The Economist, one of the world’s most respected news publications, has come out in strong condemnation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his divisive and polarizing agenda. In a piece titled “Narendra Modi stokes divisions in the world’s biggest democracy” that appears in the Leaders section both in print and online, the publication holds no punches as it takes on Modi’s Hindutva agenda.
It says, “Last month India changed the law to make it easier for adherents of all the subcontinent’s religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) wants to compile a register of all India’s 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants (see Briefing). Those sound like technicalities, but many of the country’s 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless. Ominously, the government has ordered the building of camps to detain those caught in the net.”
It further criticizes the recent Citizenship Amendment Act saying, “Mr Modi’s policies blatantly discriminate against his Muslim compatriots. Why should a secular government shelter persecuted Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but explicitly vow not to take a single downtrodden Muslim?”
Tracing the BJP’s rise to political prominence from the rubble of the Babri Mosque that was demolished by members of the arty and its affiliates on December 1992, the magazine also brings up the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 when Modi was the state’s chief minister, showcasing how the party’s actions have been building up to this latest attempt to threaten the citizenship of minotities. The publication also says, “Alas, what has been electoral nectar for the bjp is political poison for India. By undermining the secular principles of the constitution, Mr Modi’s latest initiatives threaten to do damage to India’s democracy that could last for decades.”
In more scathing criticism, The Economist connects the dots between the Ayodhya dispute and the CAA, and lays bare the Modi regime’s agenda saying, “The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that had the effect of depriving it of its favourite cause, by clearing the way for a Hindu temple to be built at the site of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya. The citizenship ruckus appeals to the party for the very same reasons that it has prompted widespread alarm. The plan to compile a register of genuine Indians as part of a hunt for foreign interlopers affects all 1.3bn people in the country. It could drag on for years, inflaming passions over and over again, as the list is compiled, challenged and revised. Just how the register will be drawn up, and what the consequences of exclusion are, remain woolly. Indeed, Mr Modi is already claiming it has all been misunderstood. Meanwhile, the hullabaloo helps reinforce the notion, so electorally valuable to the bjp, that Hindus, although about 80% of the population, are threatened by shadowy forces that it alone has the courage to confront.”
The Economist also pulls no punches while taking down the Modi regime for the shocking abrogation of article 370 in Kashmir, saying, “The citizenship row is only the latest in a series of affronts, from the bjp’s lionising of vigilantes thought to have killed Muslims to the collective punishment of the people of the Kashmir valley, who have suffered arbitrary arrests, smothering curfews and an internet blackout for five months.”
The entire piece that appeared in The Economist may be read here.