Journalist, activist, and author Aakar Patel delivered the 44th JP Memorial Lecture for the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on March 23 at M.K. Damodaran Memorial Hospital in Ernakulam, Kerala.
Reproduced below is the full text of the lecture.
We should begin by surveying the problem. The ruling party believes in, thrives through and is motivated by a fierce nationalism that is aimed inward at minority Indians. It is expressed in three ways: exclusion, persecution and humiliation.
India has 200 Muslims and one in six of us is born a Muslim and yet there is no Muslim minister in the Union [Council of Ministers] for the first time.
There is no Muslim MP in the ruling party, whether in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, of a total of around 400 MPs.
There is [only] one Muslim of the over 1,000 BJP MLAs across India.
This exclusion by the most popular political party has meant that today there is no Muslim chief minister in our states. In 15 states there is no Muslim minister at all, in 10 states there is one Muslim usually given minority affairs.
What is the purpose of this exclusion? The Jana Sangh leader Deendayal Upadhyaya tells us through a speech in Pune in 1965.
To quote him: “Our quarrel is with the way Muslims behave, coupling political ambition with religious zeal. This is why this war is not religious but political … There is only one way to defeat Muslim bigotry, and it is to politically defeat them. That is the real solution of the Muslim problem. So long as they are not politically defeated, the rot will continue to grow. Only such a defeat will make them have second thoughts and the process of Hindu-Muslim cooperation will begin…”
“There need not be any doubt as to whether this political problem should be solved or not. It will have to be solved and there is only one way in which it can be solved. It can’t be solved unless and until Muslims are politically defeated”.
This ‘political defeat’ of Muslims appears to have been achieved by the BJP under Modi if further marginalisation means defeat. The second expression of the inward facing nationalism is persecution through law and policy. Since 2014, India has seen a series of actions from the BJP that have harassed and targeted Muslims.
Some of these are as follows:
This deliberate campaign against fellow Indians has produced an atmosphere where open season has been declared on Muslims. The BJP has given up the state’s monopoly over the use of force. Mobs can deny Muslims prayer spaces granted to them by the state and the state will withdraw its permission.
Muslims were blamed for deliberately spreading COVID-19, for the Delhi pogrom in which they were the primary victims.
Because this mindset has been made acceptable, it will continue to spread. The genie has exited the bottle.
The third way in which the BJP expresses its hatred is by celebrating Muslim persecution.
Amit Shah approves of the release of convicted rapists who murdered a child because their victims were Muslim. A Union minister garlands men convicted of lynching a Muslim. MPs who abuse Muslims are made ministers. Again, the world looks away.
These three elements comprise the first feature of the BJP’s ideology. The second important feature after hostility to minorities is the party’s hostility towards federalism.
Let us look at where it comes from.
What follows is a quotation from an article by M.S. Golwalkar, published just after the Report of States Reorganisation Committee in 1956.
The article is reproduced in Bunch of Thoughts, Part 3, Chapter 18 and is headlined ‘Wanted a Unitary State’.
He writes:
“Then came our present Constitution converting our country into a number of almost distinct units each with a ‘state’ of its own and all ‘federated’ into one ‘Union. When one pauses to think of the conditions in which makers of this Constitution lived when they framed this Constitution one sees that the atmosphere then was extremely congenial to the formation and evolution of a Unitary State –One Country, One Legislature, One Executive Centre running the administration throughout the country-an expression of one homogeneous solid nation in Bharat or what remained of it then. But mind and reason of the leaders were conditioned by the obsession of ‘federation of states’ where each linguistic group enjoyed a ‘wide autonomy’ as ‘one people’ with its own separate language and culture.”
He continues under the subhead: ‘There Is a Remedy’.
“Towards this end the most important and effective step will be to bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution, to sweep away the existence of all ‘autonomous’ or semi-autonomous ‘states’ within the one State viz., Bharat and proclaim ‘One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive’ with no trace of fragmentational, regional, sectarian, linguistic or other types of pride being given a scope for playing havoc with our integrated harmony. Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish this Unitary form of Government”.
