Shining India’s Dimming Equanimity

By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
May 14, 2004


Many in the West are apprehensive at the stunning defeat of BJP led Hindu nationalist coalition in Indian election. Washington Post editorial expressed American concern: "The sharpest discontinuity is likely to come in relations with the United States and possibly with U.S. allies such as Israel. India has become a leading customer for Israeli weapons technology. With Mr. Vajpayee in office, the Bush administration hoped that India might be persuaded to send peacekeepers to Iraq -- a remarkable shift from the Cold War, when India proudly led the Non-Aligned Movement and seized every opportunity to tweak American leadership. The Congress Party-led coalition is expected to swing back to traditional anti-Americanism, sounding off against the United States at the United Nations and perhaps challenging U.S. influence in the Middle East by launching its own peace initiative. All of which would test the Bush administration's reserves of forbearance and tact."

Perhaps the Bush Administration and Israel’s Sharon led the right wing Likud government that have the remarkable ideological similarities with their own neo-conservative policies with Hindu fundamentalist ideology of BJP and its many other colored fangs surely feeling the sting for a BJP loss, but the fact of the matter is that the Congress party that has won this election and the surge of Leftist parties in many parts of India, are in favor of reestablishing a secular government that conforms with the Western concept of democracy where the minorities like the Muslims in Gujarat do not have to live in perpetual fear from atrocious deeds or barefaced discrimination, or being harassed in the name of "war on terror" enmeshed in “Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA)” like draconian measure mainly enacted for the suppression of restive Muslims, adivasis or anyone with strong opposing views. POTA is very much like American iniquitous Patriot Act. Put anyone, anywhere in 7 by 7 fusty and musty jail room. No lawyer, no rules of laws are applied. It is the imported “Gitmo-ized” limbo with added Indian spice.

Arundhati Roy describes POTA with her eloquent artistry:

“The genius of POTA is that it can be anything the government wants it to be. We live on the sufferance of those who govern us. In Tamil Nadu it has been used to stifle criticism of the state government. In Jharkhand 3,200 people, mostly poor adivasis accused of being Maoists have been named in FIR’s under POTA. In eastern UP the Act is used to clamp down on those who dare to protest about the alienation of their land and livelihood rights. In Gujarat and Mumbai it is used almost exclusively against Muslims. In Gujarat after the 2002 state-assisted pogrom in which an estimated 2000 muslims were killed and 150,000 driven from their homes, 287 people have been accused under POTA. Of these, 286 are Muslim and one is a Sikh! POTA allows confessions extracted in police custody to be admitted as judicial evidence. In effect, under the POTA regime, police torture tends to replace police investigation. It’s quicker, cheaper and ensures results. Talk of cutting back on public spending.”

Furthermore, on Kashmir, the “mental asylum of India”, she writes, “In Kashmir an estimated 80,000 people have been killed since 1989. Thousands have simply "disappeared". According to the Association of Parents of Disappeared People in Kashmir, more than 2,500 people were killed in 2003. In the last 18 months there have been 54 deaths in custody.”

Vajpayee had used his elderly poetic charm for wooing the oppressed minorities, and Advani also did all he could from not embarking on another rath yatra and subduing his usual anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan or anti-Bangladesh remarks, portraying a shining India, a software superpower, taking account of the accumulated riches of the urban middle to higher economic class, while neglecting the vast majority of one plus billion of Indian population who still live in villages, small towns, countryside. Many of them live in darkness, without electricity, without sanitary and potable water.

The sharp contrast between the have and have-nots is so much so shocking that if one visits a thriving Indian city, one could witness heap of exotic food, expensive drinks, the delicacy of caviars, the foamy olden wine and colorless champagne in sparklingly clean twinkling glasses, the beguiling dances of the riches, their endemic laughter, and their chit chats on spending extravaganza roaring in splendid palaces decorated with heavenly arts, while just a few meters away, beside the guarded walls, in front of the imported ferocious dogs, small famished children, women with babies in cradle, and emaciated men, looking on at the “shining India”, from afar.

