Ramesh Thakur's threat to Democracy

Ramesh Thakur writes-

An enduring puzzle in world affairs is the failure to impress upon nationalistically inflamed consciousness the enormous disparity between the goals envisioned, the means used, the results achieved and the price paid.

This is nonsense. If a weaker country launches a war against a stronger coalition, it fucks up. By contrast, it can slaughter its own with no ill effect. 

Some of the most ardent nationalists do some of the gravest damage to their imagined nations.

Name one. Consider Indonesia in 1965-1966. The Muslims and Hindus united to slaughter the Commies and their proxies. Benedict Anderson doesn't seem to notice that this 'imagined community' suffered no ill effect by ridding itself of anti-National forces. Nor did Malaysia, a couple of years later, when it ensured that the 'bhoomi putra' Malay Muslim would dominate over the ethnic minorities. No doubt, a stupid or corrupt leader could screw up Nationalism. But such a leader could also screw up any other ideology.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi threatens to become the latest to make the same tragic mistake.

Fuck off Thakur. You have shit for brains. If there really was any such risk, why are markets not pricing it in? Why aren't smart Muslims- like the Premjis- not selling up and running away from India?

India represents the most successful example in history of managing the challenge of unity in diversity through a dynamic formula of power sharing and accommodation.

British India represented an even more successful example. It included Burma and what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh. It kept Afghanistan and Tibet as autonomous buffer zones. It dominated the Persian Gulf and Yemen and anchored British influence in China from the Crown Colony of Hong Kong. 

This success lies in the three core features of the country’s constitutional structure: democracy, federalism and secularism.

Rubbish. India could have been just as successful as a one party State without any Democracy. Thakur, cretin that he is, says India is 'federal'. It isn't. It is unitary. The Center, and the Center alone, decides what is or is not a State or Union or other type of territory. It can put any State under President's Rule. Moreover, it can suspend the Rule of Law by declaring a State of Emergency. As for 'Secularism'- the word is meaningless in the Indian context. Its Constitution has a Directive Principle regarding Cow Protection. Its laws clearly distinguish between Hinduism, as the majority Religion, and 'minority' faiths.

In a country that is 80 percent Hindu, at one time, the president, APJ Abdul Kalam, was a Muslim,

Presidents have no power. There were two other Muslim Presidents before Kalam. 

the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was a Sikh

He had no independent power. He was merely a technocrat who had a nominated seat from Assam. He couldn't get elected from his native Punjab. 

and the real power behind the administration was an Italian-born Catholic-raised immigrant, Sonia Gandhi.

She was merely the regent for Rahul. Sadly the fellow turned out to be a cretin so the Party has collapsed. 

Muslims constitute a 180-million strong minority in India. If they become disaffected through state-sponsored policies of exclusion, the country would descend into a bloodbath and break apart.

Nonsense. The Muslims would be slaughtered and ethnically cleansed in the same way that non Muslims were slaughtered and ethnically cleansed from Pakistan and Bangladesh. It won't happen because Muslims are hard working and docile. That's it. That's the whole story. 

Conversely, they represent the largest and longest-standing refutation in the world of the alleged incompatibility between Islam and democracy.

How? They are a minority. So they don't count. We don't say that the 9 percent Muslim population of France refutes the alleged incompatibility between Islam and being a cheese-eating surrender monkey. 

The stakes are high for the world as much as for India.

Nonsense! Nobody cares. 

Muslims and other minorities had begun to feel besieged by the Hindutva agenda — a majoritarian project by hard-line Hindus to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra (nation) — in Modi’s first term (2014-2019).

What was the result? Modi won a second term. 

But not wanting to provoke untoward incidents in an increasingly febrile atmosphere, they mostly kept their silence.

And will continue to keep silent- unless it suits the BJP for them to make a fool of themselves protesting citizenship for non-Muslim Refugees in a manner which consolidates the Hindu vote and leads to the further marginalization of Congress and the Left Liberals. 

The present conflagration has three fuses. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is to be implemented in 2020 and requires people to produce evidence of their Indian citizenship or risk deportation.

 This is only true of those whose citizenship is 'doubtful' based on things like habitus and mother tongue- a tiny fraction of the population.

Introduced in the northeastern state of Assam in 2018, its purpose was to send illegal Muslim migrants back to Bangladesh.

Thakur is lying. The NRC exercise, on orders and under the direction of the Supreme Court, began in 2013 and concluded in 2019.

