India: How the secularists caused their own downfall

The triumphant victory of the religious right in India's elections has been possible with a series of follies on part of the incumbent rivals. But the particular fall of two secularist icons, Manmohan Singh and Tarun Tejpal, aptly represents the decadence of the secularist camp. 

Finally, the world’s largest electorate has given a clear verdict. After a decade-long rule of the secularist Indian National Congress (INC)-led coalition marred by incompetence and rampant corruption, the baton has been passed to the opposition coalition led by rightwing Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in India paving way for the premiership of its firebrand leader Narendra Modi. This more than makes up for the humiliating defeat of the BJP in 2004 when the Congress-led coalition had upset the incumbent’s applecart by outsmarting their glossy ‘India Shining’ narrative by meticulous work-up at the grassroots level.

With the formal coronation ceremony, Modi will now start the real task of governing the colossus of 1.25 billion people plagued by lingering poverty, increasing inequality and rampant corruption. Much of the media attention will be focused on whether he will be able to replicate much of his reported success in the realm of governance in Gujarat state where he has served for more than a decade as the Chief Minister.

Here, however, let’s explore a slightly different theme: what happens now to the so called secular fabric of Indian state in face of a stable government led by a firebrand Hindutva leader? This, of course, depends upon the future course taken by Modi and his government and many analysts argue that the sheer magnitude of power and responsibility will have the much-needed moderating effect on Modi thereby forcing him to focus on economic prosperity of his people rather than to push for any ideological agenda.

That said, the secularist incumbents in India, set to remain in opposition for at least five years to come and potentially for much longer, have a lot to do now in terms of soul-searching.  

India polls not a cakewalk for Narendra Modi

 Some facts we tend to ignore on predicting the outcomes of polls in India


The big day is finally here: the biggest democratic exercise in the world has already begun with the first round of voting for the Indian general elections on April 7. 

This is a festival of sort, for the voters because they are going to cast their votes to choose the federal government after five long years of incompetent and corrupt rule; and for the candidates because one can always claim to be the prospective winner till the very moment the results are declared.

The moment of reckoning will soon come for all but single candidate from each constituency, but that is for later.

And without doubt, this is the prime time for the media in India: faring better than the rivals at such times may go a long way towards catapulting the fate of a media outlet and a media house.

A close look at the pre-election coverage in mainstream media in India will make you feel that these polls are all about Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi attempting to slice each other's throats with very big daggers; the former being in a very advantageous position to win the fight.

In fact, many sober and intelligent heads have been complaining that a very complicated electoral race with multiple dimensions is being deliberately reduced into an utterly simplified clash between two men in a media frenzy that is fixated at readership and viewership and nothing else.

If elections were to be governed by strictly statistical concept of probability, Modi would obviously slice Gandhi's throat politically. But that is under the condition that the opinion polls conducted so far in India have been representative enough to reflect the sentiments of the voters across the country, something many analysts are not convinced about given the track record of opinion polls in the past.

The intricacies that the opinion polls cannot deal with have to be elaborated from two standpoints.

From the standpoint of the parties and the candidates, these elections mean different things for the incumbent Congress and the opposition BJP; the expectations and the stakes are different for each accordingly.

Bangladesh after polls: From the frying pan and into the fire?

The political stalemate in Bangladesh has entered a new phase with the 5 January polls that were boycotted by the opposition and have been labeled as most violent and noticed for one of the lowest voter turn out in the electoral history of Bangladesh. 

In the evening of the poll day, I was asked for a brief assessment of the situation by Victor Martin, a Spanish journalist in Delhi. Some of my statements made way to the report he got published in Spanish newspaper El Mundo. Here is the original exchange from which the readers can have a clearer glimpse of my opinion in the whole affair. 


Is this a real democratic process if the opposition is not going to play in 154 seats?

Theoretically, and what they say ‘constitutionally, yes. But practically no as the things stand today.

This election had low participation. For you, which is the reason? Is the (non) security or is because the people just can vote one party and they don’t want to do it? What do you think?

