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Showing posts with label pogrom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pogrom. Show all posts
Thursday, 8 February 2024
Monday, 18 February 2013
Narendra Modi - The man who would rule India
Ramachandra Guha in The Hindu
Like Indira Gandhi once did, Narendra Modi seeks to make his
party,his government, his administration and his country into an
extension of his personality.
A journalist who recently interviewed Narendra Modi reported their
conversation as follows: “Gujarat, he told me, merely has a seafront. It
has no raw materials — no iron ore for steel, no coal for power and no
diamond mines. Yet it has made huge strides in these fields. Imagine, he
added, if we had the natural resources of an Assam, a Jharkhand and a
West Bengal: I would have changed the face of India.”(see The Telegraph, January 18, 2013).
Tall claims
This conversation (and that claim) underlines much of what Narendra Modi
has sought to do these past five years — remake himself as a man who
gets things done, a man who gets the economy moving. With Mr. Modi in
power in New Delhi, says or suggests Mr. Modi, India will be placed
smoothly on the 8 per cent to 10 per cent growth trajectory, bureaucrats
will clear files overnight, there will be no administrative and
political corruption, poverty levels will sink rapidly towards zero and —
lest we forget — trains and aeroplanes shall run on time. These claims
are taken at face value by his admirers, who include sundry CEOs,
owner-capitalists, western ambassadors and —lest we forget — columnists
in the pink papers, the white papers, and (above all) cyber-space.
Mr. Modi’s detractors — who too are very numerous, and very vocal — seek
to puncture these claims in two different ways. The unreconstructed
Nehruvians and Congress apologists (not always the same thing) say he
will forever be marked by the pogrom against Muslims in 2002, which was
enabled and orchestrated by the State government. Even if his personal
culpability remains unproven, the fact that as the head of the
administration he bears ultimate responsibility for the pogrom, and the
further fact that he has shown no remorse whatsoever, marks Mr. Modi out
as unfit to lead the country.
The secularist case against Mr. Modi always had one flaw — namely, that
what happened in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded in all fundamental
respects by what happened in Delhi in 1984. Successive Congress
governments have done nothing to bring justice to the survivors, while
retaining in powerful positions (as Cabinet Ministers even) Congress MPs
manifestly involved in those riots.
With every passing year, the charge that Mr. Modi is communal has lost
some intensity — because with every passing year it is one more year
that the Sikhs of Delhi and other North Indian cities have been denied
justice. (They have now waited 28 years, the Muslims of Gujarat a mere
11.) More recently, the burden of the criticism against Mr. Modi has
shifted — on to his own terrain of economic development. It has been
shown that the development model of Gujarat is uneven, with some
districts (in the south, especially) doing very well, but the dryer
parts of the State (inland Saurashtra for example) languishing.
Environmental degradation is rising, and educational standards are
falling, with malnutrition among children abnormally high for a State at
this level of GDP per capita.
As a sociologist who treats the aggregate data of economists with
scepticism, I myself do not believe that Gujarat is the best developed
State in the country. Shortly after Mr. Modi was sworn in for his third
full term, I travelled through Saurashtra, whose polluted and arid lands
spoke of a hard grind for survival. In the towns, water, sewage, road
and transport facilities were in a pathetic state; in the countryside,
the scarcity of natural resources was apparent, as pastoralists walked
miles and miles in search of stubble for their goats. Both hard numbers
and on-the-ground soundings suggest that in terms of social and economic
development, Gujarat is better than average, but not among the best. In
a lifetime of travel through the States of the Union, my sense is that
Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and (despite the corruption) Tamil Nadu are the
three States which provide a dignified living to a decent percentage of
their population.
To be sure, Mr. Modi is not solely responsible for the unbalanced
development. Previous Chief Ministers did not do enough to nurture good
schools and hospitals, or enough to prevent the Patels of southern
Gujarat from monopolising public resources. Besides, Mr. Modi does have
some clear, identifiable achievements — among them a largely
corruption-free government, an active search for new investment into
Gujarat, some impressive infrastructural projects, and a brave attempt
to do away with power subsidies for rich farmers.