Look at what Wikipedia says
 Assam, being a border state with unique problems of illegal immigration, had a register of citizens created for it in 1951 based on the 1951 census data.^[5] However, it was not maintained afterwards. The Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 was then passed by the Parliament, creating a separate tribunal process for identifying illegal migrants in Assam. The Supreme Court of India struck it down as unconstitutional in 2005, after which the Government of India agreed to update the Assam NRC.^[3]

Following unsatisfactory progress on the process of updating the Assam NRC for over a decade, the Supreme Court started directing and monitoring the process in 2013.^[3] The final updated NRC for Assam, published on 31 August 2019, contained 31 million (3.1 crore) names out of its population of 33 million (3.3 crore), leaving out 1.9 million (19 lakh) applicants, rendering them potentially stateless.^[6][7] The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP), which has championed the NRC exercise, did not find the results meeting its expectations. It believes that several legitimate citizens were excluded while many illegal migrants were included.^[8][9]

The BJP has promised to implement the NRC for all of India in its election manifesto for the 2019 Indian general election.^[4] On 19 November 2019, Home minister Amit Shah declared in the Rajya Sabha of the Indian parliament that the NRC would be implemented throughout the country.^[10]

According to the Citizenship Rules, 2003, the central government can issue an order to prepare the National Population Register (NPR) and create the NRC based on the data gathered in it.^[11] The 2003 amendment further states that the local officials would then decide if the person's name will be added to the NRC or not, thereby deciding his citizenship status. No new rules or laws are needed to conduct this exercise in the whole of India.^[12]

But this is in a country where the ownership of citizenship documentation is the exception and not the norm. Among me and four siblings, for example, none had a birth certificate.

So what? On the basis of this guy's mother tongue, their citizenship is not doubtful unless they have resided abroad in which case they will be asked if they acquired foreign citizenship. If they did, then they are not Indian citizens.

In August, the government also revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

So what? J&K's 'special status' meant 'inferior status'. Delhi could do anything it liked there.
Incidentally, everything that Modi has done was mentioned in his party's manifesto and is perfectly constitutional. Thakur may believe that India's small and poor Muslim minority can contest not just the power of the Indian state but also that of the overwhelming Hindu majority. But then Thakur is a stupid liar.

Finally, in December, Parliament passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). This will permit pre-2014 migrants from the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who are Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh, but not Muslim, to become Indian citizens.

Why? Because Muslims are not persecuted on the grounds of religion in Islamic Republics. 

The CAA was passed by both houses through brute majority without consultation and the Supreme Court may well find the CAA unconstitutional for discriminatory claims to citizenship on grounds of religion.

All bills are passed by majorities. Thakur may call such majorities 'brute'- but we may call him a mendacious little beast. 
So far, it looks as though the Supreme Court will uphold as constitutional everything the Government has done.

The CAA proved to be the last straw and protests broke out in Assam and have spread all over the country.

But they have been contained. There has been no repetition of the 'Nellie massacre' of 1983. 

Ironically, the Assamese object to all “migrants” — Hindus from India as much as Muslims from outside.

How is that ironic? Nobody wants to be swamped with immigrants speaking a different language. 

Footage of police attacks on students protesting against the CAA at the Muslim-majority Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University educational institutions vented pent-up fury against the crackdown.

WTF does that mean? Protests can vent pent-up fury. The police beating the shit out of protestors also vents pent-up fury against those cretins. This has contained all violent protest- because the counter-attack is more ferocious- but it is in the interest of the BJP- and other regional parties- for cosmetic protests to continue. 

The protests have escalated to become the largest in decades

Fuck off! The Lok Pal agitation was much bigger and was highly consequential in terms of unseating Congress and permitting the emergence of the Aaam Aaadmi Party. 

and represent the most significant mass mobilization against the Modi government.

But Modi benefits from it as does AAP and other regional parties. The Left and Congress, by contrast, are now losing their deposits in what were their safe seats. 

By late December violence across India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, had caused 23 deaths — many by police bullets.

Which is why the violence there has stopped. 

The end to Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was followed by the shutting down of telecommunications and prohibiting of public gatherings.

Which is why violence there has declined. 

Initially, out of sight became out of mind for the rest of India, but now these state-ordered restrictions have hit them all and communications shutdowns and curfews are suddenly more than an abstraction.

Fuck off. Only a small percentage of the Indian population has been affected. But, those are the same guy who would lose most if the blackouts weren't implemented. 

Trust in the top political leadership has also been dented by the mess of contradictions, inconsistencies and falsehoods with respect to the linkage between the CAA and the NRC, and the creation of detention centers to hold those without the necessary documentation.

Thakur thinks 'trust is dented' when a Ruling Party makes good on its manifesto pledges. Who trusts Thakur now. 

The CAA is meant to appease Modi’s Hindu base by creating a two-tier citizenship defined by religion.

No. It is meant to help non-Muslims ethnically cleansed from Islamic Republics. There is no 'two tier' citizenship. There are only citizens and resident aliens. Some of those aliens may be deported in accordance with longstanding Indian Law. 

