Women Face Uphill Climb, 'Mother' of Democracy Headed Downhill; Hindutva is Gaining But Modi is Stealing the RSS's Thunder
Modi as 34 year old child, Calcutta HC judge who joined BJP can't choose between Godse and Gandhi, India among ‘worst autocratisers’ in recent years, Rahul Gandhi to stick to Wayanad
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
March 8, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
Women in the boardroom are far fewer than before, says a survey. The corporate sector is eulogised and idealised in India but it holds on to some of the most regressive values. “The number of women in public sector boardrooms has shrunk in the past year. Women hold only 19 per cent of total directorships in the private sector and 14.3 per cent in the public sector for Nifty 500 companies as of March 6… Though previous years have been worse, the 472 basis point gap is wider than 2023 (385 basis points). One hundred basis points is one per cent. Women are also less likely to head key board committees, according to primeinfobase.com.”
There are also fewer women feeling safe than before, says this ‘Safety Index’ in the Business Standard. 👇🏾
Philanthropist and author Sudha Murty was nominated to the Rajya Sabha and Narendra Modi, who broke the news, said this was an expression of ‘nari shakti’, or women’s power. But are women in the country feeling empowered and safe at a time when the National Commission Women chief is often resorting to victim blaming? In an interview with Faye D’ Souza, Brinda Adige, Aditi Mittal and Trisha Shetty decode the many problems at play.
PM Modi announced a Rs 100 rebate on LPG cylinders today. He said it is for Women’s Day but the timing is clearly linked to the Lok Sabha election whose dates will very shortly be announced. As with many of Modi’s promises, of course, the numbers he announces don’t tell the full story. With the new price reduction, an LPG cylinder in Delhi will cost Rs 803, while beneficiaries of the government’s PMUY scheme for the poor will pay Rs 503. In 2014, the poor paid Rs 414 per cylinder – i.e. less than what they will with Modi’s latest ‘gift’. However, the standard cylinder will now cost Rs 400 less than it did under the UPA government. Sravasti Dasgupta has the numbers.
Across India’s urban-rural divide, women and girls were several times more likely to perform care and domestic work than men or boys were, and those who did do this work spent several times as long as their male counterparts at it.
India’s performance on V-Dem, a key global democracy index, remains awful (see below) and now the ‘Global Soft Power Index’ brings more made news: India has experienced a significant setback, plummeting to 29th place, marking a notable decline in its international influence. This decline underscores India’s struggle to fulfil its soft power potential, with its reputation lagging behind its familiarity and influence, particularly in its home region. This stark contrast raises concerns about India's ability to effectively leverage its resources and cultural appeal on the global stage, leaving it trailing behind its counterparts. Meanwhile, China’s meteoric rise to third place highlights its growing dominance and prowess in shaping international perceptions and behaviours.
A visiting senior Indian diplomat has apparently said that New Delhi aims to strengthen economic relations with Afghanistan by facilitating trade through the Chabahar port, even as the Taliban regime has once again requested India to restart issuing visas for businessmen, students and patients. On Thursday, Ministry of External Affairs’ joint secretary J.P. Singh called on the acting Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in his office. He was accompanied by MEA officials as well as the head of the Indian ‘technical team’, which is how the Indian embassy staff in Kabul are euphemistically designated. Despite India’s non-recognition of the Taliban regime, its officials have maintained regular engagements with authorities in Kabul. Singh’s visit marks his fourth to Afghanistan since the fall of the Republic in August 2021.
In Sri Lanka, Gottabaya Rajapaksa, who was driven from the president’s office in 2022 by public anger, says in his book that a major power urged him to stay in power and offered to help. He did not identify the power but the speculation is that he means India.
Not just Union ministers, but Dalit teachers aggrieved by discrepancies in Uttar Pradesh’s recruitment process have also asserted that they belong to “Modi’s parivaar” and have a right to his guarantees, Satya Prakash Bharti reports.
Meanwhile, in Assam hundreds of members of the All Assam Student Union (AASU) took out a massive bike rally across the state in protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act, demanding the repeal of the contentious law.