The second source we have for the hostility to federalism and Article 1 of the constitution is from Deendayal Upadhyaya.
Article 3 of the BJP constitution says the Integral Humanism shall be the Basic philosophy of the party.
‘Integral Humanism’ is the name given to a set of four lectures Upadhyaya gave in Bombay between April 22 and April 25, 1965.
What follows is a quotation from the third lecture. It is headlined ‘Constitution Cannot Be Arbitrary’.
“Is the constitution too, not subject to some principles of a more fundamental nature?”
We have a written constitution, but even this written constitution cannot go contrary to the traditions of this country. In as much as it does go contrary to our traditions, it is not fulfilling Dharma. That constitution which sustains the Nation is in tune with Dharma.
“There is no recognition of the idea of Bharatmata, our sacred motherland, as enshrined in the hearts of our people. According to the first para of the Constitution “India that is Bharat will be a Federation of States”, i.e. Bihar Mata, Banga Mata, Punjab Mata, Kannada Mata, Tamil Mata, are all put together to make Bharatmata. This is ridiculous. We have thought of the provinces as limbs of Bharatmata and not as individual mothers. Therefore, our Constitution should be Unitary instead of Federal.”
After 2014, this ideological attack on federalism has manifested itself in several ways.
This is untenable in democracy and we can see the tension having built to bursting point. There is another problem.
The Women’s Reservation Act has been passed and is to be made operative after census and delimitation. For five decades, India ignored delimitation as a serious exercise. Fifty years ago, the 85 MPs from UP (plus Uttarakhand) represented 10 lakh citizens each, and so did Kerala’s 20 MPs and Tamil Nadu’s 40 MPs and Karnataka’s 28 MPs and Rajasthan’s 25 MPs.
The difference in Lok Sabha seats between states had existed because of a difference in population size but each MP represented about the same number of Indians. Today, this is no longer the case.
Congress MPs protest against mass suspensions of oppositions MPs during the 2023 winter session of parliament on December 20, 2023. Photo: X/@INCIndia
In the 50 years since the last time Lok Sabha seats were marginally increased, Kerala’s population increased by 56% but Rajasthan’s by 166%. Tamil Nadu’s by 75% but Haryana’s by 157%. That the southern populations should not be punished for their effective implementation of family planning by allocating more power to the north is a meaningful argument, but it is also a fact that the north Indian MP represents many more Indians than the south Indian parliamentarian and that also seems unfair. Bihar’s 40 and UP’s 80 MPs each represent on an average 30 lakh Indians, the average Kerala MP represents 17 lakh Indians, the average Tamil MP 19 lakh.
This will need to be addressed, but in a way in which the states where fertility rates fell feel that they haven’t been discriminated against. But how? Greater autonomy is the only way. However autonomy and federalism are anathema to the BJP.
We continue to drift into a space where the strong centre becomes stronger and already weak states weaker. These are states that are really the size of nations. UP is bigger than Bangladesh, Tamil Nadu is bigger than France, Gujarat bigger than Britain, Pakistani Punjab is the size of Mexico. But they have no power to tax.
They have no autonomy, no agency.
The question is: What is to be done to resist the twin thrusts of the BJP’s ideology?
The internal mechanisms of opposing authoritarianism have never worked well in India and Jayaprakash Narayan was an exception but one wonders what he might have achieved in an era of ED and CBI.
The political opposition tries but it is not easy to resist majoritarian politics because constant polarisation works for the party doing the dividing.
Parliament is a building more than an institution and has little respect.
The judiciary sometimes stands up for liberty but not always, as we can see every few days.
The bureaucracy, police and diplomatic corps show no spine including when their own are persecuted.
Despite recognising this and acknowledging the barriers, we must of course continue to utilise the space available to us: whether that space is political, judicial, legislative or institutional.
