Daily Times

At least forty-four people were killed, and hundreds were injured.Millions across the world are thunderstruck. Delhi has not seen such an intense sectarian violence in decades. The sad occurrence was not in isolation but a corollary of Modi’s initiated drive of Hinduisation and saffronisation of India. Thesaffronisation of a secular constitution while constructing Pakistan asan existential threatto India can set the world on a dangerous course of nuclear collision. The new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has served as aprecipitant while Hinduisation’s drive is a preconditionfor rerun of the Gujarat riots. This time it happened in the heart of India: New Delhi.

The saffronised India is the debilitating scenario for a new world order in general and for the region in particular.Prime Minister Imran Khan speaking to the international community in his address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) warned: “When a nuclear-armed country fights to the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders. It will have consequences for the world.”Repercussions would not stay limited to the theatre of war but would shake the foundations of the existing post-World War II order incase of a nuclear war.

The Rand Cooperation, an American think tank, in its report titled “Building A Sustainable International Order” explained America’s symbiotic relations with the international order and factors that have been threatening the health of this international order. Nevertheless, ifits health continues to deteriorate and wraps up the existing order, what comes next? The project has pointed out three possible risks to the health of the post-World War II order.

Following revisionist powers and economic crises, shifting domestic politics in an era of slow growth and growing inequality poses the grave threat to the health of the world order. Using South Asia as a main case study to analyse the third possible risk, one can easily understand how Modi’s belligerent India is posing risks to the post-World War order. To further substantiate the argument, the expansive tendencies in Imperial Japan hold various lessons to understand the consequences for not following the rules of the framework of international institutionsandorder.

At the regional level, Modi’s India is trying to revise its foreign policy on ideological lines vis-à-vis its smaller neighbours in general and Pakistan in particular

Similar to the 1930s Imperial Japan, India emanates expansionist tendencies in ideological, territorial and economic terms. For its misdiagnosed national interests, India scraped the United Nations’ resolutions on Kashmir the way Imperial japan did to the League of Nations in the case of Manchuria. Due to failure of institutional mechanism and deterrence of democratic powers,the world slid into the Second World War, pulling down the world order in stemming instability. If India does not changeitspresent course and the civilised world does not take notice, this time the consequences could be graver and far reaching.

In the last six years, saffronisation and the ultra-nationalist ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) government has drastically transmuted the democratic and secular contours enshrined in India’s constitution. Domestically, the Hindu nationalist BJP launched a three-pronged crusade against the Muslim minority: firstly, it struck down the special status of the Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK) and jolted the legal and moral foundations of the post-World War order. Secondly, Hindu extremist organisations are unbridled to perpetrate religious violence against Muslims and other minorities without impunity; their houses are torched, they are openly lynched, and are forcefully converted. Thirdly and finally, embedment of religious discrimination into law through the controversial CAA has been affecting peaceful co-existence.

At the regional level, Modi’s India is trying to revise its foreign policy on ideological lines vis-à-vis its smaller neighbours in general andPakistan in particular. The radical and drastic changes in Indian politics, aspirations of great power and bidding for the UNSC permanent membership could have perilous spillover impacts in the region. Pakistan’s foreign policy is based on the Indian threat. Modi’s anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric brought both the nuclear states, on February26, 2019, on the verge of an almost full-fledged war.A short aerial dogfight averted the larger disaster.

If Modi’s India does not conform to the international norms and law, human rights values and tenets of the secular spirit of the Indian constitution, the thin fault line of the Line of Control will lose its relevance.It will start to crumble under the heavy burden of Modi’s Hinduisation of India and Pakistan’s existence on the “Two Nation theory”. Once again Delhi’s riots have testified to the genuine essence of the Two Nation theory.

Modi’s Hindutva crusade in South Asia coupled with America’s dormant response to South Asia’s simmering cockpit are mounting slow but daunting challenges to the post-World War II order.The challenges have been eroding America’s moral standing as a superpower.

Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, averred that America’s insufficient role in some regional disputes’ resolutions have played an instrumental role in cultivating anti-American sentiments. The Kashmir dispute is no exception. If the US does not respond timely and sufficiently to the radicalchanges in Indian domestic politics with its regional repercussions, the”shifting domestic politics in an era of slow growth and growing inequality poses the grave threat to the health of world order.”

Due to declaring Russia and China as top national security threats in the 2018 American Defence Strategy, it seems that the US has adopted an appeasement policy over the ascertains of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights abouthuman rights violations in IoK and the violent rise of Hindu ultra-nationalism, and turning a blind eye to Human Right Watch’s findings of impunity for abuses committed by security forces, and inhumane treatment of Dalits, Tribal groups, and religious minorities. While, on the other hand, the UShas channelised it huge machinery, from legislature to media, to highlight China’s detention camps for Muslims in Xinjiang.

The partial, compromised and appeasement mode of the guarantor of the world order is gradually giving rise to strategicautonomy to different regional powers that disturbsthe regional balance of power. In many cases, the US’s relatively partial role, its misdiagnosed appeasement policies in India’scase, and its compromising attitude towards decades long lingering territorial issues are piling a variety of challenges on the health of the post-War II Order. If the US and US-led world order does not reassert, and reaffirm its commitments to human rights, democracy, and a liberal system, anarchy within order can become the ultimate cause of its collapse.

The writer is adjunct/visiting lecturer in a university of Islamabad