Modi may have done his best to portray a rosy picture of J&K and bussed in people to Bakshi stadium, but the International Crisis Group’s detailed report tells a different and depressing story about the state of affairs and the repression there. Modi did not mention the right of people there to vote, forget about statehood. There have been no polls since 2015. Not much of an Amrit Kaal there.
If there’s any guessing when India and China will next go to war with each other, Samir Tata says the most likely time period is 2025-30. “Absent a modus vivendi between these two, conventional war (and the spectre of nuclear war) will be impossible to avoid,” he says in the website of the British think tank, Royal United Services Institute. But former Indian ambassador to China Ashok Kantha thinks otherwise, arguing that a more gradual chipping away of India’s patrolling rights along the Line of Actual Control is more realistic.
How does the world understand Hindutva, the ideology of India’s ruling party? The Economist offers this explainer:
"In power since 2014, Mr Modi has modernised Hindutva, making it symbolic of India’s national greatness. Alongside this, his party has also pushed many Hindu-nationalist priorities. In 2019 his government revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, hitherto the country’s only Muslim-majority state, and split it into two territories that are governed from Delhi. Multiple states ruled by the BJP have tightened laws against cow slaughter and religious conversion, ostensibly to protect Hindus from nefarious attempts to convince them to abandon their religion. The government promotes vegetarianism, which is mostly practised by high-caste Hindus. A currently-suspended plan to establish a national registry of citizens and amend the citizenship law could put the rights of millions of Muslim Indians at risk.” Techcrunch reports that the Election Commission has “fixed flaws on its website that exposed data related to citizens’ requests for information related to their voting eligibility status, local political candidates and parties, and technical details about electronic voting machines.” This is on its “Right to Information (RTI) portal, which allows citizens to request access to records of constitutional authorities, as well as state and central government institutions and private organisations receiving substantial funds from the Indian government.” The bugs were serious, they apparently allowed access to the RTI requests, download transaction receipts, and responses shared by the officials “without properly authenticating user logins.”
The Calcutta High Court judge who resigned and joined the BJP yesterday has clearly done the judiciary, and the nation, a favour. During a ‘rapid fire round’ in a TV interview yesterday, Abhijit Gangopadhyay found it too difficult to choose between Mahatma Gandhi and his assassin Nathuram Godse and said he would have to think about it. Watch here. Never has a ghar wapsi, or homecoming, been more apposite.
This is shocking even by the standards of the lower judiciary in Uttar Pradesh: A judge invoking serious criminal charges against a Muslim cleric-politician for violence in Bareilly in 2010 has hailed chief minister Adityanath as a great example of a “religious person” holding a seat of power and condemned the “appeasement” of a “particular community”. In the same order, the judge went on to say that a copy of his order should be sent to Adityanath so that the CM could take action against those senior police officers and officials who allegedly assisted the accused Muslim cleric and did not act as per law at the behest of the then government (UP was under the rule of the Bahujan Samaj Party at the time). Before his current assignment, the judge was posted in Varanasi, where he played a key role in backing the claims of Hindu petitioners seeking to take over the historic Gyanvapi mosque.
After a viral video showed an Uttarakhand MLA from the BJP misbehaving with Dehradun’s municipal commissioner allegedly because his aide didn’t win a government bid, the state’s IAS Association issued a condemnation. “… There was undue interference in government work and the working environment of the office was adversely affected. This type of indecent act causes illegal interference in the legal process of the executive machinery,” it said. Jeena has been booked on charges including rioting and preventing a public servant from discharging their duties.
Rahul Gandhi will definitely contest the general election from Kerala’s Wayanad seat, which he currently represents. The Congress released the names of 39 candidates today. Former chief minister of Chhattisgarh Bhupesh Baghel will contest from Rajnandgaon, which the BJP won in 2019 with 50.5% of the vote, ahead of the Congress’s 42%.
In southern Rajasthan’s tribal belt, the Bharat Adivasi Party has polled better than either the BJP or the Congress (and in some cases has defeated both) in many seats. Deep Mukherjee reports on how the party – which is barely six months old – is disrupting political equations in the region.
For those of you that remember, FT had reported last year that India, deterred by the bad press over possible use of Pegasus had moved to check out Predator spyware. Now, the United States has sanctioned the spyware company and their executives, personally, reports Access Now.
