Two news items are consuming the media space of India almost entirely. One, the selective killings in the Kashmir valley by the so-called “hybrid terrorists” (meaning, home grown as well as Pakistan-trained), and two, the diplomatic offensive that the Muslim world has launched against the growing Islamophobia in India, which is the ruling BJP’s USP.
The second matter particularly rattled the Modi government when some Gulf nations reacted sharply to the invasive statement of Nupur Sharma, a BJP spokesperson, which was aimed at the Prophet of Islam. They summoned the Indian ambassadors to explain their conduct, something that happened for the first time. At the popular level there was a call for boycott of all Indian goods which actually started taking place at the supermarkets.
The underlying theme
The two stories are apparently unconnected. But read closely, their underlying theme will appear to be the same, that is, Hindutva.
To understand the theme even more meaningfully, one will have to understand its subtheme as well. This subtheme is about how Hindutva is stealthily entering into the country’s foreign policy establishment. The result is a systematic de-professionalization of India’s foreign policy bureaucracy.
It is not escaping the attention of many as to how Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s first 24/7 politician, with no family, with no other intellectual or non-political interest, has been methodically reducing his otherwise shrewd, highly educated, and professionally competent, external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, into his political agent. Through his suave mannerism and diplomatic non-statements, Jaishankar defends the politics of his boss much better than what he does in the realm of foreign policy.
Let us try to analyze all these three issues holistically.
Everyone knows that the Kashmir problem has no simple solution. But everyone should as well know that Hindutva is definitely not the solution. Like any complex disease, Kashmir also warrants a multi-layered treatment. Hindutva in that sense is too simplistic, which at the moment has a one-point agenda -- how to install a Hindu chief minister as and when the statehood of J&K is restored.
But let it be underlined that Kashmir is not only the lone Muslim-majority province of India, it also abuts India’s two nuclear-armed enemies with which India has fought wars.
Indeed most of the victims in the recent killings in the valley are Hindu but that is not all that one should know. Earlier killings too included Hindu victims, sometimes more than Muslims in number, sometimes less. Statistically, even the casualty figures now are not all that alarming if compared to the previous years.
What is the difference then?
The difference is the yawning gap between hope and hopelessness, as never before. The Hindu expectation, most notably that of the Kashmiri Pandits, was hyped so much that they are finding it extremely difficult now to reconcile themselves to the present reality.
For this mismatch, the hubris of the Modi government is alone responsible. Even before its policies are tested on the ground, the party and its propaganda machinery go whole-hog trumpeting their success. It is not for the first time that this has happened; recall what happened to demonetization, just to give one example. Over the years it has become the government’s DNA.
While announcing the abolition of Article 370 in August 2019, BJP’s propaganda blare was deafening. India would recover all the territories occupied by China since 1962, India would put an end to terrorism in Kashmir for all time to come, the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) would be reunited to the J&K, and all displaced Kashmiri Pandits will be resettled in the valley.
All these promises could still have been taken with a pinch of salt had The Kashmir Files not raised the level of expectations sky-high. Kashmiri Pandits thronged the packed cinema halls in Jammu. Their hopes were confirmed by the unprecedented endorsement the movie had received not only from the Modi government but also from all BJP-run states which made its screenings tax-free.
It is naïve to think that what happens in the country has no impact on the psyche of the Kashmiri Muslims. The amount of humiliation that some small Kashmiri Muslim hawkers had to undergo a few months ago in some Uttar Pradesh towns did not certainly contribute to their faith in the Indian democracy. In the age of digital media, these and other Islamophobic videos spread like wildfires in the valley, if the reports from Maldives give us any clue.
There is another dimension to the Kashmir problem which the Pandit-centricity of the discourse tends to overshadow. It is about the grievances of the Scheduled Caste (SC) Hindus of Jammu. Had the terrorists not killed Rajni Bala, an SC teacher from Jammu, this dimension would not have ever surfaced.
Following Rajni Bala’s death, an agitation was launched in Jammu by the SC employees of the state for safer postings outside the valley just like what the Kashmiri Pandits had demanded. It is alleged that Jammu’s caste Hindus, mostly Dogras/Rajputs, manipulate the government postings in such a way that the SC quota gets filled by sending most SCs to the valley so that many posts remain in Jammu to be filled by the Hindu upper castes.
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BJP is playing with fire
This brings us to our second point which too has entirely to do with BJP’s hubris. What is happening to that vishwaguru (wisdom giver of the world) which is now made to defend its position in front of some tiny Muslim states of West Asia? Is it not true that many commentators, including this author, have cautioned over the years that India was playing with fire by raising uncalled for Hindu-Muslim and Hindu-Christian issues which would inevitably jeopardize India's foreign policy interest in due course?
This forewarning should ideally have been the job of India’s external affairs ministry provided its professional role was duly recognized. The foreign missions of India are these days more busy promoting Hindu culture, as if without their support, Hinduism would have been dead and gone by now. Let me say with all moral strength under my command that the Modi government would do Hinduism a great favour if the latter is allowed to breathe on its own.
All this has much to do with the de-professionalization of India’s External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar. Many of us were shocked to see him coming in support of the fire-eating TV anchor, Arnab Goswami, when the latter was arrested by the Mumbai police sometime back. Whatever be the merits of the case, is that what one should expect from India’s external affairs minister?
Many of us have not forgotten either the way global pop star Rihanna or young activist Disha Ravi, a Bengaluru-based environment activist, were hounded during the farmers’ agitation by the Indian state, in which Jaishankar was quite in the forefront. Ironically, the controversial farmers’ acts they were protesting against were eventually annulled unconditionally by no less a person than Narendra Modi himself.
In the context of India now playing on the back foot to contain the damage the Arab diplomatic offensive has caused, Jaishankar's earlier retort to America’s soft criticism of the declining human rights situation in India sounds laughable.
Does he really mean that the NRIs in America too are subjected to racial wrath there in the same measure as Muslims in India are to the Hindu communal wrath? Nothing can be more damaging to the interest of the Indian-American community which is now the most prosperous ethnic group in America, only next to the Jews.
Postscript
During my teaching days at JNU (2006-12) an Indian Army officer once paid me a visit. During the course of our conversation, he recalled an interesting experience from one of his Kashmir postings. The Indian Army had organized a student trip to some parts of India to expose the participants to the vast country as much as possible.
After their return, they were asked about what they experienced. One of the students replied: Sir, udhar badi azaadi hai (so much freedom over there). The word azaadi has only one connotation in the valley insofar as the Indian state is concerned, that is, one is asking for independence from India.
For that Kashmiri boy the word had an altogether different meaning.
Partha S Ghosh is Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Formerly, ICSSR National Fellow, and Professor of South Asian Studies at JNU. E-mail: [email protected].
