[News] Right-Wing Hate Speech Runs Rampant in India’s Elections
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Wed Jan 5 19:57:23 EST 2022
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*Right-Wing Hate Speech Runs Rampant in India’s Elections*
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/h-Runs-Rampant-India-Elections/m9vvdw/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>
*By Vijay Prashad*
A bizarre event took place in northern India between December 17 and
December 19, 2021. It was a “religious parliament
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(/Dharma Sansad/) with the theme, “The Future of the /Sanatan Dharma/ in
Islamic India: Problem and Solutions.” The event took place in Haridwar,
a city in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. The speakers—each of them
dressed in saffron robes, which are usually worn by Hindu monks—took to
the stage during the /Dharma Sansad/ and spoke in a startlingly
dangerous and provocative fashion. Sadhvi Annapurna, the general
secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha, a right-wing Hindu nationalist outfit
in India, was the most forthright in spelling out the agenda of hatred
against the Muslim community that marked the tone for this event.
“Nothing is possible without weapons,” she said
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“If you want to eliminate their [the Muslim] population, then we are
ready to kill them.”
The reference to “their” and “them” in her speech was clear to everyone
in the room and anyone who watched her clip, which circulated widely on
social media and on television channels in India. Sadhvi Annapurna was
referring to the 204 million Muslims of India. “Even if 100 of us are
ready to kill 20 lakh [2 million] of them, then we will be victorious
and are ready to go to jail,” she said
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Despite calls by some sections of society, including a group
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of retired government officials, to investigate and arrest the
organizers and speakers of the /Dharma Sansad/ for making these
provocative hate speeches, the police in the state of Uttarakhand did
not take any “serious action” against those who tried to incite violence
through this event, stated government officials in a letter they sent
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to Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami “condemning his
government’s response” to the /Dharma Sansad/. Uttarakhand is governed
by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose leader Narendra Modi is the
prime minister of India.
Meanwhile, Dhami did not make any statements against the event, although
photographs
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of him bowing before one of the speakers at the conclave appeared to
suggest a close association with the people involved in organizing the
event. That speaker in the photograph, Swami Prabodhananda Giri, the
head of the Hindu Raksha Sena, a right-wing organization based out of
Uttarakhand, said
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at the gathering, “Every Hindu must pick up weapons, and we will have to
conduct this cleanliness drive.” It is clear that the association of
“weapons” with “cleanliness” refers to the kind of ethnic or religious
cleansing witnessed during various periods in history, including the
Holocaust during World War II.
*Elections and Hate*
Between February and March 2022, three
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key north India states are expected to go to the polls; among these
states is Uttarakhand. The other two states—Uttar Pradesh and Punjab—are
key to the fortunes of the ruling BJP, which will see its popularity
tested after Modi had to withdraw
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three farm bills on November 19, 2021. Farmer unrest in both Punjab and
Uttar Pradesh led to a year-long protest campaign that soured the
reputation of the BJP in these two states and has created the
possibility of new electoral maps being drawn in both these states in
India. Uttar Pradesh (which has a population of approximately 200
million) is India’s most populous state, and the fortunes of the BJP
there will determine the authority of Modi’s government in Delhi,
India’s capital and the central government’s seat of power. A defeat in
Uttar Pradesh, or even a reduced majority, would give the opposition
greater confidence to challenge Modi’s fiat approach to policymaking and
to counter the right-wing ideology propagated by the BJP.
