Is Modi, India’s Zia?

It’s okay that he doesn’t have a magic wand to instantly fix the economy; he only needs to outrun PML-N and PPP

Modi’s win is a spectacular loss for India. No one understands this better than my generation of Pakistanis known as Zia’s children. What Zia orchestrated in the 80s to use religion for realisation of political goals Modi is engineering in India today. With one important nuance. The Pakistani people never elected Zia into office. Meanwhile, the Indian people have elected a man who flirts with the spilling of minority blood — especially Muslims — into the office for a second time!

A second Modi term will permanently disfigure the secular, social fabric of the largest democracy in the world. It makes me uncomfortable to write the words mass murderer or blood-thirsty leader, to describe the leader of the world’s largest democracy but consider the following excerpts from Time magazine’s recent cover story, naming Modi, India’s Divider in Chief:

“India’s Muslims, who make up some 14% of the population, have been subjected to episode after violent episode, in which Hindu mobs, often with what seems to be the state’s tacit support, have carried out a series of public lynching in the name of the holy cow, that ready symbol of Hindu piety. The most enduring image of Modi’s tenure is the sight of Mohammad Naeem in a blood-soaked undershirt in 2017, eyes white and enlarged, begging the mob for his life before he is beaten to death. The response of leadership in every instance is the same: virtual silence.”

Does this story sound familiar to the blasphemy mobs in Pakistan? The irony of these words being penned in Time magazine by an Indian man, Aatish Taseer, who happens to be the son of the slain Pakistani governor, Salman Taseer, shouldn’t be lost on anyone. One could argue that Salman was assassinated by one of Zia’s children, Mumtaz Qadri, who grew up on an explosively-politicised mix of religion and violence. Today, Salman Taseer’s son is warning India of its children becoming Modi’s children.

Having a prime minister who exploits religion to pursue political goals doesn’t come without cost to society. Consider the infighting, intolerance and extremism bred in Pakistan as a result of Zia’s policies. Modi’s rule will haunt Indians for generations to come.

It took 72 years but the Quaid-e-Azam’s Two-Nation theory has been decisively endorsed by the long arc of history. Forget my arguments, Narendra Modi is the only person ever to be denied a US visa based on a little-known law on religious freedom, even though he applied for a diplomatic visa as a sitting chief minister. This led to nearly a decade-long US travel ban imposed over his role in Gujarat’s anti-Muslim riots, which left thousands dead (the UK and several European nations had also slapped a defacto travel ban on Modi).

In addition to being a problem child himself, what’s worse is that Modi is also the symptom of a far more dangerous problem; an Indian electorate at peace with war-mongering. The performance of the Indian economy wasn’t exactly the reason behind Modi’s win, it was his hardline rhetoric and warmonger-like adventurism with Pakistan that allowed him to sweep the elections. This is in striking contrast to Pakistan, where every mainstream political party runs on a platform of peace with India and if any political leader was to call for war with India to get re-elected, they would be laughed out of office.

The last lesson one can take away from Modi’s win is that he only needs to be better than the opposition to defeat it. Perhaps, this explains Imran Khan’s current political calculus in which he can simultaneously pull off painful economic reforms with accountability for opposition leaders.

There’s an old joke about two guys walking in a jungle, who come across a lion. One of the men calmly puts down his backpack and then takes off running. The other man yells, “You’ll never outrun that lion!” to which the other man responds, “I don’t need to outrun the lion; I just need to outrun you!” Modi’s win demonstrates that Imran Khan might just be able to win a second term too. It’s okay that he doesn’t have a magic wand to instantly fix the economy; he only needs to outrun the PML-N and the PPP.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2019.

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