Looking Closely At The Litany Of Woes Against This Obdurate Govt

Raids at the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai. Ban on a BBC documentary on 2002 Gujarat riots. Arrests of activists, student leaders and journalists on unsubstantiated charges. Branding of opponents as ‘anti-national’ and ‘unpatriotic’. Arbitrary decision to demonetise currency.

A close look at these and other, similar developments makes you wonder if we are living in a true democracy or a democratised dictatorship. The raids on BBC offices that began earlier this week and ended after three days came as a shock to many. However, going by its track record, such a decision was only to be expected by the current government.

There is a pattern here and if you look closely, you can spot it and sometimes even anticipate actions, largely driven by vindictiveness.

As far back as November 2021, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram had said that Prime Minister Modi is ‘a dictator in the garb of a democrat’. Addressing a press conference in Panaji, Chidambaram had said, “Modi is Modi. He behaves like a dictator in the garb of a democrat. Hitler behaved like a dictator in the garb of a dictator. The only difference is Modi is a dictator in the garb of a democrat.”

The first sign that this government believes in pushing its agenda through by any and all means and does not care much about consensus or even debate came when it made the overnight decision to demonetise all Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes on November 8, 2016, around a couple of years after being elected to form the government at the Centre. That decision caused untold misery to middle class, lower middle class and working class Indians as they lined up to exchange their wads of notes in unending queues at bank branches across the country. Some could not deal with the shock of losing their life’s earnings in a stroke of arbitrariness and either committed suicide or succumbed to heart failure. A report by the Indian Express, published on November 18, 2016, confirmed that 33 deaths were reported across the country that could be directly or indirectly linked to the sudden demonetisation move. “While a few deaths have been out of shock, as alleged by the families of the deceased, some deaths are claimed to be owing to exhaustion after standing for long hours in serpentine queues. There have also been reports of suicide and even a murder over demonetisation in West Bengal,” the report said.

Then came the farmer protests of 2020-21, which began after the Parliament of India passed three farm laws in 2020. Farmers rose up against the laws, which they found exploitative and benefiting only corporates, with the first protests beginning in Punjab and later spreading to the rest of India. At every step of the farmers’ movement, they were lampooned and castigated. When that didn’t work and their support base kept growing, the ruling dispensation was rattled and uncertain of how to react. Actress Kangana Ranaut called the protesting farmers ‘Khalistani’, resulting in an FIR being filed against her. The GoI subsequently withdrew the laws and called farmer leaders in for talks but no positive development has taken place on this issue so far.

Arrest of dissenters is nothing new in a dictatorship but when it starts happening with regularity in a democracy, there is serious cause for concern. From journalist Siddique Kappan to JNU PhD scholar Sharjeel Imam, there are examples galore of such arbitrary arrests of people who were bold enough and committed enough to question the official narrative and well-publicised turn-of-events. In case of Kappan, it was his decision to head to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh where a Dalit woman had died after being allegedly gang-raped. Kappan was granted bail by the Supreme Court on September 9, 2022, in an Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act case after being booked by the UP Police for alleged links with the radical Popular Front of India. Where Imam is concerned, a report said, “Imam was charged with sedition before a court in Delhi for allegedly inciting people to indulge in ‘activities detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of the country’. The chargesheet alleged that Imam openly defied the Constitution and called it a ‘fascist’ document.” Tellingly, a Delhi court discharged Imam in the Jamia violence case on February 6, 2023.

The BBC documentary titled “India: The Modi Question” was banned from being broadcast in India by the government in mid-January 2023. The rationale for this decision was that the documentary was a ‘propaganda piece’. Prime Minister Modi was chief minister of Gujarat when it was rocked by communal riots in 2002 that left more than 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims. The violence began after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59. Foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the film was meant to push a “discredited narrative”. He added that a “bias”, “lack of objectivity”, and “continuing colonial mindset” is “blatantly visible” in it. “It makes us wonder about the purpose of this exercise and the agenda behind it, and we do not wish to dignify such efforts,” he told a news conference in New Delhi. Meanwhile, the BBC, the UK state broadcaster, said its documentary on Modi was “rigorously researched” according to the highest editorial standards. The documentary revealed for the first time a UK government report into the deadly 2002 religious riots, which had “all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing”. Meanwhile, the government blocked all posts on Twitter and YouTube with links to clips from the documentary, and students at a Delhi university were even arrested on January 25 for trying to hold a screening of the documentary.

Now, with the IT ‘surveys’ at BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, the Modi government has revealed, beyond any reasonable doubt and without any semblance of pretence, just how serious the rot in the system is and how ‘thin-skinned’ the present dispensation is. All this has presented press freedom in India in a poor light, with its Press Freedom Ranking declining to 150th position — out of 180 countries — in the “Reporters Without Borders” global ranking for press freedom. In its statement, the “Reporters Without Borders” has said, “Indian tax department raids on BBC offices in Mumbai and New Delhi have all the hallmarks of a reprisal for the release of a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi three weeks ago… denouncing the government’s attempts to clamp down on independent media.” The RSF statement adds, “After daring to criticise the government, several journalists, media outlets and human rights groups have been inspected by agencies tasked with combating financial crimes. In July 2021, for example, tax inspectors raided around 30 Dainik Bhaskar bureaux after this newspaper, one of the most popular in India, questioned the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Tax officials raided the Newslaundry and NewsClick websites a few months later, after keeping them in their sights since June 2021.”

Ever since demonetisation, the capriciousness of the Modi government has increased, step after deliberate step. It first tested the waters by an overnight, ill-planned ban on legal currency and then blocked out all criticism of its decision, just like a tyrannical government would do. This was followed by labelling of opponents and rejectionists as ‘traitors’ and ‘anti-national’ and the subsequent arrests of activists/journalists/student leaders without sufficient proof of their complicity in any anti-national activities. The ban on the BBC documentary and the ensuing I-T ‘surveys’ on its offices appear to be but another step towards open intimidation of opponents/dissenters and constitute an overt intolerance of dissent.

The gloves are off. The Modi government does not even attempt to feign lip-service to secularism, justice, objectivity and accountability. It does not even cloak its actions as being against an ideology or a narrative. And this when we haven’t even delved into the release and feting of convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape and murder case and the public reaction to that incident.

To quote the Aam Aadmi Party, Modi has “reached the heights of dictatorship”. The laws of physics state that once you reach the acme of any metaphorical edifice, there’s only one way to go — down. It’s not a question of whether but when will this happen for the Modi government. Going by the fall of other dictators, even those in the garb of democrats, it would not be amiss to say that the fall appears destined to be as mighty and as mercurial as the rise once was.