Hindu-Muslim confrontations have begun to occur with sickening regularity in parts of India where the two communities co-exist. Unrest across India began in December with the passing of a law that makes non-Muslims from some neighbouring nations eligible for fast-tracked citizenship - a move many Muslims say is discriminatory and marks a break from India's secular traditions. Persecuted religious minorities including from Hindu, Sikh, or Christian communities are eligible for citizenship, but those from Islam do not enjoy all the same advantages.
Modi has pursued a Hindu-first agenda that has emboldened his followers, who account for about 80 percent of the population, and left India's 180 million Muslims reeling. In August, it stripped Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, of its special status, a move which Modi defended as a way of integrating the region with the rest of the country. In November, the Supreme Court handed Hindu groups control of a contested site in the city of Ayodhya that paves the way for a temple to be built on a site where a mosque once stood.
From being Hindu versus Muslim, they have become Hindu versus Christian, Hindu versus Sikh, upper-caste Hindu versus lower-caste Hindu. It is just about everyone against everybody. The root cause of spreading endemic violence is economic: religious linguistic and ethnic differences provide the excuse and motivation to indulge in it. There is not enough jobs available. There are always economic and social divisions within society to be exploited by those more rich and powerful, particularly when the existing order is threatened. Religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control over economic surplus. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual community and church organisations to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation.
Modi has pursued a Hindu-first agenda that has emboldened his followers, who account for about 80 percent of the population, and left India's 180 million Muslims reeling. In August, it stripped Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, of its special status, a move which Modi defended as a way of integrating the region with the rest of the country. In November, the Supreme Court handed Hindu groups control of a contested site in the city of Ayodhya that paves the way for a temple to be built on a site where a mosque once stood.
From being Hindu versus Muslim, they have become Hindu versus Christian, Hindu versus Sikh, upper-caste Hindu versus lower-caste Hindu. It is just about everyone against everybody. The root cause of spreading endemic violence is economic: religious linguistic and ethnic differences provide the excuse and motivation to indulge in it. There is not enough jobs available. There are always economic and social divisions within society to be exploited by those more rich and powerful, particularly when the existing order is threatened. Religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control over economic surplus. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual community and church organisations to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation.
To create a good slave you must first kill his pride, his self-respect, his notion of himself as an ordinary equal human being. The slave's body is needed - the man's for labour, the woman's for labour and abuse; but to control the body the inner spark which ignites anger must be crushed. There are many weapons in the arsenal, both psychological and physical but the chief one is dramatically simple: hunger. Oppress by destitution. Keep a people on the permanent edge of want. And the last stage of hunger - despair. There is no hope left.
The real trick is to destroy the confidence of a people: make them believe the caricatures you have created about them. The strength of the hoax lies, of course, in the fact that it is constructed on a malicious distortion of reality to give it a facade of believability.
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