LET’S start with Manipur, where the BJP’s ‘double-engine sarkar’ appears to have decoupled both engines from the state and left it to its own devices, and where 70 days plus of Modi’s apathetic silence and Shah’s wilful negligence have pushed matters to the point where Kuki groups are now demanding a separate state.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, entrusted by Shah with the task of liaising with the various groups and restoring peace, capped off a series of bumbling efforts by grandly proclaiming that the state and Central governments were “silently working” and that marked improvement would be visible “within 7-10 days“.
Aside: That Shah is a bad judge of personnel is visible in his picking Sarma to put out the fires ravaging Manipur — the latter’s expertise is not so much with the firehose as with a box of matches and a can of fuel. Last heard from, he was claiming that ‘Miyan Muslims’ were responsible for the rising price of vegetables, and threatening to drive them away. Some peacemaker!
Anyway, Sarma’s proclamation of imminent peace was on 1 July. As of 16 July when I write this, Manipur continues to burn — literally, with women protestors torching three trucks carrying gas cylinders and another group of women vendors announcing a mass protest on 19 July, while the government has gone from “silently working” to just “silent”.
That silence is not to Manipur’s liking — so much so that on 13 July, a peace meeting organized by civil society called out the Prime Minister for his studied silence, set a deadline of 10 days for the PM to visit the state, and said that failure to meet the deadline would be “considered tantamount to inciting violence, similar to Aung San Suu Kyi’s actions against the Rohingyas in Burma.”
Further, the meeting said, if Modi did not make the trip within the stipulated time frame, he would not be considered the PM of Manipur. Ouch!
And more pain — assuming the BJP and its leader are capable of being pained — followed with the Manipur issue beginning to find resonance in neighboring Mizoram. That state first sought, in vain, a sum of Rs 10 crore as Central assistance to help assuage the plight of Manipuri refugees, and then realized that in Atmanirbhar Bharat, you have to do everything yourself — so it is now asking private individuals to contribute to the relief efforts and is burning effigies of Modi, Shah, the Assam Rifles and sundry others in public as a mark of protest.
Also in Mizoram, the BJP’s state vice president resigned, stating that the party leadership’s studied silence in the face of over 350 Christian religious establishments being burned down in Manipur has led him to the conclusion that “the massive demolition of Christian Churches in Manipur was supported by the state and Central authorities.”
It’s the odd-even formula all over again. On odd days, concerned by increasing signs that the 2024 general election is not going to be the cakewalk it was generally assumed to be even a year back, Modi ostentatiously embarks on a “Christian outreach“, complete with appropriate costume. And on even days, the BJP reverts to type, turning a blind eye as its stormtroopers go about assaulting the community.
The situation — exacerbated by the Centre’s studied inaction — is so bad that even the RSS is now expressing concern over events in the northeastern state. And it all got worse when, on July 12, the European Parliament sought an urgent debate on the situation in Manipur.
Coming as it did on the eve of Modi’s visit to France as the guest of honor on Bastille Day, the EU’s move ruffled the MEA’s feathers and caused Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra to issue a statement that India is reaching out to the European parliamentarians. Kwatra said that Manipur is “absolutely internal” to India and that the EU has no business interfering.
The government even hired — on the public dime — one of Europe’s leading lobbying firms to try and head off the EU Parliament from engaging with the Manipur issue. The firm toed the official line, that since the Indian Parliament and the government were already discussing the issue (which comes as news, since I at least have seen no sign of any such discussion), there was no need for the EU to get involved.
Fair enough, except for a couple of things. It was this same government that, in October 2019, shepherded a group of EU parliamentarians on a jaunt through Kashmir, complete with shikhara ride on the Dal lake, to show that the abrogation of Article 370 had turned the state into the heaven on earth the Mughal Emperor Jehangir had famously proclaimed it to be (“Gar Firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin ast“). You can’t invite the EU to weigh in on internal matters when it suits your propaganda purposes and expect them to take you seriously when you ask them to mind their own business.
The other thing is that on 6 June, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home ended abruptly when its chairperson denied the request of Congress and Trinamool MPs for a debate on Manipur. Read that again, slowly — the standing committee for home affairs refuses an internal discussion on a burning issue right here at home. And a fact-finding team of the National Federation of Indian Women which visited Manipur and reported that the violence appeared to be state-sponsored had FIRs booked against them for, among other charges, “waging war against the state“.
Begs the question: If you can’t discuss Manipur within India or abroad, where can you discuss it?
In any event, the EU Parliament ignored the Foreign Secretary’s strictures, went ahead with the debate, and passed a resolution couched in unusually strong terms. “The resolution notes that intolerance towards minority communities has contributed to the current violence and that there have been concerns about politically motivated, divisive policies that promote Hindu majoritarianism in the area.”
