Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, used to say: “India is not a real country. Instead it is thirty-two separate nations that happen to be arrayed along the British rail line"


https://www.thequint.com/news/world/what-lee-kuan-yew-had-to-say-ab...

Apparently, Dr. Manpreet Sethi, a Distinguished Fellow at Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, sees a "Crisis in the Making" after General Khalid Kidwai's speech on Pakistan's new nuclear doctrine.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/pakistan%E2%80%99s-new-nuclear...

She writes: "Formulations like full-spectrum deterrence, buoyed by new weaponry, may seem cohesive to Rawalpindi. But that is not the case in either New Delhi nor Washington. Policymakers from both ought to make this clear to Pakistan’s military leadership"

This Indian reaction is similar to what we heard after Pakistan responded to India's "Cold Start" doctrine with tactical Nasr missile. But Nasr did succeed in burying the talk of Cold Start by New Delhi.

Saffroning the Past: Of Myths, Histories and Right-Wing Agendas
Uma Chakravarti

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4406354

Abstract
Towards the late 1980s the stage was set for a conflation of an ongoing social and political crisis of a high order with the surfacing of middle class insecurities about the state of 'their' nation and of 'their' hegemonic position within it. This was the background to a rightward shift of politics, the rise of a fascist hindutva brigade and a shift of upper caste, middle class allegiance to Hindu majoritarian ideological and political formations. The ideological context for this shift was a crisis of the legitimacy of the state. One way of dealing with the crisis is to 're'construct the nation's 'glorious' past. And this is being done today not through powerful writing but through the power of the visual medium, the cinema and the television. It was a fairly conscious move by the state to telecast religious mega serials, 'Ramayana' and 'Mahabharata'. 'Chanakya' took off on the theme of a fragmented nation, carrying the mythological tradition forward in a more coherent way emphasising a joint 'xenophobia' against the enemy within. Although 'Chanakya"s appeal was limited to an upper caste elite, it was part of a larger process in which a brahmanic Hindu view of history and culture was consolidated along with a rightward shift in politics.

Suhasini Haidar
@suhasinih
In scathing edit ahead of SL President Wickremsinghe visit to Delhi, Sunday Times points to "double standards" by govt including demanding for devolution in SL North/East while "stripping Kashmirs autonomy", concern for SL Tamils vs brushing off of SL Tamil fisherman issues.

https://twitter.com/suhasinih/status/1680445293215600641?s=20

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Sri Lanka's Sunday Times editorial

President’s long-awaited date with India PM

https://www.sundaytimes.lk/230716/editorial/presidents-long-awaited...

The Indian side is predictably going to demand an acceleration of the projects already on the table especially in the power sector (as with Nepal) and an oil and gas pipeline from Trincomalee to Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu allowing Indian companies to get entrenched further in the Sri Lankan economy. There will also likely be demands for devolution and the full implementation of the 13th Amendment in Sri Lanka (never mind stripping Kashmir of devolution) while dodging issues like the continuing poaching by Indian fishermen in Lankan waters – which is a ‘humanitarian issue’ for the Indian fishermen at the expense of the humanitarian issue of the Sri Lankan fishermen in the North.

The Sri Lankan side will necessarily have to recognise and thank India for the life-saving support (spoilt by the demand by the Indian Foreign Minister for contra deals) given from end-2021 to bail out a bankrupt Sri Lanka before the IMF came in and acknowledge the backing by India’s Finance Minister in the debt restructuring process that enabled the IMF intervention.

The problem for Sri Lanka is that it has no muscle, no clout to bargain as equal partners for win-win solutions when in Delhi, their home turf. It is a lopsided balance sheet.

As the Buddha told his chief disciple Ananda, “be wide awake”, President Wickremesinghe will need to follow the advice of India’s greatest son when it comes to discussing and interpreting India’s idea of leading to ‘a point of positive transformation’ of the Indo-Lanka relationship within the context of its ‘extended neighborhood’ policy.

The gates of Sulemanki Headworks were opened, closing them could have worsened the situation in Punjab. Pakistan Friendly Hand; Punjab Under Flood Condition | Pak Open Sulemanki head Works India Pakistan Border


https://india.postsen.com/local/806198.html

Sulemani Headworks built on Sutlej River in Pakistan.

Pakistan has extended a hand of friendship amidst the flood situation in India. The country which used to close the gates of its headworks and dams in the event of floods in Punjab, has opened the gates of Sulemanki headworks this year. This step taken by Pakistan has brought a big relief. In the past, 1.92 lakh cusecs of water reached the neighboring country from Hussainiwala.


In the last 6 days, floods have caused a lot of destruction in Punjab. While the situation has worsened in the eastern case, it is now being felt in western Malwa as well due to the release of water from the Harike headworks. Initially Pakistan had closed its gates of Sulemanki Headworks near Fazilka, but now water is flowing smoothly into Pakistani territory.

Water level in Harike crossed 2.14 lakh cusecs
With this step taken by Pakistan, the major threat of flood in Fazilka has been averted for the time being. In the past, 2.14 lakh cusecs of water was seen flowing in Harike of Sutlej. At the same time, the flow of water near Hussainiwala was recorded at 1.92 lakh cusecs, which is flowing towards Pakistan.

Narendra #Modi Is Using Brutal Repression to Silence the People of #Kashmir, with the complicity of #Indian intellectuals who seek to toxify the cause of Kashmir. #India #Manipur #Islamophobia #Hindutva

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/narendra-modi-kashmir-military-repressi...

BY
SOMDEEP SEN


India-controlled Kashmir is one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world, and any public display of a persistent Kashmiri national struggle meets with swift, violent, and indiscriminate repression. This pattern of silencing extends to the field of discourse as well.

The Indian political mainstream views any reference to Kashmiri rights and aspirations, whether spoken or written, as a manifestation of “fundamentalism,” “radicalism,” or (Pakistani-inspired) “terrorism.” The hard-right, Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi has carried this vilification of Kashmiris to new heights.

