Latest news with #PoliticalLine
The Hindu
04-08-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
political line newsletter the misrule of law
(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India's political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.) What is common between Assam's drive to evict illegal occupants of public land and the Trump administration's drive to evict illegal residents in the country? Rule of law is supposed to be sacred in liberal politics and governance. Rules are codified and are applicable to places and people as per their classification. But what happens when the state enforces the rule in its letter and ignores the human condition that surrounds those actions? This is a challenge thrown at liberalism by majoritarian politics and authoritarian states within democracies today—India and the US are prime examples. In Assam, the State government is evicting people living on public land—forests, common grazing areas, or state-owned land. Many of these people were originally settled by the State itself, but the classification of the land changed subsequently due to various administrative or ecological reasons. A majority of the affected people are Bengali-speaking Muslims who have moved into Assam over several decades, driven by political and economic factors. Some of those being evicted are indigenous people. The Assam government wants to create a land bank that is readily available to industries, and the eviction drive is partly linked to that. When the land on which people are living is classified as forest or buffer zones, the settlements become illegal. Shifting borders and reclassification of territory is a governance challenge, as governance is linked to demarcating land into countries, districts, blocks, etc.—as well as forests vs human settlements, urban vs rural, agricultural vs industrial. Those who control state power can decide what is legal and what is not. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has linked the ongoing eviction drive to measures aimed at protecting local culture, ecology, and religion. Local Assamese Muslims are largely unaffected. 'We do not divide people by language or religion. Assamese, Bangla, Bodo, Hindi—all languages and communities have coexisted here. But no civilisation can survive if it refuses to protect its borders and its cultural foundation,' he wrote on social media. He argues that Hindus will become a minority in the state within 10 years. He defends the entire drive as (1) legal, and (2) a matter of the State's regional identity. Mr Sarma makes a distinction between Assamese-speaking Muslims and Bengali-speaking Muslims. Bengali-speaking Hindus are welcome in Assam, which he describes as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multilingual society. The State's attempt to create a register of citizens ended up excluding nearly two million Bengali-speaking Hindu residents from it. While the State government and BJP politics want to grant citizenship to these Bengali Hindus, outfits representing indigenous politics in Assam want all Bengali speakers who arrived after a cut-off date to be expelled—whether Hindu or Muslim. At present, the presumption of being a non-citizen applies if one is Bengali-speaking and Muslim. The problem is that there are millions of Bengali-speaking Indian Muslims. Several BJP governments—Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, for instance—have adopted the same policy as Assam, and seek to identify and evict individuals who are both Bengali-speaking and Muslim. This is not going well. Consider this: 1) People who were granted Indian citizenship by the Narendra Modi government under a bilateral treaty with Bangladesh in 2015 are being targeted by Delhi Police in the national capital. They bear the additional burden—apart from being Muslim and Bengali-speaking—of having contacts in Bangladesh. My colleague Alisha Dutta chronicles their plight here. 2) The Government of India and the BJP claim their policy is to promote all regional languages. But we now have a situation in which being a Bengali speaker suddenly makes one's nationality dubious. This is language nationalism in reverse. The BJP does not want linguistic identity to impact or influence national identity—but its policies end up doing just that, as Bengali speakers are profiled for nationality tests. 3) Rule of law requires one to have papers—to prove that one exists and what category one belongs to. But it seems state authorities can arbitrarily decide which papers they accept and which they do not. In Bihar's Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls, the Election Commission of India argued that Aadhaar and ration cards can be forged, prompting the Supreme Court to observe that any document can be forged. Some state governments refuse to accept documents issued by the West Bengal government as genuine. The Maharashtra government is cancelling thousands of certificates it had previously issued. Evicting people by rule is one thing, but pushing people across the border to Bangladesh is clearly lawlessness perpetrated by the state itself. Some countries seek to cast off unwanted people to other countries through legal, clean treaties. The UK and Denmark plan to ship people to Rwanda, which is willing to take them in exchange for aid. Despite all this, there cannot be a liberal argument that people are not required to possess and produce documents and prove their identity. American Democrats, in some states and counties under their control, have taken the position that nobody's papers can be checked. Could that be sustainable? Not quite, if one has to adhere to the rule of law. Federalism Tract: Notes on Indian Diversity Modi for Cholas Gangaikonda Cholapuram is a historically and architecturally significant site in Tamil Nadu, where a grand Shiva temple built by the Chola emperor Rajendra Chola I in the 11th century still stands. Rajendra Chola I established Gangaikonda Cholapuram as the new capital around 1025 CE, shifting it from Thanjavur. It remained the capital for over 250 years. The name means 'The city of the Chola who conquered the Ganga.' The celebration of 1,000 years of the city underscores the political and cultural exchanges between peninsular India and the Gangetic heartlands. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Tamil Nadu to mark the occasion. Composite Assam and its other Read here my colleague Rahul Karmakar's analysis of Himanta Biswa Sarma's politics of land clearance in Assam.
