🇮🇳 Chaos reigns in India
A Southeast Asia nerd's guide to South Asia's biggest story
Hello friends!
This is a bit different today — and a bit out of our usual patch!
I’ve been trying very hard to get my head across the India news this month and I thought I may as well share my list if anyone else is trying.
Before we jump in:
Firstly, a lot of these pieces have very similar headlines and the background paragraphs can feel repetitive. Still, each and every one of these has taught me something new and is a great read.
Secondly, I didn’t really go out of my way to find these. Which is to say the sources aren’t as diverse as the regular Dari Mulut ke Mulut. This is okay, I think. I can’t get across the India media landscape as well! I hope no one minds that the India publications are light, but I do gas up Scroll.in as usual.
Please join us on the premium list for the New Year it’ll be a big one — two elections, the first full year of Jokowi’s second term, Thailand going for it, Azmin Ali and Anwar Ibrahim probably punching on, Duterte uh just being Duterte still.
You can do so here for $6 a month or $60 for the year:
As always, young Asean/Timor Leste nationals are welcome to a free premium subscription. Just get in touch via reply or on Twitter.
We’ll be back to regular schedule shortly, probably later in the week tbh.
Thanks,
Erin Cook
I raved about Scroll’s explainers last time we needed some help on India, but I truly can’t ever talk it up enough. If you can, please subscribe. Chuck a bit of cash their way so they can keep up the good fight. We’re looking at a tough 2020 and independent, endlessly readable publications like Scroll will need all of us.
This explainer breaks down what the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens are as well as looks into rumours the policy is actually from the former Congress government, not from the BJP. Once you’re done there, flick over to this older one on the Citizenship Amendment Bill and how exactly it discriminates against Muslim minorities.
Indian Democracy Is Fighting Back (The Atlantic)
I think if you’re going to read anything, this might be the one. It does a really decent job of laying out the timeline, the political and historical background as well as the contemporary context. It also explicitly tackles the link between this month and the Jammu and Kashmir conflicts.
The immediate cue for these events was the passage of a new law. On December 11, India’s parliament decided that persecuted minorities fleeing three nations in the neighborhood—Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan—will be fast-tracked into citizenship. The minorities were punctiliously listed: “Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians”—members of every major faith in South Asia except Muslims. The law was framed as an act of benevolence. In fact, it was an act of pointed exclusion, an explicit announcement of who belongs in India and who does not. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has never hidden its first order of business: to turn India from a secular state into a Hindu nation. In practice, that has translated into an overt loathing for 182 million Muslims, the country’s largest religious minority. This citizenship law, enshrining discrimination, gave that hatred flesh and form.
Around the world, advocates for the liberal order find ourselves in a moment when every crisis feels existential, bound either to preserve or destroy our various republics. In some cases, perhaps that is an overheated fear. Not in India. The BJP’s bigotry imperils the Indian constitution—not just the document that defines India’s soul, but the very substance of its demography. The party is daring Indians to choose what they want India to be.
In photos: The world’s largest democracy is in upheaval (Quartz India)
This piece brings together snaps from across the country with a bit of background on how major states are responding. It is a little outdated now, almost a fortnight old, but they’re still some stunning snapshots nonetheless.
Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi’s India (New Yorker)
This long (long) read from the New Yorker is a comprehensive look at the rise of Narendra Modi and the BJP. It also looks deeply at his time as Chief Minister of Gujarat and the hideous anti-Muslim pogrom he oversaw. I think for me, as a total blank slate on India, this piece really makes it clear that no benefit of the doubt can or should be given to Modi and the BJP’s motives.
During the violence, a senior federal official named Harsh Mander travelled to Gujarat and was stunned by the official negligence. Seeing that many of his colleagues were colluding in the bloodbath, he retired early from his job to work in the makeshift camps where Muslim refugees were gathering. He has dedicated much of the rest of his life to reminding the public what happened and who was responsible. “No sectarian riot ever happens in India unless the government wants it to,” Mander told me. “This was a state-sponsored massacre.”
A few officials claimed that the decision to encourage the riots came from Modi himself. Haren Pandya, a Modi rival and Cabinet minister, gave sworn testimony about the riots, and also spoke to the newsweekly Outlook. He said that, on the night the unrest began, he had attended a meeting at Modi’s bungalow, at which Modi ordered senior police officials to allow “people to vent their frustration and not come in the way of the Hindu backlash.” A police official named Sanjiv Bhatt recalled that, at another meeting that night, Modi had expressed his hope that “the Muslims be taught a lesson to ensure that such incidents do not recur.”