A History of Repression
The record of the Indian state’s repressive ways in Kashmir is extensive and well documented, going back decades before Narendra Modi’s rise to power. In 1993, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report titled “Rape in Kashmir: A Crime of War.” It showed that the Indian security forces routinely targeted civilians in the course of their efforts to quell the Kashmiri independence struggle, with rape used as a tool of counterinsurgency.

The report concluded that the security forces were “attempting to punish and humiliate the entire community” through systematic sexual violence against women. Another HRW report published the same year documented the routine torture of Kashmiri detainees as well as harassment and assault of health workers who were providing care. According to the report’s authors, the Indian authorities even “prevented ambulance drivers from transporting injured persons to hospitals for emergency care.”

The impunity with which the Indian armed forces have operated in the Kashmir Valley receives legal sanction from the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. This piece of legislation gives them emergency powers to maintain public order in so-called disturbed areas — all of which, civil society organizations argue, violate international human rights law.

There is ample evidence of this. Along with the acknowledged civilian death toll, there is the practice of enforced disappearances of Kashmiri men. Human rights activists estimated that between eight thousand and ten thousand people were “disappeared” between 1988 and 2007, approximately 60 percent of whom were civilians. People refer to the wives of the disappeared, who have often been missing for decades without being officially declared dead, as “half widows.”

There have also been several discoveries of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir. Eyewitnesses claim that those graves were dug under instruction from the Indian security forces, and that they contain the bodies of the missing Kashmiri men.

Blinding and Silencing
Since Modi took office, repression in Kashmir has been even more severe. Since 2010, the security forces have been using pellet guns as a supposedly “nonlethal” weapon for crowd control. In 2016 alone, they fired 1.2 million metal pellets in response to protests in the valley. The pellets left six thousand people injured, with 782 suffering eye injuries. Writing in the Guardian, journalist Mirza Waheed described it as an exercise in “mass blinding.”

A young Kashmiri student I spoke to in Mumbai describes the conditions in the state:

Stone pelting doesn’t happen that much anymore. But if anything does happen, the Indian soldiers quickly pick up anyone in sight. They will arrest you, take your paperwork, take your passport. In fact, in some cases, they will seize your property. This is normal in Kashmir.

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/narendra-modi-kashmir-military-repressi...

BY
SOMDEEP SEN


In 2019, the Indian parliament revoked Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution that granted autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir. Most significantly, Article 35A had allowed the Kashmiri Legislative Assembly to “define permanent residents.” In effect, this gave it the authority to maintain the valley’s Kashmiri identity. The Indian state has engaged in a concerted effort to settle non-Kashmiris in the region and alter its demographic makeup.

Using the Jammu Kashmir Public Safety Act, a preventive detention law, the authorities have conducted raids and arbitrarily detained politicians, activists, and journalists. In 2022, pro-government journalists joined forces with the police to storm and shut down the premises of the independent Kashmir Press Club.

India has also become the world capital of internet shutdowns, accounting for 58 percent of all disruptions worldwide. Between January and February of last year, Jammu and Kashmir experienced forty-nine disruptions, including “16 back-to-back orders for three-day-long curfew-style shutdowns.”

Toxifying Kashmir
Physical and legal repression is supplemented by an effort to depict support for Kashmiri rights as toxic. Sociologist Mark Ayyash has written about the toxification of Palestinian critique, a process through which the Palestinian national struggle is “expelled from the realm of valid, rational and respectable knowledge.” There is a similar kind of toxification at work when it comes to Kashmir.

One form of toxification is the portrayal of voices in support of Kashmir as “anti-national.” In 2020, the police bookedKashmiri photojournalist Masrat Zahra under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), accusing her of engaging in “anti-national activities.” The act allows the state to suppress any activities deemed to be against the interests, integrity, and sovereignty of the state. Zahra was charged with “criminal intentions to induce the youth” through her posts on Facebook, which mostly included archives of her previously published work.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), a specialist counterterrorism agency, also invoked the UAPA against Khurram Parvez, coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD). Parvez was accused of a series of offenses such as “criminal conspiracy,” “conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India,” and “raising funds for terror activities.” A coalition of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Front Line Defenders, denounced the charges against Parvez as an attempt to “silence and intimidate human rights defenders.”

The same process of toxification applies to the written word, with articles both academic and journalistic equating the Kashmiri struggle with terrorism or Pakistan’s “proxy war.” They do not offer any substantial engagement with the call for Kashmiri rights and a national homeland.

A review by Sumit Ganguly in Foreign Policy of journalist Azad Essa’s book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, offers a recent example. In his account of the politics of Kashmir, Essa places the national struggle at center stage. Yet Ganguly was quick to dismiss this as “polemic” and a “one-sided account,” accusing Essa of parroting a “tired Pakistani narrative” on Kashmir.

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/narendra-modi-kashmir-military-repressi...

BY
SOMDEEP SEN


A Disappearing Act
When India recently paraded the delegates attending the G20 tourism meeting through Kashmir, it was meant to show the world that Modi’s government had brought normalcy, peace, and prosperity to the valley. But in stark contrast to this performance, the young Kashmiri students I spoke to fear the ongoing violence of the state security forces. They were worried about being “picked up” at the airport, detained by the local police during a random ID check, or simply made to disappear on the way home.

They were equally aware that the ease with which they can simply disappear reflects the way that the Indian state has worked to make the entire Kashmiri national struggle disappear. In a country that has sharply swerved toward the right under the rule of Modi, it is not surprising that Kashmiris have been targeted, along with critical journalists and political campaigners. After all, they are the only ones standing in the way of India’s full-fledged shift to authoritarianism.

Washington’s Indian Delusion
Tim Willasey-Wilsey CMG

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/washi...