The Hindu
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Political Line Newsletter: Thackerays try a new language
(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India's political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.) The attempt by the BJP-led State government to promote Hindi has opened up new space for the cousins. It remains to be seen whether the sagging political fortunes of the cousins could be revived because of language politics. Bal Thackeray combined Marathi and Hindu identity; the BJP took over the Hindu identity space from the Sena and rose to become the leading force in the State in the last decade. Raj has said he is 'Marathi and Hindu' as opposed to 'Hindi and Hindu.' Simultaneously, a controversy over Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde raising 'Jai Gujarat,' along with Jai Maharashtra, at an event has erupted. During the 2021 Assembly elections, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had said she would not allow 'Gujaratis to rule West Bengal.' Ms. Banerjee tries to claim a distinct Bengali, Hindu identity. In that sense, she mimics the Thackerays, in trying to create a vernacular Hindu politics. The State government built a Jagannath Dham in West Bengal, much to the discomfort of the Odisha government. The custodians of the Puri Jagannath temple were up in arms. You can read our reporting here. Between the censuses of 2001 and 2011, Hindi speakers in Maharashtra grew by 35.57% while Marathi speakers grew by 16.23%. In the same period, the percentage of people with Hindi as their mother tongue has risen to 43.63% from 41.03%, country wide, and Hindi is the fastest growing language in India. The new census will likely prove that this trend continues. Past and future in TN politics Archaeological excavations at Keeladi near Madurai in Tamil Nadu continue to animate politics in the State. The antiquity of the Tamil people and delimitation are set to be key campaign issues in the Assembly elections in the State next year. At the heart of the debate is the question whether Tamil Nadu had ancient urban settlements. The TN government has asked the Centre to release the latest findings from the excavation. Experts from Liverpool John Moores University in England studied the skulls excavated from Keeladi and reconstructed the facial features of ancient people who lived around 2,500 years ago. While the Indus Valley Civilization has been proven as urban, the exact nature of Keeladi settlements remains a dispute. While the State government's archaeology department has concluded that the settlement that dates back to the 6th century BCE was indeed urban, some experts in archaeology feel there must be more evidence before that conclusion can be reached. The lead archaeologist for the first two phases was asked by the Archaeological Survey of India to rewrite his report. He refused and his successor thinks there is no continuity in the structures found in the excavation. Politics is often based on disputes rather than conclusions. Tamil identity politics always had claims of antiquity and fears of dominance by the north. All in a name The Central Board of Film Certification thinks the name Janaki, which is another name of Sita, the wife of Rama in the epic Ramayana, cannot be part of a film title. The matter is now in the Kerala High Court. Union Minister and BJP leader Suresh Gopi is the lead actor in the film. The reasoning of the Censor Board is that the title cannot be allowed as the character Janaki is a victim of sexual assault. There are many films that have Janaki in the title that are approved by the Board. A counsel of the Censor Board cited a norm that films are not supposed to have 'adverse references to religion or caste.' 'To this, counsel for the petitioner firm contended that the character Janaki portrayed in the film was a fighter for justice. The court observed that the character was a victim who was fighting for justice, and not an accused.' The arguments of the Board and the filmmakers and the observations of the Court, all seem to agree in principle that a human fictional character can use the name Janaki only when they meet certain qualities. That is certainly an interesting line of reasoning and application of law and norms. That sets a new bar, a very high one, for the mortals among us. Would it be possible that in the future, Indians may be called upon, nay forced by law, to live up to the character of the names that someone with pious intentions had given them? Russia woos Afghanistan Russia became the first country to accord recognition of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and it is only to be expected that the latter's location as a battlefield of grand power conflicts continues. I considered saying history comes a full circle in Afghanistan, but then this might be just another chapter. Islamists, including the forebears of the Taliban in Afghanistan, gained legitimacy in the West as fighters against the Soviet occupation of the country. Now, with Russia and the West locked in an intense geopolitical conflict both in Europe and West Asia, this new alignment between Moscow and Kabul is notable.
