In his speech at Kozhikode, Modi dialed back some of the war-mongering rhetoric of his party colleagues on Uri, but nevertheless intensified the theme of crude anti-Pakistan jingoism. BJP leader Ram Madhav had recently demanded that India ‘avenge Uri’ by taking ‘the whole jaw in exchange for a tooth.’ BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy declared that India should be prepared for a nuclear war to wipe out Pakistan even if 10 crore Indians died as a result. Modi avoided the immediate announcement of a war on Pakistan, instead boasting about India’s victory over Pakistan in the war on poverty and underdevelopment. Subsequently he declared that “blood and water cannot flow together”, and announced his Government’s plans to restrict river waters to Pakistan.
The announcement on river-water sharing is a clear indication that “strategic restraint’ is the last thing on the Government’s agenda. Restricting water to a neighbouring state in retaliation for a militant attack is a war by non-military means, one that targets the civilian population of the neighbouring country rather than just its military. Moreover, such restrictions would require expensive dam construction that would result in massive displacement and increase the dangers of flooding in Kashmir.
Modi taunted the people of Pakistan on the fact that Pakistan supposedly lags behind India on economic and social indicators. The fact is that there is very little to choose between India and Pakistan: both countries perform badly when it comes to the social and economic rights of citizens or the respect for human rights and civil liberties.
Meanwhile, the main Opposition party, the Congress, has only indulged in competitive jingoism, calling for a joint session of Parliament to “declare Pakistan a terror state.” Such competitive jingoism can only further vitiate the political climate in the country.
The war-mongering and shrill anti-Pakistan rhetoric are served up by the BJP for domestic political consumption, but in terms of diplomatic impact, such rhetoric is ineffective. At the UN General Assembly, hardly any other country shared or endorsed the Indian rhetoric against Pakistan. The countries courted so desperately by India have all preferred to keep aloof from endorsing, let alone echoing India’s position on Pakistan. Not long ago, Modi became the first Indian PM to avoid a NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) Summit that had been postponed for his own convenience – a move that underlines India’s own growing isolation from most other developing countries and much of global opinion. There is no substitute for effective bilateral diplomacy between India and Pakistan – war-mongering and jingoism or attempts to get the US or Western powers to intervene can never be effective.
In his concluding remarks at the BJP’s National Council meeting at Kozhikode, Modi made another speech in which he revealed his own and his party’s attitude towards Muslims. Quoting Sangh ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay, he said Muslims should not be rewarded or rebuffed, they should be “refined/purified.” Instead of treating Muslims as “vote banks,” he urged that they be treated as “our own.”
Modi’s defenders have tried to claim that he meant that the Muslims should be ‘empowered.’ But a reading of Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s own writings can leave us in no doubt that by invoking Upadhyay, Modi was in fact consistent in his communal hate-speech towards Muslims and his commitment not only to making India a ‘Hindu Nation’ but achieving ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Undivided India) by annihilating Pakistan.
Deen Dayal Upadhyay, in the Panchjanya dated 24 August 1953 wrote a piece on ‘Undivided India.’ There, he declared that the “separatist and anti-national attitude of the Muslim community is the greatest obstruction to Akhand Bharat. The creation of Pakistan is the triumph of this attitude. Those who have doubts about Akhand Bharat feel that the Muslim will not change his policy. If this is so, then the continuance of six crore Muslims in India would be highly detrimental to the interest of India. Would any Congressman say that Muslims should be driven out of India? If not, then they will have to be assimilated into the national life of this country. If this assimilation is possible (of Muslims) within geographically divided India then it won’t take long for the rest of the geographical territory to assimilate with India.” But, argued Upadhyay, this assimilation required a rejection of the hitherto prevalent policy of ‘Hindu Muslim unity.’ Instead, he declared, “If we want unity, we must display Indian nationalism which is Hindu nationalism, and Indian culture which is Hindu culture. We must adopt it as our guiding principle.”
It is clear from the above quotation that when Deen Dayal Upadhyay called to ‘refine’ Muslims, he was calling upon Hindus to take up the challenge of changing the “anti-national” attitude of Muslims in India and in Pakistan too, and “assimilate them” into Indian nationalism which is Hindu nationalism! Assimilating Muslims with Hinduism and assimilating Pakistan with a (Hindu) India are central to the RSS ideological and political project.
In his theses on ‘Integral Humanism’ also, Upadhyay displayed the communal mindset of the RSS when he approvingly quoted RSS founder Golwalkar as saying that “It is observed that Hindus even if they are rascals [in] individual life, when they come together in a group, they always think of good things…. [But] when two Muslims come together, they propose and approve of things which they themselves in their individual capacity would not even think of.”
In an article in a November 2015 special edition of the Rashtra Dharma magazine founded by Upadhyay, Modi’s Culture Minister Mahesh Chand Sharma wrote an article on ‘The Muslim Problem In Deen Dayal’s Eyes.” In this piece he claimed that Upadhyay advocated the “political defeat of the Muslims” and the “political defeat of Pakistan” as a “solution” for the “Muslim problem”: “Political defeat will end his [the Muslim’s] aggressive attitude and he will return to his original Hindu nature.” Can this leave us in any doubt that when the RSS, PM Modi and his Culture Minister call for ‘refining’ or ‘purifying’ Muslims, they are calling for “ghar wapsi” – for a return of errant Muslims to their “original Hindu nature”? When they call for the political defeat of Muslims, do they not mean a defeat of Muslims’ aspirations to enjoy equality and dignity as Indian citizens?
Today, the BJP and RSS are, in the name of anti-Pakistan jingoism, stoking hatred and violence against minorities and Dalits inside India. This jingoism and hate-mongering must be decisively rejected and defeated, and India must pursue effective diplomatic efforts to resolve pending issues with Pakistan.
