Daily Times

Iconic feminist poet, writer and translator, Fehmida Riaz’s famous poem on how India has just turned out like Pakistan is becoming even more relevant as the time passes. The recent Hindutva attacks on award-winning actor Naseer ud din Shah are a testimony to it. Generally, being a Pakistani; one tends to focus on one’s own country and to get our own house in order rather than being critical of other countries, be they our neighbours. One’s interest is generally limited to seeing India and Bangladesh through the prism of social science trends and indicators in the context of comparative social development of Pakistan with other countries in the developing world.

However, the recent events in India and Bangladesh show that authoritarianism and fascism is on the rise, not only in Pakistan but also in many other countries of the world including India and Bangladesh. Politics of hate and vitriolic attacks are in ascendance in India as the reaction to Naseer ud din Shah’s remarks against cow vigilantism and the recent “managed” elections in Bangladesh show.

According to the press, in the recent elections in Bangladesh, the ruling Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina Wajed was predicted to win in a fair political contest as well; however, the ruling party indulged in extensive authoritarian and fascist methods to curtail the political opposition in the country and won sorts of “managed” landslide victory in the elections. The main opposition leader was already in jail. Awami League used fascist methods of subjugation against the remaining members of political opposition and dissenting voices. Some months before the elections, the Bangladesh government arrested world famous photographer Shahidul Alam and put him in jail for supporting the students’ protests. He was only released on bail after some months, as there was massive reaction to his arrest from all over the world.

Even if Modi and BJP were to lose the general election in May 2019 in India; it is unlikely that tornado of authoritarianism and fascism that they have unleashed in India is going to go away. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is already trying to imitate BJP it his communal identity appeasement appeal rather than uphold principles based on secularism

Indian thinker and writer Pankaj Mishra has earlier called the world liberal order as the “incubator for authoritarianism.” Later, in his recent article in Bloomberg, Mishra has written about the essential conflict between democracy’s promise of equality with capitalism’s induced inequality. However, Arundhati Roy has discussed in some detail in her recent interview published by Boston Review that in India, the “big capital uses racism, caste-ism (the Hindu version of racism…), and sexism and gender bigotry in intricate and extremely imaginative ways to reinforce itself, protect itself, to undermine democracy, and to splinter resistance”.  She calls the caste as the “engine that runs modern India” and makes it out as a country that practices apartheid.

It is interesting how Roy views Indian Prime Minister Modi in this context: “Modi is the personification of what you could call corporate Hindu nationalism“. Modi, BJP, and RSS are not alone in their pursuit of hate and bigotry-backed fascism; India’s corporations are also behind them. According to Roy, within months of the aftermath of Gujrat massacre of Muslims in 2002; Indian corporations started to publicly back Modi (who was the Chief Minister of Gujrat at that time) as their choice of India’s prime ministerial slot. RSS’s agenda is turning India into a Hindu nation.

Even if Modi and BJP were to lose the general election in May 2019 in India; it is unlikely that tornado of authoritarianism and fascism that they have unleashed in India is going to go away. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is already trying to imitate BJP it his communal identity appeasement appeal rather than uphold principles based on secularism.

It is clear that forces of authoritarianism and fascism are on the rise in India and Bangladesh and Pakistan is no exception in the Indian Subcontinent. It is a trend that is gaining traction in many countries of the world, including the US. The progressive forces in Pakistan, the Indian Subcontinent and much else in the world need to re-strategize their plans and efforts to deal with this rising menace.

The writer has a social science background

Published in Daily Times, January 10^th 2019.