A new India is emerging, and it is a country ruled by fear – By Amit Chaudhuri
Four months have passed since Narendra Modi and the BJP came back to power in India, and more seems to have happened there than in the last 40 years. The sense of severance that many experience today, of being divorced from the workings of the nation, exceeds even the helplessness felt during the suspension of civil liberties in the emergency of 1975 to 1977 and the political traumas that followed.
This is because – without the matter being explicitly articulated – citizen has been set against citizen: not just Muslim against Hindu or, say, Kashmiris against the rest of India, but those who subscribe to the BJP’s new conception of the nation against those who do not, leaving one without trust in the other.
How to judge these past four months? A series of disruptions has dwarfed the now distant seeming upset of Modi’s economically disastrous demonetisation programme of 2016. In August there was the abrogation of article 370 of the Indian constitution, which granted “special status” to Kashmir in acknowledgment of its contested history. This was followed immediately by the “house arrest” of elected Kashmiri leaders and the imprisonment of thousands of others.…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/08/narendra-modi-bjp-india
SEE ALSO:
- Subverting the right to life – By Venkitesh Ramakrishnan (Oct 25, 2019, Frontline)
https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article29617528.ece - Can India bear the burden of Modi-ism anymore? – By Dr Rahul Kumar (Sep 29, 2019, Countercurrents)
https://countercurrents.org/2019/09/can-india-bear-the-burden-of-modi-ism-anymore - Attempts are being made to dismantle the pluralistic ideas of India that are a legacy of Gandhi and Tagore – By Pranab Bardhan (Oct 12, 2019, Indian Express)
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/un-civic-nationalism-identity-politics-society-development-hindu-rashtra-ambedkar-6064961/ - Is The Country Headed Towards A One Party System? – By Sandeep Pandey (Oct 10, 2019, Countercurrents)
https://countercurrents.org/2019/10/is-the-country-headed-towards-a-one-party-system
