Category: Opinion

The Modi Order Has Regressed Into a Great Disorder

As the election campaign progresses, the prime minister is navigating citizens into a raging storm of visceral animosities.

“A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order. These two things are one.”

– Wallace Stevens, Connoisseur of Chaos

Perhaps the most perplexing – and intriguing – part of the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign so far has been Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s studied unwillingness to encash one his more enduring assets: the promise of national stability and cohesion. Instead of a spirited marketing of all the “achievements” of the “amrit kaal” advertised so copiously with billions of rupees of taxpayer’s money,  the prime minister is inexplicably but deliberately turning the 2024 vote into a referendum on the Congress and its alleged  politics of “appeasement.” In speech after speech, Modi has been at his demagogic best in inventing designs, connections, and conspiracies behind the Congress’s surprisingly animated campaign.

Instead of being a resting, reassuring anchor in choppy waters, the prime minister is navigating citizens into a raging storm of visceral animosities. The Modi order is melting down into a great disorder.

This regression – from order to disorder – has been in the making for some time though. As India’s overarching state degenerates into official lawlessness,  her citizens may finally be willing to speak up and act against this lawful disorder. 

A few days ago, on April 30, a Delhi court found itself having to remind the dreaded and all-powerful Directorate of Enforcement that it, too, was bound by the rule of law. 

According to Bar and Bench, the court said that in a democracy like India, citizens possess rights while the state has certain duties and this fundamental relationship cannot be inverted to invoke an authoritarian argument that the state has certain rights against citizens who are expected to reciprocate by submission through their duties.

“Not only would the acceptance of such an argument be an inversion of the social contract on which every liberal democracy is based but also a [violation] of the constitutional scheme and constitutional morality,” the court observed.

The judge warned that strong leaders, laws, and agencies generally come back to bite the very citizens they vow to protect and that after the “masculinity of the law has been expressed against the stated targets,” these laws are “invariably alleged to have been employed against the average citizens.” 

Also read: Parts of Modi’s Speech That Violate MCC Missing from English Summary on His Personal Website

The official highhandedness flagged by the Delhi court can be deemed to be a “legal” edition of what was known and decried two decades ago as “jungle raj” in Lalu Prasad’s Bihar or Om Prakash Chautala’s Haryana. A similar reign of official dadagiri has been internalised in Gujarat.

The dilemma of how to maintain an order without it becoming a disorder is the crux of statecraft and constitutional morality. 

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Take, for example, the Supreme Court’s recent reminder to everyone not to knock “the system” down. The admonishment was in the matter of the (un)hackability of the electoral voting machine system, the very instrument that is used to help citizens exercise their most cherished democratic right — to decide whether they want to throw out an incumbent regime or renew its lien. By implication, the apex court also lent its imprimatur to the Election Commission of India’s legitimacy and competence as a neutral fair umpire. 

And, how does Nirvachan Sadan repay this faith? Even after two weeks, the ECI is not able to put out the absolute number of voters who turned up on polling day in each parliamentary constituency in the first two phases of the on-going Lok Sabha election. It has only provided vote percentages, that too after the inordinate delay was flagged publicly, inviting doubts and questions not just about its competence but also its neutrality and intent. Sadly, there is no recourse against the Election Commission’s obvious disinclination to be neutral and fair. That is a prime case of disorder.

The apex court opted for ‘order’ but the Delhi court had the prescience to point out how order can become disorder. And, this precisely is the moment in the life of the republic when citizens have an opportunity to judge for themselves whether the 10 years of Modi Raj have produced an order that is unacceptably violent and chaotic. And, whether an alternative order, even if disorderly, would be preferable to the dadagiri-centric order of Shahenshah and Shah – their munificence toward ‘labharthis’ notwithstanding.

Also read: Dwindling Voter Turnout Shows Discontent and Political Apathy in 2nd Phase of Lok Sabha Polls

The disquieting part of the Modi order has been the collapse of institutional guardrails in all constitutional bodies. Chief ministers get arrested and the courts are content to entangle themselves in procedural correctness over whether they should be granted bail. The apex court and other high constitutional bodies have failed to restore a sense of equilibrium in the polity. It seems that it is now up to ordinary voters to make up for the elites’ failure.

By constantly invoking the Hindu community and stoking its anxieties and grievances, Prime Minister Modi is forcing the average voter to ask herself why 10 years of a “Hindu raj” has not restored some balance in national life. Given what Modi has been asserting in his campaign speeches, it is clear that we, as a nation, are never going to have a modicum of communal peace and harmony. Does Manipur need to be repeated all over India?

That is the great choice before the nation. The Modi regime does not believe or does not know how to bring about reconciliation between angry neighbours. Craftiness has been its signature tune, underhandedness its default option. Overuse of the coercive instruments of the state has blunted the BJP leaders’ sense of empathy and sensitiveness.  

If the prime minister is sounding more and more unhinged, it is because the campaign period is the only time when his minions cannot shut down other voices and arguments. An arrogant regime headed by an arrogant man is finding itself confronted by a multitude of dissents and disagreements against the officially mandated “immense disorder of truths.” The voter has a funny way of seeing through the Emperor’s sleight of hand.

Harish Khare is a former editor-in-chief of The Tribune.

 

The Congress Manifesto Marks a Welcome Return to Authenticity

For the ruling BJP, dividing Hindus and Muslims is most desirable, but pointing to social divisions within Hindus is heinous; thus any talk of a caste enumeration is anathema to its bipolar politics.

For a whole barren decade now, the Congress party has tended to flounder, seeking ideological recourse to impromptu tactical moves.

The quite unprecedented mass contact marches across the length and breadth of the country, led by the brave and dogged Rahul Gandhi, have clearly brought both ground-level clarity and political confidence to the grand old party.

It has come to realise that there are public needs and policy options beyond the ones propagated by the right-wing that has sought ruthlessly to drown out the concrete realities of the overwhelming majority of Indians through money-driven, revanchist control of social and political articulation.

The central inspiration of the Congress manifesto for the 2024 election clearly is this: that the governance of India requires reorientation, so that its resources and distributive mechanisms are returned to the people to whom the republic owes its existence.

The sharply formulated theses of the manifesto about various forms of justice thus draw their strength and legitimacy from the Constitution of India’s preamble, the chapter on fundamental rights, and key provisions of the directive principles of state policy.

Most importantly, in view of the disingenuous propaganda unleashed predictably by the ruling party that the manifesto beckons back to the Muslim League of old, it needs to be emphasised with force that what the Congress says about the  personal laws of minorities is wholly in line with Ambedkar’s own admonitions on the subject, Article 44 notwithstanding.

Also read: Jobs in the Congress Manifesto: A Promise and a Hope

In the constituent assembly, Ambedkar had emphatically cautioned that personal laws which indeed needed reforms must not be altered or set aside by the force of executive will but through a patient and democratic consultation with the parties involved.

Of the essence here was the concept of voluntary consent rather than coercive fiat.

That the party which led one of the most enlightened anti-colonial movements in modern world history has sought to re-inscribe the principal impulsions of that movement, namely, the idea of justice, social, political, and economic, within a framework of universal adult franchise and freedom of expression, puts the grand old phenomenon, the Indian National Congress, on course to rediscover the unique relevance and affinity its existence had for the mass of people across boundaries and communities.

As to the disingenuous polemics of the right-wing, the jibes are easily disposed of.

At the time that Maulana Azad and others were sweating to organise the Quit India movement, the head of the Hindu Mahasabha, Syama Prasad Mookerjee was forming governments in alliance with the much maligned Muslim League in Bengal, Sindh, and the North West frontier Province.

And the great V.D. Savarkar was admonishing young Indians to join the British army, with the devious purpose of preparing themselves militarily for the real fight to come, namely with the Muslims.

Nor, it should be known, does the Indian Union Muslim League of Kerala have anything to do with Jinnah’s Muslim League.

It was founded much later, in independent India, as a patriotic formation with a secular orientation, owing unclouded allegiance to the constitution and the tricolour.

By now, it should be obvious that the ruling right-wing peddles the following polemical lines:

That dividing Hindus and Muslims is most desirable, but pointing to social divisions within Hindus is heinous; thus any talk of a caste enumeration is anathema to its bipolar politics.

However, speaking of divisions, it is good policy to divide Muslims as between the Syeds/ Mughals/ Pathans and the Pasmanda rest, but most anti-national to draw lines between upper-caste Hindus and the majority 80% whom they have systematically relegated and oppressed over millennia.

To the extent that the Congress manifesto is upfront and sentient about this compendium of historical truths and policy requirements as mandated by the constitution , the republic can draw some fresh breath.

It is good to tell Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, and all other non-Hindu Indians that their stake in the republic is neither secondary, nor deniable, and that indeed the bulk of oppressed Hindus are one with them, all endowed and protected by the republican constitution.

