Soumitra
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2011
- Messages
- 8,415
- Reaction score
- -17
- Country
- Location
Who’s Killing India’s Secularism?
To beat Hindu extremists, India’s secularists need to champion equality before the law and accept that radical Islam is a problem.
The new Chief Minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath arrives at the Parliament in New Delhi, March 21. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By
Sadanand Dhume
Updated May 4, 2017 2:14 p.m. ET
7 COMMENTS
Minority rights in India are under threat. Scarcely a week passes without news of an attack on Muslims by vigilantes somewhere in the country.
Yogi Adityanath, a rabble-rousing monk-cum-politician best known for founding a thuggish private militia and whipping up anti-Muslim emotions, recently took charge of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. On social media and on television, a shrill new breed of Hindu culture warriors makes no distinction between ordinary Muslims and a small, radicalized minority.
Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mostly struck the responsible tone expected of his office. Last year he condemned cow protection vigilantes who assault anyone they suspect of transporting cattle for slaughter. He has publicly praised Islam as a “great religion.”
But Mr. Modi’s support for Mr. Adityanath and studied silence over a spate of recent attacks on Muslims suggest a turn toward hardline identity politics ahead of national elections in 2019. In contrast, three years ago Mr. Modi won power by emphasizing economic development.
With the BJP ascendant—most serious observers expect Mr. Modi to cruise to re-election in two years—India’s secularists face arguably their biggest challenge since independence in 1947. A country long synonymous with pluralism may end up marginalizing its 172 million-strong Muslim minority, the largest Muslim population in the world outside Indonesia and Pakistan.
Not surprisingly, many members of India’s left-leaning intelligentsia simply blame the BJP and the Hindu nationalist movement to which it belongs for the upsurge in anti-Muslim sentiment. Reality is more complex.
As a large national party, the BJP accommodates many shades of opinion—from economic conservatives armed with Harvard MBAs to cultural hardliners preoccupied with battling Muslims and Christians. Mr. Adityanath’s elevation shows that the party has done a poor job of sidelining extremists who do not distinguish between the majority of peaceful Muslims and a radicalized minority. This begs the question: Why do so many Indians prefer the BJP to its opponents?
No single reason explains this preference, but it’s safe to say that the traditional version of Indian secularism associated with Congress has lost favor. More than 212 million people voted for the BJP and its allies in 2014, compared to about 129 million who opted for the alliance led by the left-of-center Congress Party. In March, the BJP crushed its opponents in Uttar Pradesh, nearly one-fifth of whose 200 million people are Muslim, by winning more than three-fourths of the seats in the state legislature.
Simply put, Indian secularism is in freefall. Those concerned that it will be replaced by Hindu chauvinism need to come up with a viable alternative.
For starters, secularists in the media and politics need to acknowledge that their model has failed. By not taking terrorism seriously, effectively condoning backward Islamic practices such as polygamy and divorce by verbal decree, and championing special rights for minorities rather than equal rights for all Indians, secularists have lost the moral high ground to Hindu nationalists.
Take Islamic terrorism. Instead of acknowledging that the global scourge affects India too, leading secular politicians do cartwheels to dodge the issue. After the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which killed 166 people, Congress Party General Secretary Digvijaya Singh helped launch a book that blamed the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps), the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad for the carnage.
Other party leaders support wild conspiracy theories impugning a decorated police officer who died in a 2008 shootout with terrorists in Delhi. Not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, another avowedly secular Indian politician from a regional party in Bihar engaged an Osama bin Laden lookalike to appeal to Muslim voters. Last week, Mr. Singh of Congress was at it again, this time blaming cops in the southern state of Telangana for allegedly driving Muslims to join Islamic State.
Moreover, Indian secularists tend to take a lackadaisical approach to reforming backward Islamic practices such as polygamy and divorce by verbal decree. Unlike Western democracies, India allows Muslims to follow separate sharia-based laws in civil matters including marriage, divorce and inheritance.
At independence, this was meant as a stopgap measure to give Muslim reformers time to modernize their customs. The lack of progress seven decades later gives Hindu nationalists a powerful weapon—effectively they are the only ones championing the idea of equality before the law.
A retooled Indian secularism would recognize these deficiencies. Back in the 1950s, it may have made sense for the Hindu majority to tiptoe around the sensitivities of the Muslim minority. At the time, Muslims accounted for less than 10% of the population. Islamic terrorism was virtually unheard of, and Islamists, champions of sharia law, were in retreat from Turkey to Indonesia.
Today, more than 14% of Indians are Muslim, terrorism is a global problem and Islamists are ascendant in much of the Muslim world. Secularists need to be tough on both terrorism and Islamism while nonetheless striving to ensure that Muslims are treated fairly as equal citizens. Unless they can find a way to do this, they should expect to give up more ground to the likes of Mr. Adityanath.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-killing-indias-secularism-1493920175?tesla=y
To beat Hindu extremists, India’s secularists need to champion equality before the law and accept that radical Islam is a problem.
