Indian malice

It is customary to claim that the Indian mind has been influenced by Modi's Hindutva, explaining why the average Indian views Pakistan as the enemy. But this puts the cart before the horse.

The Modi government enjoys unlimited power for an unprecedented tenure, largely due to a dark psychological secret. While the country hid behind fictions of secularism and socialism during its formative phase, modern India allowed its identity to be informed by a blistering, obsessive hatred of its western neighbour. Some dislike is earned, certainly, but most is deeply inculcated for no reason.

If you want to get to the roots of this hatred and see how deep it goes, just look at how the Indian state was adamant to deny a nascent Pakistani state its due share of financial resources. Its historians tell us that the decision to withhold the sums was a reaction to the first Kashmir war in 1947. But this is the usual sleight of hand. India and Pakistan won freedom on 14 August. The said war did not begin till 22 October. It was one excuse after the other. In truth, some of India's leaders hoped that Pakistan would succumb to its vulnerabilities and come crawling back.

The champion of this cause, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, is now worshipped like no other. India built the tallest statue of the man and called it a statue of unity with little mainstream liberal pushback on this gigantic waste of resources. Those who protested did so because they thought his legacy was being appropriated, not why it was being appropriated. Mahatma Gandhi opposed the blocking of funds to Pakistan. For it, he got a bullet, not the tallest statue in his home state. His assassin is valorised in many parts of India.

Is it an indictment of an entire nation? I don't know. I have known enough Indians to know there is a lot of goodness in there. But then I am usually looking for basic human decency, not measuring their attitude towards Pakistan. I can tell you that it is indeed an indictment of the Indian state, its deep state and its elite who broke their people's compassion in infancy. Want to turn a country's entire visible classes into an army of indoctrinated automatons by the throw of a switch? Just bring up Pakistan. And if any bleeding heart in Pakistan believes that Indian Muslims will show them any flexibility by virtue of being co-religionists, they are in for a rude awakening. Perhaps due to social pressures or perhaps owing to the sociology mentioned above, you will find most of them the most rigid of them all.

This kind of absolute control over a people's imagination could easily be one of the most profitable commodities in existence. India should bottle it, market it, and sell it to would-be dictators. It can earn unimaginable wealth through this single export alone. Try selling it to my state, which has repeatedly tried and failed to do something similar in its chequered political history.

You have guessed it right. This is not normal behaviour for a nation of 1.45 billion. Through regimentation, Indians are conditioned to believe that just by being, they are great, and now that they have a chance, they can do to the world what was done to them. For millennia, India was invaded and brutally colonised; therefore, it is a birthright of every Indian to do the same to others. That is precisely why, when you talk to a moderate Indian about the need to bring down tensions on the border, you are told that the only thing that needs to be brought down is the border itself. In other words, bring down your defences and willingly become a supplicant and vassal state. Do you honestly think Modi invented this state of mind? Absolutely not. Like any savvy politician, he exploited this dark backdoor into the Indian psyche and possessed it.

I had a rude awakening during the recent four-day aerial war with India in May. After lionising the Indian intellectuals who opposed Modi for a decade, I finally started noticing their duplicity. They were fine with India waging a nuclear war if it meant the destruction of Pakistan. At least the current Indian government does not believe in sugar-coating or hiding its hostility in plain sight. Imagine how foolish I felt after wasting eleven years of my life opposing the Modi government. What do I care what he does with people who want me dead? I have never refused to see the humanity of Indians.

In fact, I have gone an extra mile to see it. But if there was a faint hope that one day they would see my humanity, it proved futile. It wasn't until I realised that in India's casteist hierarchy I am considered lower than the country's absolute majority (fifty per cent Shudras, seventeen per cent Dalits, seven per cent tribals) who are already viewed as subhuman. Why would anyone take the time to see my humanity?

But this one-track mind is unhealthy to say the least. I do not make excuses for my own nation. We too have many flaws. In fact, we have been there and tried that. It ended in tears. This obsessive psychosis only brings a bad name to a country.

Had it been only Pakistan, one could have lived with it. But it grows every day. It began with an angry reading of history. Churchill, for instance, is known as a hero elsewhere in the world for taking a stand against Nazism. Not in India. He is considered a villain there. If you ask, they give a wishy-washy claim about his role in the Bengal famine. Makes no sense. He did not invent colonialism. Nor was he governor of Bengal. His actual crime, it turns out, is throwing the political Muslims of India a lifeline, which later matured into Pakistan.

But the hatred grows. Now it has spread to contemporary world leaders. You remember what the Indian Eye of Sauron did to Canada's Justin Trudeau. We don't even know who else fell victim to it. But I can tell you with certainty that since May this year, it has turned its gaze towards President Trump just because he likes to speak his mind without any fear. In India that is viewed as an offence. Not because of Modi's worldview but because this is what India is.

This piece is far from being a vindication of Modi. It only states the obvious. If any country deserves its ruler, it is India. I should make a distinction here. This indictment does not include the Indian diaspora by default. If you manage to escape indoctrination you cannot be judged by its standards.