- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 13:27

The real Modi

IN anticipation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Trinidad and Tobago, I wondered how we could approach that moment with less adulation, drawing on secular and leftist perspectives, rather than religious ones. For example, I’ve been reading writer and activist Arundhati Roy and Vijay Prashad’s critiques of PM Modi’s form of religious nationalism and its impact on minorities and journalists in India. You can look up their writings yourself and understand their solidarities with small farmers, Kashmiris, Dalits, university students, and others as underpinning their writing about use of state power against the press and opposition, and Modi’s history of neoliberal economic policies and their benefits for India’s biggest corporate monopolies and party backers, such as the Adani and Ambani groups. There have been major popular mobilisations against his policies which include anti-union legislation, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and law reforms that would have left farmers vulnerable to the free market and big companies, threatening their livelihoods. Suicide of farmers, because of debt, shrinking incomes and what are considered failed promises, increased under Modi’s leadership. His party, the Bharatiya Janatan Party (BJP), unlike the post-independence politics of the Indian Congress Party, positions India as a Hindu rather than ethnically and religiously mixed nation, with implications particularly for Muslims, Dalits, and Christians. As I write this, Al Jazeera is reporting on Bengali-speaking Muslims from Assam who are declared “illegal Bangladeshis,” detained, and then taken to the border with Bangladesh – where they are refused entry having never been Bangladeshi – and left in a no-man’s land of statelessness. Such state approaches to denying citizenship of Muslims are considered to have worsened since 2016 when the BJP came to power for the first time in Assam (and Modi became PM in 2014), and to be part of wider national shifts which were widely and repeatedly protested by civil society such as the citizenship amendment act. This act explicitly made religion a basis for Indian citizenship. Under this law, which was first proposed in 2019 but enacted in 2024, Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians who entered India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh before December 2014 are fast-tracked to Indian nationality. Muslims, including persecuted groups such as Rohingya Muslims and Hazara Shias are not eligible. The act was broadly considered to be discriminatory and to undermine secularism and equality in India. Activists’ attention to the state of Muslims in India has a long history, but in contemporary Modi politics dates back to the 2002 Gujarat Massacre which targeted Muslims and which occurred while he was then chief minister of the state. The violence was triggered by the death of Hindu pilgrims in a train fire which was initially blamed on Muslims. Modi himself was cleared by a special investigative team but high-ranking members of the BJP were involved, and some convicted, and the massacre remains a tar on his political rise. However, even further back, a Hindutva ideology which establishes Hinduism as the supreme state religion, and India as a theocracy, is framed as a response to Mughal rule over India. The destruction of the Babri Masjid, built in 1528, and its replacement by the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya in 2024 is an example of this and considered one of Modi’s most symbolic triumphs – amalgamating religion, state and Modi’s ascendance. On a different front, Al Jazeera has also reported on corporate India’s military relationship with Israel and, more importantly, its role in supplying drones, surveillance systems, rockets, explosives, and weapons’ parts to Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. In January, the New Internationalist reported that India accounts for 37 per cent of Israel’s total arms exports, and Israeli military technology is deployed in Kashmir. In 2017, Modi was the first Indian PM to visit Israel, signalling that previous solidarities with Palestine were no longer guaranteed and entrenching India’s support for US foreign policy. Modi has repeatedly referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his “friend” and the Indian government has refused to support an arms embargo on Israel. When Modi visits TT, Palestinians’ torment will be far from over. This analysis will not be popular with many looking forward to the Indian PM’s visit as a sign of long historical, economic, and cultural ties with India. In diasporic communities such as ours, symbols of India are typically considered sacred and the politician Modi will be accorded such reverence. However, I would suggest reading beyond spin and nostalgia so that we understand our deepest connections should always be informed by progressive social movements in India. Diary of a mothering worker Entry 558 motheringworker@gmail.com The post The real Modi appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.