A bandh by public transport drivers plying along the Imphal-Ukhrul route in Manipur because of what they say is the government’s inability to stop extortion en route has resulted in passengers being stranded in the state’s capital, EastMojo reports. An army soldier has been abducted by ‘anti-social elements’ in Thoubal district, more proof of the BJP’s ‘minimum governance’ in the state.
Author Amitav Ghosh has been awarded the Erasmus Prize 2024 for his writings on the climate crisis and human interactions with nature. Netherlands-based organisation Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, which gives out the 150,000 euro award each year, said that Ghosh “receives the prize for his passionate contribution to the theme ‘imagining the unthinkable’, in which an unprecedented global crisis – climate change – takes shape through the written word”.
One million pounds (Rs 10 crore) will be given towards the cost of building a memorial to honour the Muslim soldiers who died in the First and Second World Wars “in the service of freedom and democracy”, the UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced. More than 750,000 Muslims served in the Indian and Allied armies, of whom approximately 147,000 were killed. The World Wars Muslim Memorial Trust registered in 2016 seeks to honour those Muslim soldiers from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and North Africa who were involved in the two global conflicts. “The memorial will be a physical reminder of how people of all faiths make an impact working together and can continue to do so despite the challenges of those who attempt to divide our society,” a trust official said.
The prime minister said at a recent event in West Bengal that when he first visited Kolkata as a child, one of the attractions was to see the city’s “metro”. But the Kolkata Metro first became operational in 1984, by which time Modi was at least 33 years old. This is not the first time he has made tall claims about his younger days.
India among ‘worst autocratisers’ in recent years: Sweden’s V-Dem institute
The V-Dem (or Varieties of Democracy) report finds India to be in the bottom 40-50% of the 179 countries reviewed, and now situated between Niger (better) and Ivory Coast (worse). It calls out the sharp autocratisation in India from 2013, putting it at one of the top ten autocratisers in recent times, with pulling down democracy at levels as it was in 1975. It notes that India is no longer termed a democracy, but “dropped down to electoral autocracy in 2018” and remains there at the end of 2023. The report observes that a “wave of autocratisation is observable globally. Autocratisation is ongoing in “42 countries, home to 2.8 billion people, or 35% of the world’s population. India, with 18% of the world’s population, accounts for about half of the population living in autocratising countries.”
The report says, “the level of liberal democracy enjoyed by the average human in the (South Asia) region is now down to levels last seen in 1975 – almost half a century ago. That was when the Vietnam War ended and when Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India.” The population-weighted index puts India’s 1.4 billion citizens as being under autocracy. The report cites India as “one of the worst autocratisers lately.”
SC says criticising abrogation of Article 370 is no offence, cops need education on free speech
The Supreme Court yesterday quashed a first information report registered against Javed Ahmad Hajam, a professor at a college in Kolhapur, who had in 2022 allegedly posted three messages on his WhatsApp status that said: “August 5-Black Day Jammu & Kashmir”, “14th August Happy Independence Day Pakistan” and “Article 370 was abrogated, we are not happy”. A bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said that describing the day on which Article 370 was abrogated as a “Black Day” was an expression of protest and it is high time time to “educate our police machinery” on the freedom of expression and the extent to which it can be reasonably restrained. It categorically stated that citizens have the right to criticise decisions made by the government and to extend good wishes to other countries on their respective independence days.
“If every criticism or protest of the actions of the State is to be held as an offence under Section 153(A), democracy, which is an essential feature of the Constitution of India, will not survive,” the bench said. The top court said the right to dissent should be respected. “The right to dissent in a lawful manner must be treated as a part of the right to lead a dignified and meaningful life guaranteed by Article 21,” it remarked. “But the protest or dissent must be within four corners of the modes permissible in a democratic setup,” the court added.
However, the Supreme Court is as much answerable for its complicity in timely delivery of judgments.
