ok op ive looked through your tag on india and, contrary to what i would assume is the purpose of a blog called “This is Everyday Racism” you have no interest in identifying the way your own biases victimize marginalized people in a society where you have the privilege. fine. what im sure none of the many many people who call you out can stand is that, through this platform, you manipulate social justice terminology and present hindu fascism as an example of “indigenous power” to people who lack familiarity with South Asia and thus rely on you to provide a progressive perspective on current events. (If I’ve got anything wrong, please feel free to correct me! )
a) i find your use of “indigenous power” to describe the hindu nationalist BJP both insulting and incorrect. British India was never a settler colonial state in the way that the united states, canada and australia were, and so it is inappropriate from my POV (though I might be wrong and am open to correction on this point) to use terminology developed by indigenous people in the West fighting against settler colonialism to describe a completely different modern situation. India is a post-colonial state in the way that the US or Canada or Australia, as settler colonial states are not. I don’t know who you are describing to be indigenous – I can guess that you mean “Hindus” but this to me is highly suspect. The term “Hindu” is itself a colonial construction, a catch-all to describe a bunch of sects and traditions that never were a cohesive whole. The concept of “India” at all only came to be through British Colonialism – it was never a single unit before. How do you define indigeneity? Contrary to popular belief “Hindusim” is not a stable faith practice that has stretched from the Vedic era until today. The dominant state and local faiths of South Asia, even before the Mughal Empire, have been Jainism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, and different iterations of Bhakti traditions. Muslims have been in South Asia since the beginning of Islam, coming to Kerala via Arab traders: the first mosque in South Asia was built by a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Also, contrary to popular Hindu nationalist belief, Islam was largely spread amongst the masses of South Asia via Sufism. Here I would also add that classical “Hindu” empires have also committed atrocities in the name of their state religion, persecuting Buddhists, Jains, and other “sects” of “Hinduism” though in my opinion, these groups would not consider the other to be of the same religion at all.
Still, no one in India needs to justify their presence. India is a secular democracy, as laid out by its Constitution. Also I’d add that India is a socialist country so your presenting Modi’s “progressive” reforms as proof that he’s not right-wing is again, incorrect. I am by no means a supporter of the Congress Party, particularly due to its instigation of the 1984 Sikh Genocide, but the Congress platform this year included a Universal Basic Income amongst other things. This is a country where the Communist Party (CPIM), though not really a national presence, has regularly won state elections though I will admit it has not been as successful in recent years. Modi is not only culturally right-wing, but for India, he is economically right wing as well.
b) Modi won by a 6:1 margin by weaponizing the deaths of 40 soldiers in Indian occupied Kashmir. Demonetization was a disaster that resulted in the deaths of 100 people, hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, and cost India 1.5% GDP growth, amongst other negative consequences. Also, it failed to uncover black money which was the stated purpose of the policy in the first place. Unemployment under Modi is the highest it has been since the 1970s. There is an epidemic of farmer suicides. The Bajrang Dal, a militant offshoot of the Hindu Nationalist RSS and BJP, has been legitimized and so under Modi cow related lynchings of Muslims and Dalit people have risen. These lynchings are conducted by Hindu mobs seeking people who eat beef, which last time I checked was perfectly legal to do in secular India. Modi was trailing in the polls before the Pulawama attack at which point he politicized the soldiers’ death and rode a general wave of toxic nationalism back to power.
c) I know you probably don’t care, but I wonder if you have ever bothered to read up on what happened in 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat when Modi was Chief Minister.
(TW for description of graphic violence and sexual violence.) I’m putting the relevant section in italics, once you see the second set of asterisks its done.
Many of the attacks were focused on Muslim women and children – children force-fed kerosene and set on fire, women and girls gang-raped and then burned, sexually violated and then killed. Children and infants were speared and held aloft, including at one point a fetus ripped from a pregnant mother’s body. I know I’m citing a wikipedia page but each of these claims within the wikipedia section has an attached academic citation which you can follow up on if you want.
The events according to some observers meet the legal definition for genocide, or have been referred to as state-sponsored terrorism or ethnic cleansing. Scholars state that the believe the state government, of which Narendra Modi was leader, was complicit and even inflamed the tensions leading to the riots. State forces including police did not intervene and even joined the mobs alongside local and state level politicians. The fact that some rioters had voter registration lists which allowed them to deliberately target Muslim homes is a further example of Gujarat state complicity – the violence has been described as a “pogrom.”
This is who Modi is. This is what Hindu fascism is. It is contempt and violence towards the lives of the nondominant in India – based on economic status, caste, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. The BJP doesn’t give a fuck about anyone who isn’t the perfect dominant caste Hindu martial male. Hindu fundamentalism lies about who South Asians are as a people, lies about our past history, lies about our present realities, and it lies about our future potential. I don’t live in India and I don’t think that you do either so at a very basic level, we are privileged enough to be unaffected by the Indian election. But it is also important to note our own complicity in fascism within our communities and back “home.” By peddling the lie that critique of Modi is imperialist you have instead become a fascist apologetic. During this election, Amit Shah the President of the BJP literally advocated for the removal of all Christians and Muslims on the basis that they are “infiltrators.” The NRC is the National Register of Citizens in Assam which records who are “genuine” citizens of India and who is not – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who a Hindu fascist government decides isn’t a citizen. This is what your “indigenous” rhetoric leads to, btw.
Like I said, I have no love for Congress. But electing the BJP to spite Congress is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. More, the people who have been encouraged and even who were put forth as candidates who just won their elections are notably uninformed, unqualified, and most notably in the case of Pragya Thakur who just won her election in Bhopal as the candidate for the BJP, a terrorist currently out on bail. Thakur, accused of the 2008 Malegaon bombings which killed 10 and injured 80, recently valorized Godse, the RSS Hindu nationalist who assassinated Gandhi.
If you want to support Modi, fine – but at least have the moral congruency to also understand and support the white nationalist nazis who voted for Trump, or Brexit, or the Australian government. Fascism is on the rise across the globe. You don’t get to pick and choose which fascist you support based on whether or not you would be safe under their rule.
(Also, Hinduphobia has no meaning in the context you tend to use it, namely against Modi’s critics. I’m sure many people have told you this, but it’s just like accusing people who point out Trump’s flaws of reverse racism. If you mean it in a western context, prejudice encountered by Hindus is far more likely to be either misattributed racialized islamaphobia, or orientalism.)
