Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy

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Narendra Modi is the leader of the world’s largest democracy, a man who has been elected twice as India’s prime minister and is widely seen as the most powerful politician of his generation. Seen by the west as an important bulwark against Chinese domination of Asia, he has been courted as a key ally by both the US and the UK. Modi became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978, overseeing activities in Surat and Vadodara, and in 1979, he went to work for the RSS in Delhi, where he researched and wrote the RSS's history of the Emergency. Shortly after, he returned to Gujarat and in 1985, the RSS assigned him to the BJP. In 1987, Modi helped organise the BJP's campaign in the Ahmedabad municipal election, which the party won comfortably; according to biographers, Modi's planning was responsible for the win. [98] [99] After L. K. Advani became president of the BJP in 1986, the RSS decided to place its members in important positions within the party; Modi's work during the Ahmedabad election led to his selection for this role. Modi was elected organising secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit later in 1987. [100] Modi with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in c. 2001

Students staged a protest near campus that night demanding Nivedya’s release, clashing with police officers equipped with tear gas and riot gear. Five students from the protest were detained as well, she said. Modi said the journey of the past 75 years had seen ups and downs with India battling against all odds with resilience and perseverance. He asked people to remove any trace of a colonial mindset. Modi has been haunted for decades by allegations of complicity in the violence that took place during the Gujarat riots, which broke out after 59 Hindu pilgrims died on a train that had been set on fire. The fire was blamed on the state’s Muslim population.

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Almost 1,000 Muslims died in violence across the state. Police were accused of standing by and Modi of not doing enough to protect the minority community from the Hindu mobs and even tacitly supporting the Hindu extremists. He has denied accusations he failed to stop the rioting and in 2013 a supreme court panel said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Some Indians, especially those who have been made to feel inferior for not speaking English fluently, would agree with Modi when he says that English should be treated as a medium of communication, not a “criterion of intellectual ability”.

Others have suggested a better idea would be to offer bridging courses in English to help rural students to cope more easily. These graduates will be dealing with human lives. And textbooks are only one part of medical courses. There are hundreds of reference books, manuals and medical protocols, which are mostly in English and are vital for the training and functioning of a doctor,” said Sharma.Modi's relationship with Muslims continued to attract criticism. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee distanced himself, reaching out to North Indian Muslims before the 2004 Indian general election, following which, Vajpayee called the violence in Gujarat a reason for the BJP's electoral defeat and said it had been a mistake to leave Modi in office after the riots. [159] [160] Western nations also raised questions about Modi's relationship with Muslims: the US State Department barred him from entering the United States in accordance with the recommendations of that country's Commission on International Religious Freedom, [161] [162] the only person to be denied a US visa under this law. [161] The UK and the European Union (EU) refused to admit Modi because of what they saw as his role in the riots. As Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK [163] and the EU [164] lifted their bans in October 2012 and March 2013, respectively, and after his election as prime minister in 2014, the US lifted its ban and invited him to Washington, D.C. [165] [166] Modi meeting with then- Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh in 2004 Convenient Action: Gujarat's Response to Challenges of Climate Change. New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers India. ISBN 978-0-230-33192-1. OCLC 696558495.

