ISLAMABAD – In the Washington Post is an article by an Indian journalist,who said that “The Kashmir crisis isn’t about territory. It’s about a Hinduvictory over Islam,” and that Prime Minister Modi “used the Muslim-majoritystate as a demonstration of Hindu power.”
Journalist and author Kapil Komireddi described the Indian crackdown indetail and wrote: Modi’s sudden takeover in Kashmir is the fulfillment of along ideological yearning to make a predominantly Muslim populationsurrender to his vision of a homogeneous Hindu nation. It is also a way ofconveying to the rest of India — a union of dizzyingly diverse states —that no one is exempt from the Hindu-power paradise he wants to build onthe subcontinent. Kashmir is both a warning and a template: Any state thatdeviates from this vision can be brought under Delhi’s thumb in the name of“unity.”
He writes: Those who believe that such a day will never come — that India’sdemocratic institutions and minority protections will assert themselves —also never thought that someone like Modi would one day lead the country.Modi once seemed destined to disappear into history as a fanatical curio.As the newly appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he presided over theworst communal bloodletting in India’s recent history in 2002, when 1,000Muslims, by a conservative estimate, were slaughtered by sword-wieldingHindus in his state over several weeks. Some accused Modi of abetting themobs; others said he turned a blind eye to them.”
“The carnage made Modi a pariah. Liberal Indians likened him to Hitler, theUnited States denied him a visa, and Britain and the European Unionboycotted him,” he said.
“But Modi expanded and solidified his appeal among India’s Hindus, areligious majority whose resentment at being invaded and ruled forcenturies by Muslims had been papered over for decades with platitudes fromIndia’s secular elites.”
How Modi Ascended The Power Ladder, Describes Indian Journalist
He used three powerful tools to propel his ascent. The first was sadism,the hint that, under him, Hindu radicals could indulge a dormant bloodlust:After the killing of a Muslim man in police custody, for instance, Modimused at a 2007 rally, “If AK-57 [sic] rifles are found at the residence ofa person … should I not kill them?” (The crowd roared back: “Kill them!Kill them!”)
The second was schadenfreude, an exultation in the torment of defencelessminorities: At an earlier rally in 2002, Modi had ruminated on the fate ofthe Muslims displaced by the recent Gujarat riots, asking: “What should wedo? Run relief camps for them? Do we want to open baby-producing centers?”His audience erupted with laughter.
“We have to teach a lesson to those who are increasing population at analarming rate,” he said.
The final affect was self-pity, a license for Hindus to regard themselvesas the real victims.
He told Parliament that India had been a slave nation for more than 1,000years and claimed that there were forces out to kill him.
“Since his 2014 election to the premiership, bigotry has been ennobled as ahealthy form of self-assertion. Lynchings of Muslims — breathlesslydemonized as jihadists devoted to seducing and converting Hindu women — byaggrieved Hindu mobs have become such a common sport that dozens of videosof grisly murders circulate on WhatsApp groups run by Hindu nationalists.
Last summer, a minister in Modi’s cabinet garlanded eight men who had beenconvicted of lynching a Muslim man.
In this universe, Kashmir could never remain autonomous, a place imperviousto the desires of a majority happy to see its will done by violence. Modi’sreelection this year emboldened the supporters whose rage he skillfullyincited. The prime minister rarely acknowledges the murders of minorities.
Rarer still are instances when he condemns them. Not once, in fact, has hememorialized, by name, Muslims slain by Hindu fundamentalists.
This is not an accident. It is a small step from letting Hindu vigilantessubjugate their Muslim neighbours to subjugating them himself, using thepower of the state, as he has now done in Kashmir.
“Modi’s political awakening occurred in the training camps of the RashtriyaSwayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing paramilitary group that incubated themodern politics of Hindu nationalism. The RSS introduces young “volunteers”to the vast pantheon of supposed villains who plundered and emasculatedIndia over the ages — the medieval Islamic invaders, the accommodationistslike Mohandas Gandhi and the Congress party he led, the Muslim nationalistswho mutilated India to create Pakistan and sought to abscond with Kashmir —and exhorts them to shed their Hindu impotence.
The effect on Modi’s young mind was so powerful that he came to regard theRSS as his family, abandoned his wife and mother, and wandered throughIndia as a catechist of the Hindu nationalist cause.
“By seizing Kashmir, Modi has mollified votaries of Hindu nationalism andestablished himself as the father of what they proudly call the “New India.”
Kashmir was always at the top of their wish list, which also includes theconstruction of a temple in Ayodhya, where a mosque stood for half amillennium before Hindu nationalists razed it in 1992; the erasure of smallprivileges granted to minorities (such as a subsidy for the Muslimpilgrimmage to Makkah); a legal end to religious conversions by Hindus; anextra-legal suppression of interfaith romance and marriages, especiallywhen the bride is Hindu and the groom Muslim; and, ultimately, therewriting of the constitution to declare India a formally Hindu state.