Both the secularist case and the welfarist case against Mr. Modi have
some merit — as well as some drawbacks. In my view, the real reason that
Narendra Modi is unfit to be Prime Minister of India is that he is
instinctively and aggressively authoritarian. Consider that line quoted
in my first paragraph: “I would have changed the face of India.” Not
‘we,’ but ‘I’. In Mr. Modi’s Gujarat, there are no collaborators, no
co-workers. He has a chappan inch chaati — a 56-inch chest
— as he loudly boasts, and therefore all other men (if not women) in
Gujarat must bow down to his power and his authority.
Mr. Modi’s desire to dominate is manifest in his manner of speaking.
Social scientists don’t tend to analyse auditory affect, but you have
only to listen to the Gujarat Chief Minister for 15 minutes to know that
this is a man who will push aside anyone who comes in his way. The
intent of his voice is to force his audience into following him on
account of fearing him.
The proclamation of his physical masculinity is not the sole example of
Mr. Modi’s authoritarianism. Like all political bullies he despises free
speech and artistic creativity — thus he has banned books and films he
thinks Gujaratis should not read or watch (characteristically, without
reading or viewing these books and films himself). He has harassed
independent-minded writers, intellectuals and artists (leading to the
veritable destruction of India’s greatest school of art, in Vadodara).
His refusal to the spontaneous offer of a skull cap during his so-called
‘Sadbhavana Yatra,’ while read as an example of his congenital
communalism, could also be seen as illustrating his congenital
arrogance.
The most revealing public display of Mr. Modi’s character, however, may
have been a yoga camp he once held for the IAS officers of his State.
They all lined up in front of him — DMs, DCs, Secretaries,
Under-Secretaries, of various sizes, shapes, ages, and genders — and
followed the exercise routine he had laid down for them. Utthak-baithak, utthak-baithak, 10 or perhaps 20 times, before a diverting Surya Namaskar was thrown in by the Master.
I do not know whether that yoga camp was held again (it was supposed to
be an annual show), and do not know either how Mr. Modi appears to these
IAS officers when they confront him one-on-one. But that the event was
held, and that the Chief Minister’s office sought proudly to broadcast
it to the world, tells us rather more than we would rather wish to know
about this man who wishes to rule India.
To be sure, Mr. Modi is not the only authoritarian around in Indian
politics. Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalithaa, and Mayawati (when she is
Chief Minister) also run their States in a somewhat overbearing manner.
Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar are intolerant of criticism too.
However, the authoritarianism of these other State leaders is erratic
and capricious, not focused or dogmatic. This, and the further fact that
Mr. Modi has made his national ambitions far more explicit, makes them
lesser devils when it comes to the future of our country.
Resemblance to Indira Gandhi
Neither Mr. Modi’s admirers nor his critics may like this, but the truth
is that of all Indian politicians past and present, the person Gujarat
Chief Minister most resembles is Indira Gandhi of the period 1971-77.
Like Mrs. Gandhi once did, Mr. Modi seeks to make his party, his
government, his administration and his country an extension of his
personality. The political practice of both demonstrates the
psychological truth that inside every political authoritarian lies a
desperately paranoid human being. Mr. Modi talks, in a frenetic and
fearful way, of ‘Rome Raj’ and ‘Mian Musharraf’ (lately modified to
‘Mian Ahmed Patel’); Mrs Gandhi spoke in likewise shrill tones of the
‘foreign hand’ and of ‘my enemies.’
There is something of Indira Gandhi in Narendra Modi, and perhaps just a
touch of Sanjay Gandhi too — as in the brash, bullying, hyper-masculine
style, the suspicion (and occasional targeting) of Muslims. Either way,
Mr. Modi is conspicuously unfitted to be the reconciling,
accommodating, plural, democratic Prime Minister that India needs and
deserves. He loves power far too much. On the other hand, his presumed
rival, Rahul Gandhi, shirks responsibility entirely (as in his
reluctance, even now, to assume a ministerial position). Indian
democracy must, and shall in time, see off both.
