Times are bad for Muslims: India is not Pakistan, or is it?

I’ve just returned from India after an extended stay — my longest since Narendra Modi came to power — and I was shocked to see how deeply divided it has become in the past three years. I had heard stories, but what I found was a country coming apart at the seams.

It was like watching, in slow motion, a painstakingly built edifice being razed to the ground brick by brick — and replaced by a crude vision of a “new” architecture. It’s a depressing thought that on the 70th anniversary of India’s independence, which should have been a moment of celebration, the core constitutional values of the Republic are under such serious threat. In the words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz:

“Yeh woh sehar to nahin jiski aarzoo lekar chale the yaar ke mil jayegi kahin na kahin”.

(This is not the dawn we were looking forward to).

The worst victims of Modi’s vision of a “new” India are minorities, particularly Muslims. It is not a good time to be a Muslim in India, to put it mildly. And there couldn’t be a more stark evidence of their deep sense of insecurity than the fact that many have now taken to hiding their Muslim identity, and assumed Hindu names.

One Hindu friend told me that he came across at least three Muslims — a plumber, a carpenter and a nurse — in his small East Delhi neighbourhood who had changed their names. The reason they gave was that they believed a non-Muslim name would improve their chances of finding work. I heard similar stories from others.

I’m willing to concede that Muslim fears may be exaggerated but the very fact that such fears exist at all 70 years after Partition and minorities feel so insecure should be a matter not only of concern but shame for any self-respecting government and society. It shows how toxic the climate has become on Modi’s watch. I don’t recall another time in independent India when Muslims felt so threatened as they do today. I’m aware they have a reputation for victimhood, something I myself have been very critical about. But this time it’s different; the threat feels real even to liberal Muslims.

The truth is that the idea of a Hindu state is no longer a matter of theoretical debate or a hobby-horse of fringe elements. For minorities, it already feels like living in an India of Hindu supremacists. Cow vigilantism, “love-jihad”, renaming of streets and towns bearing Muslim names or associated with Muslims, laying claims to historical monuments built by Muslim rulers, forcing them to chant vande matram, and attacks on churches--these are part of a carefully thought out choreography to beat minorities into submission.

The BJP’s new election strategy of unashamed Hindu mobilisation — to make Muslims redundant to the electoral process — as we witnessed in the recent UP assembly elections — is one more step towards marginalising them. And telling them where they belong. The message to Muslims is: if you’re not happy you can leave. The argument is that this country belongs to Hindus and those who wish to continue to live here must abide by the Hindu idea of India.

India’s Zia-ul-Haque moment

I remember the day of Modi’s famous triumph in May 2014, a Pakistani friend called me to warn that this was India’s “Zia moment”.

“Now you guys will get a taste of Hindu India,’’ he said.

I breezily told him that he needn’t worry; secular opinion in India was too strong to allow anything silly to happen. India was not Pakistan, I noted rather patronisingly. Despite my distaste for Modi’s brand of politics, I genuinely believed that liberal fears about him were exaggerated. I was convinced as I told a seminar in London that India’s inherent diversity was a guarantee against its “Zia-fication”. I reckoned there were millions of liberal Hindus who would not countenance any attempt to tamper with India’s secular fabric. Three years on, I must admit I was wrong. Indian liberalism has failed to challenge the remorseless onslaught of RSS-style Hindu “nationalism”.

I found a country seething with intolerance, xenophobia, and cultural prejudice. The public discourse is disproportionately dominated by the Sangh Parivar and its apologists with nobody to contest it. They have been allowed to monopolise TV channels and op-ed pages while independent voices struggle to find space.

The fear of falling foul of an authoritarian and vindictive regime has prompted even large swathes of the liberal media to play it safe. Media houses are under constant pressure to be “on message”, or risk punishment. The acquisition of CNN-18 Network by a regime-friendly industrialist is too well known to be recounted. We have seen journalists sacked or “disciplined” for failing to toe the line; and then there was the bizarre case of a TV channel being “banned” for a day for running a story which the government found embarrassing.

Fascist overtones

Meanwhile, the circle of liberal voices is rapidly shrinking; secularism (derided as “sickularism” by Modi’s supporters) has become a term of abuse; minority rights equal appeasement; and the once lunatic Hindutva fringe has gone mainstream. To put it in perspective, such tendencies are not entirely new, but under Modi it has become “cool” to flaunt them. It is the era of tub-thumping nationalism, equating India with Hindus; and branding anyone who doesn’t agree as a fifth columnist. The “nationalism” test has assumed also fascist overtones reminiscent of the 1930s Germany.

But I wish to make a larger point: and it is to disabuse liberals of their smug belief that the Modi phenomenon is simply another blip in the electoral cycle, and sooner or later the good old era of pluralism will come back. It is not. It represents a profound shift in the nation’s cultural mood driven by a relentless campaign to undermine the post-independence liberal consensus around the idea of an inclusive and tolerant India. And this shift is here to stay irrespective of whether BJP remains in power or not. The process of cultural polarisation under Modi has gone too far and seeped far too deep into mainstream society for it to be reined back in. Henceforth, the history of independent India will be studied in terms of “pre-Modi” and “post-Modi” India. The term “Modivian consensus”, a play on the famous “Nehruvian consensus”, has already crept into the political discourse.

Where is the civil society movement?

Yet, it’s surprising that there is no sign of any liberal civil society movement taking shape. People are being publicly lynched because they belong to the “wrong” religion while writers, film-makers, artists and academics are being routinely targeted for holding the “wrong” views. But is anyone protesting? I didn’t see any organised protest by liberals beyond a few critical articles and cosy chats on social media. Contrast this with the strong liberal reaction to the right-wing demagogues in America and Europe. Even Pakistan has a more robust civil society movement than India.

This brings me back to my point about liberal complacency and the assumption that it is all a passing phase. No, it’s not. India has changed; and this is going to be the new normal. Whether protests and resistance would have any effect is a matter of conjecture but not doing anything could seem like complicity.

The author is a London-based writer and commentator