‘A Sigh of Relief’?

Modi retains his authority for the third term. The moot question is whether Muslims in India are now feeling more secure about their future. Modi has not succeeded in getting an absolute majority in parliament. He now heads a coalition government with two regional outfits having the dubious distinction of being called ‘fair weather birds’.

Right from the start of Modi’s first term in 2014, Muslims were targeted with an unprecedented degree of humiliation, disenfranchisement, and naked brutalisation by both state and non-state actors. The Modi brigade openly described Muslims as traitors, infiltrators, threats to Hindus, and the like. The expectation among Muslims across the country is that the ‘worst is hopefully over’. But Modi is unlikely to change his course. He knows well how to tame his coalition partners who are mere passengers in the new cabinet and they will be happy to have a special package for their states, without bothering much about Modi’s hidden agenda or open agenda. Money talks and it will allow Modi to talk in his own way.

During the election campaign, Modi and his party colleagues were accused of hate speech and peddling anti-Muslim tropes. Sometimes Modi’s electioneering reached the border of vulgarity as he would identify the Muslim community as one having more children. Some of his NDA partners look secular but they never raised any objection to Modi’s blatant attempt to communalise polity. It is too early to opine that India’s Muslims have reasons ‘to heave a sigh of relief’.

Many think the ‘Verdict 2024’ will put a brake on the BJP-ruled states on their notorious program of carrying out ‘bulldozer justice’. Over the past decade in almost all BJP-ruled states, thousands of Muslim houses and shops were demolished by bulldozers after their owners committed minor offences. For one thing, the authorities targeted only Muslim-owned properties, overlooking illegal structures owned by non-Muslims. Several legal experts, including former judges, called the so-called ‘bulldozer justice’ outright unlawful.

Until recently, senior BJP leaders said the Modi government was in the process of implementing a National Register of Citizens or NRC–a list of Indians who can prove their citizenship by providing documentation. In reality, the NRC project is designed to designate many Indian Muslims as illegal foreigners. At one stage there were wide-spread protests against NRC and CAA–Citizenship Amendment Act. What has happened in Assam in the name of detecting illegal foreigners is known to everybody. Thousands of people are languishing in detention camps in sub-human conditions. Here fascism is in action.

As for BJP-ruled states, Modi’s coalition partners matter little in framing policies. So they will go according to script prepared by their ideologues unless the Opposition makes concerted efforts to confront Modi’s ‘diluted saffron regime’ in its totality. The way they are protesting against the massive Exam scam makes little sense. They just finished their duty by making posts on social media.

Every year, over 2 million students in India battle it out to get one of just 110,000 available spots to study medicine. Of the total seats, around 60,000 are in state universities with the rest in private colleges. Half the total seats are reserved for students from lower-income backgrounds. The exam irregularities have plunged hundreds of thousands of medical aspirants into career uncertainty. The opposition has failed to capitalise on this issue allowing the new Modi government to do business as usual.

The fact is that this exam scam is actually related to youth unemployment. Joblessness is highest among those aged 15-29 and also remains persistently high for those with a formal education. The share of educated youth among the unemployed rose from 54.2 percent in 2000 to 65.7 percent in 2022. This unemployment factor played a crucial role in thwarting Modi’s chariot in the 2024 electoral race though the opposition INDIA bloc failed to mobilise people against Modi on this burning question of unemployment, rather life and death question for hundreds of thousands of middle-class and lower middle-class families.

25-06-2024

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 2, Jul 7 - 13, 2024