We Are Witnessing a Rediscovery of India’s Republic (New York Times Opinion)
This piece looks deeper into the importance of the 1950 Constitution and the Partition. It also explores how archaic laws are being deployed to snuff out protests and Modi’s BJP are eroding freedoms, particularly state autonomy. But resistance is mounting, several states have resisted other BJP measures while the party is losing support in recent elections.
What is taking place in India is a clash between two different political visions. The Indian state is enacting an authoritarian vision in which political rights are conditioned on the privileges of religion and class and on being obedient subjects.
Mr. Modi’s government makes this clear in choosing to celebrate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Constitution of India by focusing on “fundamental duties” of Indian citizens, which include protecting private property, abjuring from violence and striving toward excellence.
An idea borrowed from the Soviet Union, fundamental duties were inserted into the Constitution of India in 1976 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who suspended constitutional rights, jailed opposition leaders and silenced the press between June 1975 and March 1977 — a period known in India as the Emergency.
WhatsApp wars over India protests divide families (AFP)
The divisions aren’t just on the streets — it’s in homes as well. Families, particularly the younger generations, are keeping their views and activism quiet for fear of triggering bigoted relatives and potentially destroying their own futures. This piece notes that in conservative families, the fears of young women are heavy, with one young woman reporting her father has threatened her with leaving education and marrying if she doesn’t fall in line.
"My father keeps spamming me on WhatsApp with fake news and videos - it's really frustrating," says Priya.
She used to hit back with links to fact-checking websites before his threats to end her education forced her to hide her political views from her parents.
Her father, she says, has no idea about her Twitter account, where she uses a handle that shields her identity.
My family are among those protesting. It shows how much Indians value secularism (The Guardian)
But it’s not all bad news. For activist and writer Mari Marcel Thekaekara, she has new hope for India. Her son and daughter-in-law have been attending protests in Bengaluru, even if they have been roughed up by coppers. Mari makes it clear that protests in India aren’t unusual but this one is.
But when the government passed the CAA, and police entered the Jamia University in Delhi, a site of one of the early protests, and attacked innocent students, then brutally beat up students at the Aligarh Muslim University, in Uttar Pradesh, it was as if a light switch had been flicked. Thousands of people, especially young people, were galvanised to take to the streets and protest, including my children. This December has brought hope where I, personally, have felt despair about the future of India. As the independent Indian news website, The Wire said: “There comes a time in a nation’s history when silence is no longer an option. When neutrality, equivocation, discretion are acts of cravenness. Where standing up, and even protesting, becomes a moral duty, because much more than the personal, or even the principle, is involved — this is an inflection point where the very soul and existence of India are at stake.”
An incredible cross section of India is not prepared to be craven. “Spaghetti straps mingled with sherwanis”, is how one report described a mixed group of modern, westernised young women rubbing shoulders with older, traditional-looking men. The posters cried: “We are not Hindus, Christians or Muslims. We are Indians”, “No silence, no violence” and “All I want for Christmas is a new government”. A young lad, who stood defiantly before a police water cannon in Delhi, said: “There is more water in my eyes than their water cannon as I cry for my country”.
India’s citizenship bill has echoes of Myanmar’s dark path (Financial Times)
For Myanmar watchers, this is all sounds very familiar. This short-ish piece from right at the start of the trouble looks at the similar anti-Muslim rhetoric we see in Myanmar but writ large one the largest population in the world.
The context for the Indian bill has also raised alarms. The government — which claims India is being swamped by illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh — is gearing up for a massive national exercise to assess which of India’s 1.3bn residents is eligible for citizenship.
Echoing demands once made on Rohingya, Indians are expected to have to prove their ancestors were resident in India in the first years after independence — or face the prospect of being declared illegal migrants, liable to detention and deportation.
Yet Hindus and other groups now deemed refugees by the new rules will be protected. The spectre of statelessness falls therefore mainly on Muslims.
'People dying': Malaysia's Mahathir slams India's citizenship law (Al Jazeera)
It’s always nice when Mahathir Mohamad uses his sharp fury for good. The Malaysian Prime Minister’s tenure has been a bumpy one for India-Malaysia relations, but he had no intention of making peace on the sidelines of the Kuala Lumpur Summit which brought together leaders from the Muslim world. Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah has since said there’s no problem between the two states but it’s playing very well in Muslim-majority Malaysia regardless.
