By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States last week was a gala occasion. America needs India, because the case that it can serve as a bulwark against China has never been more urgent. President Joe Biden went so far as to call it “one of the defining relationships of the twenty-first century.”
India’s population of 1.4 billion people is now bigger than China’s, and its economy is growing much faster. By 2029 India will overtake Japan and Germany to become the third largest economy in the world.
But in their hearts the Democrats, like the Liberals in Canada, don’t like Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and would prefer a return to the more liberal Congress Party. He has frightened minorities in India, and his governing style verges on authoritarian. Though some Democratic members of Congress urged Biden to raise human rights issues, he sidestepped the issue.
India has not regressed democratically by the criteria of electoral contestation and participation, but detractors claim that it has failed to ensure that the rights of Muslims and other minorities are respected.
In an interview with CNN, former U.S. president Barack Obama said that raising concerns about Indian democracy must also enter into diplomatic conversations. The critics worry that electoral democracy is coming into conflict with the broader notion of democracy, electoral as well as nonelectoral, that India’s 1950 Constitution enshrines.
There is no doubt that Modi is a practitioner of Hindutva, a form of Hindu Indian nationalism, and has little patience for the complaints of other faiths, in particular Islam. This is vexing to the 200 million Indians who are Muslims and have experienced increased violence.
In reaction to a BBC documentary about Modi and his relationship with the nation’s Muslims, the government attempted to block people from streaming it and then sent tax agents to raid BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai.
The documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” focused on Modi’s role during Hindu-Muslim riots that tore through the state of Gujarat in 2002, when he was its chief minister. The deaths of a group of Hindu pilgrims in a fire prompted a wave of mob violence in which about 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, and perhaps 150,000 uprooted.
The BJP views the centuries of Muslim rule by the Mughals, who governed over most of the subcontinent from the early 16th century until their gradual replacement by the British by the mid-19th century, as a form of anti-Hindu imperialism. And it wants to make that official doctrine.
For example, the recent deletion of a chapter on Mughal rulers from Indian school textbooks has ignited a debate on how history should be taught to schoolchildren.
The discussion was sparked by the publication of a new set of textbooks by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), an autonomous organization under the federal education ministry.
It has insisted that the changes, which were first announced last year as part of a syllabus “rationalisation” exercise, are necessary, but other educators argue that the omissions are worrying and will affect the students’ understanding of their country. They accuse the NCERT of erasing portions of history that Hindu right-wing groups have campaigned against for years.
The Hindu nationalist activists and historians view the Mughals as foreign invaders who plundered Indian lands and corrupted the country’s Hindu civilisation.
“Students are learning about our nation’s history in a deeply divided time. By removing what is uncomfortable or seen as inconvenient we are not encouraging them to think critically,” remarked Hilal Ahmed, who teaches at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi.
Supporters of the exercise argue that some degree of course correction in school history textbooks is necessary because these books gave too much importance to Muslim rulers.
“The Mughal rule was one of the bloodiest periods in Indian history,” contends Makhan Lal, Director of the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management. “Can’t we write more about Vijay Nagar empire or the Cholas or the Pandyas instead?” he suggested, referring to Hindu dynasties that ruled southern India.
He adds that Indian textbooks have long given the Mughals disproportionate prominence in comparison with Hindu kings. These so-called distortions, he asserts, have led to decades of shame around ancient Indian culture and values.
Even the recent inauguration of India’s new parliament building has proven contentious. Nine opposition parties did not participate, explaining that they wanted President Droupadi Murmu, who is head of state, to open the new building, instead of Modi.
They also denounced the decision to hold the event on May 28, the anniversary of the birth of Hindu nationalist ideologue V.D. Savarkar. In 1923 he wrote Hinditva: Who Is a Hindu? which sought to define Indian culture as a manifestation of Hindu values.
Opposition parties consider Savarkar a divisive figure. Modi was not deterred by the criticism. “This is not just a building. It is a reflection of the aspirations and dreams of 1.4 billion Indians. This is the temple of our democracy and it’s giving the message of India’s determination to the world.”
Modi’s next major opportunity to appear as a global statesman will come in September when India welcomes the summit of the Group of 20 leaders.
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