This is important because in many ways civil society is the critical element in offering a new direction to the suicidal one that we have embarked on, particularly since 2014.
India’s civil society is small but vibrant. It has been oppressed but it is defiant. It is the only part of society that is ideologically invested in opposing majoritarianism and is willing to pay the price for it.
The two major civil rights victories of our time, against NRC and against laws affecting farmers have come from civil society mobilisation.
The BJP recognises this and that explains its levels of hostility towards NGOs. It is willing to damage India and its progress in the process. In the United States 10% of all private sector jobs are in NGOs, in half states NGOs provide more jobs than manufacturing, 1.2 crore jobs in all.
In India 20,000 NGOs were denied FCRA.
Civil society is kept busy trying to protect itself or in reacting to whatever new thing the BJP throws out that week. Some law, some arrest, some atrocity. There is no space to mobilise as there was even before 1947 on issues like on MSP of indigo in Champaran, or on monopoly in Dandi or on high taxation in Bardoli or preventive detention like in Jallianwala Bagh.
Given this reality and the possibility that it will continue we must plan for a road ahead after 2024. This must take into account our strengths our weaknesses and our capacity. But we must also consider the problem in the whole and that must address unresolved tensions.
India has developed a reflexive hatred of Pakistan and that has affected our thinking in ways that are damaging to us.
Till 2020 of India’s 14 army corps, only four and a half had faced China, but more than twice that number was ranged against Pakistan. Before Galwan, of the army’s 38 divisions, 12 faced China, while 25 divisions were deployed on the India-Pakistan border with one division in reserve. After the reassignment, 16 divisions would face China. A total of 200,000 Indian troops were now on the China border, fully stretching the army and reducing India’s military options.
Why this was not done earlier is easy to answer. Because we are accustomed to thinking of Pakistan as the enemy. We will not want to see it as any other neighbour. That is true also of Bangladesh, our other sibling.
The World Bank says that intraregional trade between Bangladesh, India and Pakistan accounts for 5% of our total trade, compared to South East Asia where the number is five times higher and the EU where it is 10 times higher. Trade annually here is $23 billion though it should really be over $100 billion. Why? The problem is purely man-made. The World Bank says that “border challenges mean it is about 20 percent cheaper for a company in India to trade with Brazil instead of a neighbouring South Asian country” and that the main problem is “a broad trust deficit throughout the region.”
“South Asia is one of the least integrated regions in the world in terms of trade and people-to-people contact. Putting aside traditional concerns and taking joint action can develop cross-border solutions to shared issues, strengthen regional institutions, improve infrastructure and connectivity, and advance trade policy.”
Nations alone do not prosper, regions do. East Asia, Western Europe, North America, South Asia?
Intraregional trade is 68% in Europe, 60% in East Asia and 5% in South Asia.
Pakistan has no capacity to manufacture automobiles but Mahindra is not sold there, or Tata or Bajaj or TVS. Because we don’t want to. This is one reason, not the only one, but one reason why we have remained poor.
We were slightly ahead of China in 1990: US $ 367 per capita to US $ 317.
After 30 years of liberalisation, they are five times larger. So economic system not the limiting factor. External situation or self induced trouble will always remain.
The tendency of South Asian nations in terms of becoming developed is towards failure not success.
In August 2022, India entered a 25-year phase which the prime minister called Amrit Kaal, a term from Vedic astrology meaning era of eternity. He had said a year earlier that “the journey of the next 25 years is the Amrit Kaal of a new India and “the fulfilment of our resolutions in this Amrit Kaal will take us till 100 years of independence.”
The BJP says adhering to these will make India a ‘superpower’.