The resolution urged that human rights be integrated into “all areas of the EU-India partnership, including in trade” (emphasis mine), and encouraged member states to “systematically and publicly raise human rights concerns, notably on freedom of expression, religion and the shrinking space for civil society, with the Indian side at the highest level.”
The BJP has been trying out various talking points to see which one resonates with the electorate. The latest attempt was to portray Modi as a global statesman (enshrined earlier via the “Vishwaguru” trope). Unfortunately, as happens often with a propaganda-driven party that is inept at propaganda, the attempt fell flat on its face when it turned out that an IT Cell-generated propaganda video about Modi’s many global triumphs featured a map of India that ceded territory to China on one side and Pakistan on the other. Cue red faces and frantic attempts to delete the social media posts.
Besides the faux pas, the BJP’s timing — unsurprisingly — was just plain bad. Besides the EU Parliament calling Modi’s India out in strong terms (the Twitter handle Churumuri has a thread on the speeches, and a transcript is here), the French newspaper Le Monde (The World) welcomed Modi to Paris with a stinging oped. Moral of the story: We live in a connected world; what happens in India does not remain in India but has resonances far and wide.
That the EU resolution struck a raw nerve became evident when BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya found a (rather convoluted) way to lay the blame on Rahul Gandhi. He was quickly joined by Smriti Irani, who is the minister for something or other, I forget what, but whose day job appears to be to comment on Rahul Gandhi. In passing, I wonder if the likes of Malviya and Irani read the comments their posts attract? If they did, they’d have realized that this schtick is not selling like it used to.
And while on “internal affairs”, pro tip: You can’t reserve to yourself the right to comment about the “internal affairs” of other countries while insisting that no one has the right to comment about yours. Item:
Before leaving the subject of Manipur (for now), one side note. Remember that at least three delegations of politicians and civil society leaders from Manipur failed to get a meeting with Modi despite camping for days in Delhi? Remember (as pointed out earlier in this segment) that neighboring Mizoram tried, and failed, to get the Centre to release funds — Rs 10 crore was the ask — to care for Manipuri refugees?
Right. So, an RTI inquiry found that it cost Rs 1.48 crore for Modi to play dress-up and flag off one Vande Bharat train in April. Another RTI revealed that it cost Rs 2.16 crore for him to flag off two trains, one in Tamil Nadu and another in Kerala. (Add two more trains, flagged off from Puri and Ajmer, and the total cost for launching four trains works out to Rs 5.6 crore).
Every time the PM plays station master just so he can get airtime in the media, that is another one-plus crore of public funds down the drain — funds that are not available to care for Indians who have become refugees in their own land or to pay scientists the research funds that are due to them.
We are, all of us, ok with this criminal waste of public funds, yes? Ok then.
Playing defense
In the run-up to Modi’s trip to France, there was much talk of various defense deals being imminent. The surround sound around the trip, though, was dissonant — Banquo’s Rafale’s ghost popped up as an unwanted guest when French news portal Mediapart broke yet another story on the murky doings around Modi’s previous visit to France. (The story is paywalled but, pro tip, if you unlock it for just one Euro, you actually end up being able to access all earlier Rafale-related stories broken by Yann Philippin by following the links. And if you don’t want to shell out, The Wire has a fairly comprehensive analysis of the story). The abstract reads:
France’s 7.8-billion-euro sale to India in 2016 of 36 Dassault-built Rafale fighter jets, the subject of an ongoing French judicial investigation, is mired by suspected corruption involving politicians and industrialists. As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who signed the deal, prepares to attend France’s Bastille Day celebrations as guest of honour, documents obtained by Mediapart reveal how Modi’s billionaire friend, Anil Ambani, boss of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Group, which was handed a lucrative contract as a condition of the Rafale sale, directly solicited the intervention of then economy minister Emmanuel Macron and finance minister Michel Sapin in a bid to escape a 151-million-euro tax claim against his French subsidiary. The tax adjustment was finally cut down to 6.6 million euros.
Yann Philippin for Mediapart
At the same time as Mediapart was breaking the third installment of its relentless coverage of the Rafale deal, came the news that the joint venture Modi pushed the French firm into signing with Anil Ambani is about to be dissolved. Partly because the younger Ambani is on the verge of bankruptcy (“inability to make the investment required to keep the joint venture going” is how the official version goes) and partly because, as Rahul Gandhi pointed out at the time, Anil Ambani does not have the capability of making even a paper plane.
I meant to write about the latest round of defense deals negotiated during Modi’s visit to France. But, as with the deals made during his recent US visit, there appears to be considerable ambiguity about the exact nature of the deals with the French.
