Prime Minister Modi’s second term has been marked by historic decisions and policies – and on Sunday, he completes his first year after the re-election. While some of his policies have been appreciated for being bold and unprecedented, others have been criticized for clamping down on minorities and suppressing dissent.
The Modi government had been criticized for being anti-minority since the beginning of their first term; however, some decisions taken in the past year give a lot more legitimacy to those claims. It is no secret that the Modi-Shah duo have followed a populist and majoritarian approach to campaign in order to consolidate the majority Hindu vote. Fret-tingly, this approach is now visible in governance.
This approach in NaMo 2.0 started with the decriminalization of triple talaq. While Muslim women had been at the receiving end of this practice for a long time, and even the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional and invalidated it – criminalizing it and putting Muslim men in jail for the same was seen to be exclusionary and discriminatory as there is no law to protect women of other religions who are abandoned by their husbands. Although many argue that politicization of every issue is problematic, some believe that there was a clear case of communal intent in the government’s approach towards Triple Talaq.
Followed by this, came the abrogation of Article 370. The central government shrewdly amended the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir in order to change the requirement of ratification from the “Constituent Assembly” to “Legislative Assembly” to abrogate the article. This caused a lot of resentment in the state of J&K and the NDA, arguably, failed to take the citizens into confidence before taking a drastic decision.
Further, many claim that the CAA and NRC were the strongest attacks on the identities of the minorities. The Indian constitution clearly states that there shall be no discrimination between people on the basic of caste, creed, religion or colour, but the Citizenship Amendment Act fast tracked the citizenship process for citizens of most major religion apart from Muslims. This was seen to be a strategic exclusionary tactic by prominent opposition leaders and led to nation-wide protests. What was ever more surprising during the protests was the kind of divisive rhetoric used by influential BJP leaders like Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra.
This overtly political environment coupled with the lack of faith in the government led to communal violence in many portions of the country which resulted in the killings of numerous people. Allegations of policy brutality were also put against the government as the police was seen beating and torturing students of central universities in the national capital. While several protestors and students were detained by the police, not a single person who openly advocated for mobs to attack protesters was arrested.
Although with the recent pandemic the government has had to put brakes on its Hindutva agenda, only time will tell if the country’s fundamental secular structure and niceties of democratic liberalism can be preserved.
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