"the American magazine with British spelling" The Economist Indian politics An illiberal turn Hangings, limits on speech and intolerant politicians mark a troubling moment for liberalism in India Feb 16th 2013 | DELHI AFTER two years of wary peace, Kashmir is under siege again. This week the authorities banned newspapers, blocked television and the internet, and imposed a curfew in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, and beyond. Police battled with protesting youths, three of whom died. It was all sadly predictable after the hanging on February 9th of a Kashmiri, Afzal Guru, in Delhi. His family was officially told by post fully two days later, and so far has been refused his body. Convicted for his part in a terrorist attack in 2001 on India’s parliament, Mr Guru had been on death row for years. Recently, politicians grew anxious to see him hanged. Once Pranab Mukherjee became India’s president last year, it was assumed that an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty would end. November brought the first execution in eight years, of Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani convicted for his role in a dreadful terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. India’s public and press cheered. Almost immediately Narendra Modi, a hardline figure who is fast rising on the right of Indian politics, suggested that Mr Guru should hang too. Mr Modi, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is seen by many as a likely leader of India after the next general election, due in 2014. More hangings are possible. Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s embattled chief minister and an ally of the ruling Congress Party, says authorities must show executions are not political, targeting only Muslims. Why now delay executions of three Tamils or a Punjabi, all convicted for assassinations of high-profile politicians? Politics are at play. Last month the home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, clumsily accused the BJP of promoting “saffron”, ie, Hindu, terrorism in India. Furious, the opposition said it would boycott meetings with him and accused the government of being friendly to Islamist terrorists. Soon after, Mr Shinde suddenly announced that Mr Guru had swung. It was, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a liberal columnist, an appallingly opportunistic move. To some, it fits a troubling pattern. Politics are today more moderate than in the 1990s, when communal violence flared, or than under Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency in the 1970s. Yet a host of incidents suggests a newly intolerant trend. Authorities readily limit expression. Tamil Nadu’s government banned a film unless it was re-edited to placate Muslim critics. Also hoping to please Muslim voters, regional politicians routinely bar Salman Rushdie, whose “The Satanic Verses” prompted a fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, from public appearances: West Bengal’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, is the latest culprit. And politicians ban books they dislike, as Mr Modi did in Gujarat with a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, the state’s best-known son. Religious leaders are often intolerant. A teenage girl band in Kashmir this month hung up its guitars after the Grand Mufti, the highest-ranking clergyman, called its members “unislamic”, and vitriolic abuse spread online. In November police arrested a woman in Maharashtra state for grumbling, on Facebook, that Mumbai had been shut for the funeral of Bal Thackery, a thuggish, hard-right Hindu politician. Police then arrested a young friend who “ liked” her comment. Supposedly, they had hurt religious feelings. In recent weeks prudish Hindu protesters marched on a gallery in Delhi and threatened one in Bangalore, demanding the removal of paintings of nudes. Intolerance is not new ..... But politicians pandering to interest groups are perfectly happy to limit speech. Last year over 8,400 protesters against a nuclear-power plant in Tamil Nadu were charged with sedition. Cartoonists critical of politicians have also been charged with the same offence. Last month a sociologist at the Jaipur Literature Festival said corruption was rampant among the lower castes, who qualify for certain privileges in government and education. Egged on by a politician, police prepared charges. Public figures rarely defend individuals’ “right to offend”, as Manish Tewari, the information minister, said on February 9th. The reason is that politicians compete for blocks of votes defined by religion or caste. Block solidarity grows when leaders declaim against even a mild, or imagined, offence. Mr Mehta says that mobilisation around hurt feelings is as old as Indian democracy. Yet three new factors may now be at play. Increasingly lively media, especially cable-news shows, thrive on shallow, angry debate. They help stoke controversy by seeking out extreme voices and those ready to be offended. Second, regional leaders are growing more influential, and readier to stir up their main supporters. Whereas a national party may see virtue in compromise or in such values as free speech, a regional figure usually gains by stoking indignation. Mayawati, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and a leader of dalits (untouchables), is a case in point. Last comes the role of a growing, urban middle class. Mostly young and less likely to define themselves by religion or caste, in theory such voters might favour a more liberal politics. In practice, the evidence is mixed. Many who decried the gang rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi in December called for public hangings, and even torture of the perpetrators. Others want vigilante squads to roam the cities. Such voters may not reliably prove to be liberal. A rising middle class, convinced of Indian might, may become just as nationalistic, for instance, towards Pakistan as voters were in the past. Along with India’s press, the middle class was notably bellicose over a spat on the border last month in which two Indian soldiers and three Pakistanis died.
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