As ace foreign affairs correspondent Suhasini Haidar points out, France and India have revised the joint statement issued initially, and the revised version omits key details of the defense deals. The earlier mention of 26 Rafale jets to be purchased has now been dropped; so also all references to the three Scorpene submarines India was to purchase.
There is a strong smell of rotting fish in all this. The original statement put out by India mentioned both deals; the French version did not. Now India has put out a “revised version” that tallies with the French, and the explanation is that “some earlier negotiating text got uploaded” by mistake.
If that explanation is true, it is a shocking way to run the MEA — documents relating to high-level defense negotiations don’t just lie around for some random person to pick up and upload. What is more likely is that the Indian side considered the two deals — the crown jewels of Modi’s recent jaunt to France — as done, and are now having to scramble to save face.
Update: A “source” says that the deal could not be concluded in time for the official statement; that delivery timelines and certain specifications could not be resolved by deadline. So what was all the advance drumbeating in aid of? Why did “sources” tell the media that the deals would be the highlight of Modi’s trip to France? And why, in any event, are unnamed “sources” speaking on matters of such importance to India’s defense preparedness? Do we have a Defence Minister? Where is he in all of this? (Actually, just as all of this was unraveling, Rajnath Singh was inaugurating a gym (?!!) and boasting of how the PM of Australia calls Modi “Boss”.)
The story of this latest misadventure in foreign relations is not over yet, not by a long chalk. Expect the likes of Mediapart to break details of what went wrong, in the coming weeks.
Odds and Ends:
#1. Remember the story of Alexander Coates Reed, the principal of the DY Patil High School in Pune who was assaulted by Bajrang Dal members on the basis of allegations that he had forced students to recite Christian prayers and also that he had installed CCTVs in the ladies’ toilet? A police investigation reveals that the whole thing was trumped up by a disgruntled mom.
This is what the BJP’s emphasis on “hindutva” has done to civil society: It has created a situation where anyone can pursue their private vendettas by the simple expedient of gaslighting and whistling up thugs cloaked in saffron, while the media helpfully whips up public hysteria. In context, read also this story of a passenger forcing a Muslim bus conductor to remove his skull cap, and note that the lady had someone in tow to videograph her brave fight for who knows what.
A saffron scarf can cloak a multitude of sins: In Karnataka, four BJP workers have been arrested for illegally transporting their cow-mothers — they likely forgot that the BJP is no longer in power in the state and that their immunity from police action is no longer in force.
While on this, the news coming from Damoh, in Madhya Pradesh, is that 16 girls are missing from a hostel, days after videos of them bathing, shot with hidden CCTV cameras, went viral on the internet.
16 young, traumatized, girls “disappeared”, just like that. There is no word yet about the Bajrang Dal outraging over this. Also in Madhya Pradesh, a BJP leader’s son is one of four accused of gang-raping a woman and sexually assaulting her minor sister.
#2. Maharashtra continues to be the exemplar of the BJP high command’s desperation to somehow cobble together disparate forces into some sort of common front. As pointed out in the previous edition of TWTWTW, Ajit Pawar’s power play worked — in the cabinet reshuffle this week, Pawar got the Finance portfolio he had insisted on, despite the opposition of chief minister Shinde and the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis.
More than who got what portfolio, what is interesting is who lost out in the reshuffle. Ajit Pawar got Finance and Planning, which till now Fadnavis had held. Remember that Fadnavis had earlier been given those two lucrative portfolios to make up for having to cede the chief minister’s post to Shinde.
Similarly, Chhagan Bhujbal of the breakaway NCP gets Food and Civil Supplies — the loser being the BJP’s Ravindra Chavan. Hasan Mushrif, whose ongoing case in court is causing the BJP considerable embarrassment (see previous edition of TWTWTW) gets Medical Education, another lucrative post — the loser being the BJP’s Girish Mahajan. Dhananjay Munde gets Agriculture, the loser being the Shinde faction’s Abdul Sattar. The NCP’s Dilip Walse Patil gets Co-operatives, at the expense of the BJP’s Atul Save…
I could go on, but if there is one thing the reshuffle indicates, it is that the BJP is so desperate to keep Ajit Pawar and his cohort happy that the party is willing to give the breakaway NCP faction all prime portfolios, even at the expense of the Shinde faction and of the BJP’s own Devendra Fadnavis.
Why this desperation? Recent surveys indicate that the BJP is losing ground rapidly in Maharashtra and, worse, roping in the Shinde faction hasn’t given the BJP the headwinds it had hoped for.
All that the BJP has accomplished is to hand over the keys of the Maharashtra kingdom to Ajit Pawar and his group — the same bunch of people Modi, no less, was loudly accusing of corruption to the tune Rs 70,000 crore just days before the NCP split.
