By Sushant Singh / The Wire
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
Canadian academics say they’re being harassed and threatened by diaspora groups and trolls for criticising the Narendra Modi government and its support of Hindutva, as per a report by CBC. That should not surprise anyone, as the followers of India’s current ruling ideology had earlier viciously attacked the ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ conference organised in the US. Those attacks were well-funded and organised, pointing to an apparatus for well-coordinated assault. One academic says the attacks must be treated at par “with those from white supremacists”, and it is not a ‘culture’ issue.
Those attackers may only have been supporters of the party in office. But what has happened in Australia recently is far more serious. Thirteen academics have quit the Australia India Institute at Melbourne University, citing concerns about academic freedom and alleging interference by the Indian High Commission. What was earlier the job of trolls and online mobs has been done by an Indian diplomat. The letter to Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell of the University alleges the Indian high commissioner to Australia has intervened in the institute’s activities and research or views unflattering to the image of India were blanked out. The Indian high commissioner was earlier involved in another controversy for targeting an Australian newspaper ― a much milder irregularity compared to the current misdemeanour.
The purpose of the whole exercise is to keep the truth about the current state of affairs in India – democratic erosion, suppression of dissent, denial of civil rights, targeting of religious minorities and institutional capture – from swimming across to foreign shores. When PM Modi goes abroad, he likes to hold forth on India’s diversity, democratic values and inclusiveness – the very ideas he never promotes or practises when he is in India. He hails Gandhi abroad while his party leaders praise his assassin Nathuram Godse in India. The current Indian government wants to do everything that is abhorrent to the Western world but doesn’t have the courage to publicly accept its deeds on the ground.
This is why the government is extremely sensitive about the various global reports about indices which have recorded a decline in India’s democracy and media freedoms since Modi became PM. V-Dem has called India an ‘electoral autocracy’, and Freedom House has rated India as ‘partly free’, and this matters to the government. That such reports also diminish credit ratings further hurts this government. The purpose of putting the Western media under pressure over its reportage from India is the same. Flimsy excuses of visa and pandemic are used to harass them, along with other unstated threats used to keep them in check.
Emboldened by its success in taming the corporate-owned Indian media and making it a mouthpiece of the ruling party, the dispensation thinks that it can do the same with global publications, academics and think-tanks. Even though these people and institutions are willing to lend a sympathetic ear to the government’s point of view, the egregious reality of India under this regime is impossible to ignore for any half-decent journalist or academic. As is the wont with all authoritarian rulers, the state is doubling down with harsh measures to browbeat Western reportage of India into submission.
Two recent incidents in India provide further evidence of this attempt to prevent the reality from being known in the West. Journalist Rana Ayyub and writer, author and activist Aakar Patel, both known to not mince words, weren’t allowed to fly out to speak at foreign conferences on trumped-up orders issued by central investigative agencies. The cases did not last even one court hearing – Ayyub is already abroad while Patel’s harassment continues despite a court order. He has charged the CBI with contempt of court and after due process, should be travelling soon.
This government and its Hindutva trolls should have learnt this lesson by now: You can stop people at emigration counters, but truth needs no visas or stamped passports to be heard abroad. Truth is free and it travels regardless of border controls. Truth will fly. The Hindutva brigade must be prepared to deal with it. Here, and abroad.
This article first appeared on thewire.in