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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Guest Post from Schroedinger’s Cat: “Silent No More”

Guest Post from Schroedinger’s Cat: “Silent No More”

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Protest Sign - Orange is the New Black

It has been more than a month since the Citizenship Amendment Act or the CAA was passed by both the houses of the Indian parliament. The protests that started immediately following the passage have continued unabated for over a month despite more than thirty deaths due to heavy handed police tactics. Many more have been imprisoned on flimsy charges for excercising their right of free speech and assembly.

In state after state, in towns large and small and cities, on college campuses, at the court houses, at historic venues, the anti-CAA protesters are registering their protest against the body blow to India’s founding principles by singing the national anthem and reciting the preamble to the constitution.

After the passage of the bill in mid-December a feeling of helplessness enveloped me. I was afraid for India’s Muslims and other vulnerable groups. The rise of the BJP from a bit player on the political scene to its current status is built on the demonization of Muslims and anti-Muslim pogroms. Those fears were realized when reports of the brutal police actions in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led states, especially in Uttar Pradesh started trickling in.

The CAA takes aim at the heart of the Indian Constitution by singling out Muslims and treating them differently than adherents of other religions. This bill along with the BJP’s government’s plan to construct a National Register of Citizens would be a living nightmare not just for the 100 million plus Muslim population but also the poor and dispossessed. The NRC conducted in Assam gives us a window on how a similar exercise conducted on a national scale would turn out.

The BJP had tried to pass this law in an earlier session of the Parliament but it died because they didn’t have the numbers to pass it through the upper house, Rajya Sabha prior to the elections last May. But after gaining an imposing majority in the Lok Sabha in the last elections, this time around many smaller parties decide to go along with the BJP’s agenda in the Rajya Sabha and the bill passed both the Houses easily.

Modi and His Idol

(Left to Right : The Sangh role model, Mr. Modi in the Sangh uniform)


The agenda of the BJP is the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the political off shoot of the black hats and brown shorts (recently the shorts have been replaced by pants) wearing all male volunteer organization. The RSS is modeled after similar organizations in Europe following World War I. Their plan for India has always been clear, to rid India of its religious minorities, especially its Muslims or relegate them to an inferior or a secondary status and assert a muscular Hindu identity. Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism are considered Hindu by the Sangh in this classification while Islam and Christianity are not.

When the BJP was able to form a government on their own strength I knew that their long awaited ideological project would gather full steam. Taking away Kashmir’s status as a state of the Indian Union was just the first step. Their agenda is not popular except among their die-hard supporters. So Prime Minister Modi maintains an avuncular facade talking about schemes of keeping India clean, building toilets and bringing LPG cylinders to villages. But make no mistake, he is a Sangh pracharak. He has dedicated his life to the Sangh and presided over a vicious anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 as the Chief Minister (Executive Head and the Legislative leader) of Gujarat…

To read the rest (including more protest signs), click the link.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  6. 6.

    Darkrose

    Thanks SC. Watching this has been terrifying, but it’s good to see that there’s pushback. I really appreciate your posts and the context you provide.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    Whenever I start to feel fed up because Trump or McConnell said something ugly, it’s important to remember how difficult things are for vulnerable people in other places.

  10. 10.

    Citizen_X

    Boy, the actions of the BJP IT cell sounds familiar. [See the continuation of SC’s post at her site.] Is civilization really going to be drowned by hordes of angry, pathetic online trolls?

  11. 11.

    Mike in NC

    @ruemara:  Exactly 100 years ago, in the chaos that followed WW1, European fascism began to spread its wings. Spain, Italy, and of course Germany were ripe for plucking by demagogues. Now we can thank years of antiglobalization and anti-immigrant hysteria for what’s happening, along with changing demographics. Gonna be a rough ride.

  14. 14.

    Bill Arnold

    SC, question: how is Sikhism considered Hindu in that categorization of religions? It sounds like foreign vs domestic religions? (geographic place of origin.)

  15. 15.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Bill Arnold: Yes, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated on the subcontinent.Fun fact all three were were rebellions against Brahminical orthodoxy. But facts don’t matter much to the Sangh.

    While Christianity and Islam came from outside India. Parsis and Jews are too few in number to matter.

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    @ruemara:

    It’s crazy how suddenly we’re facing fascism outbreaks worldwide.

    It’s crazy, but not as surprising as you might think.  For all that fascists talk about nationalism, they’ve always been primarily concerned with fighting their ideological enemies on the left.  Despite their nationalism, they’ve been happy to cooperate with other fascists internationally.  Mussolini and Hitler cooperated, and they helped fascist parties throughout Europe overthrown their post-WWI democratic governments.  Today, Putin is more than happy to help his fellow fascists worldwide; for all his nationalism, he clearly sees liberal democracy as the true threat.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @ruemara: Yeah. Between this, what we have here, resurgent far-right wing parties all across Europe, etc., it feels like we’re sliding backwards in a big way.

