India: the Birth of 21st Century Fascism?
It’s been little over a fortnight since the results of the 2019 Indian General Elections were announced. The right-wing Hindu nationalist incumbent party, BJP, led by Narendra Modi won by a landslide by orchestrating a presidential style campaign (in parliamentary democracy) with a monolithic focus on terror.
By turning a parliamentary election into a presidential one, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shifted the narrative from one of grassroots development to one of national hullabaloo. Each speech given by the incumbent Prime Minister stoked fears of terrorism. He repeatedly painted a bleak picture of our national security — apparently India is encircled by expertly trained, well-armed terrorists who are ready to infiltrate and pillage India at a second’s notice. And Prime Minister Modi is the only saviour the nation has. Modi, a man who believes radars can’t detect planes on cloudy days, is the only hope the nation of 1.3 billion has.
The party underlings took the hate speech a step forward and communalized the elections by relentlessly attacking, verbally and physically, Muslim communities and other minorities to consolidate the majority Hindu votes. But then again, what do you expect under the leadership of a man who practically oversaw the worst religious pogrom India has seen since independence?
Divide and Rule.
This is a fairly common election strategy across right wing nationalist parties. Donald Trump hates Muslims and Central & South American immigrants. Jair Bolsonaro hates gays, blacks and indigenous people. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hates Jews and Syrian immigrants. And before them all, the OG, Adolf Hitler laid the foundation on how to systematically hate, marginalize and murder a group of people.
Fun fact: RSS, the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, was formed by men who idolized Mussolini and Hitler and the Holocaust.
So, for the next five years, India will have a terror-accused individual who cured her cancer by drinking cow urine sitting in Parliament. Another MP has proudly declared that India will not see any future elections. India will have an Education Minister with fake degrees who thinks Astrology is the №1 science. India will have a thrice murder-accused Home Minister holding key positions in all important cabinets. Almost half of the elected lawmakers in this parliament have declared criminal cases against them. About a third have serious criminal cases against them including rape, murder, kidnapping and crimes against women.
The country faces chronic agrarian distress— the number of farmer suicides deliberately undisclosed by the government. India has seen an unprecedented number of fake news instigated mob lynchings over the past five years. Economic growth has slowed down significantly. Unemployment is the highest in 45 years. And yet, the BJP won. Modi won.
I am still trying to process this. I thought the bleak ground reality would have propelled people to vote against the Modi government. Surely, even if you were a bigot who hated Muslims, you’d prioritize your own well being first. Surely, you’d pick a government that gave you jobs over one that didn’t. But then I guess, hate unites in ways rationality doesn’t.
It’s been a little over a fortnight since the elections. There have already been at least five confirmed cases of mob beatings and hate crimes. Five journalists were arrested last week over a tweet and a video. Another two men were arrested today over similarly dense charges. The police is being used to impose fear instead of maintaining law and order.
India has become a tinderbox of communal hatred, youth joblessness and rural distress. The nation is primed to erupt into a civilian crisis, in large part thanks to the unbridled power in the hands of Modi and the BJP.
If a 1.3 billion strong democracy fails, world peace as we know it fails. If India fails, the world fails.
