In the past couple of weeks, the kind of reporting we have seen in
Indian and in world media backed by several motivated academicians and
politicians on the recent amendment to Indian’s Citizenship Act, can only be
described as an Information War, that has been unleashed on the Indian state.
It is well known that the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party is seen as a right-wing
nationalist party. In India it is seen as a party with primarily Hindu voter
base. In international media it is often described as a Hindu nationalist party
which in their eyes is a negative portrayal. The ideological opposition to BJP
is well entrenched in the left leaning English media in India and also in
similarly inclined western media. In general, western media has a negative view
of India as a result of cold war dynamics of the past, but off late with the
political rise of BJP in India, they have a particularly negative view about
India under BJP government.
Various reasons can be attributed to this entrenched opinion. Political
positions viewed as right wing are automatically disliked by self-described
left liberal media. Influence of Christian evangelical organizations on western
and even local Indian media is another factor, since these organizations see
the BJP as a less conducive to their evangelical project in India. Similar
motive can be attributed to media organizations under influence of Islamic
evangelical organizations and Islamic countries. When such motivations are at
play then its is almost impossible to expect reasonable analysis of events in
India from these media organizations. Their criticism however is often cloaked
in the language of liberalism, pluralism, women’s rights, democratic values
etc.
There is also a set of Indian urban population which has primarily grown
cut off from the civilizational ethos of India under the influence of an
education system that specializes in turning the mindset of people away from
anything that is culturally Indian in general and Hindu in particular. There is
a belief in this population that being less Indian, less Hindu is somehow being
more modern. This population has long considered itself to be the guardian of
“Indian secularism”. A term which is as difficult to define if not more, than
the term Hindutva or Hindu-ness which BJP espouses. In this scenario those who
consider themselves anti-Hindutva also consider themselves to be the sole
guardians of secularism in India. This group is most turned off by the “Hindu
nationalist” image of BJP and views every action by BJP with suspicion. They
are also most easily influenced by the western media being English speaking
themselves. Many among them consider themselves global citizens who happen to
hold an Indian passport.
This urban Indian population especially students of humanities discipline
in Indian universities have been under influence of certain ideological groups
namely Ambedkarites, extreme Marxist, Islamists and to a lesser degree
evangelical Christian groups. The influence of last of these is most subtle
since it is not explicitly in Christian fundamentalist terms in most Indian
universities but instead in the language of western universalism. This student
population has seen BJP as antitheses of what they understand should be the
future direction of India. With rise of BJP and loss of political space in
electoral democracy to these ideologies they have chosen to combine forces in
campus politics by projecting their most extreme form on impressionable college
students who are easier to mould towards these ideologies due to a fertile
ground created by absence of civilizational knowledge and cultural awareness.
In short due to a lack of emic perspective in the humanities education in India
these students are most prone to be turned towards these ideologies that are
often described as breaking India forces (read Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra, Aravindan Neelakandan) since they see
the cultural underpinnings of India and the mainstream culture as oppressive
and worthy of being thrown out.
Some of the recent political decisions by the BJP government like the
law banning Muslim practice of triple divorce, curb on foreign funding of
Indian NGOs which either work for evangelical purposes or influencing Indian
political process, the revocation of article 370 which gave a separate
constitution to the J&K state and the judicial decision on Ayodhya Ram
temple case which went in the favour of Hindus, left these ideological groups
completely shattered. It was unexpected by them that these important issues on
which they had staked their entire existence had gone out of their hands completely.
They were confident that no Indian government will be able to change the
constitutional status of J&K, that their case on Ayodhya Ram temple was
undefeatable and that no government will be able to touch the Muslim personal
laws. They considered these issues to be the touchstone of Indian secularism
and set back on these issues hurt their cause greatly.
Under this back drop one must see another issue that these forces see as
important which is the status of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India. Whether
you look at the liberal left, or the Islamist both see that inaction by GOI in
the problem of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants is the happy state of affairs. No
government in past had been able to deal with this problem even when there was
a widespread movement in Assam to deal with this problem of forced demographic
change in north eastern states especially Assam. One of the reasons for this
inaction was the difficulty of dealing with this problem without also affecting
the Bangladeshi Hindu population which had come to Indian since the 1971
genocide of Bengali Hindus. It is now well known that 80% of the 10 million
refugees of the Bangladesh war that came to India were Hindus so were the
approximately 3 million victims who were killed in East Pakistan by the
Pakistani army. It would not be wrong to say that it was genocide particularly
of Bangladeshi Hindus which is easy to see if one compares the census figures
of Bangladesh from the pre and post war periods.