It is to be hoped that the grand old party and its allies have enough time and will to go frontally among the populace to convey what the manifesto says and means.

Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.

Home Ministry’s ‘Positive Narrative’ on CAA is Full of Lies, Half-Truths and Really Bad Drafting

The document issued on March 12 is part Kafka, part Orwell and wholly misleading.

On Tuesday, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs released a list of questions and answers in an attempt to clear the air about the discriminatory nature of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The document makes for bizarre reading. It is shoddily drafted, makes improbable claims and is full of half-truths and even outright lies.

I am reproducing below the questions posed by the MHA, its answers, and my analysis (‘The reality’) for each reply.
Update: The MHA has deleted the embarrassing document but here is the original, saved as a PDF.

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Home Ministry preambular claim: Without curtailing the freedom and opportunity of Indian Muslims to enjoy their rights as they have been usually practicing and entertaining since Independence like other Indian citizens belonging to other religions, CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) 2019 has reduced the qualification period of application for citizenship from 11 to 5 years for the beneficiaries who had [been] persecuted on religious grounds in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan and who had entered India on or before December 31, 2014 with an aim to show a generous treatment to them as compensation for appeasing [sic] their persecution.

The reality: I have no idea what “compensation for appeasing their persecution” means but this claim is a dishonest one. If the aim is really to benefit the victims of persecution and offer them “generous treatment”, the government needs to explain:

  • Why is the benefit confined to refugees from only these three countries?
  • Why is only religious persecution being considered grounds for conferring benefits when there are other forms of persecution that people in these three countries may be fleeing from, including political persecution or persecution on grounds of ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation?
  • Why have Muslims being excluded from the list of those subject to religious persecution when there is evidence that particular Muslim sects are indeed persecuted in these countries?
  • Even if the aim is only to help non-Muslims who are religiously persecuted in these three countries, why is there a cut-off date of December 31, 2014? How does the government propose to treat victims who had good reasons to flee to India after that date or who may still flee here to escape persecution?

The Modi government has no answer to any of these questions, nor can it explain why it took four and a half years to operationalise the CAA and provide this “generous treatment” to these refugees.

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Question: What are the implications of the Act for Muslims who have been living in India?

Home Ministry’s answer: Indian Muslims need not worry as CAA has not made any provision to impact their citizenship and has nothing to do with the present 18 crore Indian Muslims, who have equal rights like their Hindu counterparts. No Indian citizen would be asked to produce any document to prove his citizenship after this Act.

The reality: Home Minister Amit Shah has said several times  in the past that there is a ‘chronology’ at work when it comes to the Modi government’s policies towards refugees and ‘infiltrators’. In April 2019, he said: “First we will bring the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), every refugee will get citizenship, and after that we will bring the National Register of Citizens. So refugees have no reason to worry. But infiltrators definitely have a reason to worry. So understand the chronology.” He added that the NRC would not only be for Bengal but for the entire country because “there are infiltrators everywhere.” On December 10, 2019, Shah told parliament that the NRC was definitely coming and when it is implemented “not even one infiltrator will be able to save himself”.

What did Shah mean? The NRC is a process whereby the citizenship status of every person in India will be tested on the basis of documents they provide. In Assam, where the NRC was first tested, the results were disastrous: some 1.9 million people were excluded as citizens. These were Indians who were unable to produce the required documentation. The majority were Hindu. The purpose behind the CAA was to reassure Hindus who fail to satisfy the NRC process that they need not worry about being expelled or disenfranchised since the CAA allows a path to citizenship for those without proper papers. But for Muslims who fail to satisfy the process, there is no way out. They face the risk of being branded as ‘infiltrators’.

Even if the Modi government formally renounces its plans for implementing the NRC, the MHA’s claims that Indian Muslims need not worry about the CAA affecting their citizenship is simply not true.

As I have written elsewhere, consider the example of two Indian women, one Hindu and one Muslim, who have been married to two undocumented Bangladeshi men, one Hindu and one Muslim. Under the unamended Citizenship Act, the children of both women are considered ‘illegal migrants’ and are liable to deportation along with their respective fathers. The CAA, however, offers a clear path for the Hindu Indian woman to live a normal family life free of the risk of disruption due to deportation. But the Muslim Indian woman must continue to live with the risk of expulsion of her family from India. And she will have no option but to leave India if her family is deported and she wishes to continue living with them.

