In spite of the Gods

With liberalism in retreat, India is beginning to seem more a country marching resolutely backwards

Is it anti-national to bring disrepute to a country? The phrase is so overused that I have misgivings about typing it. Despite believing that countries as large as India and with as liberal a post-colonial Constitution as ours should only treat acts of violence against a state as seditious, the cow vigilantes in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the lawmakers who seek to rationalise their actions have certainly gone a long way to blackening the image of the country. As recently as a week ago, Rajasthan’s Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria explained the murder of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan near Alwar by saying, “He must have transported the cows illegally, hence he was penalised.” Penalised? It is a little worrying for the rule of law when a senior state minister cannot describe a lynching as a lynching.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, by contrast, have called the sorry saga for what it is: An organised hate crime that the Indian state sees no reason to apologise for. In an op-ed for the NYT, Aatish Taseer likened it to the lynching of blacks in the southern states of the United States in the yesteryear of segregation. The NYT also carried a powerful piece on the attacks on Nigerians and Kenyans in Noida, which again senior ministers refuse to characterise as racist. Perhaps it doesn’t matter in a country as insulated — and insular — and self-confident as India, but the tide of international coverage is turning quite markedly. The honeymoon for this government, sparked by the misperception that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an Indian Thatcher or Reagan, is waning. The appointment of Yogi Adityanath as chief minister drew criticism from just about every major foreign publication. The alcohol ban is not the government's doing, but coupled with reports about the war on buffalo meat production, an export sector that was growing at double-digit rates, and on dairy farmers who happen to be Muslim, India is beginning to seem more a country marching resolutely backwards. Having read such reports, an Australian friend who was planning on taking a house in India every February is now vowing not to return. 

One could argue we at least have plenty of company. Liberalism is in retreat; majoritarianism is a game politicians everywhere play well in the Age of WhatsApp. I am writing this column from Jakarta where we have just witnessed the defeat of a capable ethnic Chinese Jakarta governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, because Islamist groups banded against him, and misrepresented what he said as blasphemy. Bumper-to-bumper traffic aside, the skyscrapers of Jakarta make it seem a Singapore in the making; Ahok, as Purnama is called, had approval ratings of close to 75 per cent but still lost. 

Yet, unlike in UP and Rajasthan, it is hard to argue that Indonesia's administrators are not tackling the threats of a rise in religious fundamentalism. The respected Jakarta police chief had mobilised an extra 45,000 police and military ready on Wednesday, when the results were declared. The victor, a former university head and national education minister, may have been backed in a polarising campaign by a nasty alliance of Islamist parties and General Suharto's son-in-law, but immediately visited Ahok to seek reconciliation and said he would rule for “all Jakartans”. President Jokowi continues to be an inspiring and tireless voice for moderation. 

Indonesia's tradition of moderate Islam is being challenged, but Jakarta this week still felt like a more liberal place than much of India. Women — most choosing not to wear a hijab — are part of the workforce in multiples far higher than in New Delhi. On my first night in the city, I unthinkingly ordered pork belly; it was so tender that I can only assume the chef had plenty of practice. The banker I interviewed the next morning piled his plate high with bacon. By contrast, the stylish eateries in the middle lane of the fire-trap that is Khan Market have stopped serving buffalo for some time now. (If mutton in the fridge for a biryani is “mistaken” for beef as happened in Dadri, what hope do you have if your freezer is ransacked and buffalo meat is found?) 

I am an agnostic, befuddled by both the certainties of religion and hyper-nationalism. In deference to the sensitivities of others, I would stop eating buffalo, though partly out of cowardice. But, I am not sure it would make much of a difference. “A lynching is a majority’s way,” as Taseer notes, “of telling a minority that the law cannot protect it.” That is ultimately what this is about. Reflect on the howls of protest on social media groups about the White House's initially cavalier response to the shooting of an Indian engineer in Kansas and the muted reaction to a very public murder on a road in Rajasthan. Contrast what we have heard — and not heard — from India’s leaders since the ‘penalising’ of Pehlu Khan with President Obama’s response to the killings of six Sikhs in a gurdwara in the US in 2013. “We are reminded how much our country has been enriched by Sikhs who are part of our broader American family,” Obama said.