The Hindu
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Political Line Newsletter Bharat Mata and her quarrelsome children
(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India's political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.) Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar insists on the display of a representation of a woman, Bharat Mata, holding the saffron flag at official functions. This has turned into a political controversy, with people and the Kerala government protesting on paper and on the streets. The idea of anthropomorphising the country, particularly as mother, has a long and contested history in India. Indian nationalism has drawn heavily from Hindu symbolism and iconography, and the concept of Bharat Mata and its representation was instructive. It had unifying power, but simultaneously triggered discord, as it excluded religious minorities. Muslims, particularly, developed a deep scepticism towards the idea of Bharat Mata, and the worship of the nation as mother. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, sought to give the imagery of Bharat Mata a secular character in his book The Discovery of India. But he too is discovering India as a civilizational eternity. Marking the birth centenary of Nehru (in 1989), a 53-episode docudrama on the state-controlled network Doordarshan televised the book. Shyam Benegal directed Bharat Ek Khoj, with the first episode being 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, and Benegal was by no means sectarian. The episode begins with Hindu chants in Sanskrit, before it goes on to Nehru's secular conception of Bharat Mata. The point was that it would be difficult to articulate the historicity of Indian identity without relying on Hinduism. But Nehru and his compatriots were sensitive about the potential of the slogan creating a communal rift. You could find more about that in this review of historian Sugata Bose's book The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood. The former general secretary of the Lok Sabha P.D.T. Achary traces the history of Bharat as mother and notes that there is no constitutionally recognised depiction of the concept. The Hindu's own editorial considers the Governor's enthusiasm for the public veneration of the image a partisan move. 'Who is Bharat Mata': On History, Culture and the Idea of India, Writings by and on Jawaharlal Nehru, edited by Purushottam Agrawal could also be of interest. You could find a review of the book here. If you have stayed with me this far on this topic, I would also recommend The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India by Sumathi Ramaswamy. The book brings us dozens of depictions of India as mother and goddess from the 19th century to the present. Federalism Tract Regional sentiments In Tamil Nadu, BJP ally AIADMK is on the back foot following the screening of video clips that showed leaders of Dravidian politics as critics of the Hindu religion at an event where their leaders were present. In Maharashtra, the BJP is trying to assuage regional sentiments after the government led by it privileged Hindi over other Indian languages in its three-language policy. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that a final decision on implementing the three-language formula in schools in the State will be taken only after discussions with writers, language experts, political leaders, and all other stakeholders. In West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government built a Jagannath temple in Digha, which custodians of the Puri Jagannath Temple in Odisha consider a violation of its singular primacy. Ms. Banerjee inaugurated the first 'Rath Yatra' from the ₹250-crore temple in the coastal town. Puri Shankaracharya Nischalananda Saraswati said the Jagannath temple constructed at Digha, lacked religious sanctity and was driven more by commercial interests than spiritual devotion.
