NEW YORK- : The secular India of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru has vanished under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid growing mobviolence against Muslims, an Indian writer has said in an article published in The Wall Street Journal.“The Hindu nationalists arrival in Washington was a reminder that of all the recent revolutions at the ballotbox, Mr. Modi’s was the first,” wrote author Aatish Taseer, referring to the Indian premier’s recent visit to Washington and talks with US President Donald Trump “complete with bearhugs, defence deals and a welcoming tweet from the first lady.”Taseer said, “This week, pundits noted similarities between the two populist leaders: Both Mr. Trump and Mr.Modi have made political careers out of anti-Muslim animus, tapped nationalist passions, stoked the fires of intoleranceand pursued vendettas against impertinent media outlets.“Yet these symmetries unfold in fundamentally different contexts. America has experienced a political upheaval, but it retains that supreme achievement of a mature democracy:It has two credible sides, left and right; the two sides have held, more or less; and the pendulum may swing againbefore long.“India has experienced something quite different in the three years since Mr. Modi took power. The ‘other side’ liberalIndia, secular India, the India of Nehru and Gandhi – hasn’t merely been decimated electorally; it has ceased to exist as a cultural and moral force. In area after area of life – from politics to media to cinema – there is now Mr. Modi’s India, and then a great void.
The India of my childhood,with its fond notions of Hindu-Muslim unity, has gone under. It is as complete and comprehensive a defeat asone can imagine.”Taseer spoke of his recent travel to Gorakhpur, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, whereModi’s choice of chief minister was Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu priest in saffron robes and longtime parliamentarian.“His anti-Muslim rhetoric has been so hateful – he has told his followers that if Muslims – kill one Hindu man,then we will kill 100 Muslim men – that he was once beyond the pale.
Today, his popularity threatens to eclipse Mr. Modi’s,” he wrote.The author cited instances of the changing environment in today’s India, and said, “Mr. Modi’s India has scantroom for romantic ideas about Muslims or their place in Indian society.”Taseer wrote, “The remaking of India’s cultural landscape was affecting the English media too. When I was covering the 2014 election for Open magazine, there were two – maybe three– English-speaking journalists who openly supported Mr. Modi,and they were pariahs for it.
Three years on, the change wasstaggering. Old TV hosts with bow ties and Oxbridge accents were being weeded out; Barkha Dutt, the country’s most famous liberal anchor, was off the air; and earlier this month, theowners of New Delhi Television, a private broadcaster criticalof the government, were raided by a government agency.“But the raid almost wasn’t needed: The channel, out of step with the times, was fading. Meanwhile, a new nationalistchannel had taken to the air, making no distinction between enemies of the government and enemies of the country. Within weeks, Republic TV had seized a 52% market share, accordingto the Broadcast Audience Research Council of India.The most obvious consequence of India’s new anti-Muslim atmosphere has been a spate of gruesome cow and beef-related murders. The cow is sacred to Hindus, but the current hysteriahas been engineered. During his 2014 campaign, Mr. Modi whippedcrowds into frenzies over a supposed conspiracy by his politicalfoes to slaughter cows and export beef.“Since he took power, India has seen more than 60 incidents of cow-related mob violence, in which the overwhelming bulk of the 23 reported fatalities were Muslim.
Mr. Modi has had very little to say about these deaths. On Wednesday, anti-lynching protests erupted in cities nationwide, and Mr. Modi finallybluntly condemned the violence. “We belong to a land of nonviolence,” he said, invoking Gandhi.But it may be too late; the Indian street is on the boil. In the U.S., Mr. Trump faces a free press, a galvanized oppositionand a Republican Party with deepening misgivings. In India, Mr. Modi faces only himself.”