There is a silver lining for the BJP though: A day before handing over charge of his Planning ministry to Ajit Pawar, Fadnavis managed to push through the paperwork giving Gautam Adani the $3 billion Dharavi Redevelopment Project. Further, Times of India reports, Adani is poised to get a whole heap of sops as part of the deal.
In passing, in last week’s episode I’d written of a theory doing the rounds that Ajit Pawar’s defection was a carefully orchestrated ploy by Sharad Pawar to save his nephew from punitive ED/IT raids and a possible arrest. On that note, I noticed an odd bit of news today — Ajit Pawar and his cohort met and decided to seek the blessings of Sharad Pawar; following up on that thought, they trooped to the YB Chavan Centre to meet the NCP patriarch. Odd behavior for a group that supposedly quit the parent party in an acrimonious fashion. Not so off if you consider that the junior Pawar has staved off any BJP action on corruption, and he and his bunch have cornered all key portfolios and now quite literally rule the roost.
#3. We learn that Shivamogga Airport will become operational from August 11. Which begs the question: What was it that Modi inaugurated, with considerable fanfare, on February 27? That visit cost the state exchequer Rs 36.43 crore; a sum of Rs 3.94 crore was spent on 1600 KSRTC buses hired to ferry people to the venue for Modi to wave at. (Reminder: The Centre doesn’t have Rs 10 crore to spend on food and shelter for Manipuri residents, nor has it been able to pay scientists their allocated research grants).
#4. Sher ne cheetah leke aaya was just one of the hagiographic chyrons captive TV channels ran with last September when Modi celebrated his birthday by releasing cheetahs brought over from Namibia for the occasion. This week, two of those cheetahs died within two days of each other, taking the tally to eight in a span of four months.
#5. Two months ago, I had in my monthly column for The Morning Context written in detail about India’s ace wrestlers who had camped in Jantar Mantar to protest systematic sexual abuse by the then Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
After months of being gaslit by the visual media, of being harassed by the Delhi police force, of being ignored by Home Minister Amit Shah, Prime Minister Modi and Women’s Affairs Minister Smriti Irani, of being abused and accused of anti-India activities by sundry “influencers” on social media, after being all but called liars by an internal committee that “found no evidence” to substantiate the charges, the wrestlers have finally come up trumps.
This week, the Delhi police filed an extensive chargesheet against the BJP “strongman”. The evidence adduced reportedly includes photographs and cellphone records that substantiate the allegations. The police chargesheet also includes detailed testimony from the wrestlers, all collected in the presence of a magistrate.
When the wrestlers demanded Singh’s arrest, the counter was that he had been removed from his post as chief of the WFI and was no longer in a position to tamper with evidence or intimidate witnesses. The police chargesheet now includes an email alleging that Singh’s aides intimidated and harassed witnesses, and that his close aides were permitted to be around when witness statements were being recorded. Remember, in this connection, that the minor withdrew her complaint, and that her father later said the family had done so out of fear.
Here is a question worth thinking about: Why did it take all these months of heartburn, of the issue snowballing until it even made international headlines before the government gave the police the green light?
When they protested, the wrestlers were accused of showing the country in a bad light. What is it, though, that gets the country a bad name: That the entire establishment is deployed to protect a Member of Parliament from allegations of sexual abuse, or that someone protested about it? That the wrestlers spoke out, or that those at the highest levels of government did not?
Why does this government’s reaction to every problem follow the same template: denial, deflection, obfuscation, ad hominem attacks, and the use of intimidatory force before it finally succumbs and does the right thing?
The part that should make you both sad and angry? The three words I started my column with: “Narendra Modi knew“.
Modi knew what was going on; he knew at least two years before the protests broke out; and he chose to say nothing, do nothing.
When all is said and done, the PM is nothing but a Potemkin facade, propped up by a propaganda machine that churns out jaw-droppingly bad attempts to make him a larger-than-life figure. See the example below (BTW, what is the Indian PM doing in a space suit sporting the American flag, and is that anti-national? When did he go to Mars? Also, memo, there is no point wearing a space helmet if your face is going to poke out of the thing.)
These guys need to get out in the streets and listen to the voice of the people. As for instance:
PostScript: When I started This Was The Week That Was last week, the intention was to do a weekly roundup of thoughts on issues of importance, and through the week to do shorter posts on specific items of news.
That plan came to grief on, well, grief, because I had to rush off to Chennai on Monday to attend a family funeral. As a result, no updates during the week, and an overlong edition today. Apologies. Life permitting, will try for a saner schedule here on in.
PPS: About a month ago, my friend Arati Kumar-Rao and I discussed Marginlands, her debut book on the environment. It is essential reading for every Indian. Here is a recording of the event:
Smoke Signals 