Sunday, 25 November 2012
Declassify report on the 1948 Hyderabad massacre
The Gujarat election will revive charges that Narendra Modi killed a thousand Muslims in the 2002 Gujarat riots, with the BJP accusing Rajiv Gandhi of killing 3000 Sikhs in the 1984 Delhi riots. To get a sense of perspective, i did some research on communal riots in past decades. I was astounded to find that the greatest communal slaughter occurred under neither Modi nor Rajiv but Nehru. His takeover of Hyderabad in 1948 caused maybe 50,000-200,000 deaths. The Sunderlal report on this massacre has been kept an official secret for over 60 years. While other princes acceded to either India or Pakistan in 1947, the Nizam of Hyderabad aimed to remain independent. This was complicated by a Marxist uprising. The Nizam's Islamic militia, the Razakars, killed and raped many Hindus. This incensed Sardar Patel and Nehru, who ordered the Army into Hyderabad. The Army's swift victory led to revenge killings and rapes by Hindus on an unprecedented scale.
Civil rights activist AG Noorani has cited Prof Cantwell Smith, a critic of Jinnah, in The Middle Eastern Journal, 1950. "The only careful report on what happened in this period was made a few months later by investigators - including a Congress Muslim and a sympathetic and admired Hindu (Professor Sunderlal)- commissioned by the Indian government. The report was submitted but has not been published; presumably it makes unpleasant reading. It is widely held that the figure mentioned therein for the number of Muslims massacred is 50,000. Other estimates by responsible observers run as high as 200,000." A lower but still horrific estimate comes from UCLA Professor Perry Anderson. "When the Indian Army took over Hyderabad, massive Hindu pogroms against the Muslim population broke out, aided and abetted by its regulars. On learning something of them, the figurehead Muslim Congressman in Delhi, Maulana Azad, then minister of education, prevailed on Nehru to let a team investigate. It reported that at a conservative estimate between 27,000 and 40,000 Muslims had been slaughtered in the space of a few weeks after the Indian takeover. This was the largest single massacre in the history of the Indian Union, dwarfing the killings by the Pathan raiders en route to Srinagar which India has ever since used as the casus belli for its annexation of Kashmir.
"Nehru, on proclaiming Indian victory in Hyderabad, had announced that 'not a single communal incident' marred the triumph. What action did he take on receiving the report? He suppressed it, and at Patel's urging cancelled the appointment of one of its authors as ambassador in the Middle East. No word about the pogroms, in which his own troops had taken eager part, could be allowed to leak out. Twenty years later, when news of the report finally surfaced, his daughter banned the publication of the document as injurious to national interests."
Perry Andersen is accused by some of anti-Indian bias. This cannot be said of author William Dalrymple. In The Age of Kali, Dalrymple says the Sunderlal report has been leaked and published abroad, and "estimates that as many as 200,000 Hyderabadi Muslims were slaughtered."
Our textbooks and TV programmes show Sardar Patel and Nehru as demi-gods who created a unified India. The truth is more sordid. You will not find any mention of the Hyderabad massacre in our standard history books (just as Pakistani textbooks have deleted reference to the East Pakistan massacre of 1971). The air-brushing of Patel and Nehru is complete. My friends ask, why rake up the 1948 horrors now? You sound like an apologist for Modi's killings of 2002.
I can only say that the killings of 1948 cannot possibly justify the killings of 2002, or 1984, or any others. Modi has blood on his hands, whether or not he was directly culpable. But why pretend that others had spotlessly clean hands? There is a macabre logic in the praises Modi has recently heaped on Patel: the two were not entirely dissimilar. Nations need to acknowledge their past errors in order to avoid them in the future. Germany acknowledged the horrors of fascism and militarism, and this helped it build a new anti-war society focused on human rights.
Something is terribly wrong when Indian citizens are kept in dark about the biggest pogrom since Independence, even after foreign sources have lifted the lid. India's jihadi press is fully aware of the 1948 massacre, and projects its censorship as evidence of Hindu oppression . This is not how a liberal democracy should function. India cannot become a truly unified nation on the basis of suppressed reports and sanitized textbooks. The Sunderlal report must be made public.
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