The new Chief Minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath arrives at the Parliament in New Delhi, March 21. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By
Sadanand Dhume
Updated May 4, 2017 2:14 p.m. ET
7 COMMENTS
Minority rights in India are under threat. Scarcely a week passes without news of an attack on Muslims by vigilantes somewhere in the country.
Yogi Adityanath, a rabble-rousing monk-cum-politician best known for founding a thuggish private militia and whipping up anti-Muslim emotions, recently took charge of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. On social media and on television, a shrill new breed of Hindu culture warriors makes no distinction between ordinary Muslims and a small, radicalized minority.
Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mostly struck the responsible tone expected of his office. Last year he condemned cow protection vigilantes who assault anyone they suspect of transporting cattle for slaughter. He has publicly praised Islam as a “great religion.”
But Mr. Modi’s support for Mr. Adityanath and studied silence over a spate of recent attacks on Muslims suggest a turn toward hardline identity politics ahead of national elections in 2019. In contrast, three years ago Mr. Modi won power by emphasizing economic development.
With the BJP ascendant—most serious observers expect Mr. Modi to cruise to re-election in two years—India’s secularists face arguably their biggest challenge since independence in 1947. A country long synonymous with pluralism may end up marginalizing its 172 million-strong Muslim minority, the largest Muslim population in the world outside Indonesia and Pakistan.
Not surprisingly, many members of India’s left-leaning intelligentsia simply blame the BJP and the Hindu nationalist movement to which it belongs for the upsurge in anti-Muslim sentiment. Reality is more complex.
As a large national party, the BJP accommodates many shades of opinion—from economic conservatives armed with Harvard MBAs to cultural hardliners preoccupied with battling Muslims and Christians. Mr. Adityanath’s elevation shows that the party has done a poor job of sidelining extremists who do not distinguish between the majority of peaceful Muslims and a radicalized minority. This begs the question: Why do so many Indians prefer the BJP to its opponents?
No single reason explains this preference, but it’s safe to say that the traditional version of Indian secularism associated with Congress has lost favor. More than 212 million people voted for the BJP and its allies in 2014, compared to about 129 million who opted for the alliance led by the left-of-center Congress Party. In March, the BJP crushed its opponents in Uttar Pradesh, nearly one-fifth of whose 200 million people are Muslim, by winning more than three-fourths of the seats in the state legislature.
Simply put, Indian secularism is in freefall. Those concerned that it will be replaced by Hindu chauvinism need to come up with a viable alternative.
For starters, secularists in the media and politics need to acknowledge that their model has failed. By not taking terrorism seriously, effectively condoning backward Islamic practices such as polygamy and divorce by verbal decree, and championing special rights for minorities rather than equal rights for all Indians, secularists have lost the moral high ground to Hindu nationalists.
Take Islamic terrorism. Instead of acknowledging that the global scourge affects India too, leading secular politicians do cartwheels to dodge the issue. After the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which killed 166 people, Congress Party General Secretary Digvijaya Singh helped launch a book that blamed the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps), the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad for the carnage.
Other party leaders support wild conspiracy theories impugning a decorated police officer who died in a 2008 shootout with terrorists in Delhi. Not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, another avowedly secular Indian politician from a regional party in Bihar engaged an Osama bin Laden lookalike to appeal to Muslim voters. Last week, Mr. Singh of Congress was at it again, this time blaming cops in the southern state of Telangana for allegedly driving Muslims to join Islamic State.
Moreover, Indian secularists tend to take a lackadaisical approach to reforming backward Islamic practices such as polygamy and divorce by verbal decree. Unlike Western democracies, India allows Muslims to follow separate sharia-based laws in civil matters including marriage, divorce and inheritance.
At independence, this was meant as a stopgap measure to give Muslim reformers time to modernize their customs. The lack of progress seven decades later gives Hindu nationalists a powerful weapon—effectively they are the only ones championing the idea of equality before the law.
A retooled Indian secularism would recognize these deficiencies. Back in the 1950s, it may have made sense for the Hindu majority to tiptoe around the sensitivities of the Muslim minority. At the time, Muslims accounted for less than 10% of the population. Islamic terrorism was virtually unheard of, and Islamists, champions of sharia law, were in retreat from Turkey to Indonesia.
Today, more than 14% of Indians are Muslim, terrorism is a global problem and Islamists are ascendant in much of the Muslim world. Secularists need to be tough on both terrorism and Islamism while nonetheless striving to ensure that Muslims are treated fairly as equal citizens. Unless they can find a way to do this, they should expect to give up more ground to the likes of Mr. Adityanath.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-killing-indias-secularism-1493920175?tesla=y
