The Indian government’s toolkit for persecuting critics
Feb 27th 2021THE JUDGE who granted bail to Disha Ravi on February 23rd was doing Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, a favour. The jailing of the 22-year-old environmentalist a week earlier had made his government look mean and, more damaging still, silly. For the supposed sin of sharing a Google document that listed ways for activists to support protests by Indian farmers, Ms Ravi was dragged from her home in Bengaluru and flown to Delhi. Police charged her with sedition, a crime that can carry a life sentence. Government mouthpieces portrayed her list as the dastardly “toolkit” for a global conspiracy aimed at ripping India apart. Other conspirators include exiled Sikh separatists, Greta Thunberg, a teenage environmental activist, and Rihanna, a Barbados-born pop star who has been depicted as an inveterate foe of India since she expressed mild concern for the farmers’ well-being in a recent tweet. Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.The judge’s ruling, noting the absence of any evidence tying Ms Ravi or her “toolkit” to anything illegal, briefly warmed Indian liberals’ troubled hearts. In truth, his lordship could have gone further. He could, for instance, have pointed out the irony of this government, in particular, whining about someone else’s political “toolkit”. In election after election since taking power nationally in 2014, Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has wielded its own box of tricks much dirtier than anything Ms Ravi has suggested. It has, for instance, diligently stoked tensions between the Hindu majority and minorities, especially Muslims. A particularly effective tactic is the use of WhatsApp groups and other social media, powered by thousands of Hindu nationalist trolls, to spray a ceaseless mist of innuendo about the “anti-national” leanings of the BJP’s rivals. On February 22nd Mr Modi himself, on the campaign trail in West Bengal, a big state that is a teetering opposition stronghold, rang a familiar gong by vowing to end “appeasement” of minorities. On the same day the opposition-led government of Puducherry, a small territory far to the south, collapsed when a group of deputies abruptly defected amid claims of money changing hands. This was the ninth state government to fall in this way during Mr Modi’s tenure—another reliable component of the BJP’s “toolkit”. In making up conspiracies about people like Ms Ravi, the police, too, are resorting to a tried and tested tool from the kit. A few days before her release, three young working-class Muslim men in Delhi were also granted bail. They had spent not a few days, like the middle-class activist, but 11 months in jail, accused of shooting another Muslim youth during communal riots in the capital that left 53 people dead last year, more than two-thirds of them Muslims. The judge not only let them go, but rebuked police for producing “no evidence whatsoever” against them.The ruling went on to show that film footage, forensic reports and witnesses all made plain that the fatal bullet had been fired not by the victim’s friends, as police insist, but by someone amid the furious mob of Hindu youths gathered on a rooftop across the street. Video from a television channel reveals a rifle pointing down, at an angle that matches the victim’s wounds. This version, however, does not seem to match with the preferred “toolkit” of Delhi’s police. Their investigation of the riots has been single-mindedly focused on the premise that Muslims shot one another to embarrass Mr Modi’s government. As a result they have ignored footage that plainly shows politicians from the BJP inciting mobs, and police officers joining in. It is a shame that India, as a republic, increasingly seems to set aside its own original and excellent toolkit, namely its constitution of 1950. The divergence has been a long and slow process, but there is little doubt it is speeding up. One hint as to why may have been revealed by the culture ministry, which on February 19th, for the first time ever, issued an official tribute to “The Profound Thinker” M.S. Golwalkar, an early leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, the mothership of the Hindu nationalist movement and progenitor of the BJP. Among other controversial views, Mr Golwalkar believed that Nazi Germany’s management of its Jewish problem “represented a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”. He was not happy with India’s constitution either, judging its makers “not firmly rooted in the conviction of our single homogeneous nationhood”. His call for a change of toolkit has found a powerful audience.This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Toolmasters”