Teacher sacked for refusing Saraswati worship speaks out
The Mooknayak reports on the ordeal suffered by Hemlata Bairwa, a Dalit primary school teacher from Rajasthan, whose suspension the state’s education minister ordered after she allegedly refused to worship the Hindu goddess Saraswati during Republic Day celebrations. Bairwa said she refused to do so because she thinks schools ought to be secular spaces. She filed a police complaint on two locals who allegedly insulted her on the basis of her caste following the incident; an FIR has been registered but no arrests have been made. Interestingly, The Mooknayak points out, the minister who set her suspension in motion, Madan Dilawar, is a Dalit himself – though he is also a firebrand Hindutvavadi.
The Long Cable
The RSS Paradox: Hindutva is gaining fast but Modi is stealing RSS thunder
P. Ramam
We are a ‘party with a difference,’ the newly re-born Bharatiya Janata Party used to boast during the ‘80s and ‘90s. The tag line, coined by KR Malkani, was, to an extent, apt. Those were the days when the BJP’s organisational bodies met at regular interval while the ruling party Congress followed the high command system.
The BJP’s organisational bodies held free and fair discussions within the ideological framework of the RSS. The National Executive (NE) had quarterly meetings held at different state capitals. At the National Council meeting — a three-day jamboree open to media — the delegates loudly held forth on party policies and internal functioning.
That was then and now is now. Consider last month’s National Council meeting. It was dominated by Modi’s address on both days and one each by Amit Shah and JP Nadda. The 11-page political resolution mentioned Modi as many as 84 times
Back in the day, special trains carried party delegates who mingled with the large number of correspondents present. Top leaders like L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi accompanied the train and interacted with delegates and media persons, in groups and individually. We had a fairly good idea about what was happening in BJP.
The BJP presidents, on their part, did not announce any decision without consulting the NE or the office-bearers and, of course, the RSS. Nagpur in those days encouraged a system of free and fair internal debate among the Parivar outfits. The NE was a lively forum which discussed and worked for consensus on contentious issues — some thing unthinkable under the MoSha BJP.
Oftenm discussions were inconclusive and the NE had to put off consideration to the next meeting. For wider debate on specially contentious issues, ‘chintan baithaks’ were called. Such a wider conclave was held at Sariska on Narasimha Rao’s 1991 economic reform when the Advani group sharply differed with the Swadeshi Jagran Manch group.
The latter had the support of Murli Manohar Joshi, Malkani, KL Sharma, Sunder Singh Bhandari and Jai Dubashi. The Sariska conclave was followed by the Gandhinagar session of the NE where an economic policy document detailing the ‘Swadeshi alternative’ or Gandhinagar declaration was finalised.
Organisational elections were fairly free. And at local levels, the pre-Modi BJP had its share of allegations of fake voters lists, protests and boycotts — indications of free and fair polls. Decisions under the central observers were mostly by consensus at tehsil, district and state levels.
Chief ministers were fixed after a system of tenuous consultations among the RSS leaders, BJP legislators and leaders of various contending state factions. Unlike today, the carried juicy stories about the prospects of different aspirants for the BJP CM’s post.
Now, all this is history. The BJP as a political movement with organic links with its support base is a thing of past. Narendra Modi likes to directly deal with voters. Anything coming in between the leader and the voter is considered a hurdle and should be removed. That is the new philosophy.
The large army of middle-level workers who had acted as a link and played a crucial role in taking the message to the grassroots are another casualty. Under the Modi-centric public discourse and election campaign, they have little role. With technology and an army of experts, the whole line of command has undergone drastic change.
At the local levels, the traditional RSS and BJP workers have been turned into panna pramukhs, booth in-charges and similar kind of gophers. All profitable positions have been cornered by the glib talking smart set. They invariably use their new status for the enhancement of their business career. With such elements grabbing the enormous party funds, devoted traditional workers are gradually fading away.
Like every good elected dictator, Modi has an aversion for leaders with their own support base. During the good old internal democracy days, such leaders were treated as a great asset to the BJP. But Modi considers them as irritants and potential challengers. Hence he has eliminated all senior chief ministers. Last among the sidelined are Vasundhara Raje Scindia and Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Their place has been taken by faceless new picks.
