Plugging off farmers, celebrities and sundry

Farmers’ protest is unplugged. So how will India unplug something that is already unplugged. Traditionally, the Modi government has a simple “shut-up “formula – shoot the messenger. However, by shutting and shooting unnecessarily a micro item becomes mega news. The best way to raise a voice is to ban it. The best way to raise an uproar is to block it. The best way to create a mob is to use force on it. These are the old age techniques of boosting up any resistance or movement. The surprising thing is that despite knowing such things why do governments do exactly as they are not meant to do. The answer is that when under pressure most human beings, institutions and governments cannot control the panic button inside them. Instincts take over logic. Consequences may seem temporarily good but soon add fuel to the very fire they want to extinguish.

For time immemorial everything that happened bad was due to Pakistan. The convenient scapegoat was Pakistan’s so-called militancy in Kashmir. With slick marketing and a huge market India’s voice was loud, booming and heard. Pakistan’s backfoot, defensive, mumbling jumbling was hardly audible. That helped India build up their narrative of Pakistan the CTO i.e., Chief Terrorist Operator and India as the CPO Chief Progressive Operator in the region. To top it all the global Islamophobia trend in the West helped India find a common platform of “Islamic radicalism” being provided terrorist havens in Pakistan. While every small or big terror incident within Pakistan was reported as evidence to their theory, fundamentalism growing in India was masked cleverly under the guise of a largely secular state. This sold well till a few things happened:

1 Modi’s overKill- Heady with unprecedented success in the 2019 elections based on the hate Pakistan narrative he decided to press the accelerator on Kashmir. In came the revocation of Article 370 and the lockdown. Indians assessed that with huge Indian support and a rather indifferent West, India would just need a few months to tame the Kashmiris into submission. The opposite happened. The Kashmiris did not give in and the Kashmiri political supporters of Delhi after being locked down, also rebelled. Pakistan had the “audacity” of exposing India on all forums. PM Imran Khan led the Kashmir cause on the UN and international forums. What was supposed to be a few months turned into a year, making it a historical inhuman event that the media started reporting with reluctant disgust. Modi was and is trapped. He cannot lift the lockdown and he cannot just let the West talk about the history’s worst human siege.

2 Internal Division- Victory based on hate is self-consuming. Having tasted unprecedented victory in elections Modi felt hate was the remedy for every ill in India. As the economy slowed down and people lost jobs he decided to introduce the Citizen Amendment Bill. That set off protests in universities all across the country. Riots and state force in Delhi protests, that were hidden due to communication lockdown in Kashmir, were visible in India. Then came the virus. For Modi his own dictatorial mindset was his undoing. With just 4 hours of notice he shut down India. Millions of migrant labourers were stranded on streets while trying to go home. Scenes of stampede and brute force in World media further tarnished the image. As the virus went out of control, India was touted as a case study of failed economic and corona management.

1. Global Fallout- As the virus affected the Indian economy, Modi’s government was keen to revive it as the corona numbers became manageable. They tried to introduce crop pricing reforms in the farm sector. This was policy making without the right foresight. Farmers rebelled and tagged the government as big business bullies. They believe in the long run a consortium of private players will develop, leaving them vulnerable to large corporations and market forces. The reforms do not give them a right to go to courts but to bureaucrats for disputes. From a few thousand it has now become one of the farmers’ largest and longest protest in the history. That is why it has caught the global activists and celebrity eyes. From Rihaana to Greta Thonberg, from Meena Harris to Karen Attiahare all tweeting about why the world is quiet over it. The Indian celebrities are responding by ‘saying mind your own business’. But what was a local farmer’s protest has now become a global cause of human rights and injustice.

As with lies, to hide a wrong, a thousand wrongs ensue. The Indian government is now so set with the HFS – Hate, Force, Shut – strategy that they are pushing all the wrong buttons. When Amnesty International started relating horrifying stories on Modi’s atrocities against minorities in India its office was shut down. In the farmers’ protest internet was shut down in Delhi as the farmers gathered. As the issue became global Modi’s government became furious. On tweets by Meena Harris the niece of VP of USA questioning democracy in India, the Indian external affairs ministry accused “foreign individuals” and celebrities of “sensationalism”. They have asked Twitter management to close and block thousands of accounts in India that dare speak against them. Twitter resisted but threats of jail for their local employees forced them to shut those accounts in contradiction of their freedom to speak mission.

Pakistan for the first time has openly and unapologetically unmasked India’s double face to the world. India had always dismissed Pakistan’s claims. India was big and was needed in the region to counter China. Pakistan was just a convenient base to be used for operational warfare of the west. That changed as Pakistan’s strategic importance in American withdrawal from Afghanistan became imminent.

Pakistan needs to establish the same importance with the new government in the White House. Pakistan also needs to cement its ties with other countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, etc. The expansion in its relations with other countries of the bloc will help in making Pakistan’s case of peace within the region. Indian economy will recover from the Covid-19 shock as the vaccine becomes widespread. Then the likelihood is that world powers will overlook Indian atrocities due to vested financial and political interests. Pakistan can counter this tilt by making its base of support wide and deep not just within the region but across regions to firm up its standing as a country that matters in the post Covid-19 world order.

(The writer can be reached at [email protected])

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021