India on the 78^th Independence Day!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

Republican India on the 78^th Independence Day on August 15, 2024 presents a grim picture. It’s leader the Prime Minister is heading a union government of a divided nation for which he is himself responsible as can be deduced from his divisive, communal and polarizing campaign hate speeches during the General Elections to the Lok Sabha 2024 that concluded in June 2024 and his government’s discriminatory and minority bashing actions since 2014. Even after the BJP has been reduced to minority and formed government on the crutches of three supporting parties from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, his functioning as an autocrat has not mellowed as expected. 

As can be seen, PM’s hatred for and hostility towards the largest minority is reflected in the introduction of the Wakf (Amendment) Bill 2024 where he diabolically interferes in the wakf properties endowed by Muslims themselves across the country to the glory of God and welfare of the community. This bill is frontal open assault on the largest minority, whose religious charitable trusts, known as wakf, are sought to be acquired unconstitutionally, to legitimize illegally occupied wakf lands by government and select few corporates. This is unfair, as the PM cannot interfere in the religious charitable trusts and endowments of Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis and similarly circumstanced other communities, who own huge properties. The Constitution of India guarantees the country’s minorities fundamental rights to freedom of religion and protection to their other welfare activities. However, the fascist having allowed the bill to be referred to a joint parliamentary committee shows signs of relenting, the first Bill referred to a joint parliamentary committee in the last ten years.

In yet another partial meltdown the fascist has withdrawn anti-people and undemocratic Broadcasting Bill 2024 intended to stifle the dissenting voices of people against the government on digital platforms and gag people’s voices to get to the truth, with a rider that the Bill in existing form will be recast and a revised version introduced after consulting the media and other stakeholders.  After capturing mainstream media outlets, both print and electronic, during the last ten years since 2014, the PM is out to shut digital media altogether for ventilating voices of people individually to show truth to the power. If passed, this bill (law) would have created conditions making it difficult, almost impossible, for the audacious journalists of repute and people in general to inform, discuss and debate diverse public issues on digital platforms like YouTube and similar others. This also indicates that the fascist is still continuing in his autocratic mold as in his earlier two terms since 2014. Even individuals on the digital media would be punished heavily for any posts against the government. Added to this, decent jobs with adequate incomes are not available even for educated. Jobs for youth proposed in the union budget 2024-25 have been linked to market intervention with supplemental role of the government, that too for casual employment.

While we may shout from the mountaintops as the world’s largest democracy, elections thus have paradoxically become slayers of democratic spirit. The authoritarian regime of RSS Pariwar from 2014 to 2024 is continuing unabated and shows no signs of waning despite electoral losses in 2024 General Elections and emergence of a united strong Opposition. Recent Bangladesh event has shown how autocrats think they would be able to bring unprecedented prosperity and peace in their land if only they shut down the dissenting voices of the people from civil society and carping critics in the Opposition. It is in this illusional trap that every dictator falls in.  With an invigorated Opposition making its presence felt in Parliament, the PM coterie appears to be feeling worried that many in the judiciary and bureaucracy may not be all that enthusiastic of implementing the NDA agenda of vengeance. The murmurs of unease and defiance within the BJP starting from Lucknow seem to be gathering a critical mass.

Sheikh Hasina was also recently elected under an arrangement that lacked credibility, with no pretence of free and fair poll processes. In India, there were many voices people largely felt that given the RSS Pariwar stranglehold over the Election Commission of India (ECI), the anti-BJP parties should stay away contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls. However, it was Supreme Court verdict on electoral bonds that persuaded the cynics to have some faith in the overall Constitutional schemes. Even then the ECI failed to earn the unqualified respect of all; it failed totally and spectacularly in conducting free and fair poll as the difference of over five crore votes between the actual votes polled and the votes counted showed convincingly that about 70 parliamentary constituencies that BJP won BJP won with thin margin were fraudulent. If only ECI had been fair and neutral, BJP would have lost altogether as has been proved by two private election watchdogs of repute. For such out and out partisan role favouring BJP, the Chief Election Commissioner needs to be impeached. Even if the

impeachment motion in Parliament is not carried out, the CEC will go down in the history as black spotted. ECI also failed the nation in enforcing the Model Code of Conduct.

Emergence of strong and buoyant Opposition now casts obligation on them to put on notice every stakeholder from the President of India to the Chief Justice of India to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha to the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha to every governor that if every democratic voices of dissent are not allowed to be raised that the only noise that prevails is the crowd in the street. What happened in Dhaka should sober up the duo fascists. They are the lie-making factories continuously lying, and lying and lying and this strain prevail in every autocracy. A similar weakness has marked the government’s approach to facts and figures. It rejects all international reports and opinions, even dismisses international standards and yardsticks of democratic health. Civil society and its critiques are dismissed as the handiwork of those who want to create instability and bring a bad name to Mother India. Refusing to heed the voters’ admonitory slap in their face, PM’s commissars are now trying to throttle or gag all independent voices in digital platforms. One can hope the NDA government’s overreach will have to pass the tests of judicial scrutiny.

The past ten years have made it abundantly clear that PM projects have had no answers to the problems and complexities of national governance. Apart from self-praise and self-promotion, PM’s decade long tenure in governance is one of inefficiency, insensitivity and incapacity premised on fallacious and arrogant assumption that one honest, incorruptible helmsman could fix the broken system. After ten years, India remains corrupt it was before 2014. In ten years, it has become unfair, more unequal and more undemocratic a place. In Bangladesh, every good impulse, every healthy tradition, every admirable protocol, every vital institution had been suborned to the glory and power of one individual. India has come very close to flirting with the Bangladesh model. The self-corruption of the establishment has eaten into union government’s pretensions.

The Bangladesh events make it clear to remind ourselves that irrespective of whatever the duo asserts, democracies do not elect kings or emperors. Democracies choose PMs and Presidents, all drawing legitimacy and authority from the Constitution, the people’s power.  A democratic government is accountable government. The RSS Pariwar will make a terrible mistake if they think they can get away with misusing constitutional processes to suborn institutional arrangements anchored in democratic accountability. It has been the historic conceit of every autocrat to think they will be able to bring unprecedented prosperity and peace in their land if only they shut down the dissenting voices from civil society and the Opposition. Sheikh Hasina is not the first and will not be the last ruler to fall in this illusional trap. Every ruler commits this folly only to find the army or angry mobs storming the government palaces.

No one can be confident that the PM and his coterie, who traffic in political arrogance, have the wisdom and sagacity to draw lession from Sheikh Hasina’s flawed model of personal rule. But one can be confident that India’s constitutional institutions will regain their prowess to assert themselves against the PM regime’s uncured waywardness. The Bangladesh denouement is a pointer to India on the solemn occasion of the Independence Day of the Republic! 

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