explicitly gives legally sanctioned second-class citizenship to Muslim minorities.
Weeks after, in a poll meeting for Delhi state assembly elections, the central minister Anurag Thakur was spotted leading a crowd to chant the notorious “Shoot the traitors” slogan.
Following this, Kapil Gujjar, a Hindutva sympathizer, was busted at Shaheen Bagh protest site to fire in the air to disrupt the protest gathering and disperse the crowd. “Only Hindus shall have a say in our country, no one else", Gujjar said while he was taken into custody.
A similar incident happened at Jamia Millia Islamia University, where a teenager, in front of the police personnel, fired and then shouted “here's your freedom" at the protesters
During the Anti-CAA movement in 2019, many claimed a major shift in domestic politics that is, in fact, capable of giving a blow to the current regime. But there has not been any visible change in Modi’s popularity when Muslims are at risk of being deemed stateless. Along with ordinary Muslims, dissenting students, liberal politicians, and Leftists joined in large numbers.
It is pertinent to notice that the movement would have been slightly successful, only if ordinary Hindus had joined. That would have had a cataclysmic effect on Modi’s support base which is unlikely to happen.
Transformation of a secular democracy into a fundamentally de jure ethnic democracy has been an uncomplicated task for the right-wing as the liberal and centrist parties have proven their allegiance to the majoritarian whims to succeed in the electoral arena. Numbers matter!
Even if Modi’s empire comes crashing, his politics win. He has ensured no party would ever dare to speak of equal political representation and citizenship rights.
Muhammed Jahfer is pursuing Journalism at the University of Stirling in Scotland.
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