The US believes it has secured India as a strategic ally in the Indo-Pacific region. There will certainly be mutual benefits from the deepening partnership, but India has no intention of sacrificing its ‘strategic autonomy’ to join the Western camp against China, or of abandoning its friendship with Russia.

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Central to the visit were several military deals. India is to acquire fighter jet engines from General Electric and drones from General Atomics. This is an urgent requirement for India, which has been incredibly slow to recognise its military vulnerability after many years of ponderous defence procurement processes and a heavy reliance on antiquated and unreliable Russian (and often Soviet) weaponry.

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This contrasts markedly with the US treatment of Pakistan. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan was met with hostility in Washington after his feckless visit to Moscow on the day of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In the months after Biden’s inauguration, Khan did not receive a single phone call from the US president, who was likely registering his irritation at Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan both before and after the US withdrawal. This cold-shouldering of Pakistan is doubtless part of US attempts to draw India into a strategic embrace. The US has a long history of trying to abandon Pakistan and then finding itself sucked inexorably back into an alliance with a country which is geographically significant and whose security (not least because of its nuclear weapons) is crucial for global (and Indian) security.

The central motivation for the US’s cultivation of India has nothing to do with Russia or Pakistan, however, but is focused on the increasingly serious global stand-off with China. With India being regularly challenged on its northern border by China, this might feel like a slam-dunk for policymakers in the State Department and at the Pentagon. However, Modi’s position on China is much more nuanced than that of his hawkish national security team led by Ajit Doval or of the pro-Western officers of the Indian Navy. He has kept channels with Beijing open and has made sure that commercial relations (except in the security domain) are unaffected. In fact, India–China trade continues to grow.

Modi is probably mystified by China’s hostility towards India. Having won a conclusive victory in the 1962 war, China voluntarily retreated to a demarcation line of its own choosing. Beijing may now worry about the proximity of northern India to its restless regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, but that threat is much greater if Beijing continues to alienate New Delhi. In Nehru’s time there was talk of Hindi Chini bhai bhai (Chinese-Indian brotherhood), and as late as 1996 Beijing contemplated taking a balanced approach between India and Pakistan.

When Modi was chief minister of Gujarat (when he could not get a US visa because of concerns about his alleged role in an anti-Muslim pogrom), he was a regular visitor to China (and Japan). Since becoming prime minister, he has weathered several serious Chinese transgressions over the northern border, but has resisted calls by his own national security team to escalate. This is partly because of India’s military weakness, and partly for fear of coordinated operations between China and Pakistan. But the main reason is that Modi does not want to do anything that endangers the Indian economy.

For all the talk of India becoming the third largest global economy by 2027, the reality is that India has by far the lowest GDP per capita of any of the world’s top economies. In 2021 it was ranked 159th out of 229 countries. In 2023 it will be higher, but much of urban and rural India is undeveloped, with high levels of poverty and deprivation and a lack of basic public services. Modi knows this better than anyone. His own humble roots provide him with a different perspective to that of the Indian bureaucracy and the military.

Romila Thapar - India's Past and Present: How History Informs Contemporary Narrative (2010)

https://youtu.be/J8HhLJzpx3Y

In conversation with IDRC President David M. Malone, historian Romila Thapar, widely recognized as India's foremost historian challenged the colonial interpretations of India's past, which have created an oversimplified history that has reinforced divisions of race, religion, and caste.

How did Rajiv Gandhi, applauded for his modernist ideologies, accelerate Hindu nationalism politics?
An excerpt from ‘India is Broken: And Why It’s Hard To Fix,’ by Ashoka Mody.
Ashoka Mody


https://scroll.in/article/1042462/how-did-rajiv-gandhi-applauded-fo...


In 1987, Indians owned just 13 million televisions. Friends and neighbours gathered around television sets in homes and at shopfronts. In villages, hundreds of people assembled around the one available set. On average, about 80 million people (almost 10 percent of the population) watched an episode. By the time the serial ended, almost all Indians had seen multiple episodes. More so than the Ekatmata yagna (the series of processions in late 1983), the Ramayana serial fused Savarkar’s view of India as the fatherland and holy land of the Hindus.

In a tribute Savarkar might have savored, the Indian Express’s media correspondent Shailaja Bajpai commented on August 7, 1988, a week after the series ended, “From Kanyakumari to Kashmir, from Gujarat to Gorakhpur, millions have stood, sat and kneeled to watch it.” Reflecting on that total absorption, she wondered: “Is there life after Ramayana?” No, she answered, there could be no life after Ramayana. Instead, echoing the void Jawaharlal Nehru sensed when Mahatma Gandhi died, Bajpai wrote: “the light has gone out of our lives and nothing will ever be the same again.”

For the 78 weeks that Ramayana ran, it presented a martially adept and angry Ram dispensing justice. The VHP projected its partisan view of the serial in its iconography of Ram. The author Pankaj Mishra described the Ram in VHP posters as an “appallingly muscle- bound Rambo in a dhoti.” Theatre scholar Anuradha Kapur lamented that VHP images showed Ram “far more heavily armed than in any traditional representation.”

In one image, Ram carried a dhanush (a bow), a trishul (trident), an axe, and a sword “in the manner of a pre-industrial warrior.” In another image, Ram, the angry male crusader, marched across the skies, his dhoti flying, chest bared, his conventionally coiled hair unrolling behind him in the wind. Accompanying those images, every VHP poster pledged to build a temple in Ayodhya. The dismayed Kapur noted that Ram, the omniscient and omnipresent Lord, was everywhere. Pinning him down to Ayodhya made no sense. “Hinduism,” she despairingly wrote, “is being reduced to a travesty of itself by its advocates.”

The Hindutva movement’s heavy reliance on young hypermasculine warriors to achieve its mission only exacerbated this travesty. In April and May 1987, when the Ramayana serial was in its early months, bloody Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Meerut, a city in western Uttar Pradesh. By most accounts, Muslims provoked the riots. But then the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary, infected by the Hindutva virus, killed hundreds of Muslims in cold blood.