The Modi era also presents a curious paradox. While the Hindutva cause has floruised immensely, the RSS under Mohan Bhagwat has suffered considerable erosion. Modi increasingly overshadows Bhagwat and his RSS. Modi has taken the role of a chief priest and pujari — whether in Ayodhya or Abu Dhabi — and has been anointed as the Hindu Hriday Samrat.
Hindutva crowds increasingly look to Modi for inspiration and as their hero. The epicenter of Hindutva is gradually moving from Nagpur to the PMO in New Delhi. Modi has emerged as the chief spokesman of Hindutva. The RSS has never suffered such an erosion of authority in the past.
The reasons for this can be traced to the present RSS leadership’s tunnel vision. Bhagwat’s predecessors like Rajubhayya and K.S. Sudarshan had a wider world view beyond Hindutva, Ayodhya and narrow hate politics. They believed that Hindu nationalism could be built only by a BJP government on a nationalistic socio-economic foundation, i.e. a Swadeshi alternative.
The RSS never allowed the emergence of authoritarian or all-powerful super bosses under their aegis. Instead, they insisted on consensus decisions and collective leadership. Consider the travails of BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee whenever he tried to cross the RSS’s Lakshman Rekha. Today, there is no line or limit Modi can’t cross.
Reportedly
Amritpal Singh’s aides are falling sick, one after the other amid a hunger strike in Guwahati jail where Singh has been detained. The jail superintendent was arrested a month after electronic devices, including a smartphone and a spy pen, were confiscated from Amritpal and his men. The Indian Express reported that the strike is related to a demand for the ten detainees to be shifted to Punjab, and the Hindustan Times has reported that they are striking to protest ‘violations of their privacy and human rights’. A thick veil of secrecy hangs over how Amritpal was designated the biggest risk to Punjab, his sudden rise and fall and then incarceration.
Deep dive
Demolishing mosques to erase history or more? Shabir Hussain on the demolition of mosques in India that has turned into a loud and highly organised movement now and is at the core of Hindutva politics.
Prime number: 5
At present, all five posts at the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes are vacant with the chairperson’s post vacant for eight months. This is the state of a constitutional body with quasi judicial functions where chairman holds cabinet rank. “The B.J.P. is committed to fostering the empowerment of tribal communities,” Modi said in Jharkhand last week.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
India’s moribund coal generators are firing up again, writes David Fickling. It shows how state intervention skews markets away from cheap, clean power toward costly, fossil-fired incumbents.
Judges joining political parties they are seen to have supported while on the bench poses a danger to the credibility of our judiciary, Vir Sanghvi warns.
Underfulfilled promises and unexpected instances of opposition unity suggest the BJP is not exactly coming up roses this election, says Sanjay Gatade.
Shailaja Bajpai takes a scalpel to the ‘mainstream’ TV news media’s sneerful coverage of the opposition and its recent rallies.
Shoaib Daniyal on “what the Ambani wedding palooza says about Modi’s India.”
Khurram Husain says that a “cautious confidence is returning after the elections” in Pakistan.
Listen up
Hear Supriya Nair and Daisy Rockwell in and on translation - literally - as they steer between worlds, words and the truths of our times.
Watch out
The Wire Wrap: Watch MK Venu and Javed Ansari in conversation with Sarvasti Dasgupta on the week that was – from electoral bonds, BJP’s Lok Sabha picks to paper leaks.
Over and out
From 500–1300 CE, Jainism was one of the dominant religions of the vast Deccan Plateau. But not the kind of Jainism we might imagine. Anirudh Kanisetti writes about fiery goddesses and tantric rituals—including a recipe for a mediaeval Jain aphrodisiac.
From broken bones to World Cup, SouthFirst on how Aishwarya Pissay “vroomed ahead to pave way for women in motorsports.” Aishwarya Pissay became the first Indian woman to win a world title in motorsports.
Actor Randeep Hooda stars as Savarkar in a hagiographic film of the same name an is being panned by historians for his absurd claim that if the BJP’s favourite pre-independence leader had ‘had his way’ instead of Gandhi, India would have won its freedom ‘35 years earlier’. “Savarkar was a freedom fighter,” says Ruchika Sharma. “[But for] his own freedom!! His biggest legacy: 9 mercy petitions.”
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.