The contrast between the rich and the poor is not a recent phenomenon. The defeated BJP government’s policies are not the sole cause either. From the day India attained its independence from the British colonial rule more than half a century in the past, wide majority of Indian population were deprived in systemic steps. Policies after policies were undertaken that were biased against the poor favoring the rich. “About four-fifths of healthcare spending in India is effectively private medicine. Spending on universities rather than schools sees the country produce 2 million graduates a year and leaves more than half the country's women illiterate. As Pavan K Varma, an Indian diplomat and one of the country's most perceptive writers, points out in his latest book, Being Indian: "Ironically it is precisely this social callousness that has contributed in great measure to India's emergence as a possible global power in technology."

And exactly this growing insensitivity and indifference existing in many privileged members of the middle and upper class Indians made it possible for BJP pursuing POTA and other torturous agendas, emboldening “politicization of historical scholarship -- its determination to impose textbooks peddling a narrow revisionist, Hindu-nationalist vision of India’s past on the country’s school and colleges, and its deriding of the work of the greatest Indian historians, such as Professor Romila Thapar”. Salman Rushdie writes, “The BJP has often seemed to want to inflame our perceptions of the past in order to inflame the passions of the present.”

Indian and many foreign economists outpoured their bedizened gala in highlighting India’s soaring GDP, pointing that Indian fat-wallet consumers are now having the soothing time of their life. Their stores are full of useful and one-time use merchandises, Internet café in every few hundred meters, adults can sweat profusely in modernized gymnasium, X-box and Nintendo have become the normal toys for the rich Indian kids. They said that there is so much food available everywhere that no one needs to remain hungry anymore.

But the reality tells another story altogether. There are reports of farmers committing suicide since they were drowning in insurmountable debts, and yes, there are starving kids and families, millions of them. Malnourishment is still normalcy for incalculable many while the BJP “Government allowed 63 million tones of grain to rot in its granaries. 12 million tones were exported and sold at a subsidized price the Indian government was not willing to offer the Indian poor.”

BJP has meted the similar fate of electoral defeat as Indira Gandhi had in 1977. “In the two and half years before the 1977 election, Gandhi's autocratic "emergency" regime, initiated after she was found guilty of electoral malpractice in 1975, had been guilty of many civil and human rights abuses, including forced sterilizations and vasectomies.” And Indira Gandhi and the Congress were defeated resoundingly in the subsequent national election.

BJP’s lack of reign on tarnished Narendra Modi’s communal forces in Gujarat, even providing muted supports in the failure of convicting the criminals and leaders who were in the forefront of atrocious attacks against the Gujarati Muslims two years ago were not erased either from the Indian voters’ mind nor from the international communities’ conscience. With the victory of Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party and the emergence of the Left as formidable force, justice, that’s been denied for too long, may get a better chance running its course.

It is interesting to see whether the Congress and alliance will fulfill the promises they made to the marginalized Indians, the dreams they had invoked in their political campaigns that the poor will be empowered, POTA will be recanted, and peace with the neighboring nations will be in their top agenda, eradicating the nefarious and unilateral river-linking project that could devastate the riparian Bangladesh, dismantling the apocalyptic nuclear weapons by means of bilateral agreements with the Pakistani government and settling the Kashmir conflict for establishing permanent peace in the region.

It would also be intriguing to observe what BJP and its Sangh Parivar, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena, RSS and thousands of shakhas scattered around in India would do next. The top leaderships of BJP, especially in their campaign for the election were positioning the party away from Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) antagonistic extremities. Now that they have lost the election, would Advani be back in another agitation debacle relating Babri Masjid and Ram Janmabhoomi? Vajpayee’s embracing defeat saying "Victory and defeat are a part of life, which are to be viewed with equanimity” is indeed graceful, but will this “equanimity”, the balanced view be held by Narendra Modi or agitators like him?

India in fact may shine someday when justice is served and “equanimity” is observed in democracy, in deeds not in words or software codes merely.


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Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) is a freelance writer. His email address is: sohelkarim@yahoo.com.

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