Did Rahul Gandhi just sound the gong on R2P?

At speaking engagements in the United Kingdom, Rahul Gandhi pointed to the demise of democracy in India. He was bringing home to his foreign audience that molly coddling the Modi regime by democracies, for the strategic end of containing China, can only embolden India to proceed further down-hill from its current position as an electoral autocracy, moving past authoritarianism to totalitarianism and from hyper-nationalism to fascism.

Whereas Gandhi, a legislator, restricted his observation to how democracy is faring in India, can it be taken as tacit articulation of an early warning, of waiting-to-happen atrocity crimes? Taking cue from Amartya Sen’s thesis that democracy keeps famine away, can it be said democracy also prevents mass atrocity? Absent democracy, will India go down an unthinkable route?  

That a cultural genocide of Muslim India is underway has already been proclaimed by would-be perpetrators, Hindutva-subscribing Right-Wing formations, collectively, the Parivaar. The epidemic of renaming is example. The negation of Muslim icons, for example Tipu Sultan, is another. At the recent India Today conclave, a prominent Muslim rued the over-turning of the salad bowl concept of nation.

As for physical manifestations of mass atrocity, these shall be few and far between, to be almost undetectable. Micro terror - the latest instance being of abduction in Rajasthan of two Muslim men and their torching in Haryana – even when taken cumulatively, does not amount to mass atrocity, but certainly indicates trends.

At best, pogroms that respectively won Narendra Modi the Hindi heartland in 2014 and followed his election victory in 2019 - Muzaffarnagar and North-East Delhi - may repeat. These may not presage crimes against humanity like the one Narendra Modi presided over as a provincial chief minister.

Instead, China’s example of human rights violations by stealth in Tibet and Xinjiang may be the model in Modi's tenure. However, this cannot be said of tenures to follow of his prospective successors, who are outdoing each other in emulating Chief Minister Modi.

It would be hard to pin Hindutva down. Afterall, it too has learnt its lessons from the fascist period in European history. It has mastered the art of boiling the frog so that it does not jump the water. As it consolidates, Hindutva has been circumspect.

Increasingly, with no opposition grouping within sight, it does not need to worry of any challenge from the domestic space. Externally, over the past nine years it has invested in winning indulgence for India; mere opprobrium sliding off its back like water off a duck’s.

Internally, as Rahul Gandhi noted, the long-infiltrated institutions of State have been taken over. The opposition bearing the brunt of these institutions – lately the Enforcement Directorate - cannot expect a level playing field. The legislature is currently witnessing an unprecedented moment with the ruling party holding up proceedings of the Lower House, to - as all know - to cover-up the fusion of corporate and governance, described as Modani. Stalling of parliament proves Gandhi’s truth, that Indian democracy lies embalmed for burial at the soon-to-be-inaugurated parliament building.

The third pillar – the judiciary - is in a lonely rearguard battle, pushed on the backfoot on the Collegium issue. Its dissenting retirees have been styled honorary members of the anti-national gang. A counterattack is in the launch pad, with the Court at long last taking up electoral bonds for scrutiny.

Of the fourth pillar, Amartya Sen had it that a free press helps democracies keep famine at bay. By analogy, its dissipation is an enabling precondition for atrocity crimes. The proverbial last line of defence – India’s military – has been diligently neutered.

Externally, the Modi government has artfully arrived at a stable strategic sweet spot in its milking of India’s strategic location in respect of China. This helps keep the West off its back on democratic down-sliding. It is also Panda-hugging having Xi come over twice to Delhi during the year. The Mother of Democracy had no comment on Chinese treatment of its Uighurs. It has kept mum on Russia waging of a war of aggression. As a regional power, it had no word on what the Tatmadaw did to the Rohingyas. As for Muslim countries, all it takes – a lesson learnt for which the ruling party spokeswoman paid a price - is to take care when mouthing hate to avoid reference to the Prophet.

While Pakistan has taken to querying Indian impositions on its minority, it is merely part of the usual exchange between the two. The Pakistan Army stands exposed when its jugular vein, Kashmir, was severed by India through a reengineering of Article 370. A pullback of the high commissioner was all of Pakistan’s tepid response. Internally, Pakistan is hemmed in by the United States (US), retaliating for Pakistan’s role in its ignominious exit from Kabul. An outcome of the General Bajwa visit to the US is in the cornering of US-critic, Imran Khan. Under the circumstance of resulting political instability, a strategic Pakistan, espying India sawing the branch it sits on, will know India does not need a Pakistani nudge down. 

