ARSHAD SHAIKH analyses the two-hour interview of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the TIME magazine vis-à-vis the minorities in India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a two-hour interview to the TIME magazine on the eve of completing one year in office. Under pressure to show his report card after getting the thumbs down from both India Inc and the mainstream media for an uninspiring performance, Narendra Modi tried to reassure his fans and stakeholders by giving them an “all is well” feeling and painting a rosy picture of the future of India.
THE BACKGROUND
Rajdeep Sardesai has called Modi’s TIME interview a nice fireside chat with no cross-questions / interruptions. If you go through the complete question set posed to the Prime Minister, it looks like a good PR exercise aimed at scoring brownie points with the international media and the audience back home by projecting Modi as the man in complete control and cruising along smoothly.
Arun Shourie has pointed out this talent of the PM as “the ability to grab headlines”. However, there are many who will dispute the narrative of the government that the economy is on track, foreign policy is gaining prominence and the communal temperature in the country has steadily come down ever since Modi came to power.
The 2015 annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has slammed the NDA government for its “minority policy” and expressed concern about ghar-wapsi incidents. The US ambassador to India, Richard Verma, also rebuked the government’s crackdown on non-governmental organisations, saying it could have a “chilling effect” on civil society. Countering this censure was the need of the hour, with TIME helping out.
THE BLAZING OR THE TUMBLING ECONOMY
The Prime Minister tells TIME regarding India’s economy: “You will actually see that, internationally, the whole world is, once again, excited and enthusiastic about India and the opportunities that India represents…. Internationally, whether it is the IMF, the World Bank, Moody’s or other credit agencies, they are all saying in one voice, that India has a great economic future. It is progressing at a fast pace and has again become a factor of growth and stability in the international economic system. India is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world.”
However, the captains of Indian industry don’t seem to concur. Industry leader and chairman HDFC Bank, Deepak Parekh said: “Impatience was creeping in among businessmen as nothing had changed on the ground in the first nine months of the Modi government.” He said that business wants to know: “Why no changes are happening and why this is taking so long having effect on the ground.”
And although the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may tout economic figures of inflation being 5%, fiscal deficit 3.9%, current account deficit 1% and growth 7.5%, the fact of the matter is that industrial production has declined, rural wages have decreased, unemployment rate is creeping up, fuel prices have increased, the rupee is falling and farmer’s suicides are once again making headlines. With more than 380 million people still living below the poverty line by not able to make more than $1.25 a day – this bleak statistic should serve as a grim reminder to Modi’s slogan of sab ka vikas.
THE INDIAN DNA
Modi elaborated in the TIME interview: “India by its very nature is a democracy. It is not just as per our Constitution that we are a democratic country; it is in our DNA.” It is well-known that the true test of a democracy is the way it treats its minorities. Unfortunately, the BJP does not have a single Lok Sabha member belonging to minorities. Of the 482 candidates that it fielded only 7 were Muslims, none of whom managed to win. So how can the Prime Minister flaunt the democratic DNA of India when his own party, the BJP (which is the ruling party with a brute majority of 282 seats) does not have a single Muslim MP in the lower house of Parliament. The PM has not announced any plans to correct the anomaly thus far.
The first statement made by his Minister for Minority Affairs – Najma Heptulla, after assuming office was: “Muslims are not minorities. Parsis are.” When questioned further, she snapped: “This is not the ministry for Muslim affairs; this is the ministry for minority affairs.” If this the mindset of the Modi sarkar’s minister and the electoral strategy of his party (to completely deny Muslim political representation) then what should the Muslim community expect in terms of justice and empowerment except hollow words?
HINDUISM AND HINDUTVA
The Prime Minister explained: “Religion and faith are very personal matters. So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the Constitution of India…. For us, the unity and the integrity of the country are the top most priorities. All religions and all communities have the same rights and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My Government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion. So there is no place for imaginary apprehensions with regard to the rights of the minorities in India.”
Contrast these words regarding the Constitution of India as the holy book of the country with the demand for making the “Bhagwad Gita” the national scripture or national book by none other than Modi’s Minister for External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj. The Prime Minister has himself led the way by gifting the Gita to heads of states like Barack Obama and Shinzo Abe.
The string of communal and racist comments and statements by Modi’s own ministers along with demands to declare India a Hindu Rashtra, proclamations that all Indians are Hindus and demands to declare Godse (the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi) as a patriot and install his statues all over India have caused a great deal of anxiety to those who care about communal amity as the future of India. But the most worrisome aspect is the complete pin-drop silence of the Prime Minister on these questions.
Now that he has finally broken his silence and promised to have a zero tolerance policy for communal hate-mongers, he should immediately order the Hindutva brigade and the Sangh Parivar (his alma mater in a way) to mend ways and stop their one point agenda of converting India to a Hindu Rashtra where all minorities will have to forgo their religious identities and live as second class citizens.
WALK THE TALK
There is a maxim which says: “Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.” History bears witness that then Prime Minister of India P.V. Narasimha Rao had assured Parliament that the Babri Masjid will be protected at all costs. But what happened under his nose is before the nation and the world. In spite of all his accomplishments, Narasimha Rao will always be remembered as the one whose deliberate inaction caused irreparable damage to the secular fabric of this country and paved the way for the ascent of the Hindutva and Saffron forces. They say history repeats itself, first as tragedy second as a farce. If Muzaffarnagar happens again and the attacks on churches continue unabated, only then will we know that the 2015 TIME magazine interview was in fact nothing but a big farce.