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Is there any provision or agreement for repatriating illegal Muslim migrants to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Home Ministry’s answer:: India does not have any pact or agreement with any of these countries to repatriate migrants back to these countries. This Citizenship Act doesn’t deal with the deportation of illegal immigrants and therefore the concern of a section of the people including Muslims and students that CAA is against Muslim Minorities is unjustifiable.

The reality: This is a clever and deceptive lie. The Foreigners Act (Section 3) and Passport (Entry into India) Act (Section 5) already empower the government to deport persons it deems to be illegally staying in the country (‘power of removal’. The absence of a pact for repatriation only means that persons deemed illegal are liable for incarceration  – even long-term – in prisons or detention centres. Taken together with the NRC it is not hard to understand why “a section of the people including Muslims and students” see the process which the CAA embodies as anti-Muslim. Even if it does not lead to deportation or detention, the fear is that a large number of Indians who will be mostly Muslim will end up disenfranchised.

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Who is [an] illegal migrant?

Home Ministry’s answer: Like Citizenship Act, 1955, this CAA defines illegal migrant as a foreigner who has entered India without valid documents.

The reality: In 2003, the then Vajpayee government amended the Citizenship Act to prohibit ‘illegal migrants’ from ever acquiring Indian citizenship by naturalisation or marriage. In 2016, the Modi government amended the Act to exempt non-Muslim ‘illegal migrants’ from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh from this provision provided they entered India before December 31, 2014. The CAA of 2019 took this process further by allowing the fast-tracking of their citizenship.

In other words, as the law stands today, a foreigner from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan who has entered India without valid documents until December 31, 2014 will only be considered an illegal migrant if they are Muslim. All non-Muslims will no longer be considered illegal migrants. This discrimination on the basis of religion violates the Indian Constitution. As the lawyer S. Prasanna has noted, this discrimination is also a violation of India’s obligations under the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, Article 26 of which states:

“All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

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What is the impact of this Act on the image of Islam?

Home Ministry’s answer: Due to the persecution of Minorities in those three Muslim countries, the name of Islam was badly tarnished all around the world. However, Islam, being a peaceful religion, never preaches or suggests hatred/violence/any persecution on religious ground. This Act showing the compassion and compensation for the persecution, protects Islam from being tarnished in the name of persecution.

The reality: If we ignore the terrible drafting of this answer, the MHA and the Modi government has not been able to explain why a law has been made to accept religiously persecuted people only from Muslim counties and not from other non-Muslim neighbouring nations like Myanmar, China and Sri Lanka. Is the government not saying that there is something unique about persecution in Muslim countries which is causing it to create a new law for its victims? What does this tell us about how the government view Islam and Muslims as opposed to other faiths?

Government ‘sources’ claim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have been singled out as these three countries are in India’s neighbourhood and have a ‘state religion’:  “The presence of a state religion is hurting minorities in the neighbourhood,” they claim. But the fact is that Sri Lanka, too, has a state religion – Buddhism. And in Myanmar, the US Committee on International Religious Freedom notes, “athhough there is no official state religion, the constitution states the government “recognizes the special position of Buddhism as the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens of the Union.”

Secondly, the CAA may or may not have any impact on the image of Islam but it has already had an adverse impact on the image of the country. India has welcomed and granted domicile to refugees and people from all parts of the world for over three thousand years but has now for the first time in its history made religion a criterion for the acquisition of citizenship (and right to domicile) for refugees from three countries. The world at large sees this as a betrayal of India’s own values and culture, not to speak of its constitution and commitment to human rights.

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Is there any bar for Muslims from seeking Indian citizenship?

Home Ministry’s answer: No. There is no bar on Muslims from anywhere in the world to seek Indian Citizenship under Section 6 of the Citizenship Act, which deals with the citizenship by naturalisation.

The reality: Since 2003, the Citizenship Act bars anyone who is an illegal migrant from acquiring citizenship of India. The CAA opens the door for illegal migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and their India-born children who are non-Muslim to acquire Indian citizenship. But illegal migrants and their India-born children who happen to be Muslim will continue to be barred from acquiring citizenship.

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What is the need of the amendment?

Home Ministry’s answer: To show the mercy on the persecuted minorities of those three countries, this Act gives opportunity to them as per the evergreen generous culture of India to get Indian Citizenship for their happy and prosperous future. To customise the Citizenship system and control the illegal migrants, there was need of this Act.

The reality: There was no need to create a religion-based exemption in order to show generosity towards persecuted persons. All that the government needed to do was to say that any illegal migrant in India who has a well-founded fear of persecution in the country of their origin would be allowed to stay in India indefinitely and be eligible, in due course, for Indian citizenship. In fact, this is the route countries around the world follow for the naturalisation of refugees and it does not require the refugees to be of a particular religion.

