As an expat Indian, I make it a point to visit India often enough to renew my contact with my family and friends. During my current visit, I travelled through multiple cities in the north and south of India. It is very difficult for anyone not to pay attention to the ongoing political and social upheavals in India.
Just to recap, for those who are not familiar with Indian history: in 1947, the partition of British India into Hindu majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan was followed by large-scale religious riots, resulting in killings of between one million and two million people and displacement of about 14million. Growing up in India meant that we were told to mistrust Pakistan and I am sure the children in Pakistan were told to mistrust India. Kashmir is a Muslim-majority state between the two countries and both countries have fought over it since 1947, totally ignoring the will of the people living there. East Bengal (now Bangladesh) separated from Pakistan, no doubt prompted by India, in 1971.
While Pakistan chose to be an Islamic republic, India chose to remain a socialist, democratic, secular republic and formulated its constitution accordingly. Having lived in India during the turbulent formative early years of the country, with large-scale famine, hunger and poverty, wars and diseases and political upheavals, I have watched the people uniting as one nation, irrespective of race, caste, religion, region and wealth, to overcome such adversities.
I am deeply saddened to see the current state of India, where one of the fundamental principles of its constitution, secularism, is jeopardised by the Right-wing nationalist majority. Gone are the days of compromise offered by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, who nurtured a truly secular India.
We often hear about the strides India has made in the past few decades, particularly in the field of agriculture, manufacture and economic growth, as well as cricket. What we do not hear much about in the Western world is the struggle going on within the country for the soul of India: about curtailing of freedom of expression; deliberate attempts to discriminate against the Muslim minority; attempts to change the historical facts and truths by interfering with the education system; the lack of rule of law in many parts of the country.
India has a federal structure, divided into multiple states in 1956, each with its own assembly and government. The essential basis of this division was the language, and thus culture. Language is the mosaic of any culture. There was an attempt to define an Indian citizen and a Citizenship Act was created in 1955; this was not imposed by previous governments because of its many potential drawbacks.
During the violent formation of Bangladesh in 1971 and in the subsequent years, a lot of people migrated into the northeastern states of India, particularly into Assam and Bengal. They faced opposition from those who were already living in those states. The present government decided to further update the Citizenship Act last year.
To create a registry of people, everyone needs to have appropriate documents. In a country like India, a large number of people have no documentation, such as we take for granted in the West, such as birth certificates, particularly for the poor and uneducated. The registry stipulates that individuals have to produce documents to support that one of their parents was Indian; an impossible task for many people. But the current government plans to implement a National Citizenship Registry from this year. Many suspect sinister undertones to this move as an attempt to exclude some minorities from Indian citizenship.
It became evident last year in the state of Assam there were over two million "migrants", mostly from Bangladesh, who couldn’t meet the citizenship criteria because of lack of proper documents or inadequate documents: they belonged to both Hindu and Muslim faiths. This was a dilemma for the current ruling Hindu nationalist party (BJP); it solved this problem by bringing in Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) last year.
This gave dispensation for those without documents to enable them to become Indian citizens, but excluded Muslims from this dispensation. This makes Muslims without documentation stateless, destined for internment camps and subsequent deportation (not sure where to). The current agitation ongoing in many parts of India is because many people consider implementation of a Citizenship Registry and Citizenship Amendment Act to be against the spirit of the constitution, which ensures secularism as a founding principle of India.
The large majority for the ruling party in Parliament, however, ensures any Acts could be passed by the Government. This shows one of the drawbacks of the Westminster style of democracy — not a true representative democracy for whole peoples.
The Right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation (RSS), with its declared aim of making India a Hindu-only country (called Hindustan), has its hands and feet into all walks of society. Altered historical facts seem to be taught to pupils in schools in some states — Godse, the man who killed Gandhi, is a national hero and all the Hindu mythological stories are true.
In the past few years, Right-wing ruling party nominees have risen to lead positions in most establishments in the country, particularly in education. India has had a very active university system, thanks to the British Raj, where ideologies, particularly political theories, were discussed in the campuses, in a free and fair manner, which led to development of individual autonomy of students and teachers and produced leaders in all walks of society. There were confrontations, strikes and even violence, but there was a sort of detente between groups and the police generally did not take sides.
But recent events in some of the major university campuses resulted in attempts to stamp out dissent of any sorts. This happened recently in the premier university in the country, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, where goons with sticks beat up protesting students, including their president, Aisha Ghosh, breaking her arm and head.
Police did not protect the students, but subsequently filed charges against the students for unauthorised marches and anti-Government slogans, whereas the goons who beat them up seem to get away free. People with opposing views, including the media, are frequently silenced by false charges such as financial irregularities and anti-national activities.
The Environmental Protection Acts of the past are being flagrantly violated now. Large areas of forest have been allowed to be cleared for mining by corporates. The tribal people who live there protest, but they have been labelled "terrorists" and often put in jail or terminated in "encounters".
The air in many cities of India is totally hazardous to human health and there are no viable plans to improve the air quality.
This sad state of affairs goes on and on, unchallenged. India is claiming rapid economic progress, but dissenting voices are not tolerated, fascist tendencies flourish and one of the leading principles of its constitution, secularism, is being openly challenged. Undoubtedly, there is something rotting in Delhi.