With the internal and external space rendered manageable, the final nails are being driven into democracy’s coffin. Elections will be called once the two back-to-back summits in the national capital commemorate India’s arrival as Vishwa Guru and the newly minted temple, to be inaugurated in autumn, elevates Ayodhya to being India’s Mecca.

Even if the economy is buffeted by eddies from foreign bank failures and Adani blues persist, there is always the identity drip the patient can be placed on. Last time round, similar economic straits stemming from Modi’s demonetization misstep, were sidestepped by a Pulwama. Modi’s national security minders carefully missed Balakot so as not to arouse Pakistan into an over-reaction.

This time round, China at the doorstep, a security stratagem will be foolhardy. Modi’s kitchen cabinet cannot really believe he is due for a Nobel prize or that he is Modi the Immortal. They were rudely made aware of the limitations of Mann ki Baat in the reaction of Modi’s chosen constituency, India’s youth, at the launch of the Agniveer scheme.

Luckily, the Ukraine War has bailed Modi out. War profiteering keeping the economy on even keel helps Modi over the finish line, while the opposition quarrels outside the stadium. That the Russian oil has not pushed down petrol prices does not matter. The expectation that a tortoise on a Bharat Jodo Yatra will beat the hare on a hattrick is the delusion of liberals. Modi’s Base (Incidentally, Base translates as al Qaeda!) is adding 100000 shakhas and 2500 pracharaks. They can go door to door electioneering, and later help implement the first 100-days program of Modi’s third term.

The first 100-days’ agenda last time included the demoting of a state. It hasn’t gotten back democracy since, leave alone Azadi, willfully misinterpreted as self-determination. This time round Modi may prove more ambitious, it being perhaps his last term. He may take aim at the Constitution itself. The Vice President has already sounded the bugle with his denigrating of the basic structure doctrine as a judicial overreach. The Preamble will be divested of terms ‘socialism’ and ‘secular’. Whether ‘Hindu Rashtra’ will be added is worth speculation.

Amit Shah’s Chronology, put on back-burner by onset of Covid-19, will be back. The Census, advisedly postponed, will be used to populate the National Population and Citizens’ Registers. By then, the multiple detention centers being constructed across India will be readied for inmates. As intended, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will help keep non-Muslims out. Foreign Minister Jaishankar is right: CAA has little to do with Indian Muslims. Muslims will be offered a choice they cannot refuse: a return to the hierarchical fold whence ancestors had the temerity of exiting.  

The campaign for welcoming the Pasmanda Muslims back into the lower castes is already in full swing, on the directions of the prime minister. The Pasmandas are to throw off the Ashraf yoke. Later it will be revealed that the Ashrafs are only to be substituted, the yoke to remain. No favour to the Pasmandas, its Chanakyan strategy of Bhed, that colonialists liberally borrowed from for their ‘divide and rule’.

It is to strike at any vertical integration of Muslims by severing any elite-mass connect. Alongside, the elite is under assault, with a set of it prised off into confabulating with the Hindutva mothership, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), while it keeps up a confounding din that all Indians are Hindu, and caste is a latter-day invention.

Most Muslim communities are easily targeted. If this is so easily done in the national capital that has a non-Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government, such as witnessed in Jehangirpuri, what is happening in BJP ruled states, such as in Khargaon, Madhya Pradesh, can well be imagined. All it takes is to deliberately route processions past Muslim localities and throw in a provocation or two (a DJ, stone pelting, saffron flags hoisted from minarets, trishuls brandished), as done at multiple sites during the last Ram Navmi.

Quite like the world’s longest cruise, Dozer Raaj has linked the Ganga to the Brahmaputra. Sudhir Chaudhary’s list of ‘jihads’ will be innovatively elongated to constrict Muslim presence further. Muslim women might have more to contend with than educational setbacks engineered through the hijab ban.

