A month ago, those who screamed the loudest about the “rise of fascism in India” and democracy being under threat oddly fell silent. It was not out of any sudden realisation or grave defeat. Rather, their silence came riding on the white horse of victory.
After Congress swept the Karnataka state elections defeating the ruling BJP, the noise around elections and institutions being rigged fell into a temporary lull. It had beaten the BJP even in the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections just five months ago.
The democracy of one-and-a-half billion keeps jumping out of the ballot boxes to declare it is alive. In the face of violent, foreign-funded street protests and insurgencies, the Indian state quietly says that democracy is not just alive, it has the will to be extraordinarily restrained. Many of these protests — whether it was the countrywide stone-pelting and arson during the anti-CAA violence or the rampage in the capital in the name of farmers’ agitation or making Manipur burn — have been engineered precisely to provoke the Indian government into using brute force. It has not, so far, except for firing on armed militants in Manipur.
But it would be naive to say that Indian democracy is not under attack. It is under attack from wolves who cry wolf.
Take for instance dynastic political parties. The Congress’s ruling Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is particularly bitter and restless. It has never sat out of power for so long, electorally kicked out by the people not once but twice for wanton corruption, neglect of national security, and naked minoritism by disadvantaging India’s Hindu majority.
More importantly, the dynasty has never faced such low odds of returning to power at the Centre. In a Parliament of 543, the Congress’s tally has been 44 and 52 respectively in the 2014 and 2019 elections. In spite of some gains in the state polls, it is unlikely to cross the 100 mark in 2024 as well.
And while its scion Rahul Gandhi comes up with syrupy and misleading Bharat Jodo Yatra (Join India Tour) and the recent ‘Mohabbat ki Dukaan’ (Shop of Love) tour of the US, in the then Congress-ruled Maharashtra, sadhus were lynched in Palghar, editors were thrown in jail and physically tortured. In Congress-ruled Rajasthan, Hindus supporting BJP’s Nupur Sharma’s right to quote and criticise the Hadiths on air were beheaded on live cam.
In other dynasty-ruled states like Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC cadre murdered, raped and burnt the homes of rival supporters after winning the 2021 state elections. The violence against the state’s Opposition continues.
Rahul Gandhi has consistently spoken China’s language against his own nation, made unverified claims of the Chinese occupying new tracts of Indian soil, and appealed for foreign intervention to overthrow the Narendra Modi government during his overseas tours.
India’s ruling dynasties are among the biggest threats to democracy because they find it difficult to accept the people’s mandate and sit out of power. They are willing to ally with even anti-India forces to deny their opponents the right to govern. And sure enough, they find allies.
Today, Western deep states, Left-‘liberal’ media, and elite globalist networks like George Soros’s Open Society Foundation have launched a concerted campaign to malign India and stem its rise. Deep states in the Western world find India’s surge towards being a responsible, new superpower alarming. Indian agencies and politicians — including Congressman and then PM Manmohan Singh — had repeatedly warned about foreign powers using NGOs to scuttle development projects in India.
In this comes the role of the Church, especially the evangelists. The Congress-led UPA government in 2012 revoked the licences of three Church-based groups involved in stoking and funding the Kudankulam nuclear plant protests. The Narendra Modi government has cracked down on hundreds of such NGOs which are fronts of foreign powers and the Church.
One of India’s topmost enemies remains global jihad and Islamic fundamentalism. Besides working through now-banned outfits like the Popular Front of India (PFI) to ensnare, convert, radicalise, terrorise and oversee a demographic takeover, Islamists have adopted a strategy of working through influencers, using politically correct terms like ‘concern for humanity’ and ‘secularism’ and infiltrating movements like anti-CAA and anti-farm laws. They have adopted the wolf-in-sheep-skin approach after a strong backlash from rising Hindutva. The effort is to convert to their side unsuspecting, ‘secular’ and ‘liberal’ Indians without revealing the underlying jihadi agenda.
While the pragmatic Arab world has become much friendlier towards India, attacks are now launched from Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar and certain Western nations like Germany, the UK and the US. Islamic terror groups and agencies like Pakistan’s ISI have also been funding the Khalistani movement with mobs of radicalised Sikhs from places like Canada.
And then there is China. It has long-standing border conflicts with India. But now it resents India’s sharp economic and military rise and the unexpected pushback it has got in Doklam and along the Arunachal and Ladakh border.
Chinese discuss India’s new nationalism with anger and despondency on social platforms. It tries to sabotage India’s growing relations with the rest of the world.
During a number of recent disruptive campaigns, all these forces have come together to attack India in the guise of attacking the Narendra Modi government.
And India’s Opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi walk right into that trap in their greed for power. The Congress has still not divulged the contents of the memorandum of understanding that it had signed with the Chinese Communist Party in 2008.
All this puts Indian democracy in danger. Not from the so-called ‘fascist’ Modi government or the BJP and RSS, but from those who most vociferously say that India’s democracy is in danger.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed are personal.
Comments
0 comment