Indian view of Pakistan Navy Modernization

https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/china-is-helping-modernize-the-paki...

by Guarav Sen

Pakistan has been proactively procuring technologically advanced naval vessels from China, headlined by a $5 billion deal signed in 2016 for Pakistan to acquire Yuan class Type 039/041 diesel submarines by 2028. Pakistan is all set to acquire eight such submarines from China, with four of them scheduled for delivery by the end of 2023. The first four subs are being built by China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation; the other four will be built in Pakistan by Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works, further bolstering Pakistan’s indigenous capabilities.

These submarines are equipped with advanced sensors and modern armaments, which tilts the tactical power balance slightly in favor of Pakistan. These diesel attack submarines align with the Pakistan Navy’s offensive sea denial strategy, which prioritizes the use of submarines and missile-carrying maritime patrol aircraft in naval warfare.

Apart from this, Pakistan is also expanding its surface fleet. It has commissioned Zulfiqar-class frigates, based on China’s Type 053H3 vessels, which serve multiple roles, including anti-submarine warfare. It carries YJ-82 missiles for anti-surface warfare and FM-90N short-range surface-to-air missiles for self-defense.

In January 2022, the Pakistan Navy commissioned its most advanced vessel, the guided missile frigate Tughril. The Tughril is the first of four powerful Type 054A/P frigates being built in Shanghai for the Pakistan Navy. The vessel is armed with surface-to-air missiles and supersonic surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs), is a versatile warship capable of undertaking multiple missions. The second such vessel, the Taimur, was commissioned in June 2022.

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While the Tughril-class frigates represent a significant addition to Pakistan’s surface fleet, they do not pose a credible deterrent against the Indian Navy’s superior capabilities and numerical advantage. But still, India needs to monitor Pakistan’s shift toward power projection in the IOR. The addition of these advanced frigates enhances the Pakistan Navy’s capability to operate in distant waters, which is demonstrated by its ability to conduct joint drills with China’s navy in the East China Sea this year.

Besides China, Turkey is also playing a key role in stretching and modernizing Pakistan’s naval fleet. In 2018, Pakistan and Turkey signed a contract for the construction of four Milgem-class corvettes based on the design of Turkish Ada-class ships. Under the deal, Turkey will deliver four ships to Pakistan by February 2025.

Pakistan’s continued induction of higher-tonnage surface vessels reflects its ambition to enhance power projection in the region. The concerns for India lie not only in the naval imbalance but also in Pakistan’s first-ever maritime doctrine, “Preserving Freedom of Seas.”

Pakistan’s maritime strategy has evolved from an offensive sea denial approach to one focused on a sustained presence in the IOR. The Chinese-made J-10 fighter, which is part of China’s naval arm, can be used by the Pakistan Navy to carry out maritime operations in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The warplane can carry anti-ship missiles, which could enable the Pakistan Navy to play a more responsive role in the Indian Ocean.

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Presently, Pakistan cannot come close to matching the maritime power of its archrival India, but the continued push for modernization and renewed strategic cooperation with China and Turkey could change the status quo by transforming Pakistan into a genuine regional naval power. A strong Pakistan Navy equipped with advanced frigates and other weapons is part of Beijing’s grand plan to ensure the security of Chinese oil imports coming from the Persian Gulf and attain control of the sea lanes traversing the Indian Ocean.

General Khalid Kidwai’s warning to India

https://youtu.be/fN4LrNK9lqQ

Join Pravin Sawhney on "The Bottom Line" as we unravel Pakistan's nuclear policy and India's political provocations. Explore General Khalid Kidwai's crucial role and the red lines for nuclear weapon use. Discover how China's support impacts the strategic landscape. Stay informed and gain critical insights in this concise video. Like, share, and subscribe to Force Magazine for more!

Growing India-US Technology Collaboration: Implications for Pakistan

https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/growing-india-us-technology-collabo...


The transfer of cutting-edge technologies to India is aimed at countering China, but it will also threaten the national security of Pakistan.

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It is pertinent to note that the technology cooperation taking place between the United States and India is targeted at China. However, it will have implications for Pakistan considering the tense history of both countries, and the conventional as well as technological disparity between India and Pakistan. In this context, the transfer of cutting-edge technologies will not only threaten the national security of Pakistan but also destabilize the already volatile South Asian region.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, responding to the media queries on India-U.S. joint statement, stated: “Pakistan is also deeply concerned over the planned transfer of advanced military technologies to India. Such steps are accentuating military imbalance in the region and undermining strategic stability. They remain unhelpful in achieving the objective of a durable peace in South Asia.”

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Keeping in view the evolving situation, it is important that India and Pakistan work toward establishing confidence-building measures. Pakistan has already taken a positive step, as its foreign minister visited India for the first time in 12 years to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in early May. Establishing confidence-building measures between both states would ultimately lead to a decrease in the likelihood of conflict escalation.

It is also important that major powers like the United States should keep a balanced approach toward mediation, keeping in view the regional dynamics.

Finally, although Pakistan is not presently in the ideal position to indulge in an unwanted arms race, it is still important to initiate investment in the technological domain in order to close the gap with India. Since most of the technologies being pursued in contemporary times are dual-use, it will be appropriate for Pakistan to invest in such technologies to reap the benefits in both the civil as well as military domains. For now, it is important for Pakistan to focus on developing conventional counter-tactics to be better prepared for emerging threats emanating from India.

General Khalid Kidwai’s warning to India

https://youtu.be/fN4LrNK9lqQ

Join Pravin Sawhney on "The Bottom Line" as we unravel Pakistan's nuclear policy and India's political provocations. Explore General Khalid Kidwai's crucial role and the red lines for nuclear weapon use. Discover how China's support impacts the strategic landscape. Stay informed and gain critical insights in this concise video. Like, share, and subscribe to Force Magazine for more!