    And just in time for everyone to do nothing about climate change.

    Sigh. I wish I had something useful to suggest.

  18. 18.

    Felanius Kootea

    Does the fact that there have been monthlong demonstrations mean that BJP could lose its majority in parliament?  How difficult would it be to reverse the citizenship amendment act?

    By the way, I totally believe that if Trump wins reelection, naturalized US citizens will be slowly, steadily stripped of their rights, depending on their country of origin.  So it may be religion in the case of the CAA but that kind of law provides a horrible model going forward for others outside the world’s largest democracy (India).

  19. 19.

    Mathguy

    I have a colleague from India that sings Modi’s praises. I want to feed him a giant helping of STFU, but picking that fight would not help anyone-we have only 14 people in the department, and I cannot get rid of him since he has tenure. One day, though, I may not be able to put up any longer.

  20. 20.

    Patricia Kayden

    Great article. Looks like rightwing extremists are taking over everywhere. I assume that Modi loves Trump since they both share an anti-Muslim agenda.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    It would be a nice touch if you spelled her name as she does, without an e. Just sayin’.

    /curmudgeon

  26. 26.

    Hortense

    So ironic that Modi spent half a billion dollars on a monstrous statue of Patel who said in 1949, “Hindu Raj is a mad idea, it will kill the soul of India.”

    Thanks for this post. What’s going on now in India is reminiscent of what happened in Sri Lanka with the efforts of the Sinhalese to turn the Tamils into second class citizens. That did not end well and this isn’t going to either.

  27. 27.

    Barbara

    I know that many attribute resurgent European fascism with demographic changes that have caused women to leave rural areas and men to lose traditional factory jobs.  Basically, the kind of despair that we seen Appalachia or certain parts of the Rust Belt with an added bonus of difficulty finding a mate.  I can’t believe that is what is motivating BJP and Modi, which seems to be even more pernicious.  Thank you for keeping us informed.

  29. 29.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Hortense: One thing that I didn’t cover in this post was how all the BJP heroes are borrowed. Sangh collaborated with the British they were absent during the freedom struggle. So they have to borrow their freedom fighters

    Patel from the Indian National Congress, Bhagat Singh who was a communist/socialist and Bose who was a socialist. Even the Hindutva icon Savarkar was not a Sangh member but a member of the Hindu Mahasabha.

  30. 30.

    Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)

    Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism are considered Hindu by the Sangh in this classification while Islam and Christianity are not.

    Yep, and I bet a lot of the Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists are looking the other way here.  I wonder whether they understand what lies in wait for them a little farther down the road.  And after them, they’re going to begin narrowing down which Hindu sects are really, truly Hindu.  This shit never ends well unless somebody steps in and stops it before it gets out of hand.

  31. 31.

    Citizen_X

    @dmsilev: And just in time for everyone to do nothing about climate change.

    Not entirely a coincidence. Oil and gas form a major part of Russia’s economy, and of course Saudi’s, and that of many GOP bankrollers.

     

    So we’re losing our freedoms, and destroying climate stability, for the short-term survival of corrupt petrostates.

  32. 32.

    Ohio Mom

    Thanks for this. What’s happening in India was one of those news stories I regretted not paying attention to in the beginning — by the time I realized  this was important, I was very behind. Now I feel caught up.

  35. 35.

    schrodingers_cat

    @cain: BJP wants to bring uniformity to Hindu rituals, I read a report this morning. Regional linguistic identities will reassert themselves. We saw that in Maharashtra and Jharkhand in the last two months.

  39. 39.

    Duane

    @Mike in NC:  it’s one thing to read about the right-wing movement as history. Until recently I thought they were history. Never expected to see it happening again. Obviously, I’ve been naive, but not any more.

  41. 41.

    opiejeanne

    Thank you for explaining it to us. I’ve been trying to keep up with your posts here and on Twitter, but this is a much clearer picture of Modi and his party’s aims, and it’s shocking.

    I have been watching fascism seeping in here and abroad, since 2014 when my niece gave us a heads up to watch for it in northern Italy, and then we ran smack into it in the train station in Milano and then next day in Venice, and even then I didn’t recognize it as such. They behaved like the Tea Party, protesters who were angry that the recent election hadn’t gone the way they wanted, so they wanted their cities to secede.  Blah blah blah. The locals were too ashamed to translate accurately for us. Same trip met a Frenchman at a flea market in Paris who when he found out I was American wanted to tell me of his great love of Bill O’Reilly.

    India surprised me.

  42. 42.

    Thadeu

    @Mathguy:

     

    I have a colleague from India that sings Modi’s praises. I want to feed him a giant helping of STFU,

    I have one too.. I listened patiently, and then I told him that its great that many countries are now doing this. I then confided (trolled) that I support Trumps goal to make this a white Christian country, which was similar, and the rest of the people can never be “American” ..

    But the Constitution says .. was his response. Unbelievable. Guy with a post-graduate CS degree could not comprehend the logic.

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