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What are the previous initiatives of the Government?

Home Ministry’s answer: In 2016, the Central Govt. also made minorities of those three countries eligible for long term Visa to stay in India.

In reality: Here are some ‘initiatives’ the MHA forgot to mention. So helpful has the government been towards religiously persecuted persons from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the wider neighbourhood that it made it extremely difficult for Sikhs in Afghanistan to get an Indian visa and flee the Taliban. In the case of a Sikh man killed by terrorists in Kabul, his visa for India never came. In 2021-22 alone, 1500 Pakistani Hindus who wanted to stay in India were forced to return home because of hurdles placed in their way by the government. Rohingyas, fleeing religious persecution in Myanmar, have been deported by the Indian government.

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Is there any restriction for Muslim migrants from any foreign country?

Home Ministry’s answer:: CAA does not cancel the naturalisation laws. Therefore, any person including the Muslim migrants from any foreign country, seeking to be an Indian citizen, can apply for the same under the existing laws. This Act does not prevent any Muslim, who is persecuted in those 3 Islamic countries for practicing their version of Islam, from applying for Indian citizenship under the existing laws.

The reality: In this answer, the MHA has let the cat out of the bag. It knows very well that there are Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who are persecuted for practising their version of Islam. But if they enter India without valid papers, or overstay their visa, they automatically get classified as illegal migrants and are thus ineligible for Indian citizenship under existing laws. So they simply cannot apply for Indian citizenship under the existing laws.

 

 

 

 

 

Biden versus Trump Rematch: Will the Democrats Manage to Surpass the Republicans Again?

Most voters decide for whom they will vote relatively early in the campaign season and the polls show Donald Trump is ahead, however narrowly, in enough states right now to win the electoral college and the presidency.

As both candidates secured their parties’ respective nominations, the November 5, 2024 US presidential election is looking to be a Donald J. Trump vs. Joe Biden rematch.

In a fiery State of the Union address (SOTU) on the night of March 8, President Biden drew battle lines with Trump ahead of November’s presidential election. Acknowledging the stakes if he got anything wrong at the SOTU, the US president defended himself against accusations of being too old. “In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old,” Biden said as some 32 million Americans tuned in to watch, he took on Republican hecklers and criticised Israel for refusing to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Biden is 81, and Trump is 77 so neither of them are spring chickens, but the former’s verbal and literal stumbling has meant that a little bit more of the age issue is reflected on him. Almost a month ago, during an impromptu press conference, President Biden said his memory is “fine” and lambasted a Justice Department report on his handling of classified information, particularly its questions about his mental acuity and age. Biden answered defiantly — and sometimes angrily — questions about his capacity to continue serving in the White House.

Yet even as he defended himself against a tide of scrutiny about his mental fitness, Biden mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the leader of Mexico. Before that he mixed up Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel of Germany and Mitterrand and Macron of France.

It was a good week for Trump — the US Supreme Court overturned an attempt to block him from the ballot in Colorado and polls showed him ahead of Biden in the presidential race. On Super Tuesday, Trump secured victories in several Republican primaries across the country. His only major challenger, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, dropped out last week after his Super Tuesday triumph.

Also read: India 5th Among 20 Countries that Gave Trump Businesses of $7.8M During Presidency: Report

The former president has doubled down on the most controversial aspects of his first term, threatening to abandon NATO allies and promise to tackle illegal immigration. Domestically, abortion or what Biden chose to refer to as ‘reproductive freedom in his SOTU is a major issue in this election and both candidates hold contrasting opinions on it. With Trump leaning toward restricting abortion, the motivation to vote is significantly higher on the Democratic side now.

Difference in perspective does not translate into fundamentally different positions

Creating an unusual spectacle, Biden and Trump recently travelled to Texas border towns, acknowledging the centrality of the immigration issue. Opinion polls show broad public disapproval of how President Biden has handled the surge in illegal border crossings, averaging 2 million per year since 2021. Although Trump, also faced criticism for his immigration policies, he is perceived as more effective against illegal immigration.

Their foreign policy positions are harder to discern. Overtly, Trump’s presidency was rooted in unilateralism, confrontation, and a focus on “America First,” Biden adopted the phrase, ‘America is Back’ emphasising diplomacy and multilateralism. This perspective does not however translate into fundamentally different positions, merely approach to foreign policy issues.