Under Hindu Nationalist Leaders, Sectarian Violence Flares in India

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/world/asia/india-hindu-muslim-vi...

A gunman who killed Muslim train passengers and a Hindu march that turned riotous underscore how the partisan stances of India’s top Hindu leaders have given license to chaotic elements in the country.

In the early hours of Monday, on a train bound for Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, a police officer took up his service rifle, fatally shot his superior and then killed three unarmed passengers. All three of the passengers were Muslim men, according to Indian news reports.

Audio from cellphone videos of the incident filmed inside the train is muffled, but it sounds as if the officer, Chetan Singh, says in Hindi: “If you want to live in Hindustan, you must vote for Modi and Yogi.” Using an antiquated name for part of South Asia, he appeared to be advocating support for India’s foremost Hindu politicians: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath, the leader of India’s most populous state.

The violence occurred on the same day as a march led by a Hindu nationalist organization in one of the few northern Indian districts in which Muslims are a majority. The rally, which a Hindu vigilante wanted in the murders of several Muslims had promised to join, dissolved into street fighting, which then gave way to a full-blown riot that spread toward Delhi. As shops, vehicles and a mosque were set ablaze, at least five people were killed, including the mosque’s junior imam, the police said.

These scenes — uncoordinated and unrelated, but hardly uncommon in India under Mr. Modi’s tenure — have emerged at an awkward time for the country as it prepares to host the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi in September. Mr. Modi has been promoting an economy-focused “India growth story” around the world and has received leadership accolades in Paris and Washington — a notable achievement given that in 2005 the State Department denied him a visa for nearly a decade over “severe violations of religious freedom” in the wake of massacres in his home state.

Far away from Monday’s violence, ethnic hatred has also been erupting in the northeastern state of Manipur since May. Although religious identity has played a lesser role in the fighting there, the government’s inability to keep the peace between warring groups — in part because it is not seen as an impartial party — has been just as disturbing.

Both Mr. Modi and Mr. Adityanath, and indeed the whole nationalist movement led by Mr. Modi, are widely understood to stand on the same side of any conflict that pits India’s Hindus — who make up almost 80 percent of the country’s population of 1.4 billion — against its Muslims, who make up its largest minority, at roughly 14 percent.

Mr. Adityanath speaks for “law and order” but also talks about “feeding bullets, not biryani” to Muslim troublemakers. And although Mr. Modi tends to be much subtler, on the campaign trail he has said of violent rioters that “we can identify them by their clothes” — meaning the salwar kameez favored by South Asia’s Muslims — and will punish them accordingly.

How Manipur violence is challenging India’s politics


https://www.vox.com/2023/8/6/23821950/manipur-violence-india-modi-kuki

Modi and the BJP face a no-confidence motion due to brutal conflict.

By Ellen Ioanes


Interethnic violence has grown over the summer in India’s northeastern Manipur state , with reports on Thursday claiming three people had been killed and several homes set on fire. The clashes, between the majority Meitei ethnic group and the Kuki tribal groups risks spilling into neighboring states, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has thus far failed to seriously address the violence or the broader underlying issues of migration and ethnic tensions in the region.

Since May 3, Meitei and Kuki residents of communities in Manipur have engaged in horrific violence including reported rapes, burnings, and decapitations, apparently motivated by the state government’s efforts to extend benefits and jobs once exclusively reserved for Kuki to Meiteis. Over the past three months, the violence has become so extreme that it has triggered a no-confidence motion against Modi’s government this coming week.

Though the proposed motion won’t affect Modi and his Bharatiya Janta Party’s (BJP) grip on power, it will serve two main political purposes: to draw attention to the government’s inaction in containing the conflict as well as other failures and to galvanize the opposition under a new umbrella group.

Interethnic, sectarian, and insurgent violence is not new to India, and Modi’s Hindu nationalist ideology has contributed to the atmosphere of discord, if not outright fueled violence in some cases. The BJP governs Manipur state, and rather than attempting mediation between the largely Hindu Meiteis and Christian Kukis, the state government imposed an internet blackout that was only partially lifted last month.

The no-confidence motion won’t topple Modi’s government and may not even bring relief for the thousands who have fled violence in Manipur — or the many more still living in fear.

Violence in Manipur has become too extreme to ignore

India’s northeastern states — collectively called the “seven sisters” — are remote, often under resourced, and ethnically diverse. Some of these ethnic groups, called Scheduled Tribes, are transitory or share kinships across different states or even into neighboring countries; the Kuki, for example, have ties to ethnic groups in neighboring Myanmar and parts of Bangladesh as well as Mizoram and Assam states.

Because of its remoteness, porous international and state borders, migratory tribal groups, and the political and economic instability of neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar, northeastern India has seen many interethnic conflicts over the decades and under Modi’s government. In Assam, for example, tensions between ethnic Assamese and Bangladeshi migrants, including those whose families had lived in Assam for decades, have always had a political dimension — which was only exacerbated in 2019 when the federal government essentially declared about 1.9 million Bangladeshis in Assam stateless.

Manipur, like Assam, is poor and under-resourced; and inequality, real or perceived, exacerbates any tensions that already exist.

In Manipur, the Meitei people make up about half of the population, per CNN, and the Kuki make up 25 percent. As Scheduled Tribes, the Kuki have special access to land permits, jobs, and other benefits because they had historically been oppressed and denied access to education and livelihoods.

But a court ruling issued May 3 suggested the Meitei people also be designated as Scheduled Tribes, giving them access to the benefits — and, importantly, land in Mizoram’s hill country— that had previously been set aside for Scheduled Tribes. Kuki and other Scheduled Tribes rallied against the ruling, leading to the statewide suspension of mobile internet services, as well as a “shoot-at-sight” order issued by police governor Anusuiya Uikey to “maintain public order and tranquility,” CNN reported at the time.