Currently, the BJP dominates the state assembly in Uttar Pradesh (it won
312 out of the 403 seats in the assembly elections
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of 2017). The atmosphere in Uttar Pradesh remains
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tense for minorities (around 19 percent
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of the population in the state are Muslims), largely because various
Hindu right-wing organizations—such as those represented at the
religious conclave—have stoked the fires of hatred against the Muslim
minority for generations. As part of its vote-gathering arsenal, the BJP
has developed a strategy
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to provoke religious violence, polarize the population, and ensure that
the majority Hindu vote gathers under its banner. This is what the BJP
did to succeed in the 2014 general elections, before which local party
officials engineered
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a pogrom in the town of Muzaffarnagar in August to September 2013 that
resulted in the death
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of more than 60 people and left thousands of others displaced. In the
aftermath of that violence, BJP leader—and now home minister of India
(responsible for law and order in the country)—Amit Shah in 2014 told
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a crowd in Shamli in western Uttar Pradesh that the general election,
which eventually led to the BJP seizing power in India, was about honor,
and was “an election to take revenge for the insult” and “to teach a
lesson to those who have committed injustice.”
In November 2021, the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal
(National People’s Party) formed
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an alliance for the Uttar Pradesh legislative elections. The Samajwadi
Party had governed the state from 2012 to 2017 under the leadership of
former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. The Rashtriya Lok Dal, meanwhile,
brings heft in the western districts of Uttar Pradesh, where the
farmers’ agitation had the greatest impact. This combination threatens
the BJP’s divisive agenda. It is likely that more events like the
/Dharma Sansad/ focused on spreading and strengthening religious hate in
Uttar Pradesh will be on offer to polarize the electorate to the benefit
of the BJP.
*Sewers of Hate*
The religious conclave held in December 2021 suggested that there was a
threat to Hindus in “Islamic India
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/muslim-hate-speech-laws-broken/m9vvdy/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>.”
This is a theme that goes back to the 19th century, when leaders of the
Hindu right wing began to say that Hinduism was being threatened by,
among other things, the rising birth rate
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/y-quraishi-article34011389-ece/m9vvfy/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>
of Muslims. Facts apart, this idea festered in the sewers of right-wing
thought continues to find favor in the currents within the BJP, such as
Shah, who had described
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the minority Muslim population of Uttar Pradesh as the people “who have
committed injustice.” To refer
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to India as “Islamic” is part of the exaggerated paranoia, a festivity
of hatred that results in violence and in the consolidation of political
power for the BJP.
Rather than face arrest for their hate speech, the men and women who
spoke at the assembly filed a complaint with the police against
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“/maulanas/ or clerics” and “the Quran, /maulvis/ [Islamic scholars] of
Haridwar and other unnamed Muslims.” Sadhvi Annapurna, who had called
for the murder of Muslims, is heard in a video
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posted on Twitter on December 28, 2021, telling a police officer to
“show us that you are not biased.” Yati Narsinghanand, who organized the
religious conclave, interjects to say that the police officer is “biased
and on our side.” Following the religious conclave in Haridwar, 21
“Hindu monks” who participated in the conclave formed
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a committee to hold more of these meetings and to “convert India into a
‘Hindu Rashtra’ [state].” “You [the Hindus in India] can fight them only
with arms,” the monks said
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/r-armed-fight-against-muslims-/m9vvg7/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>,
with no need to elaborate on whom they meant during their reference to
“them.”
Democracy in India is wounded by the acidic legacy of the Hindu right
wing, which thrives on intimidation and false pride as the fuel for its
success. The farmers’ agitation offered an alternative path. The two
roads will be tested in these legislative elections expected to take
place in early 2022.
/*Vijay Prashad* is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a
writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2022-01-05/m9vvg9/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>.
He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2022-01-05/m9vvgc/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>
and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2022-01-05/m9vvgf/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>.
He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial
Studies
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/y2hdjcpo/m9vvgh/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>,
Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books,
including/ The Darker Nations
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1595583424--tag-alternorg08-20/m9vvgk/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>
/and/ The Poorer Nations
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1781681589--tag-alternorg08-20/m9vvgm/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>/.
His latest book is/ Washington Bullets
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/catalog-product-view-id-21820/m9vvgp/974333026?h=xpG6HvOwj6tgbVhdGYe4Awwvv-hGVuL3m5_cmieQtPY>/,
with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma./
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