Indian celebrity voices advising Prime Minister Imran Khan to mind his own business on the question of minority conditions on the other side of the border are right to do so. After all, the world’s largest democracy has its hands rather full on this front. And outside interference from Pakistan will do no one any good at this juncture.
Indeed, it will simply fuel an existing and false narrative which contends that the Indian intellectual elite are running scared when it comes to calling out Muslim targeted violence against the Hindu majority; as well as forced conversions colloquially referred to as ‘love-jihad’. For nothing kills cultural capital than being labelled a communalist. Yet this is a precarious premise at best. Not least because it mirrors the sneaky path of western Islamophobia that casts Muslims in the role of ruthless reactionaries. Thereby allowing the state to keep silent about its own complicity in fanning the flames of extremism.
Under the premiership of Narendra Modi, things were bound to get worse. For the man who swept to power back in 2014 along with his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) already has a proven record. For Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat when an anti-Muslim massacre took place on his watch in 2001; leaving some 2,000 dead. Of course, there have been charges of how Muslims ignited the riots by setting fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists. And while both acts of violence must be condemned in equal terms — it remains the duty of the state to stem bloodshed. Not, as in this case, to arm those seeking revenge with the names and addresses of homes and businesses owned by Muslims. And certainly not to view the carnage as a “successful experiment” that would be repeated all over the country. It was the same India under Congress rule that reportedly denied Dalits from accessing emergency food packages following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
All of which raises important questions as to how a nation that fully upholds a deeply entrenched caste system is able to invoke the world’s-largest-democracy-mantra. The simple answer is that market size matters. New Delhi is now the sixth-largest global economy. Meaning that it represents an attractive destination for western goods.
