WOW. WOW. President of the BJP vowing to cleanse the country of….Christians and Muslims? And presumably anyone else who is not Buddha (sic), Sikh or Hindu? https://t.co/6JSVdhdZ7Z

— Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 11, 2019

Betwa Sharma writes:

Nine hundred million people, just shy of the combined populations of Europe and America, will have the chance to vote as Indians line up to decide who will lead the country for the next five years.

The phased polls begin on April 11 and will continue for a month in different parts of the country. The results are expected on May 23.

Five years after Narendra Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power, the country appears at a crossroads: Indian society is fractured along the lines of caste and religion, the economy is still recovering from a series of ill-considered shock measures, and unemployment is rampant.

Yet many still expect Modi and the BJP to hang on to power, largely due to an opposition that has struggled to counter the current government’s potent brew of toxic religious nationalism, a supine press that actively sides with the government on most issues, and the ruling party’s vast online army of trolls that spread government propaganda and intimidate critics.

Despite this, the government was struggling earlier this year, right up to 14 February when a suicide bomber killed over 40 paramilitary troopers by driving a van-laden with explosives into a troop convoy. A brief military skirmish with Pakistan followed, ensuring that national security dominated the headlines for the next several weeks.

“This is not a real election. It is a virtual election being fought on the imaginary issues of national security,” said Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist and professor at O.P. Jindal Global University. “It is a total invention.”

If the 2014 elections were about hope for India’s vast swathes of unemployed youth, the 2019 elections are about fear. [Continue reading…]