Something terribly bizarre is going on in the international commentariat-academia/civil society space, among scholars and journalists who call themselves experts on India—of course the fashionable term nowadays is “South Asia”, which brown-washes India’s achievements with a pan regional brush, so that an Indian identity is subsumed in a broader South Asian identity, thus not only refusing India its rightful place as a major power, but also hyphenating India with basket cases such as Pakistan and other smaller countries in the region. The trend is to fling casually the most absurd charges at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then to paint India’s majority community in the vilest of colours for voting for him. One such instance, which has suddenly gone viral among these “South Asia” experts and commentators is the Narendra Modi government’s decision to erect a statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at the India Gate. The decision has been welcomed by the common Indian as official recognition of one of India’s greatest sons, a true hero of the Independence Movement—a respect that he long deserved, but was denied by successive governments. To many, especially in Bengal, this is a case of “righting” a wrong and has been greeted with appreciation cutting across political and ideological lines. But Subhas Bose’s brief brush with the Axis powers during World War II is being highlighted by these commentators as proof that PM Modi is a Nazi supporter and is following in Hitler’s footsteps. In a deliberate misreading of history, these commentators are holding Subhas Bose guilty by association, overlooking the fact that he worked on the simple principle of “an enemy’s enemy is a friend” in his attempt to oust the British from India. Were Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt Communists because they were associated with Stalin? What appalls is the sheer unwillingness to understand why Bose is a hero to a vast majority of Indians. Not everything can be seen through the western lens, especially when it concerns India, which defies all labels. Also, any attempt to extrapolate conditions of 1930s Germany to India in the 21st century is not only intellectual laziness but also intellectual dishonesty, because such comparisons are not backed by fact. But who cares for facts when it’s easier to spin a fiction? Hence a stray news item about a few thousand copies of Hitler’s biography Mein Kampf having been sold in a 1.3 billion people country is taken as proof that India is going the Nazi way. Similarly, a few statements by some fringe hotheads—against whom action has already been taken—are being highlighted as evidence of India’s “Hindu nationalist” government ready to commit genocide of Indian Muslims. It’s a pity that this narrative is being stoked from inside this country by certain Indians themselves, such as a former Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari, who last week actually briefed US Congressmen and Senators about the supposed decline of democracy in India. He thus legitimised the anti-India campaign unleashed by a well-known Pakistani ISI-backed outfit that organised the briefing.
The casual manner in which words are being used, literally to name call the leader of the world’s largest democracy, and the majority community of this country is pure slander and a blatant attempt to normalise such vitriolic attacks, which, if done with other nationalities and religious groups would have been described as “phobia”. This is obviously part of a larger campaign to blacken India’s name globally. While there is no doubt that this hatred stems from frustration at a former British colony’s rise to big power status, there is reason to believe that much of this is also “inspired” by the not-so hidden hand of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance. The aim is to portray India as a cauldron of hate, throw a spanner in India-US partnership, which is essential to counter communist China’s aggression, get India sanctioned, stop businesses from coming to India and so on and so forth.
This cannot continue. We are facing a “narrative war”, 24X7. While the pushback has started, much more needs to be done at the level of the government in particular, exposing the forces at work against India. Raising the issue of “Hinduphobia” at the United Nations recently is a small step in that direction.