The plight of Muslims in Narendra Modi’s India

Muslims in the USA are subject to unfair prejudices and unfair treatment, but, all things considered, I’d rather be a Muslim in this country than a Coptic Christian in Egypt, a Baha’i in Iran or a Muslim in India or Burma.

Narendra Modi

India’s 200 million Muslims are just under 15 percent of the population.  Hindus are about 80 percent.  Yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi has convinced a majority of the voters that Muslims comprise some kind of existential threat to the majority.

India’s newly-enacted refugee law bars admission of Muslims, but allows refugees of other religions.  Proponents argue that victims of religious persecution in neighboring Muslim countries deserve special consideration.

The problem with that argument is the context.  Modi’s government is explicitly anti-Muslim.  The law would help dilute the Muslim populations in India’s border areas and In Kashmir.

There is an overall pattern of discrimination against Muslims and of excluding Muslims from protection of the law.  The world justly condemned the USA for its treatment of African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.  Modi’s government also deserves to be condemned.

Update [12/24/2019]  India’s new policy is worse than I thought, as Ian Welsh pointed out on his web log.

In addition to barring Muslim refugees, it calls (in practice) for purging of Muslims from citizenship rolls, much as African-Americans were purged from voter registration rolls in the start of the Jim Crow era.

Welsh pointed out that India faces a future refugee crisis as Muslim-majority Bangladesh goes under water due to climate change.  Bangladesh’s fleeing millions will be killed or put in internment camps.

LINKS

Blood and soil in Narendra Modi’s India by Dexter Filkins for the New Yorker.

The Coming Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in India by Ian Welsh.  [Added 12/24/2019]

The Rape of India’s Soul by Jayati Ghosh for Project Syndicate.  [Added 12/15/2019]

India military deployed and protests rage against citizenship bill by Jessie Yeung, Helen Regan and Omar Khan for CNN.

The Islamophobic roots of population control efforts in India by Kunal Purohit for Al Jazeera.

And in neighboring Burma –

Aung San Suu Kyi Defends Myanmar Against Rohingya Genocide Accusations by Marlise Simons and Hannah Beech for the New York Times.

Modernization has created an angry world

I think the world is locked into struggle between a heartless corporate neoliberalism and a rage-filled blood-and-soil nationalism, neither of which offers hope for the human future.

Pankaj Mishra, author of AGE OF ANGER (2017), said this is part of a conflict of ideas that originated with Voltaire and Rousseau in the 18th century and is still going on, all over the world, today.

Voltaire taught that if you give up your outworn prejudices, superstitions and customs, and embrace science, reason and commerce, you will gain the power to determine the course of your life, as well as enjoy a rising material standard of living.

His enemy, Rousseau, spoke for all those who were angry because this bargain was not kept, or because they rejected the bargain in the first place.

They included millions of people in Europe and North America in the 19th century and also billions in Asia and Africa in the 20th and 21st, who have been uprooted from village communities and left to fend for themselves in an unforgiving global economy.

Voltaire, although a brave defender of religious and intellectual freedom, despised the ignorant masses.  He admired “enlightened” despots, such as Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, for trying to force their unwilling subjects to adopt modern—that is, French—ways of life.

Rousseau cared nothing for modernization.  His ideal was an imaginary Sparta, an austere, primitive and close-knit society of brave warriors.   He thought it unimportant that Spartan warriors were predatory and merciless to others.  What mattered was their comradeship with each other, and also their manliness.

Another theme of Rousseau, in contrast to Voltaire, is the need for manliness and the corresponding need to keep women in their place.   Once again, this is an example of Rousseau wanting something he didn’t have.  He was never able to fulfill the traditional role of the male, which is to be a protector and provider for women and children.

The global rise of Putinism

What do the following leaders have in common?

• Vladimir Putin of Russia.
• Xi Jinping of China.
• Narendra Modi of India.
• Shinzo Abe of Japan.
• Recep Tayyip Erodogan of Turkey.
• Viktor Orban of Hungary.

They all reject the ideals of democracy and human rights as historically understood in the United States, Great Britain and France, and instead embrace authoritarianism, nationalism, state capitalism and religious and social conservatism.  For want of a better name, call the new ideology Putinism.

Other names arguably could be added to this list.  Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, like Putin and Modi, is an ethnic and religious nationalist who turns a deaf ear to advocates of universal human rights.

I wouldn’t say any of these people are movements are exactly the same as Hitler, but neither to I think it is a coincidence that Nazi symbols keep popping up in unlikely places, because the Nazis are the polar opposite of liberal and democratic values.

The Taliban, al Qaeda ISIS and other radical Salafists represent a different kind of anti-democratic backlash.  They’re not Putinists.  They hate Putin, Xi, Modi and Erdogan.  They aren’t nationalists.  Their leaders don’t care whether you’re an Arab, a Afghan, a Chechen, a Uighur, a Somali or even a European, so long as you accept their religious dogma and hate people of different religions.

I think we Americans and others should resist the temptation to take sides in quarrels among freedom’s enemies.  The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

India to be led by pro-business Hindu nationalist

The founders of the Republic of India were secularists.   They wrote a constitution which, like the U.S. constitution, was friendly to religion, but religiously neutral.  Like the U.S. founders, they sought to instill a patriotism based on constitutional loyalty rather than loyalty to a racial, religious or ethnic group.

Narendra Modi, India’s new prime minister, rose to power as a Hindu nationalist. This is cause for concern.   Ethnic nationalism linked to religion is poison.  It links the total loyalty that is demanded by religion to the narrow and exclusive interests of a particular racial or cultural group.

The Hindu religion has given the world great spiritual insights, but in recent years rioting Hindus have killed Muslims, Christians and other minority groups, and Modi has refused to condemn them.

When Modi was chief minister of Gujarat province in 2002, rioting Hindus killed 1,200 Muslims and drove out hundreds of thousands more.  Modi was accused of egging the rioters on.   The U.S. State Department denied him a visa on human rights grounds.  However,  an Indian investigating commission found no evidence of guilt.

During the current election campaign, Modi said his priority will be economic development.  He even appealed for Muslim votes, much like Gov. George Wallace appealing for African-American votes the last time he ran for governor of Alabama.

His Bharatiya Janata Party won 37 percent of the national vote, but that was enough to give it a majority of seats in Parliament.  The Congress Party, which governed India since independence, received only 23 percent.  The other 40 percent was divided among regional and splinter parties.

Analysts think Modi’s success was largely due to public disgust with the corruption of the Congress Party.  Some weeks ago I read a book, India: a Portrait by a journalist named Patrick French.  The author pointed out that not only have almost all the leaders of the Congress Party been members of the Gandhi and Nehru families and their widows, but the successful candidates in the lower levels of the party also are members of family dynasties — India’s version of the Kennedys, Clintons and Bushes.

This being so, ambitious people with ability but no connections joined the BJP, and their aim is a country open to enterprise and initiative and free of Congress’s stifling bureaucracy.  Modi said his priority will be economic development — more toilets, not more temples.  May it be so!