Daily Times

India under Modi is playing on very dangerous turf. The country may get out of the growing challenge from the COVID-19 pandemic but the religious bigotry and hatred against Muslims will surely destroy whatever is left of Gandhi’s India.

Modi is eying the epidemic as an opportunity to advance his party’s agenda to institutionalize India as a Hindu nation and deepen the Hindu-Muslim divide. Last week, a senior BJP leader, Subramanian Swamy, while sharing his party’s views about India’s controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act, said that “We know where the Muslim population is large there is always trouble – because the Islamic ideology says so.”

His following comments were clear to highlight BJP’s term or one-point agenda when it comes to the place of Muslims in India. “If Muslim [population] becomes more than 30 percent [in any country], that country is in danger.” According to BJP’s leadership, the party’s view cannot be termed as ‘hatred’: “It is easy to call this hatred, I am being kind to them [Muslims] by not letting them enter India…Muslims do not fall into the equal category [in India].”

For the international world, Modi and BJP’s intentions to use majority Hindu nationalism and populist politics as electoral leverage, has been clear for years. Electorally, the politics of bigotry and fascism has paid dividends for BJP: last election victory was a major manifestation of this very change that India is going through. India’s Hindu Nationalism is the new ticket to political victory regardless of other pressing issues dealing with the stressed economy or the constitutional declarations of “equal rights for equals.”

When the COVID-19 crisis ends, the world needs to curtail Modi’s fascism as it stands to engulf the entire region and end millions of lives

However, what the recent crisis in the form of COVID-19 has shown is problematic. Many of us thought Modi may take a step back from the ongoing divisive politics due to the growing resistance to the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAA) within India. It is alarming that BJP intends to further accelerate the process by gaining from a crisis that may end up killing thousands of Indians in the next few months.

The policy of segregating Muslims and institutionalizing their identity as second class citizens is not new. An effort to achieve this goal was put in place when the RSS, BJP’s parent organization was founded by Hindu supremacists. India’s history shows that the party’s ideology to exterminate Muslims is not only focused on undermining leaders, voices, groups, and parties that come from within the Muslim community but also leaders that uphold the vision of an inclusive, progressive and moderate India.

One of the prime examples of this fascism is the murder of Mahatama Gandhi by an RSS extremist on grounds that he was pliable to Muslim’s demands related to the subcontinent’s division. Moreover, BJP is also working hard to remove Nehru’s imprint from modern India. Several states in India are either removing his role from the literature or injecting BJP proposed nationalist literature that is set to create a new generation of RSS sympathizers and supporters.

BJP’s vision to make India an authoritarian state has taken roots over the past six years. For the BJP, there is no turning back and with it, the country’s Muslim population (being cited as radicals) faces tough choices.

It’s not just mainland’s Muslims that are paying the price of Modi’s fascism; the Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir has been under a strict lockdown for more than six months now. One of my friends from the Indian occupied Kashmir had to say this about Modi authorized curfew amid COVID-19: “It’s terrible. Indian security forces even don’t allow us to go out to buy necessary items.” He further noted that “I have a son who is having fever and cough and I couldn’t take him to hospital.”

Last week, Modi’s Hindu nationalist government introduced a controversial domicile law for India occupied Kashmir which gives “new rights for people from other parts of India residing in the territory.” By locking up millions of Muslims at a time of severe crisis and giving residence permits to people from mainland India is nothing short of barbaric.

This will surely have regional implications as this not only complicates Pakistan and India’s bilateral equations but also makes other problematic discussions more difficult. It’s unlikely that Pakistan would allow India’s role in the future of Afghanistan after what Modi is doing in Jammu and Kashmir and with the country’s Muslim population.

When the COVID-19 crisis ends, the world needs to curtail Modi’s fascism as it stands to engulf the entire region and end millions of lives.

The writer is Coordinator, Research Division, The Nerve Center