The recent change to the citizenship act which was done by the BJP can
be seen as an attempt to solve this conundrum. How to protect the population of
religious minorities from Bangladesh living in India from any legal action for
deportation back to Bangladesh, where they are vulnerable, but at the same time
be able to act on the illegal economic migration from Bangladesh, which has
changed the demographics in North eastern states in particular, but has also
led to creation of settlements of Bangladeshi populations in several cities in
rest of India? This law which provides a faster path to Indian citizenship to
religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and prevents
their deportation on grounds of illegal entry or lack of valid documents of
entry is a safety net to protect this population for any future state action
against illegal economic migrants living in India. A vast majority of such
migrants are Bangladeshi.
This distinction between refugees escaping religious persecution a
majority of whom happen to be Hindus and the illegal economic immigrants a
majority of whom happen to be Muslims does not go down well for the
self-described liberal secularists in India. Thus, the Citizenship Amendment
Act and the expected national register for citizens which would follow was seen
as the final nail in the coffin of secularism by them. They first argued that
the CAA is not permitted in Indian constitution which is secular. When it is
pointed out that the same constitution permits special consideration to
religious minorities when its comes to freedom of operating their educational
and religious institutions which Hindus don’t get, or how it is permitted for
the state to provide special scholarships and run state funded educational
institutions which provide reservations based on religion, how it can run a
special minorities affairs ministry and can tolerate separate personal laws,
these inconvenient questions are completely avoided by them. The question of
legality of this law has been challenged by them in the courts, which has for
now refused to stay the act and given the central government one month to
respond to the objections.
Without waiting for the court decision to arrive they immediately cried
foul of the motive of the government in bringing the CAA in conjunction with
yet to be announced pan India National Register for Citizens. While their
concern is that with the difficulty of Bangladeshi Hindu refugees being
resolved by CAA the illegal Bangladeshi economic migrants now become vulnerable
to state action in any future NRC, they chose to project the CAA and NRC
exercise being somehow against Indian Muslims. Their weird argument was that
Hindus and other religions except Muslims are protected by CAA safety net in
any future NRC. Which is completely wrong since CAA is for foreign refugees not
for Indian citizens. No Indian will ever choose to apply for naturalization
using the CAA route just because his or her name is missed in any future NRC
due to lack of any required documents. Naturalization is a longer process and
will require clearance by intelligence agencies etc. If such an application is
rejected that this person will be left in the lurch despite being an Indian
citizen for several generations. It would be utterly foolish for an Indian
national to do this rather than produce a community certificate or witnesses
from the community in lieu of government issued ID. This was also clarified by
spokesperson of the home ministry.
On this rumour that NRC+CAA combine will disenfranchise Indian Muslims
in particular they ran a nation-wide campaign against CAA. In this media
war the central government of India was projected as being of fascist intent
that wishes to put Muslims in detention camps also called in some circles as
concentration camps. Such absurd claims and hijacking of the movement by
radical Islamists lead to large scale rioting in several urban centers of the
country with higher concentration of Muslims. The international media outlets
have carried front page articles, editorials and oped criticizing the
Citizenship Amendment Act as a “Muslim ban”. When the reality is that it simply
provides a faster path and easier process for naturalization to persecuted
religious minorities from 3 Islamic countries in the subcontinent. It does not
take away any opportunity for anyone no matter what their background on seeking
Indian citizenship by naturalization etc by the existing process. What they
have described as an action being taken by India for the first time is also not
correct. While there was no law as such, it has been the policy of GOI to give
special consideration to religious minorities from Pakistan in particular for
providing then Indian citizenship by registration or naturalization. It has
been seen a commitment by post partition India to provide a refuge to people escaping
the Islamic state created in India after partition. This was provided
specifically to the non-Muslim communities coming from Pakistan. One is not
able to fathom how the executive action remains in the realm of secularism even
if favours a particular religion but a legislative action is suddenly a threat
to the secular principles of the state.
Given the level of misinformation that is being spread on this issue in
India as well as world over, one is struck by the vulnerability of the Indian
state to information war of this kind. No matter how many clarifications are
given by several quarters, whether state institutions or private individuals,
the rumour and the fear mongering around it refuses to die. Riots and protests
by university students against the CAA continue unabated. Several lives have
been lost, corers of rupees of public property has been damaged and India’s
reputation abroad is tarnished in the campaign which has flimsy factual
grounds. While one would have understood the academic disagreement on the
approach or the legal questions raised on the Law which could have been
discussed and resolved in rational manner, the irrational public outrage at
display has every marking of an information war that the Indian state needs to
better prepare itself for and be able to pre-empt and counter in future,
through appropriate communication strategy. The grip of combined breaking India
forces on Indian universities is also a cause for worry and the long-term
security risk for India that needs to be solved by introducing the emic
perspective in Humanities education and making it the mainstream perspective
rather than the fringe perspective it currently is. It is only though giving
primacy to civilizational knowledge systems in humanities education can this be
done. Which is of course another battle ground for the “secularists” who will
resist it at every level in the name of it being Hindu.