Hyderabadi Muslims, represented by the feisty Asaduddin Owaisi, need only have right-wing stalked KCR go-under. The opening salvos on his daughter testify to the nature of the campaign coming up for Telangana. Just as Bangalore, though a strategic city, did not restrain the BJP from polarizing Karnataka, that party won’t stop risking destabilization of Hyderabad. Indeed, unrest if any will be blamed on Muslims, legitimizing a hardline.

Micro terror will metastasize, now that Rule of Law under Amit Shah has been redefined as rule by vigilantes. Discharged Agniveers will join the vigilante ranks in the middle of Modi’s next term. What that spells for the State’s monopoly of force is easy to guess.

Muslim communities that have a strength in numbers are being steadily whittled. Kashmir is under dragnet, with the army to hand over to the central reserve police as the lead force in the Valley. This will make Kashmiris easy pickings, since armed police exhibit a pronouncedly anti-minority prejudice, if their actions in the Jamia Millia Islamia and North-East Delhi violence episodes are any guide. Reportedly, on taking over as operations’ lead the central police has started sending its new recruits into Kashmir. Since their growing up has been in the Modi era – so to speak – it will soon be known if they have the hate imprint. But with journalists jailed - the latest being Irfan Mehraj - no one would be any the wiser.

In the tradition of Modi’s reference to Wayanad once, Amit Shah’s exhortation to Kannadiga voters not to end up resembling Kerala, shows the Gujarat Model going national. Its physical manifestation is evident from Siddique Kappan’s recall of his interrogation in the Hathras ‘conspiracy’ case. The crackdown on the Popular Front of India – an outfit that at worst mirrors Hindutva outfits - is to preemptively defang Muslims in anticipation of Hindu Rashtra. Deprived of hotheads in its self-defence and activists to forge alliances, Muslim communities are expected to fall in line.

However, the primary candidates for Hindutva’s nefarious attention are Bengali Muslims of Assam. Their nation-wide presence as migrants holding down subsistence level jobs helps Hindutva spin its myths. BJP has not advanced in the North-East, part of all but the Mizo government, for aggrandizement alone. The battle ground stands ringed. Bengali Muslims, that got away lightly in the population register trailer restricted to Assam, are in the sights. The Ideologue in place in Guwahati is creating conditions for the grand Inquisition.

Breaking Bengali ethnic-based unity is essential step for breaking into the Bengali heartland, so far out of reach of Hindutva. Preempting Bengali ethnic unity kicking-in is essential to the project. There is no guarantee a Hindutva version of Hinduism supersedes Bengal’s shared language, DNA, history and culture. Over-zealousness in its grafting onto the lower-Gangetic belt by upper-Gangetic Hindutva-subscribing tract may well prompt a lower-riparian Bengali, cross-border consolidation. The external bogeyman can then be used to discredit Muslims, setting India down an Operation Searchlight of its own.

Rahul Gandhi’s is an early warning. Though not put out with a purpose to trigger a Responsibility to Protect (R2P), it nevertheless must prompt Pillar I implementation of the concept on part of India. Pillar I has the State addressing an emergent and prospective problem. Indians instinctively know the problem at hand. If it is any help, the executive summary of the just-released US report on human rights in India for last year can be perused on trends that can take India down the path apprehended.

It is only when Pillar I is not invoked or is deliberately not worked that Pillar II comes to fore. Pillar II has the international community step up to its responsibility of assisting a dithering or under-resourced State. With democracy under threat, relying on Pillar I alone may not be prudent but invoking Pillar II may be premature.

However, it should not be India reaches Pillar III – when a State manifestly fails on account of being either unwilling or unable to shoulder its responsibility - unthinkingly. It can be hazarded that the closer Hindutva gets to being a failed social project, the more likely scapegoating of Muslims might lead up to the unthinkable.

Now that the early warning gong has sounded, there is no excuse to avoid the first stage of R2P: Responsibility to Prevent. Prevention will preclude a subsequent Responsibility to React and avoid a costly Responsibility to Rebuild further downstream.

The onus is on India to address the problem, as Rahul Gandhi has it. Since the government won’t and the opposition can’t, it is the voter who has to step up and restore good health to democracy. The possibility of ‘Modi Hatao’ by voters acting for ‘Desh Bachao’ must be credibly held out, hoping it might restrain Modi and help rein in the saffron ‘Base’.