The ban on the BBC documentary was met with outrage by opposition politicians, who accused the Modi government of censorship. Mahua Moitra, an MP for opposition party Trinamool Congress, tweeted a link to a clip, writing: “Shame that the emperor and courtiers of the world’s largest democracy are so insecure. Sorry, haven’t been elected to represent world’s largest democracy to accept censorship.” Modi emphasised his government's efforts at sanitation as a means of ensuring good health. [321] On 2 October 2014, Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission ("Clean India") campaign. The campaign's stated goals included the elimination of open defecation and manual scavenging within five years. [327] [328] As part of the programme, the Indian government began constructing millions of toilets in rural areas and encouraging people to use them. [329] [330] [331] The government also announced plans to build new sewage treatment plants, [332] and planned to construct 60million toilets by 2019. The construction projects faced allegations of corruption and severe difficulty in getting people to use the newly constructed toilets. [328] [329] [330] Sanitation cover in India increased from 38.7% in October 2014 to 84.1% in May 2018 but use of the new sanitary facilities was lower than the government's targets. [333] In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated at least 180,000 diarrhoeal deaths in rural India were averted after the launch of the sanitation effort. [334] Nivedya P.T., a student in New Delhi, was 2 years old at the time of the riots in Gujarat. She and others defied warnings from her university, Jamia Millia Islamia, not to screen the BBC film because “it is very important for us to know about our history,” she said.Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, called the BBC film, “India: The Modi Question,” a “propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative” and said it reflected a “colonial mind-set.” Since his election as India’s prime minister in 2014, Modi has been accused of presiding over an unprecedented religious polarisation in his country, with several laws discriminating against minority groups, mainly its 200 million Muslims. A protester outside White House holding poster showing a person being beaten during last year’s anti-Muslim riots in New Delhi [Raqib Hameed Naik/Al Jazeera]

Punjab, Delhi, Bihar, Maharashtra, Goa and West Bengal have thus far proven somewhat recalcitrant and occasionally rebellious, for a variety of reasons that are regionally specific, and because of local parties, caste alliances and grassroots leaders who challenge the BJP. But even in these States, the presence of an opposition no longer proves that public opinion is against Modi or that the default political common sense is secular. Nor should the south be taken for granted any more. As Jaffrelot shows in his oeuvre, studying Hindutva ideology over the past century, from Savarkar and Golwalkar, to Advani and Vajpayee, before arriving at Modi and Shah, allows us to retrospectively register the early tremors of the political earthquake we are now experiencing. Abroad, countries like Israel, Turkey, Hungary and Brazil provide a global context for the rise of ethnic democracy. On Tuesday, more than a dozen officers from the government’s tax department office raided the offices of the BBC in Mumbai and New Delhi, describing it as a “survey” of operations. Phones and laptops were taken and the offices were sealed as part of a tax evasion investigation, which many viewed as retaliatory action. Now that the Hindi textbooks for anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry are ready, first year students in 13 government medical colleges in Madhya Pradesh will be taught in Hindi from November, though the option of learning in English remains. In 2001, Modi was appointed Chief Minister of Gujarat and elected to the legislative assembly soon after. His administration is considered complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots, [d] and has been criticised for its management of the crisis. A little over 1,000 people were killed, according to official records, three-quarters of whom were Muslim; independent sources estimated 2,000 deaths, mostly Muslim. [11] A Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court of India in 2012 found no evidence to initiate prosecution proceedings against him. [e] While his policies as chief minister, which were credited for encouraging economic growth, were praised, Modi's administration was criticised for failing to significantly improve health, poverty and education indices in the state. [f] In the 2014 Indian general election, Modi led the BJP to a parliamentary majority, the first for a party since 1984. His administration increased direct foreign investment, and it reduced spending on healthcare, education, and social-welfare programmes. Modi began a high-profile sanitation campaign, controversially initiated the 2016 demonetisation of high-denomination banknotes and introduced the Goods and Services Tax, and weakened or abolished environmental and labour laws. Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy ; Christophe Jaffrelot, Translated by Cynthia Schoch, Princeton University Press & Context/Westland, ₹899.Supporters of the new policy agree that it will be difficult initially to find easy Hindi equivalents. The Hindi for anatomy, for example, is the clunky “sharir rachna vigyan”. But the translators in Madhya Pradesh have already said that many English terms will be retained if no easy Hindi option exists. Sethi spoke about cases of police brutality meted out to India’s farmers, who have been protesting for nearly 10 months on the highways leading to New Delhi, seeking repeal of three new “anti-farmer” agricultural laws passed by the Modi government in September last year.