Apprehensions about its scope for abuse have grown because of the potential links with the National Population Register (NPR), a massive electronic database of all residents that will be updated this year. In addition, it will directly undermine Modi’s economic agenda by reducing investor confidence in India’s social cohesion and political stability.

Rubbish! Investor confidence is boosted by getting rid of illegal migrants and potential terrorists. But F.D.I scarcely matters anymore.

Externally, it negates Modi’s deliberate outreach to Bangladesh and the Arab countries.

Saudi Arabia and the Emirates remain fast friends. Bangladesh does not matter. 

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned meeting with Modi in Assam has been postponed.

So what? India was dragging its feet on the naval alliance. 

The misstep offers unexpected opportunities to China to court India’s neighbors.

No. China was already in bed with anybody who didn't mind getting in hock to them. 

And, undoing decades of Indian diplomacy, it re-hyphenates India and Pakistan by strengthening the narrative that the two nations are founded on religions that cannot coexist.

De-hyphenation occurs when the big dog fucks over its smaller, poorer neighbors. Pakistan used to believe it had a fifth column in India. Now even Owaisi grabs hold of any nutter who says 'Pakistan Zindabad' and hands her over to the Police.

India can rudely brush off criticism from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad but cannot ignore the gathering hostility in influential U.S. circles to rising Hindu fundamentalism.

Of course it can! Those US circles are so influential, even American voters don't listen to them. It looks as though those virtue signallers will get Trump re-elected.

In Modi’s first term, disquiet was whispered by liberals uneasy at signs that religious zealots want to turn India into a “Hindu Pakistan.”

These guys had been crying wolf about Modi with the result that he went from strength to strength. They did him a favor by getting Europe and America to Visa ban him.

The new NRC, annulment of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy and now the CAA mean that, as an editorial in The Indian Express put it, “murmurs of concern across the American political spectrum during the first term of the Modi government have turned into vocal objections in the second.”

And 'murmurs of concern' over a Trump Presidency are going to turn into vocal objections when he gets re-elected in the same way that 'murmurs of concern' over Brexit turned into vocal objections to being called a stupid cretin. 

Still, there are four positive features on which to end. First, in testament to the vitality of federalism, several states, including some ruled by allies of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, insist they will refuse to implement the CAA and NRC.

But, this is irrelevant. The thing will be done through the Central Services in any case. 

Second, the protests have been spearheaded by idealistic students intent on reclaiming the founding idea of India: a pluralistic, secular, tolerant and all-inclusive republic.

But these idealistic students are getting the shit beaten out of them and they are being sent to jail on sedition charges. The Left told them it would be cool for them to be anti-national. But the Left has been decimated as has Congress. So the students are taking a hit and are ceasing to be idealistic and are becoming incontinent- i.e. pooping their pants. Look what happened to a young girl who tried to raise a pro-Pak slogan at an Opposition meeting. Owaisi himself grabbed her and handed her over to the Police. Her father has disowned her. Poor thing, what she meant to do was also raise pro-India slogans because...urm...well, it seemed a swell idea at the time.

Third, the protest movement is comprised of students, citizens and political leaders from all religions, with some prominent public intellectuals among those detained by the police, including the noted historian Ramachandra Guha.

But these are all a bunch of cretinous has-beens. Guha may seem an intellectual giant to Thakur but only because Thakur is completely shit. 

Finally, the Muslim students, especially young women, have been most politically savvy in defying Hindutva hardliners. They were brilliantly clever in wearing identifiably Muslim dress like the hijab but wrapping themselves in the Indian tricolour, chanting the national anthem and reading excerpts from the Indian Constitution.

Cool! So they feel they have a duty to protect the holy cow- coz that's one of the Directive Principles in the Constitution.

The truth of the matter is that a student is only 'brilliantly clever' if they end up with a high paying job after graduation. Dressing in tricolor burqas and clutching the Indian Constitution isn't going to get them a job with Google. 

The message to Modi is visible, stark and powerful: We are Indians, we are the custodians of constitutional values, we are patriots, and we stand for the unity of India and of all Indians. You, sir, are the threat to all four.

But the Supreme Court's verdicts over the coming year will confirm that this message is stark staring mad- not to speak of wholly impotent. It is the Bench, not some bunch of stupid students or elderly 'dadis', which is the custodian and sole interpreter of the Constitution. It is the elected Government of the Union of India which stands for the unity of India. Those silly girls aren't a threat to anything save their own life-chances. On the other hand, they have given Ramesh Thakur a hard on so big that, in his own mind, it is a threat to Democracy in a country far away from his place of habitual domicile.