Biden has spent years chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy is considered his point of expertise. He took a big political punch for the drawdown in Afghanistan, but made good on a promise to get the United States out of Afghanistan.

He has been very aggressive in his support of Ukraine and steadfast in his support of Israel, which may be potentially jeopardising relationships with people within his own party who support the Palestinians. His administration had to make public calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Trump has called Gaza militant group Hamas a “problem” stating, “You’ve got to finish the problem. You had a horrible invasion. It took place. It would have never happened if I was president, by the way.” And so that can have electoral ramifications.

Trump who earlier withheld military aid to Ukraine impeachment proceedings, has now declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin can “do whatever the hell he wants” with respect to NATO allies. Biden on the other hand opened his SOTU rallying for American support for Ukraine. “We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.”

No change expected in Indo-US ties and US’s China policy 

There is bipartisan support for expansive engagement with India. Both Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh were invited by Democratic presidents for rare US state visits. Republican administrations have historically been more suited to Indian sensibilities especially as they take less interest in concerns about India’s democracy, human rights and press freedoms.

Both the Democrats and Republicans have courted the fairly affluent and educated Indian American vote bloc, largely residing in potential swing states like Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

So while augmenting Indo-US ties is a given for both candidates, it is their posture vis-a-vis China that generates the most interest. At the Biden-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Leaders summit in the US there was an attempt to restore a degree of affability to an extremely hostile and competitive relationship.

Despite disagreeing with Trump’s China policy, the Biden administration has maintained existing tariffs and imposed restrictions on sharing technology. It is unlikely that the course of US’s China policy will alter fundamentally post elections whosoever assumes office.

Most voters decide for whom they will vote relatively early in the campaign season and the polls show Trump is ahead, however narrowly, in enough states right now to win the electoral college and the presidency. In the meantime, the Biden versus Trump campaign is witnessing intense competition, fierce online activities and abusive debates on social networks.

Vaishali Basu Sharma is a strategic and economic affairs analyst.

Why an Alternative Ideology Is Important: The Far-Right Is Loud, Not the Silent Majority

In times of digital transformation, misinformation and troops of favourable video editors can sway voters and construct imagery of leaders and parties far removed from truth.

Bullying and ragging were common in Sainik School where I grew up. Masculine boys ruled, as was the nature of the entire training and education of the school. They did not necessarily have well-built bodies nor performed well in studies, drills, physical training, or shooting. Instead, some of them would not stand a chance in case they were even slapped. Most of them were lethargic rule breakers and often had to attend the punishment hour.

They did not have the moral high ground, yet they were powerful. They were loud.

They were always present, generating clamour. Despite their obnoxious demeanour, they always found ways to get away, seized the best opportunities. Cadets like me felt like losers. We followed rules, never bunked classes, or missed the devastating morning PT or 3 am drill. But there were no prizes for us. Whereas our bullies always received rewards. We thought they would always win. We were hopeless and tempted to give up. We would simply succumb to their bullying.

Far–right parties, much like those bullies, are loud. They yell, they shout, they bulldoze, the vocal minority claps in approval, and they win. And non-far-right parties and individuals often perceive them as unbeatable, thinking that bullies have the people’s support.

Our psychology is demoralised, defeated. This is not to claim moral or intellectual superiority, nor do we seek to dismiss far–right as street goons. That would be a self-defeating trope. But the goodness in us makes us play it safe, becoming cautious citizens, effectively rendering us inactive and hesitant to take initiatives that might involve even the slightest possibility of risk. We avoid trouble, shy away from confrontation. And should we, really? It drains us, it is an exhausting and persistent war.

For years, liberal political commentators have been quick to attribute extremist acts of religious vandalism to fringe elements. They dismissed them as outside the mainstream political discourse. However, over the past decade under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule, we have witnessed the transformation of once-termed “fringe” tactics into tools employed by democratically elected governments. JCBs and bulldozers have evolved into symbols of instant justice. Persecution through non-judicial state apparatus has become a primary method. Every other political discourse, particularly in North and Northeast India, reinforces the view that these fringes are no longer on the outskirts but have, in fact, become part of the mainstream. And they truly have.

But are they also the majority?

There are two ways to respond to it. One, who has more resources? Two, what is playing on the screens?

In times of digital transformation, misinformation and troops of favourable video editors can sway voters and construct imagery of leaders and parties far removed from truth. For example, consider the case of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the two primary political rivals who happen to be approximately in the same age group. Trump, at 77, and Biden, at 81, are merely four years apart in age. Yet a campaign spotlighting Biden’s age in the United States gains more traction than a similar focus on Trump’s age.

