Forget China. Modi's turning India into a Pakistan

Narendra Modi will complete two years as prime minister of India this month. Since he assumed the power in New Delhi, minorities have been forced to live in a hostile environment, history books are being rewritten and mythology is being projected as scientific achievements.

RSS activists are being appointed to influential positions to further Hindutva into India’s institutional fabric. Hindu religious clerics have become prominent faces of the public discourse.

What Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq did to Islamise Pakistan in the 1970s, Narendra Modi is repeating that formula in India to turn India into a fief for Hindutva forces.

Prominent artists, historians and scientists have been raising their voices against an intensifying climate of religious intolerance in the country. Student protest movements are spreading from one academic institution to another against the upper-caste favoured mindset of Hindutva forces.

Security forces are being sent to academic campuses and Hindutva thugs have been given a free run to attack protesting students. Right-wing commentators are shamelessly screaming to stop spending taxpayers’ money on students of these "anti-national" academic institutions. 

On domestic front, by subverting the secular features of the country, Modi has been very successful in his project of making India a Hindu Pakistan. This Pakistanisation of India is not only limited to domestic politics, it has also captured country’s foreign policy.

The pre-election promise of economic miracle by the Modi sarkar has turned into a mirage. Besides a few Hindutva regulars, many converters have converted again and have started to censure Modi’s governance agenda at home.

Much is being written these days in critically assessing Modi’s domestic policies, while an overall notion still prevails that he has been successful at the foreign policy front. His frequent foreign trips mainly to Indian diaspora-rich countries are being stage-managed to perfection to showcase his popularity abroad.

Modi was virtually banned to travel to the West for nearly a decade and his foreign policy utterances before the election were primarily confined to chest-thumping rabble-rousing sermons vis-à-vis Pakistan.

In this environment of expectation vacuum, he started well. He invited leaders from neighbouring countries, including Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan to his swearing-in ceremony.

In a few days, Modi tried to project himself from a chest-thumping iron-man to a hugging and hand-holding endearing figure. Some of his admirers even coined the term "Modi Doctrine". But, there is always limit to this packaging, particularly if the product is of questionable quality.

With decreasing economic growth in other BRICS countries including China, India has been lucky to be the "one-eyed king in the land of the blind".

The potential for doing business in a still-growing India and electoral strength of the Hindu diaspora has made Western leaders to superficially pander to Modi’s vanity. This has deluded Modi into fancying himself as a statesman.

However, Modi is flying around the world as a salesman, selling India’s potential to be the factory for the world under his pet program, "Make in India".

For this to be successful and India to be the next China of the world, internal peace and stability is extremely crucial. But, Modi’s domestic agenda of turning India to a Hindu Pakistan is in serious conflict with his international agenda of turning India into a "world’s factory", China.

The Hindutva project has made India far more divided and volatile now than what it was two years back. And for this growing internal instability, no one else can be blamed except Modi and RSS.

Not only Modi has ignored the Chinese "mantra" of securing internal peace and stability, he has also taken a different route on foreign policy than the strategy Deng Xiapong adopted while undertaking the path for his country towards economic glory.

The fundamentals of Chinese foreign policy under Deng were to create a favourable external environment for its economic opening up while keeping a safe distance from any international power struggle.

China’s economy thrived while keeping a low profile and waiting for its time to arrive to take the centre stage in global politics.

Of course, Modi, by nature, can never maintain a low profile or wait for his turn. However, international diplomacy is of course much more complicated than winning the power struggle against Advani within the Sangh Parivar.

Modi not only has waged a series of assaults on secularism at home; on the external front, he has also deviated considerably from the post-independence foreign policy paradigm of India, which was not to entangle itself with any kind of alliances or commitments that would lead to fight a war for others.

Modi government in April 2016 has signed an agreement with the US to open up its military bases to the Americans. This will allow American fighter planes and warships to use Indian facilities, bringing them closer to China’s southern border.

By doing this, India has virtually entered into a formal military alliance with the Americans against China.

Americans have been putting pressure on India for this deal since George W Bush administration signed the Civil Nuclear Agreement with India in 2005 but the so-called weak and indecisive Manmohan Singh had even refused to give in to preserve India’s strategic autonomy.

But, Modi’s 56-inch chest decided to cave into the American pressure. Even his government is on the verge of agreeing to aid US Navy to track Chinese submarines in Indian Ocean.

India is now on its way to be the same as Pakistan, which was used by Americans to encircle Soviets.  Zia-ul-Haq did not only Islamise Pakistan, he also handed over his country’s military bases to American forces to be used against Soviet army in Afghanistan.

Modi is transforming India now to what Zia did to Pakistan in 1980s. Modi brags of turning India to China, but actually India is fast becoming a Pakistan under his tutelage.