Section:GDN 1J PaGe:5 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 18:53 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Guardian •
5
Modi is using
Kashmir to
remake India
sniffi ng animal excrement and sharing laughs
and survival techniques. Opposition politicians
have seized on the fi lm to accuse the Indian prime
minister of not interrupting his escapade with Grylls
immediately on news of the atrocity – a charge the
government has denied.
Either way, Modi, a consummate method actor, was
playing “the conservationist”. He added this role to an
extensive repertoire – poet, sage, statesman, he-m an,
yogi – that he has deftly deployed to craft a cult of
personality unrivalled in the democratic world, not
least for a man who was once widely castigated as a
Hindu supremacist. Within two weeks of the shoot,
Modi, campaigning for re-election, ordered Indian jets
to breach Pakistan’s airspace and bomb targets deep
inside enemy territory. That decision, drawing
s outh Asia’s nuclear-armed adversaries to the
precipice of an all-out war, helped to se al Modi’s
victory . And in the two months since his triumph,
Modi has moved aggressively to consolidate his grip
and establish himself as the father of what his
worshippers call “ New India ”.
The solidifi cation of the cult of Modi has been
accompanied by an aggressive erosion of the legal
and constitutional foundations on which the Indian
republic stands. Last week the government arrogated
to itself powers to designate individuals as terrorists.
Presumption of innocence, legal representation and the
right to judicial appeal – everything that distinguishes
a civilised democracy from an autocracy – is severely
restricted. Muslims and other minorities , favoured
quarry of the lynch mobs emboldened by the regime ,
will be the principal targets of the new measures.
Lest there was any doubt, Amit Shah, Modi’s dreaded
enforcer and the minister responsible for law and order,
clarifi ed in parliament that “urban Naxals” – a label that
encompasses everyone from left wing intellectuals torootless cosmopolitans sceptical of the Modi regime –
“will not be spared”.
Organised political opposition to Modi and the ruling
Bharatiya Janata party is being meticulously wiped out.
July ended with the collapse of a coalition government
in Karnataka, one of the few states where the BJP was
not in power, after opposition legislators dramatically
joined Modi’s party.
Now August has begun with the partition and
abolition of Jammu and Kashmir – which acceded to
India in 1947 on the assurance that it would be granted
special constitutional safeguards – by a presidential
decree. Kashmir is now under the thumb of the union
government, and the region’s elected leaders have
been thrown in jail. Communications have been
cut off. The most monumental redesign of Delhi’s
constitutional arrangement with India’s sole Muslim-
majority state, hatched in secrecy, occurred without a
debate in parliament.
Modi’s willingness to take the risk was no doubt
dictated by the reward. He has in one stroke ground
down and humiliated Kashmiris , and held them up as
an example to other Indian states , a demonstration that
nobody is immune from his untrammelled authority. The
termination of Kashmir’s special status is simultaneously
a culmination of a longstanding Hindu nationalist
yearning to domesticate the region’s dissenting Muslim
majority and a successful test case for the project to
remake the entirety of India in accordance with Modi’s
ideology. What has happened there will be repeated
elsewhere. “One country, one system,” Modi’s acolytes
cry with sadistic glee at Kashmiris who are curfewed
and cut off from the world. Next week India will mark
72 years of independence. For many Indians, forced to
pledge allegiance to a de facto one-party state under one
supreme leader, it will be the beginning of an inquisition- not an occasion for celebration.
Kapil
Komireddi
O
n Valentine’s Day this year,
Narendra Modi went on a date
with Bear Grylls. As the two
men set off on an “adventure
of a lifetime” in India’s Corbett
n ational p ark, 500 miles to the
north in the valley of Kashmir a
suicide bomber drove a truck laden
with explosives into a convoy of vehicles carrying
Indian paramilitary forces. Forty troops were blown
to bits in the blast. It was the bloodiest single atrocity
suff ered by Indian security personnel in the savage
history of the Kashmir confl ict.
A trailer for Grylls’ programme Man vs Wild,
released last week by Discovery, shows the
duo wandering the wilderness that afternoon,
Kapil Komireddi
is the author
of Malevolent
Republic: A
Short History of
the New IndiaРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS