In India, religion, which is supposedly espoused peace, and harmony, often the cause of intolerance? The reason is that the BJP and other hardliners Hindus attempt to claim political space and hence the failure of the Indian leaders to work within their communities to cool down hot heads.
The past few decades have been challenging for pluralism in India firstly religious extremism and secondly religious pluralism. Religious extremism in India has reshaped the Indian internal structure that led to radical religious and political-religious movements inside India. Powerful extremist movements created polarization in India. Moreover, in case of religious pluralism, is also disturbed in India due to the vast verities of ethnic cultures with a huge number of norms and values that have created increasingly diverse and complex societies across India. Moreover, the old complex cultures of India, are also challenged in new ways by their own pluralities, religious /right-wing groups, and by new articulations of nationalism. That’s why incidents of communal violence in India, for instance are rising with time.
The challenge of pluralism is not to erase differences, nor to smooth out differences but rather to discover ways to integrate a society of differences. This is no small challenge, because the most contentious differences are within religious communities and even within particular sectarian movements that leading India towards complete meltdown under current Modi’s hardline regime.
In 2020, The annual report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) places India. But Delhi did not accept the proof and said the report was “biased” and a “new level of misrepresentation”. The report in its findings said that following the landslide victory of PM Modi’s BJP in 2019, “the national government used its strengthened parliamentary majority to institute national level policies violating religious freedom across India, especially for Muslims”. It also highlighted India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), adding that “Home Minister Amit Shah referred to migrants as ‘termites’ to be eradicated”. In reality, CAA “potentially exposes millions of Muslims to detention and statelessness. India the so-called largest democratic and secular nation in the world, where the CAA has been challenged openly by the opposition Congress Party and lawmakers, civil society, and various groups also which exposed the true face of rising India.
India must reaffirm religious tolerance, recognize the strength in diversity and stand against hate and bigotry otherwise disintegration of India is sure short. Indians who choose to remain silent do not realize that small-scale and large-scale violence are intimately connected. The perpetuation of hate crimes can easily lead to wider violence. Many wonder whether India is staring into a dangerous abyss when a government with a majority led by a powerful leader refuses to condemn hate crimes and a vast number of citizens stay silent or appear to privately support it. Moreover, India has the politics of insecurity and anxiety” which is leading to anarchy even as the “state watches lynching as a spectacle”. Also, it’s not just Muslims or Christians, perhaps the people they hate the most are the ones who are standing up for a different way of looking at the world, and therefore need to be silenced.
For India, the only solution to the ongoing developments is government at the federal level that follows the rules and regulations. Indian Muslim leader and member of parliament, Asaduddin Owaisi, while commenting on the Indian internal scenario said that it is high time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who “puts an end to all this” and respects the 1991 law, which prohibits a change in the status quo of religious places as it existed at the time of India’s independence on Aug. 15, 1947.
Lack of strong political opposition, the politicization of state institutions, growing socioeconomic disparities, and complacency of the global powers will all be responsible for the myriad miseries befalling the Indian minorities. The radicalism in the name of faith and the sense of otherness will keep on digging deep, and explode into a catastrophe. Only a sound political mindset backed by serious communal cohesion can pull India out of the mess it is in. Time for saner elements to take a call.
