WHAT DOES THIS MANDATE MEAN? In a democracy citizens have to accept the verdict of the people. But when a new government takes over there are legitimate concerns. Writing in the Guardian on Friday, Indian author and writer Pankaj Mishra argues that with Modi at the helm, India is facing it’s most sinister period since independence. Providing context for both Modis rise within the BJP and the rightwing fanaticism of the party now set to control India, Mishra writes: Modi is a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary Hindu nationalist organisation inspired by the fascist movements of Europe, whose founders belief that Nazi Germany had manifested race pride at its highest by purging the Jews is by no means unexceptional among the votaries of Hindutva, or Hinduness. In 1948, a former member of the RSS murdered Gandhi for being too soft on Muslims. The outfit, traditionally dominated by upper-caste Hindus, has led many vicious assaults on minorities. A notorious executioner of dozens of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 crowed that he had slashed open with his sword the womb of a heavily pregnant woman and extracted her foetus. Modi himself described the relief camps housing tens of thousands of displaced Muslims as child-breeding centres. Such rhetoric has helped Modi sweep one election after another in Gujarat. A senior American diplomat described him, in cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, as an insular, distrustful person who reigns by fear and intimidation; his neo-Hindu devotees on Facebook and Twitter continue to render the air mephitic with hate and malice, populating the paranoid world of both have-nots and haves with fresh enemies – terrorists, jihadis, Pakistani agents, pseudo-secularists, sickulars, socialists and commies. Modi exhorts his largely young supporters – more than two-thirds of Indias population is under the age of 35 – to join a revolution that will destroy the corrupt old political order and uproot its moral and ideological foundations while buttressing the essential framework, the market economy, of a glorious New India. In an apparently ungovernable country, where many revere the author of Mein Kampf for his tremendous will to power and organisation, he has shrewdly deployed the idioms of management, national security and civilisational glory. His record as chief minister is predominantly distinguished by the transfer – through privatisation or outright gifts – of national resources to the countrys biggest corporations. His closest allies – Indias biggest businessmen – have accordingly enlisted their mainstream media outlets into the cult of Modi as decisive administrator; dissenting journalists have been removed or silenced
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 08:39:03 +0000
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