#Modi's #Hindutva politics is pushing #India to the brink. World’s most populous country is degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence. #BJP pumping out a steady stream of #Islamophobia & vile dog whistles. #Manipur #Haryana @Planet_Deb
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/india-modi-conflict-zone...

Indian social media is a brutal place, a window on the everyday hatred and violence that has come to colonize the country in the nine years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power. But the images from the northeastern state of Manipur that began circulating in July were shocking even by those low standards.

A video clip showed two women being sexually assaulted as they were paraded, naked, by a crowd of men who later gang-raped one of them, according to a police complaint. The horrific scene was part of an explosion of ethnic violence since May that has turned the small state into a war zone, killing more than 150 people and displacing tens of thousands.

The state has a long history of ethnic animosities that predate Mr. Modi’s rise. But the fuse for the current unrest in Manipur was lit by the politics of Hindu supremacy, xenophobia and religious polarization championed by his Bharatiya Janata Party.


India is a diverse nation, crisscrossed by religious, ethnic, caste, regional and political fault lines. Since Mr. Modi took office in 2014, his ruling party has torn those asunder with dangerous exclusionary politics intended to charge up the party’s base and advance its goal of remaking India’s secular republic into a majoritarian Hindu state. The repugnant nature of this brand of politics has been clear for some time, but the situation in Manipur shows what’s ahead for India: The world’s most populous country is slowly degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence.

Under Mr. Modi’s government, the state monopoly on violence is being surrendered to extremists and vigilantes. Those targeted by the kind of mob violence that we are seeing in India may conclude that equal rights are no longer guaranteed, that political differences can no longer be peacefully reconciled or fairly mediated and that violence is the only way for them to resist.

The targeting of minorities — particularly Muslims — by right-wing Hindu extremists is now a way of life in many states. Vigilante mobs, who often assemble provocatively in front of mosques, regularly assault Muslims as understaffed and underequipped police fail to intervene. Lynchings and open calls for genocide are common. India now ranks among the top 10 countries at the highest risk of mass killings, according to Early Warning Project, which assesses such risks around the world.

In Manipur, Christians are bearing the brunt as the state’s B.J.P. government stokes the insecurities of the majority ethnic Meitei, who are predominantly Hindu. State leaders have branded the Kuki tribes who populate the hill districts, and who are mostly Christian, as infiltrators from Myanmar, have blamed them for poppy cultivation intended for the drug trade and evicted some of them from their forest habitats. The specific trigger for the current violence was a court ruling in the state in favor of granting the Meitei affirmative action provisions and other benefits that have long been enjoyed by the Kuki and other tribes, which sparked a protest by tribal communities opposed to the ruling. The Manipur government this year also began a citizenship verification drive that infringes on the privacy of Kuki. A similar drive in neighboring Assam state targeting Muslims has already reportedly disenfranchised nearly two million people.

#Modi's #Hindutva politics is pushing #India to the brink. World’s most populous country is degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence. #BJP pumping out a steady stream of #Islamophobia & vile dog whistles. #Manipur #Haryana @Planet_Deb
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/india-modi-conflict-zone...



Emboldened by the state government’s rhetoric, Meitei militias in Manipur have gone on a rampage of raping, pillaging, looting police armories and burning villages. More than 250 churches have been burned down. Those were Meitei men in the horrific 26-second video, sexually assaulting two Kuki women. (The video was shot in early May but came to light only in July, possibly delayed by a government internet ban imposed in the state in response to the violence.) Many similar attacks on Kuki women have been reported. Mr. Modi has called the rape incident “shameful” but has otherwise said little about the chaos in Manipur.
The violent impact of his party’s polarizing politics is acutely felt in India’s heartland, too. The area near a tech and finance hub on the outskirts of New Delhi was rocked by violence last week as Hindu supremacists staging a religious procession clashed with Muslims. Mosques were attacked, an imam was killed, businesses were burned and looted, and hundreds of Muslims have fled.

In tandem with the B.J.P.’s demonizing of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims, television, cinema and social media are deployed to radicalize the Hindu majority, pumping out a steady stream of Islamophobia and vile dog whistles. Extremist groups, at least one of which appears to have received the public support of the prime minister, run amok. Muslims have been arrested for praying, had their livelihoods and businesses destroyed and their homes razed. Bulldozers, used to demolish homes, have become an anti-Muslim symbol, proudly paraded by B.J.P. supporters at political rallies.

As John Keane and I argue in our book “To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism,” it’s a signature tactic of modern-day despots: tightening their grip on power by redefining who belongs to the polity and ostracizing others. In the ultimate subversion of democracy, the government chooses the people, rather than the people choosing the government.

India is already a complex federation of regional identities, many of which consider themselves distinct from Hindi-speaking north India, the power base of Mr. Modi’s party. This federal structure is held together by delicate bonds of social and political accommodation. But they are fraying fast under Mr. Modi, who has no appetite for either, shrinking the space for nonviolent political contestation. Some regional political parties see the Bharatiya Janata Party’s centralizing and homogenizing Hindu-first thrust as a cultural imposition from outside and are assailing it with the same divisive us-versus-them vocabulary.

What India’s foreign-news coverage says about its world-view

https://www.economist.com/asia/2023/08/16/what-indias-foreign-news-...


Indians are growing more interested in the outside world, but not more expert

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When narendra modi visited Washington in June, Indian cable news channels spent days discussing their country’s foreign-policy priorities and influence. This represents a significant change. The most popular shows, which consist of a studio host and supporters of the Hindu-nationalist prime minister jointly browbeating his critics, used to be devoted to domestic issues. Yet in recent years they have made room for foreign-policy discussion, too.

..... Mr Modi has also given the channels a lot to discuss; a visit to France and the United Arab Emirates in July was his 72nd foreign outing. India’s presidency of the g20 has brought the world even closer. Meetings have been scheduled in over 30 cities, all of which are now festooned with g20 paraphernalia.

