Bleeding liberal hearts in India miss no opportunity in pointing out the tyranny of Indian administration in Kashmir. The likes of Prashant Bhushan and Arundhati Roy would have you believe that Kashmir should be given its independence, even though there is no historical or logical basis behind this suggestion.
Ever since the arrival of Narendra Modi on the political scene, political opponents have used every opportunity to paint the Indian state as a tyrannical state, hell bent on imposing its hegemony over various people and erasing their independent identity. It is in line with this that consumption of beef was converted into a major political issue.
Amit Shah’s innocuous greetings on ‘Vamana Jayanti’ were painted as an assault on Kerala’s culture. Random attacks by self-styled activists on cattle hustlers were portrayed as an attack on the Muslim community and so on. The overarching narrative of liberals lately has become such that they have begun to deny the existence of India as a single nation. Our liberals seem to be working overtime to wreck the state from within by magnifying faultlines and imposing separatist identities, where none have historically existed.
In short, to our liberals, India is a despotic state that should unravel at the earliest.
Nothing could be farther than truth. India, strangely continues to be a soft state, an epithet that was first used in the Vajpayee years. Both the state and the Central governments seem to show enormous patience in putting up with viewpoints that are inimical to national interests. Seditious thoughts are tolerated, some might even say, welcomed. Instead of using force to quell dissent, the Indian state chooses to rely on dialogue and discussions. For instance, when Owaisi talks of Muslims being targeted in the Demonetization drive, the Indian state doesn’t respond beyond a tut-tut, even though, history shows that it was such thoughts that spawned the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Similarly, Pakistani actors were free to carry out their trade in India, even though the two nations had extraordinarily bad relations in recent times. Some JNU students can shout ‘Bharat tere tukde honge’, and the wrath of the Indian state still doesn’t fall on them. Maoist sympathizers roam freely, spewing venom and yet the Indian state tolerates their actions. How then, is one to assume that India is indeed a tyrannous state?
A soft power like India has much to learn from its neighbouring giant, China.
So effectively has China branded itself as a homogeneous, united nation that it is impossible to even consider countries such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Taiwan etc. as being separate from China today. History shows that not so long ago, these countries were autonomous, if not independent of China. A random phone call by then president-elect Trump to the President of Taiwan was enough to rile China to the extent that Chinese dailies were openly talking of attacking Taiwan and bringing it under Chinese rule. A visit by a foreign dignitary, or a Lama to Arunachal Pradesh, which is claimed by China, is enough for China to warn India of dangerous consequences. Any talk of independent Tibet leads to massive reprisals by the Chinese state. This has resulted in a situation where the unity and integrity of China, which is a notorious state with an abysmal human rights record, is unquestioned. The One-China principle, propagated by the ruling dispensation, which is nothing more than fiction, has today become gospel truth.
Our liberals can be accused of assigning politics to nationalism. In their bid to oppose politics, they have now begun opposing the nation itself. While political dispensations keep changing, the nation must remain above everything else. If our liberals feel that they can resume their control of India by undermining it, they are sadly mistaken. Any existential threat to India will be exploited by her neighbours to ruin the nation once and for all. It is unlikely that India’s enemies will have any appetite for tolerating India’s liberals. It is best if Indian liberals, who have been described as neither being Indian nor liberal, take off this mask of faux-western values and begin seeing India as their own motherland!