Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s statement about how he has been asked, again and again, to prove his loyalty to the country shows the extent to which India’s social fabric has unraveled since Narendra Modi came to power.
“I get very sad when I am supposed to explain each and every time how good a patriot I am,” he told India TV journalist Rajat Sharma on his show “Aap Ki Adalat” last week.
The 50-year-old actor was at the center of a controversy last year for his comments on patriotism in the wake of a raging debate on growing signs of intolerance in the country. He was attacked by leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and branded a “Pakistani agent” after he joined the ongoing debate on the issue — the first Bollywood star to do so.
That was a time when India witnessed some disturbing developments like the murder of three Hindu intellectuals for holding views which were anathema to BJP and its right-wing allies. A prominent public intellectual, Sudheendra Kulkarni, had his face blackened with ink for organizing a book release in Mumbai for a former Pakistani foreign minister. And Hindu zealots stormed a Cricket Control Board meeting to disrupt discussion of a possible India-Pakistan cricket series.
Nearly 40 distinguished authors and poets returned their Sahitya Akademi (Literary Academy) awards to protest the silence of the academy and other government bodies following the killing of intellectuals by suspected Hindu hardliners. A top scientist followed suit, returning his Padma Bhushan, the government’s third highest honor.
There were attempts to convert or “reconvert” Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. History and school textbooks were rewritten eulogizing Hindu kings and denigrating Muslim rulers.
As if all this was not divisive enough, the BJP brought the cow, an explicit symbol of Hindu piety, to the center of political debate. A Muslim man was beaten to death by a mob in a small town in Uttar Pradesh in September in response to rumors that he had slaughtered a cow and eaten beef. Another man died after being attacked by villagers who believed he was involved in cattle smuggling. And a trucker was killed in Udhampur, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, over rumors that he had been involved in cow killings. Three deaths took place in just three weeks.
Even more frightening was the silence of Prime Minister Modi, a prolific speaker and user of Twitter, in the face of such repellent examples of intolerance and right-wing vigilantism.
Sha Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, another Bollywood actor and social activist, later retracted their statements and claimed that they never said India was turning intolerant. But the developments in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University tell a different story. On Feb. 12, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union President Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on charges of sedition for allegedly chanting slogans in support of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri who was hanged for an attack on Indian Parliament. The issue soon turned into an ideological battle between those who want India to remain a secular democracy and those who would define nationalism in narrow, exclusive Hindu terms.
BJP and its allies say all such controversies are meant to derail Modi’s economic overhauls. Just the opposite, say critics. The ruling party is raking up emotive issues to deflect public attention from Modi’s many failures as an administrator. If the prime minister is serious about economic reforms, he should know that social unrest will only frighten potential investors and lead to a flight of capital. Has not India’s central bank governor, Raghuram Rajan, issued a warning against attempts to undermine the country’s tolerance and tradition of debate which, he said, were the foundation for its current and future success?
So for India and its prime minister, it is time to act decisively to stop communal and political polarization.