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What is the Indian perspective? Watch Ms (Palki) Sharma and a message emerges: everywhere else is terrible. Both on wion and at her new home, Network18, Ms Sharma relentlessly bashes China and Pakistan. Given India’s history of conflict with the two countries, that is hardly surprising. Yet she also castigates the West, with which India has cordial relations. Europe is taunted as weak, irrelevant, dependent on America and suffering from a “colonial mindset”. America is a violent, racist, dysfunctional place, an ageing and irresponsible imperial power.

This is not an expression of the confident new India Mr Modi claims to represent. Mindful of the criticism India often draws, especially for Mr Modi’s Muslim-bashing and creeping authoritarianism, Ms Sharma and other pro-Modi pundits insist that India’s behaviour and its problems are no worse than any other country’s. A report on the recent riots in France on Ms Sharma’s show included a claim that the French interior ministry was intending to suspend the internet in an attempt to curb violence. “And thank God it’s in Europe! If it was elsewhere it would have been a human-rights violation,” she sneered. In fact, India leads the world in shutting down the internet for security and other reasons. The French interior ministry had anyway denied the claim a day before the show aired.

Bridling at lectures by hypocritical foreign powers is a longstanding feature of Indian diplomacy. Yet the new foreign news coverage’s hyper-defensive championing of Mr Modi, and its contrast with the self-confident new India the prime minister describes, are new and striking. Such coverage has two aims, says Manisha Pande of Newslaundry, a media-watching website: to position Mr Modi as a global leader who has put India on the map, and to promote the theory that there is a global conspiracy to keep India down. “Coverage is driven by the fact that most tv news anchors are propagandists for the current government.”

This may be fuelling suspicion of the outside world, especially the West. In a recent survey by Morning Consult, Indians identified China as their country’s biggest military threat. America was next on the list. A survey by the Pew Research Centre found confidence in the American president at its highest level since the Obama years. But negative views were also at their highest since Pew started asking the question.

That is at odds with Mr Modi’s aim to deepen ties with the West. And nationalists are seldom able to control the forces they unleash. China has recently sought to tamp down its aggressive “wolf-warrior diplomacy” rhetoric. But its social media remain mired in nationalism. Mr Modi, a vigorous champion for India abroad, should take note. By letting his propagandists drum up hostility to the world, he is laying a trap for himself

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...

Just weeks ago, Indian diplomats had to douse diplomatic fires across the subcontinent after Modi inaugurated a new parliament building that featured a mural map of India, commissioned by the Modi government, that showed the country’s borders stretching from Pakistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east, gobbling up Nepal and Bhutan. In case anyone had doubts, lawmakers from Modi’s BJP lauded the mural for its representation of Akhand Bharat, a Hindu right-wing conceptualization and ideological goal of an undivided India.

India’s neighbors were horrified at this casual trampling of their sovereignty. Pakistan protested. The Ministry of External Affairs said the mural was not depicting Akhand Bharat but “the spread of the Ashokan empire.” The first to contradict this was, among others, Modi’s own Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, who tweeted a photo of the map and said, “The resolve is clear—Akhand Bharat.”

Foreign minister S. Jaishankar, now a frequent presence on Indian Instagram and YouTube videos for his brusque responses to criticism, swat Islamabad off in trademark fashion, saying he does “not expect Pakistan to understand.”

The explanation was enough to set hyper-jingoistic social media feeds ablaze. But Kathmandu and Dhaka, traditional friends of New Delhi, were equally mortified. Both asked for explanations. Former Nepali Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai warned that the mural issue would “stoke [an] unnecessary and harmful diplomatic row,” with the potential for “further aggravating the trust deficit” between the two neighbors. In Kathmandu, Mayor Balen Shah, a young populist politician, cocked a snook at the mighty neighbor and published a map of “Greater Nepal” that included Indian territories. Under domestic pressure, Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, on the eve of his India visit, said he would raise the issue with Modi. On his return, Prachanda said that even though the Modi government had “clarified” that it was a cultural map, “further study” needed to be done in the issue.

This mural controversy came just weeks after the United States made public that Modi’s BJP and Hindu nationalist groups affiliated with it were propping up demands by Nepali Hindu groups to ditch Nepal’s secular constitution and turn it into a Hindu state. The disclosure, made in the U.S. State Religious Freedom report launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May, also recorded Nepali civil society actors saying that Modi’s BJP could even be funding some of the organizations driving this demand.

India’s domestic media, mostly submissive toward the Modi government, ignored the report, but foreign capitals have taken note. There is growing recognition that these instances are damaging India’s standing globally even if few might be willing to say it aloud.

“The rise of Hindu nationalism within India will have an impact on India’s global image, no doubt,” said Aparna Pande, the Washington, D.C.-based director of the India Initiative at the Hudson Institute. She added that some of India’s actions in the recent past have been “damaging” to its interests, especially in its immediate neighborhood.

“The ideology or the belief of the ruling party in Delhi has historically not been allowed to impact foreign policy. It did not matter if we had a socialist government or one that backed free-market policies, because foreign policy was insulated,” she said.

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...


This, though, is changing.

In 2019, the Modi government amended the country’s citizenship laws to fast-track citizenship applications of non-Muslim refugees from the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Leaders from the BJP made statements, without any pushback from the party or Modi, that threatened to “send back” the “illegal Bangladeshi Muslims,” referring disparagingly to the economic immigration, often undocumented, by Bangladeshis into India. In a rare show of its anger with New Delhi, Dhaka canceled scheduled visits by its ministers to India.

Local conflicts can play into the Indian government’s fierce nationalism. Last year, violent clashes between newly arrived Hindu immigrants and Muslim residents rocked the English city of Leicester. Police investigations found, according to the Daily Mail, that Hindu nationalist “elements close to Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party” were suspected to have played a key role in inciting them. The Modi government issued an unusually partisan response, condemning the violence and singling out “symbols of Hindu religion” as the target of the attack.