Clearly, the “Sleepy Joe” propaganda caught up on TikTok and within mainstream media, siding with Trump’s narrative. This pattern parallels the propaganda in India where the BJP labels the opposition as ‘pappu’ (incompetent) and prime minister’s characterisation of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s parliamentary speech as “entertaining” is followed by a campaign on prime-time TV, shaping the debate agenda set by the far–right.

Digital competition is brutal, unkind and leaves no space for truth to travel faster than an entertaining lie. If anything, digital outlook thrives on it. Social media platforms and online spaces provide a megaphone for extreme views, amplifying their impact beyond their numerical presence. The far-right’s ability to command attention is confused with broad public endorsement.

Like those of us in our school, which was equally diverse like the Indian demographics, the majority electorate is silent. Only a handful of individuals, often the same set of familiar faces, appear to be vocal, ringing the bell and warning us about the challenges facing our democracy. The silent majority watches far-right propaganda capturing discourse but sits back.

Also read: What Explains the Political Right’s Ascendancy to Global Power?

Non-far-right parties misread this and take a cautious approach. If recent election results (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana) tell us anything, it is that “the people” want the far-right BJP to be reined in. Non-far-right parties often take cues from the electoral success of the far-right and overestimate people’s affinity to traditional values or a sense of narrow nationalism. In the process, they lose sight of the silent majority, which cares about democratic values like equality and wants a government that delivers on public services.

The same elections reveal that co-opting far-right issues, such as soft Hindutva – projecting the ‘Ram Van Gaman Marg’ as an achievement of the Chhattisgarh government – did not help them win votes. If anything, it cast doubt among voters about the political ideology of the non-far-right.

Congress leaders like Kamal Nath focused on the clamorous voices of the far-right, and risked neglecting more tempered and nuanced views, resulting in losses to the BJP in urban and semi-rural areas. Whereas, in Telangana, the Congress presented an alternative ideological agenda and did not play on the far-right’s turf. Evidence from these 4-state elections also suggests that Congress vote share increased in rural areas across all four states. This indicates an electorate seeking politics driven by issues that directly address the everyday life of the people, rather than an imaginary alternative reality of “Ram Rajya”.

The silent majority, in its desire for a modern democracy, adopts a conservative stance — a dichotomy and anomaly in itself. They are the people with an attitude of ‘wait and watch’. They observe non-far-right parties adopting far-right politics to appeal to the electorate which shows a disconnect with their past stances, policies and limited ambitions for future reform. That frustrates the silent majority. But all is not to be non-far-right parties’ blame. The silent majority is also impatient, inconsistent, indecisive.

The non-far-right can still challenge the far-right. The strategy is straightforward: present a consistent alternative ideology to that of the far-right, broaden the alliance, and do not play on the far-right’s turf. The silent majority will find you.

Pius Fozan is a public policy student at Central European University and the Brandt School.

And Then There Will Be None: In Palestine, a Picture of How Life Cannot Be Lived Any More

Traditionally, the dissolving human body is the stuff of nightmares. But Yazan Kafarneh is not a dissolved body. The horror we see is the corpus intacta but diminished. It invokes greater horror not because it is broken but because it is whole and yet not-alive.

The child victim’s body is the moral Ground Zero of conflict and the global silence around conflict.

The Afghan Girl (2015), the vulture and the little girl (2013), Aylan Kurdi (2015) and now Yazan Kafarneh (2024). Media photographs of the impact of armed conflict on children, arguably the most vulnerable in any condition of conflict and the ‘ideal victim’, have marched endlessly through the years.

The famous social documentary filmmaker Jacob Riis captured New York’s poorer neighbourhoods in his The Children of the Poor (1892) as a mode of raising awareness of the social state of the expanding city.

Even the United Nations employed such photographs for its own ends. UNICEF began by capturing child victims of poverty in the late 19th century, and employed the pictures to solicit sympathy and contributions but also ramp up a humanitarian morality around the figure of the child and uneven development.

For example, as Paula S. Fass has noted in her essay, the UN’s Children’s Rights Convention adopted in 1959 made use of such pictures to underline its point. Collections such as UNICEF’s Under Siege: The Devastating Impacts on Children of Three Years of Conflict in Syria (2015) were put out for later too.

No longer recognisable as persons, given their ruined state, the children look out from the UNICEF photographs, or do not in the case of Kurdi and Kafarneh.