I have not yet seen Indonesian President Jokowi speak on the issue, but he has shied away from Muslim world struggles (bar Palestine). India and Indonesia also enjoy strong relations so I’m not certain I’ll have much to add here in the near future.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Kuala Lumpur Summit 2019 on Friday, Mahathir questioned the "necessity" of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), when Indians have "lived together for 70 years".
"People are dying because of this law. Why is there a necessity to do this when all the while, for 70 years, they have lived together as citizens without any problem?" he asked.
India’s Muslims and activists face mass arrests, beatings amid unrest over citizenship law (Washington Post)
In Uttar Pradesh, the mammoth state home to 200 million people, the stakes are high. Activists — both longtimers and those moved to demonstrate now — are facing jail time for their participation and fear a ‘police state.’ Accusations of police violence, including the shooting and killing of unarmed people, have been met with denials.
Sanjeev Tyagi, the local police superintendent, said there was no order to open fire at the crowd and denied Anas was killed by police. He acknowledged, however, that a 20-year-old student from the locality was killed when a constable fired in self-defense.
In the same neighborhood, Mohammad Imran watched from a neighbor's terrace as a dozen police officers barged into his house. "I was so scared that I couldn't dare to do anything," he said, describing how the officers beat his 62-year-old, paralyzed father and dragged him away. "I learned yesterday that he was sent to jail."
Tyagi denied police were carrying out arbitrary arrests. The "police's job is like a surgeon, and if there is a problem, we have to do a surgery to solve the problem," he said.
Modi Pushes India Into Revolt (Foreign Affairs)
One of the great fears of the policy is undocumented Indians — that is, Indians who do not have paperwork like birth certificates or other forms of identification — will find themselves on the wrong side. A mad scramble has erupted across the country in an effort to find or obtain the right papers. For Muslim Indians, of which there are over 200 million, fears of being rendered stateless are real.
If the experience of the state of Assam — where the government has carried out a limited form of this exercise — is any guide, the verification process itself will be Kafkaseque. Millions of poor people with no birth certificates or other documentary history (birth certificates only became widespread in India in the last 30 years) struggled to prove that they are citizens. The process is bureaucratic and arbitrary, leaving many to languish in camps. At the moment, 1.9 million individuals face the prospect of statelessness in Assam.
But here is the real catch. Suppose two individuals, one Hindu and one Muslim, were asked to prove their claims to citizenship. Suppose for a moment that officials determine both are in India illegally. After the enactment of the citizenship law, the Hindu will have a fast track to naturalization. It is likely that the Muslim will not.
The WhatsApp groups spewing anti-Muslim hatred amid India’s citizenship dispute (OZY)
WhatsApp is having a hell of a PR nightmare in India these last few years. Here’s a fresh one! Despite efforts to cut down forwarding and group features, BJP-aligned/sympathisers are using the app to spread messages of Islamophobia and stoke hate speech. Another very nasty parallel with Myanmar, no?
They list a “four-step” process for India becoming a Hindu nation — starting with the new law, followed by the NRC, then another law to control population, ultimately followed by a uniform civil code that would eliminate separate civil laws for Muslims. The language employed in these posts is blatantly Islamophobic — the NRC is captioned as a “Check and Throw,” while the law for population control is captioned “No pig breeding.”
The messages justify their Islamophobia by throwing in unlikely statistics and making unverified claims. One message called Muslims a “burden” for the country, citing false statistics like the community comprises 45 patients of all patients in government hospitals (the government does not maintain such records) or that Muslims form 32 percent of all those incarcerated in India (they actually form 15 percent of all prisoners, proportionate to their population).
Delhi Police film protests, run its images through face recognition software to screen crowd (Indian Express)
WhatsApp is almost old-hat tech now. Software used to identify people in crowds, initially purchased by Indian authorities looking for missing children, has reportedly been used at a Modi rally. It is the first known time it has been deployed. It will almost certainly heighten fears of police overstepping.
Sources said Delhi Police has so far created a photo dataset of over 1.5 lakh “history-sheeters” for routine crime investigation. Another dataset meant for monitoring sensitive public events has over 2000 images of terror suspects and — the latest addition — alleged “rabble-rousers and miscreants”.
The use of AFRS by police assumes significance given ongoing protests across the city against the new citizenship law and the National Register of Citizens — events where police were seen videotaping proceedings.