Back to India’s Secular Future – By Kapil Komireddi
For nearly six years, Indians indulged Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he sought to make the world’s largest democracy submit to his ideology and impulses. When he announced one evening in 2016 that all high-denomination currency notes were going to be annulled that very night, supposedly to extinguish the proceeds of graft, a wave of misery washed over the country – but Indians endured extreme hardship without a show of resistance.…
Despite the fact that Modi failed to deliver on the major promises that earned his Hindu-first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) absolute dominance in parliament in 2014, he secured a second term in office in 2019 by inciting religious passions and mobilizing voters around the idea of a Hindu nation.
But over the past four weeks, just as Modi began to appear invincible, the resentments seeded by his excesses finally erupted. The issue that jolted multitudes into uniting against him was the legislative subversion of the constitution to introduce a religious test for citizenship.…
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/02/back-to-indias-secular-future/
SEE ALSO:
- The Battle to Keep India Secular – By Tunku Varadarajan (Jan 2, 2020, Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-battle-to-keep-india-secular-11578008973 - Democracy: All for one – By Prabhat Patnaik (Jan 3, 2020, The Telegraph)
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/democracy-all-for-one/cid/1732372 - Safeguarding the idea of India – By Kaushik Basu and Nirvikar Singh (Jan 6, 2020, The Hindu)
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/safeguarding-the-idea-of-india/article30487146.ece - A battle for India: Recovering the Republic – By Ramachandra Guha (Jan 4, 2020, The Telegraph)
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/a-battle-for-india/cid/1732668