Both reasons are partially valid. But I think the people are increasingly losing faith towards both the political parties as well as the system itself. The major motive of voters in any election is that the votes they cast will bring about some tangible positive changes in their lives. When they see the whole political practice as a farce played to ensure the personal gains and to feed the ego of the leaders (the PM Hasina and Opposition Leader Zia in this case) there is no genuine motivation for going to caste the votes. Also, unlike the committed voters of the ruling Awami League, a large section of so called ‘swing voters’ were never ready to take the risk of getting injured or even death for merely casting votes in an election of questionable legitimacy. I think this was one of the reasons behind the low voter turn out.

Secularism in South Asia: The Chickens Come Home to Roost

(First published by Foreign Policy Journal on June 1, 2013)

Over 2008-2009, the tide of secularism sweeping South Asia appeared unassailable. While the chickens have already come home to roost in Pakistan merely after a tenure of PPP-led government, the ailing UPA-II coalition in India led by the Congress fears a similar fate in upcoming polls after two exhausting tenures. Situation in Bangladesh looks more complicated and less predictable but some lessons are hard to miss.

In 2009 elections, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the incumbent secular alliance led by the Indian National Congress, got a thumping victory in India. To defeat the rival saffron alliance for two elections in a row, that too with an incremental margin, was no mean achievement and the future of the secularists looked cemented for the first time after the post-emergency debacle of Indira Gandhi in 1977.

It was not long after the lingering turmoil in Bangladesh had followed by a landslide victory of the secular-minded Awami Leage (AL) led by Sheikh Hasina in 2008, nearly decimating the right wing religious parties.

And in a dramatic turnaround, the polls in Pakistan held in 2008 to cap the Musharraf rule had also given the alliance led by PPP, known most widely for its secular credentials apart from corruptibility and tendency to misgovernance, an unambiguous victory.

In the tiny neighborhood of Nepal also, the centuries long Hindu monarchy had been formally uprooted in 2008 with a promise to establish a secular republic, even though the fate of the monarchy had been already sealed by the people’s movement in 2005.

To sum up, the tide of secularism seemed unassailable as the first decade of new century was concluding, sweeping across the political boundaries in South Asia. After a protracted affair with the religion as the driving force in politics, it was believed, people had said ‘enough is enough’ and sought an alternative.

The times have changed now, however, and so have the directions of political wind in various capitals of the South Asian countries.

The coalition of the secular parties in India has been battered so badly by the corruption scams and shoddy dealing of those scams by people at all levels in the government that it has become a heresy to praise the achievements of the UPA-II a year before the completion of its tenure.

With the recent revelation that even the politicians in ruling alliance are mulling over the option of early polls to bring the lackadaisical performance of the once-impeccable Manmohan Singh to an end, the future looks pretty grim for the coalition of secularist forces in India. While all of their loss is unlikely to transform into gain for the rival saffron alliance named NDA, a fractured verdict of the people is bad for both the secularists and the nation in general.

In neighboring Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has just enjoyed a historic electoral gain. A witty journalist Mohammed Hanif has sarcastically commented that Sharif has won by promising airports to people who do not own even a bicycle, still both the gain for the religion-friendly parties and the loss for the secularists in Pakistan were highly significant. While duly sharing a record of corruption and misgovernance with the PPP, PML-N stands in contrast with the former in terms of its attitude towards the relationship between the state and the religion.

Looking deeper into the results of the polls in Pakistan, the performance of the ruling coalition over the past five years was far more decisive than any other factors like the Taliban’s selective targeting of secular parties prior to the polls, in determining the outcome. In face of intractable Taliban insurgency and failure of the PPP-led government to tackle the problem head on, the assumption, rather wishful thinking, that the Taliban could be better dealt by political powers ideologically closer to them seemed less absurd then it would appear otherwise.

And the tumult and turbulence in Bangladesh now is a bit complicated and rather unsettling, but the lessons to be learnt could be very significant.