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For India’s Hindu Nationalists, Religion Alone Defines Entitlement, Rights and Citizenship | Alternet
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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

India’s Progressive-Minded Vice President Steps Down: Minorities Are Now More Vulnerable to a Hindu Theocratic State | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/world/indias-progressive-minded-vice-president-steps-down-minorities-are-now-mor

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The timing, the eve of the 70th anniversary of India’s independence, ruled as it is by a majoritarian proto-fascist party, could not have been more apt. India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has seen a serious deterioration in law and order and in the security of the minorities with repeated incidents of lynchings that reflect hate-ridden public discourse apart from the legitimization of violence.

Ansari then went further. On his last day as vice president, in his interview to the Rajya Sabha TV channel, he said, “Muslims were experiencing a feeling of unease.” “A sense of insecurity is creeping in,” he noted. In his speech in Bangalore too, he had spoken of the “enhanced apprehensions of insecurity amongst segments of our citizen body, particularly Dalits, Muslims and Christians.”

Not known to be the epitome of either dignity or tolerance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—for whom Hamid Ansari has been a bête noire ever since the former swept to power in May 2014—responded crudely, with a speech that has been roundly assailed for the depths to which it has taken public discourse in India.

It was clear what Narendra Modi, a committed soldier of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh before he acquired political office, meant. Though he did not say the word ’Muslim,’ that was what India’s prime minister told his people that day in the upper house of Parliament when he insinuated that Ansari’s entire worldview was stained by his long association with a constrained mahaul (environment) and dayara (circle).

For the RSS and BJP under Modi and his close associate, Amit Shah, freeing India from the hold of the Congress is close to an irrational obsession.

#Inde #Néo_fascisme

India Is on Its Way to Becoming a Hindu Nation, Suppressing Multiculturalism | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/world/india-its-way-becoming-hindu-nation-suppressing-multiculturalism

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Much has changed since 2013. Narendra Modi, who was then chief minister of a western Indian state, the first chief minister who was a direct recruit from the supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is now India’s prime minister, heading a majority government that has already implemented several changes in laws and statutes that arguably militate against India’s constitutional framework.

This government rose to power in May 2014, led by Modi’s charisma with the masses, backed by a high-voltage campaign funded by crony capital; yet no victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) within Indian politics has ever been possible without the organizational mettle of its parent body, the RSS. The RSS, since its birth in 1925, has openly advocated not just to create a Hindu nation, but also to continue propagating the “overthrow of the constitutional framework.”

Despite these violent schisms, as this author tells students of history and law in her classes, the rich deliberations contained in India’s Constituent Assembly debates reveal a deep maturity in the political leadership of the day, from all political persuasions, that was clear and committed to an India that was inclusive and based on equality of citizenship, irrespective of color, class, gender or community.

Despite the deep schisms, even bloodshed, caused during India’s vivesection, the vast section of India’s political leadership opted for India to remain democratic, inclusive and secular. This was a deeply principled and pragmatic decision, as only through this promise (as encapsulated in the Indian Consitution) of equality for all could India and Indians—with all their attendant diversities of language, faith and culture—remain as one. The Indian Constitution recognizes 22 languages, though we have more than 740 dialects, and through this abiding respect for our deep diversity has this nation been born. It is this basic assumption that is under direct threat from an ideological force that believes in the overthrow of India as was born in 1947 and established in 1950.

It is not mere words but the actions of those in power and the mob on the streets after Modi assumed power, that give weight to these potential dangers. “The recent election of Adityanath, who is a strong proponent of Hindu rashtra, with a brute majority (to the post of chief minister of Uttar Pradesh) shows that people want a Hindu rashtra in India,” Uday Dhuri, spokesperson of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, told the Hindustan Times ahead of the Goa conclave. The Samiti’s agenda, available on its website, is a good example of the priorities of a Hindu rashtra, should it emerge. Hatred and bile against India’s religious minorities and Dalits, authoritarian rule, the imposition of “one culture, one language” to create a strong “militarized, Hindu nation.”

The ongoing convention in Goa represents a very real threat—and not just to India, known as it is as the largest democracy with well-negotiated principles of equality and non-discrimination. Another win for Modi and his lot in the next general election could make this threat into a chilling reality, where discrimination rules and violence, threat and intimidation become an easy norm.

#Inde #fascisme #religions #politique_monde