On 17 September Youth gathered to celebrate the birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as ‘National Unemployment Day’ in a manner of protest against wrong policies of government, unemployment and contract system in jobs. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Prajjwal3959/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
Let us examine these in turn. To become ‘developed’ India must boost its per capita income. To what extent? There is no definition of a developed nation and the world’s average per capita income according to the World Bank was over $12,000 in 2021. The United States was at $70,000, the UK just under $50,000, Singapore is over $70,000, Japan about $40,000 and Korea $35,000. These are all exceptional nations and perhaps we should lower our sights. Let us say that a ‘developed’ nation is one with a per capita income of $25,000. India in 2023 is at $2300. It had taken us 12 years to double our per capita income from $1100 in 2009 to where we are today and 12 years is also our historical average for doubling per capita income since 1960.
If we continue growing at the rate we have, in the 25 years to the end of Amrit Kaal we will be at around $8,800 per capita. Meaning we will not be close to being a ‘developed’ nation and in fact a quarter century from now we will still be behind where China is today ($12,700). And note that China at $12700 per person still has 600 million people who earn only 1000 yuan (Rs 11,500) per month. Population size matters. Further By 2047 our ‘demographic dividend’ would also have begun to evaporate
There will always be something to slow us down. A global financial crisis, a Ukraine war or Gulf war, oil at over $100, an Asian financial crisis, demonetisation or pandemic. The reality is that the others grew despite all of these while we did not.
China grew 11%/year in 1990s, 16%/year in 2000s, japan grew 13%/year in the 1960s, between 1970 and 1980 Korea grew at 20%/year and in the decade after that at 14%. The question is when if ever we grew at these rates. Answer is never. Not under Nehruvian socialism, Indiran license raj or this liberalisation
We will not become developed in 2047 and to claim we will is to not understand arithmetic. What comes after 2047 none of us can tell. India has more billionaires than Germany but smaller economy. Our economy is a fifth of China’s but the two wealthiest Asians are Indians.
If we don’t belong there, and we don’t, then where is our station? It is with our sisters here in South Asia.
Bangladesh is at US $ 2,600 per capita.
India at US $ 2,300.
Pakistan at US $ 1,600.
Sub Saharan Africa at US $ 1,700.
Sri Lanka at US $ 3,300.
This is where we belong and we should acknowledge the reality which is that:
Put together what does it all mean? There are no studies on this by the government. Niti tried to engage with indices in 2019 to try and improve our ranking but then stopped because the bad news didn’t stop coming.
Under Modi that political defeat of Muslims that Deendayal Upadhyaya wanted has been achieved.
Now what?
We should expect more of the same coupled with economic stagnation and a contracting federalism.
This has to be exposed but along with that we have to offer another vision. One that resists majoritarianism and authoritarianism but also addresses the wider historic problem that touches our neighbourhood. If we see the other parts of undivided India, similar problems as ours come to the fore and similar solutions.
Vision that makes trade more open, borders less hard. Where those in east and west Punjab can trade freely and those in west and east Bengal can travel freely and families across the LoC can meet freely. Such a direction addresses in large measure both the problems of minorities in South Asia and the contracting federalism and goes a long way in addressing our underdeveloped economies as well.
In this vision, we have an ally in our young, who are less inclined to listen to authority in matters that concern their lives. Less gullible in accepting unremitting hostility for people they have not met. Less interested in making enemies out of neighbours they can engage with in ways we could not before this time.
Their freedoms of choice and of expression are harder to curb and control in this era. To tell them who they can and cannot love and marry. What they can and cannot eat or drink. Where they can and cannot reside and work.
Finally, civil society’s great strength is its ability and its desire to cooperate. We do not see ourselves in competition unlike the rest of the private sector. We are motivated by things outside of personal benefit. We are unified in seeking common goals. This strength must be utilised and deployed. Our crisis is more than just one that concerns a generation. It is existential, as we can see with the pace of developments around us.
No society remains permanently in a state of hating itself and damaging itself. All of us ultimately come around to doing the right thing. In the last century, the arc of humankind has been to move away from war, towards greater integration whether in East Asia or in Europe. India can be both the greatest example of this and the greatest beneficiary.
It is our job to convince this generation that a better future is not just possible but also within reach.
Thank you.
Aakar Patel is an author and columnist.
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