The Hindu
22-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Political Line newsletter: Violence as political currency
(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India's political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.) Violence within national societies and among nation states marks a collapse of order A lawmaker in Minnesota, U.S.A., was killed and another injured in an act of political violence in the past week. The suspect had a list of 45 elected officials, all Democrats, who he wanted to eliminate, say reports. U.S. President Donald J. Trump survived two assassination attempts during the last election campaign. In December, the CEO of United Healthcare was shot dead, again in an act of alleged political violence. The suspect had apparently been upset with the unfairness of the U.S. health insurance sector. Mr. Trump's Attorney General has decided to seek the death penalty for the suspect. The suspect hails from an affluent family, and was disenchanted with the U.S. political order. American public opinion is divided over the case, as many people sympathise with the accused. In India, instances of political violence — mob lynching particularly — are being reported frequently. Historically, India and the U.S. have been pulverised by violence: the Civil War, Partition, and other events. Those were violent churns that would eventually lead to the expansion of democracy in both countries. The current era of violence is markedly different from popular violence in the past, I feel. Violence earlier was the birth pang of democracy; what we currently witness is the result of an erosion of democracy that we thought had brought an end to violence as the currency for political exchanges. The violence around us today denotes a breakdown of order, among nations and within nations. Rules do not apply, and the 'might is right' principle is back with a vengeance. The distinction between state and non-state actors has been erased. This violence is a statement by political actors that they do not trust the rules any longer. See the following examples. India says there is no distinction between the Pakistani state and the terrorists it supports; India's drive against Maoist insurgents and illegal immigrants in the country is admittedly beyond the enforcement of law. Law often delays the enforcement of order, according to this worldview. If Bangladeshi migrants have to be expelled through a deportation process, it will be too time consuming; so let's just 'push' them back. Israel accuses its rivals of committing terrorism, but it has little regard for any rules of democracy, order, or even war. Israel publicly threatens to kill the leader of a fellow member of the United Nations, Iran. In the U.S., the Trump administration is stretching the scope of law — if not entirely ignoring it — to deal with illegal immigration. We are in an era where violence is not merely happening, but there is a celebration of it as a virtue, or even a moral duty of the patriotic, the faithful, and the seeker of justice. Eric Hobsbawm, writing in 1994, (The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991) was already revising his earlier opinion, which was only a decade old then, about the future of humanity in the 21st century. While avoiding any definitive predictions, the historian of capitalism, modernity, and nationalism was, in the mid-1980s, hopeful that the kind of large-scale wars of the 20th century would be improbable in the 21st. But he would revise that opinion soon. 'There is less reason to feel hopeful about the future than in the middle 1980s, when the present author concluded his trilogy on the history of the 'long nineteenth century' (1789-1914) with the words: 'The evidence that the world in the twenty-first century will be better is not negligible. If the world succeeds in not destroying itself [i.e. by nuclear war], the probability will be quite strong.'' Federalism Tract: Notes on Indian Diversity Digging in The political battle over the antiquity of Tamil culture, between the State government and the Centre continues. The Centre controls archaeology in the country, but the State of TN has taken proactive measures to insert itself into archaeological excavation. The Centre wants the lead author of a report to rewrite it, and the State has objected to these efforts as a move to deny Tamils their due. Talking of antiquity of cultures, the Centre is supporting efforts to decipher the Indus Valley script, which remains an enigma a full century after it was discovered. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will host a three-day international brainstorming conference in August, which will assemble scholars working on the question. Finding the foreigner It is one thing to theoretically argue that illegal immigrants should be deported from the country, but identifying the foreigner in India is not an easy task. BJP governments in different parts of the country are targeting Bengali-speaking citizens, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said. She said residents of the State with valid documents were being labelled illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
