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The Right-Wing Assault on the Truth in India Claims the Life of Another Journalist | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/world/right-wing-assault-truth-india-claims-life-another-journalist

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Unfortunately, today anybody talking in support of human rights and against fake encounters [extrajudicial killings] is branded a Maoist supporter. Along with that, my criticism of Hindutva [aggressive majoritarian ideology that stands for a Hindu Theocratic State] politics and the caste system, which is part and parcel of what is considered ‘Hindu dharma,’ makes my critics brand me as a ‘Hindu hater.’ But I consider it my constitutional duty to continue—in my own little way—the struggle of Basavanna and Dr. Ambedkar towards establishing an egalitarian society.” —Gauri Lankesh

These were the recent words of journalist, activist and writer Gauri Lankesh, gunned down on the night of Sept. 5, 2017.

One of the sharpest cleavages currently simmering within India, a conflict that has a potential of impacting all of South Asia, is this fundamental battle of ideas, convictions and orientation: the politics of a modern, liberal, secular, socialist, democratic state and the violent push of several forces to turn India into a theocratic dispensation. Gauri Lankesh’s death cannot be de-linked from this, especially given her sharp, effective and brave response to preserve a rational and modern India. In June of 2013, then chief minister of Gujarat, the present prime minister of India, Narendra Modi had congratulated the extreme right wing’s convention ’aimed to convert India into a theocratic state.’

#Inde #Facisme

India’s Hindu Right-Wing Extremists Are Increasingly Turning to Violence | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/world/hindu-far-right-turns-violent

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Deep roots of social democratic and left culture in Kerala have made this state difficult terrain for the Hindu right. None of its appeals seem to work here, where the population is almost entirely literate and where social progress is seen to be more important than religious division. That is what gives Vijayan the confidence to speak so forthrightly against the Hindu right. More than the power of his state, he has his society behind him.

One of the architects of the Hindu right’s electoral victory in 2013, Amit Shah, and the Chief Minister of the largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath, were called upon by the Hindu right’s high command to make mischief in Kerala. They were to inaugurate the Jana Raksha Yatra (Save the People March) in the state in early October to call attention to what Shah claimed is ‘Marxist-Jihadist violence’ against the activists of the Hindu right. The Hindu right has led no such march to defend the hundreds of Indians killed this year by their own fascist hordes. Their eyes are fixed on Kerala, and with laser intensity, against the communists.

#Inde #fascisme

For India’s Hindu Nationalists, Religion Alone Defines Entitlement, Rights and Citizenship | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/world/indias-hindu-nationalists-religion-alone-defines-entitlement-rights-and-ci

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It’s a worldview at odds with modernity and republicanism crafted in the Indian Constitution and the state: A fundamental belief, indoctrinated through skewed ‘history’ lessons in the shakha, that asserts religion and faith systems, some more than others, inherently determine entitlement, rights and citizenship.

It is this prism that governs officialdom and India today and that tells us—quite unashamedly—that the Rohingyas (never mind that they are poor, distraught and below any poverty line) are a security threat, simply because they are Muslim. The Chakmas are not, the Hindus from Myanmar are not, but Rohingyas are a threat, simply because of their faith. (Source: Indian government’s affidavit before the Supreme Court of India dated September 18, 2017.)

At the core of this instrumental use of a militarized form of faith is the transformation—through a climate and fear of violence and death—of India as articulated in the decades long struggle for independence from British colonial rule and exemplified in India’s founding document: its Constitution.

Theocracy, or religion based nationhood, was unequivocally rejected by India’s Constituent Assembly, by leaders of all ideological dispositions. It was exclusivist outfits who were one in their worldview, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, with the Muslim League—who also successfully projected that Muslims could not be part of a composite nation with India’s Hindus.

Today, this worldview, which unashamedly articulates nationhood, citizenship and entitlements based on narrow definitions of faith, dominates Indian Parliament and rules 12 states (another five in alliance). The game of numbers, finally, is on their side.

For any dispensation in the 21st century, in a country of over 1.324 billion people, a good 15 percent of whom are Muslim, 2-3 percent Christian, 27 percent Dalit, a physical ethnic cleansing of those ‘not Hindu’ may not be easy nor practical. But periodic and brute lynchings, by the brainwashed and armed cadres of these multi hydra organizations, are useful to build such an ethos, based on the fear of death.

#Inde #Théocratie #Epuration_ethnique #Fascisme #Religion