There is a mixed bag in governance in India these days. On one hand, Muslims are demonized, Christians’ charity and philanthropic works are linked to the forced conversion debate and quite often sedition laws or the controversial Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) are used to silence dissent.
Then there is the latent anguish of the middle class and poor. There is also an agrarian crisis. In any other political set-up, opposition parties could have gone in for the kill and cornered India’s ruling dispensation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But often the misguided moves by opposition parties like “creating pandemonium” in parliament come to the rescue of Modi’s publicity wing. The goalposts are changed and the battle which should have been to expose fault lines in the new farm bills goes into another realm.
Steered by an ostensibly decisive and determined Prime Minister, the Indian government is in serious confabulation with the Chinese leadership these days. But there could be a brief lesson for Modi’s leadership to learn from the Chinese context. The reasons could be multiple but how long can Modi brave through the situation with the argument that the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy cannot be solely blamed for all the ills and limitations?
“It is appalling that human rights defenders are locked up in overcrowded prisons and continuously denied bail despite calls by the UN to decongest prisons and release political prisoners during the pandemic,” says Josef Benedict, CIVICUS Asia-Pacific civic space researcher.
As many as 332 people were reportedly arrested under the sedition law between 2016 and 2018, though the conviction rates were very poor. Mob lynchings were carried out between 2014 and 2019 in various parts of India and in many instances it has been suggested that there is now perhaps a type of institutionalization of the communal venom.