Five months later, in February this year, the Modi government unleashed a series of tax raids on offices of the BBC across multiple cities. The sudden raids came just weeks after the BBC released a documentary that investigated the role of Modi during the 2002 riots in his home state of Gujarat, which killed 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

Ian Hall, a professor of international relations at Griffith University and the author of the book Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy, said the Modi government had been trying to tread a fine line by “sometimes using anti-Muslim language at home to mobilize voters while trying to maintain positive relations with Muslim states,” he said. “There is no doubt that outbursts of anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks on Muslims in India cause problems for New Delhi, both in the Muslim world and in the West.”

These problems come in different forms.

In London, a foreign-policy expert who asked not to be named said there were many within the U.K. Foreign Office who were “petrified” and “worried” about doing business with Modi’s government, but also acknowledged the “overriding strategic concerns” that brought them closer.

India’s geopolitical significance as a counterweight to China in the region might ensure that criticism for its actions may not be too vocal, but that still won’t give India a free pass, said Kira Huju, a fellow in international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“Western capitals are compelled by geostrategic imperatives in the Indo-Pacific to seek India’s cooperation, but they may well have gone further in these pursuits, had they not harbored deep reservations about domestic developments in India,” Huju said.

Some of this pushback was on display during Modi’s recent U.S. visit.

Media reports said that despite Modi’s insistence on not holding a press conference, the Biden administration pushed on after a marathon negotiation, ensuring that their guest did not leave without fielding questions from the press. Pande, from the Hudson Initiative, said the U.S. insistence on the press conference was a not-so-subtle message from the Biden administration.

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...


When a U.S. journalist posed a question to Modi, infamous for not having addressed a single press conference in his nine years as PM, pro-Modi trolls, including Modi’s own leaders, viciously attacked her online and highlighted her Muslim roots. The attacks were so vicious that the White House stepped in, called it “unacceptable” and saying that administration officials “absolutely condemn” the attacks, which the spokesperson said were “antithetical to the principles of democracy … on display during the state visit last week.”

Huju said that even former U.S. President Barack Obama’s CNN interview during Modi’s trip, in which he implicitly criticized Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics, was possibly “coordinated” by the Democratic administration in the White House to send a message across to the Modi government.

Closer to home, India’s brand of politics is rankling friendly regimes, too.

Shahab Enam Khan, a Dhaka-based academic and a Fulbright professor at the U.S. University of Delaware, said that many within the Sheikh Hasina regime, traditionally close to New Delhi, were “uncomfortable” with the Modi government’s actions.

This anger against Modi and his government spilled over onto the streets in 2021, when the Indian prime minister visited Bangladesh. Angry protesters clashed with security forces, leading to the death of at least 10 people, and dozens injured.

“In Bangladesh, Hindutva is also perceived to be one form of extremism. Hence, many here are questioning India’s right to criticize other forms of extremism,” Khan said. “In fact, many here are now comparing the centrality of religion in India’s politics to the centrality of religion in Pakistan’s politics,” he said.

In Kathmandu, an anti-India brand of politics has been brewing afresh in the recent years, and the recent mural controversy only added to it. When Prachanda—the Nepali PM, an avowed lifelong atheist and leader of the country’s Maoist movement—visited India in June this year and performed a six-hour long ceremony at the Mahakaleshwar Temple in the city of Ujjain, many in Kathmandu were left aghast.

“Many here felt that this temple visit could not have been Prachanda’s choice; it was possibly hoisted on him by the Indian government,” said a Kathmandu-based geopolitical analyst and chief of a think tank, who did not wish to be named.

Analysts warn that allowing the Hindutva agenda to fray New Delhi’s traditional neighborhood ties could be dangerous for India.

“India’s neighbors are its first layer of security. India and its neighbors are in a dependence relationship—you can push it a bit, but you can’t break it,” Pande said.

According to Pande, the “entire ecosystem created” by actors belonging to and aligned with Modi’s BJP has “ensured that domestic politics now has greater impact on foreign relations with our neighbors than our foreign policy does.”

This was evident even in Modi’s visit to Johannesburg to participate in the BRICS summit between Aug. 22 and 24. The Daily Maverick, a local newspaper, reported that Modi “refused to get off his aircraft” on arrival, to protest the South African government deputing a cabinet minister to receive him.

#Modi's #Hindutva diplomacy is hurting #India's image. #Hindu nationalist attitudes are alienating other nations. #RSS, #BJP’s ideological parent, openly advocates Hindu supremacy, resulting in hate crimes against #Christians & #Muslims. #Islamophobia https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/28/india-modi-diplomacy-bjp-hindu...


The story went viral in India, shared widely by Modi’s critics. Hours after it was published, the Daily Maverick tweeted that it had faced a “massive” cyberattack by Indian servers, ostensibly “to deny the people of India access to this story,” and hence was blocking access to its website for Indian users. The government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa rubbished the news report but did not react to the cyberattack. While the attackers did not reveal their identity, Modi’s party has been known for its proficient use of information technology.

This brand of muscular nationalism will have damaging effects for India’s foreign interests, analysts said.

Bangladesh’s Khan agreed, pointing to a comment by then-BJP chief and now India’s Home Minister Amit Shah referring to undocumented migrants from Bangladesh as “termites,” which remains widely remembered in Dhaka.

“The rise of nonsecular narratives [and] the rise of religious nationalism will destabilize the region because you are fueling toxic nationalism across the region,” Khan said. “It is inevitable that the more hyper-religious nationalism emerges in India, the greater political instability there will be in the region.”

Huju, the London School of Economics fellow, said that even the nature of Indian diplomacy, through the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), was at stake as a result of the Modi government’s assertive Hindu nationalism.

“Should there be a third BJP term, we are looking at lasting institutional changes to the way that the IFS is governed and culturally imagined,” she said.