In BJP’s regime, the path to legitimising and legalising bigotry is now well charted 

Some of the by-products of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading India to ‘international recognition and acclaim’ is the global acknowledgement that the country is a less happy place and that there is a decline in democracy and press freedom.

The World Happiness Index for 2020 ranks India 144 out of 156 nations surveyed. In 2015, India ranked 117 out of the 158 countries.

India was ranked 53rd in the Economist Intelligence Units (EIU) 2020 Democracy Index; the country was ranked 27 in 2014.

In the World Press Freedom Index, India is at 142 out of 180 countries. In 2014 the country stood 140th.

India’s position in the recently released Freedom in the World Index is 111, a fall of 17 spots within a year.

What do these myriad global indices translate into nationally?

As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 571 cases of offences against the State (under sections 121, 121A, 122, 123, 124A, 153A and 153B of IPC) were registered during 2015, showing an increase of 11.5% over the previous year 2014. The NCRB report, Crime in India-2019, states that between 2017 and 2019, both years included, the cases of sedition (124A IPC) increased from 51, to 70 and finally 90 in 2019.

In the same period cases of Imputation, assertions prejudicial to national integration (Sec.153 B IPC) rose from 24 to 38 to 58. Similarly, cases filed on charges of promoting enmity between different groups (153A IPC) rose from 934, to 1076 and declined to 1055 in 2019.

A report in the Deccan Herald states that the number of sedition cases rose by 165% in 2019. It also adds that the number of citizens arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) rose from 918 in 2018 to 1228 in 2019.

One must remember that the UAPA was amended by the Modi regime so that it could be extended to individuals. The conversion of a law intended for organisations to one that targets individuals – Indian citizens at that – was one part of the successful institutionalisation and formalisation of targeting dissidents.

But building the foundations for a thousand-year rule takes Machiavellian imagination and Faustian perseverance.

Before the saffronisation of India, supporters of this ideology and the BJP were in the vanguard of dealing with critics. While evangelising and normalising this bigoted dogma, they also intimidated their critics with violence and filing specious and trumped-up cases filed against them.

There were constant attempts to ensure a saffronised morality in every field. To achieve this, the bigoted philosophy that required its adherents to be bombastic, rugged and macho now dictated they don a fragile skin. This enabled them to whine and claim their ‘religious sentiments’ were hurt. ‘Hurting religious sentiments’ was the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ and became the justification for targeted mob violence and the filing of criminal complaints. Can one forget the saffron fire and brimstone against M.F Hussein; the movies Fire, Water; Valentine’s day; Padmavati; then the food habits of other Indian citizens; and now the series Tandav?

In hindsight, these were not acts of the loony fringe but the opening gambit of bigots building on their dream of one day ruling the country. So, it cannot be a surprise that India bears witness to the passage of anti-cow slaughter laws, renaming of Muslim city names, the government paying homage to Gowalakar - the RSS ideologue inspired by Nazism, and the government continuing to push a sanitised hagiography of Savarkar who is on record begging for forgiveness from the British.

The route to the passage of laws against the bogey of ‘love jihad’ is similarly educative. This law is the confluence of the unfounded fear of the Muslim population increasing, attempts to ‘protect the virtue of Hindu women’ - and therefore Indian culture - from non-Hindu men and from western influences like Valentine’s day.

What began with zealots going around parks and restaurants with sticks and self-righteous cudgels to protect their bigoted notion of Indian culture finally metamorphosised into ‘love jihad’ laws in several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governed states.

The path to legitimising and legalising bigotry is now well charted and those on this route seem to have been programmed to find their way about. The route includes priming and pumping-up citizens, getting them to act in concert to create, normalise and amplify various forms of distrust.

In time, this distrust metastasizes into demands for action. These demands are then solicitously picked by the government and converted into laws. This is the Goebellian form of democracy which India wants to share with the world.

So it stands to reason that the increasing use of the sedition law has antecedents in sanctimonious saffronised common citizens disparagingly telling critics of Hindutva and the BJP government to go back to Pakistan or labelling others as anti-national.

The call ‘Jai Shree Ram’, now being used in the Bengal election campaign, has interesting antecedents. Even though Shri Rama is revered as the Maryada Purush, Hindutva fanatics used ‘Jai Shree Ram’ as a call to battle during the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Since then, self-assigned protectors of Hinduism, Hindu women, and cows have mutated the call into a coercive one to intimidate citizens and threaten violence.

Even as the users of this call transformed from destroyers to ‘protectors’, what remained unchanged was the desecration of the pluralism of the Indian Constitution. The trajectory of this call has now led it to becoming the official BJP party slogan for their 2021 campaign in Bengal. That it subverts the Election Model Code of Conduct is par-for-the-course.

One could argue that the BJP has been taking up people’s issues. With India goose-stepping her way into the future, harassment by deluded fellow citizens or the tactics of bigoted mobs has progressed to become official government positions.

There is every reason to believe that India has ‘developed’ under Modi. However, considering the facts, one can only look in unbridled admiration at the direction and the consequences of this progress.

(Views are personal)