India's Hindu Caste Disease Re-surfaces Again - A Warning To Singapore

Under the Hindus' BJP party led by Narendra Modi, the Hindu caste mentality has been openly displayed for the whole World to see. There is very little attempt to hide or disguise it. This culturally-ingrained caste-mentality is an ugly disease that is impossible to eradicate. Despite the promises of doing away with the caste system, this ugly disease continues to infect and infest the brains, hearts and souls of most Hindus, especially those in the upper echelons of society.

With a staunch traditional Hindu leader, the BJP Hindu nationalists have been pushing the minority communities into a corner. The minority communities, especially the Muslims, are feeling more humiliated now than at any time in the history of India since 1947.

Hindu mobs have lynched Muslims and others for eating beef or transporting cows, which are sacred to majority Hindus.

The Modi government has amended laws to fast track non-Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries. It has also split the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir and stripped it of its decades-long constitutional autonomy.

This year, Muslims were singled out and blamed for spreading the COVID-19 coronavirus infections, after members of an Islamic group attended a religious gathering in Delhi. However, much larger Hindu religious gatherings during the COVID Pandemic received no such political, public or media opprobrium.

In addition, Muslim students and activists have been picked up and thrown into prison for allegedly instigating riots over a new controversial citizenship law introduced by the Modi Administration last winter, while many Hindu violent protagonists went scot-free.

India's Muslim community's sense of alienation is real. PM Modi's BJP makes no bones about its Hindu Majoritarian Ideology. Popular news networks openly demonize Muslims and other races. Many of India's once-powerful regional parties, which once stood by the minorities, appear to have abandoned them. The main Opposition Congress is accused of using the minorities cynically to harvest votes without providing much in return. The minority communities have few leaders to speak up for them.

Indian Muslims carry a double burden of being labelled as anti-national and as being appeased at the same time. The irony is that, while many Indians have bought the Hindu nationalist's bogey that Muslims are being "rewarded unfairly", the Muslims have in fact not benefited from any major socio-economic gains.

For decades, India's Muslims have been disproportionately squeezed into ghettos in India's teeming cities. Their share in India's elite federal police officers force was not even 3%, while Muslims make up more than 14% of the population. Only 8% of India's urban Muslims have jobs which paid a regular salary, less than double the national average.

Though enrolments of Muslim children at primary school levels are high, dropouts at high school are even higher, mainly due to economic deprivation at the national and local levels.

Also, Muslim representatives in India's Parliament have been declining speedily and consistently - below 5% in the elected lower house now, down from 9% in 1980. When the BJP swept to power in 2014, it was the first time a winning party did so without a single Muslim MP.

Religious electoral competition practised by the ruling BJP has led to the marginalization of Muslims. Modi's party polarises the country by making the Muslims a threat to the Hindu identity.

In fact, India is moving towards an ethnic Hindu dictatorship, born out of ethnic Hindu nationalisation, which inculcates a strong sense of belonging and of superiority of the Hindus over all other people in their ancient caste-fixated world view.

Back home, Singaporeans had better wake up now before it is too late. Don't play with your fate by romancing with a caste-entrenched mentality. Otherwise, one day you are bound to face the same fate as the minorities in India today.

SSO

PS. Posted on behalf of SSO