Beyond the extreme vulnerability of Kurdi and Kafarneh, beyond their fragile bodies, the photographs achieve something else.

First, children traditionally associated with not just innocence but embodying potential are captured embedded in a context in which no future can possibly unfold. Starvation, absence of healthcare and unrelenting conflict are the contexts in which a Kafarneh-with-potential becomes a victim, one whose potential has been erased fully.

Which means to say, the sites, whether bombed ruins or hospital beds, are sites where no future abides. If potential and capability require a sustaining environment in which to reach fruition, then the context in which Kurdi or Kafarneh are embedded ensures that no potential is ever likely to be fulfilled.

These photographs then are not of the children alone: they point to the material conditions in which a certain kind of future alone rests. The pictures are not about the present: they are about a future in which, possibly, there will be no children left.

Then, the scenes of destruction that we see unfolding on our screens today, whether of barren lands or devastated lands, force us to shift from ruin to rubble. The ruin, which has its own melancholic appeal and sense of mystery, is now just plain rubble.

The child victim does not connect to the ruin: s/he is of the rubble, a part of it, broken, dismembered and poignantly separated from a context in which s/he would have otherwise lived.

The landscape of conflict where Kafarneh is to be ‘found’ (a wholly inappropriate word, given that he starved to death in his ‘home’) is a place where matter has lost its form. The hospital, the home and the school are no longer the same: their form has been broken down into bricks, mortar and steel due to the bombings.

Material matter, which had been formed into structures for a Kafarneh to live in, play in and study in, has returned to a pre-form, by which I mean a state prior to all form state: rubble. The ruins of buildings may still be functional, at least minimally. But their intended service and purpose are altered once the ruination has set in.

It is this loss of form and function – of the hospital, the home, the school – that produces the child victim. Kafarneh died in a hospital bed, but he arrives via a landscape smashed to smithereens and in a state of advanced starvation, according to reports.

The hospital is of no functional use because life among the rubble has made it impossible that the new matter (the form and function of the hospital) can revive that life. Just as the hospital, home and school are rendered into waste, so is the child’s body that occupies those spaces.

There is, therefore, a tragic correlation between the wasting – intended, of course, through bombings – building and the wasted child. In these spaces, the human form, particularly of the child, is inverted into mere flesh.

The ruined body of Kafarneh, within the precincts of the hospital where he died, does not point to the hospital. It points to the landscape he came through. The ruined or damaged hospital is newness because the original hospital is only in the past. Likewise is Kafarneh lying in bed, emaciated to a point where there is little matter (flesh) on him (and the eyes seem overly large as a result).

The conflict and the bombing therefore produce new matter: the ruined hospital of the present and the starving body in the present.

Traditionally, the dissolving human body – the liquefaction – is the stuff of nightmares and much Gothic and neo-Gothic horror. But neither Kurdi nor Kafarneh are dissolved bodies. The horror we see is the corpus intacta but diminished. It invokes greater horror, one could argue, not because it is broken but because it is whole and yet not-alive.

Also read: The World’s Indifference to Palestinian Genocide Will Cost More Lives

Writing about the Abu Ghraib visuals, the critic Susan Sontag said:

“To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one’s life, and therefore to go on with one’s life oblivious, or claiming to be oblivious, to the camera’s nonstop attentions. But to live is also to pose.”

In some sense, Kurdi and Kafarneh are posed: captured on camera in a particular state. Except that this state is not a pose emanating from life. It is a record, to adapt Sontag’s words, of how a life could not be lived any more.

The photograph captures a body transitioned from the living to the non-living: just inert matter on a beach (Kurdi) or a bed (Kafarneh). The human descends, reversing the normative of life lived towards a future, into the abhuman (starvation, in this most recent case) and eventually the non-living.

In his 9/11 novel, Falling Man, Don DeLillo writes:

“It was something that belonged to another landscape, something inserted, a conjuring that resembled for the briefest second some half-seen image only half believed in the seeing, when the witness wonders what has happened to the meaning of things, to tree, stone, wind, simple words lost in the falling ash.”

Yes, it is another landscape: a once-pulsing, thriving land is transformed into unrecognisable forms of rubble.

In an essay titled ‘In the Ruins of the Future’, this same Don DeLillo wrote: “For all those who may want what we’ve got, there are all those who do not.”

People did want the same thing for Kurdi and Kafarneh: life. So we know the meaning of things buried beneath the ash of this smoking rubble: a future ended there.

And then there will be none.

Pramod K. Nayar teaches at the University of Hyderabad.