The latest census of India, that of 2011, indicates that 79.9 per cent of Indians identify themselves as Hindu, 14.2 per cent as Muslims and 2.3 per cent as Christians (about 30 million, divided almost equally between Catholics and those belonging to other Churches or denominations).

However, while Muslims and Christians seek in their identity an element of self-protection and egalitarianism barely touched by socio-economic differences, also present within them, for many Hindu leaders and their political references the priority task is to bring back to the Hindu ‘common home’ the ‘exiles’ who by converting to other religions have sought above all greater equality opportunities but who in so doing would threaten the unity and ‘purity’ of India.

The religious element has acquired more and more a political value.

The identity ‘card’ has been increasingly played, but while in the long period of power of the Congress Party, almost uninterrupted from 1947 to 2012 under the leadership of the Gandhi dynasty which still directs it in the figures of Sonia Gandhi (party president) and his sons Rahul (congressman) and Priyanka (member of the All India Congress Committee), its impact has been relative or localized. With the return to power in 2014 of the pro-Hindu nationalists led by Narendra Modi, now in his second consecutive term as head of the government, the religious element has acquired a political value, exacerbating divisions and underlining the desire to bring back the various religious experiences present in a single traditional vein, with reconversion where possible, with a path of convergence on shared points in other cases, and with forced assimilation or expulsion in others.

The Taj Mahal is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra.

In a country known for its tolerance and assimilative capacity that cannot ignore the conflicts that have repeatedly been inspired by religious diversity, the official sponsorship of Hinduism has imposed constant pressure on religious minorities. This is partly the expression of a broad discriminatory movement towards traditionally marginalized groups, partly the manifestation of a ‘governing’ nationalism which, by promoting national unity and identity, indicates the destiny of every religious expression that has historically emerged in reintegration into the Hindu stream or has differentiated from it. A promoter of this line is the largest party at the federal level and at the head of many states, the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bjp, but it is deferred to – providing important banks of votes – by militant Hinduism movements, starting with the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a leading organization of Hindu nationalism that advertises one million adherents and for which the theory of Hindutva (‘Hinduity’, or rather of a natural belonging to Hinduism of anyone born in India) must be the primary objective. ‘At any cost’, because where direct coercion or the threat of violence do not reach, propaganda and lies do. ‘Destructive lies’, such as those that give the title to the latest Open Doors report which aims to shed light on ‘disinformation, incitement to violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India’.

Masjid-e-azam is the main mosque in Mysore, a city in India’s southwestern Karnataka state. 123rf.com

Based on field research conducted between February and March 2021 by a group of scholars from the London School of Economics, the report includes data and testimonies collected in various locations in the country where episodes of anti-Christian or anti-Islamic violence are manifested, highlighting how ‘throughout India, Christians live in a state of constant fear’ as a result of ‘a systematic campaign of harassment, violence, rape and murder’. The proposed ‘cases’ are exemplary, identified in areas particularly affected by Hindu pressure such as the rural regions of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa, which show the inconvenient truth hidden under official policies.
‘Daily life for many Christian and Muslim communities has become an excruciating battle to earn a living and practice their faith’, stresses the report: ‘India: Destructive lies: Disinformation, speech that incites violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India’, which intends to highlight a situation in constant and worrying deterioration which places the largest world democracy face to face with its
obvious contradictions.

Mass at our lady of Lourdes church in Kumrokhali, West Bengal. 123rf.com

‘In India, there is an ongoing work of disinformation and anti-Christian propaganda and against other religious minorities (including Muslims, Open Doors specifies) which makes use of many tools but which now has a leading vehicle in the mass media and in social networking. Underlining that not only do attacks and persecution occur, but ‘they are ignored or even condoned by the authorities – including state and regional governments, police and media’ so as not to antagonize the powerful Hindu organizations that are in fact sponsors of the nationalist government by giving them their votes and receiving immunity from them in their campaign of reconversion to Hinduism and in the often violent action that uses alleged conversions as a pretext that a growing number of states and territories of India are forbidding by law.
The fine for those who convert to Christianity is 25 thousand rupees (about 260 pounds in the tribal areas of the state of Orissa), one of the 9 states of India that already apply anti-conversion legislation with a clear repressive direction towards religious activities, both Islamic and Christian. According to one of the authors of the report, ‘the extent to which state actors are complicit in the violence is shocking. Bureaucrats, policemen and lower court judges are often openly colluding in discrimination and politicians, top religious leaders and powerful media owners are giving very clear signals that this behaviour is appropriate’.
Under this growing pressure, Christians are particularly vulnerable due to their numerical situation but also because they are more exposed to unfounded accusations, given the large number of welfare, educational, social, and cultural initiatives they initiate or manage. They are open to all, without exclusion but are seen by Hindu extremists as also
aimed at conversion.

Catholics during an outdoor mass in the village of Mitrapur, West Bengal. 123rf.com

According to Open Doors, India is in 10th place among the 50 countries where difficulties for the baptized are most acute. Another organization committed to identifying Christians’ difficulties in expressing their faith, Persecution Relief, reported that in the first half of 2020 hostile acts against Christian Indians increased by 40 per cent, mostly reported as ‘hate crimes’, and the subsequent trend showed no significant change. Between lies and fear, the ‘narrative’ of discrimination is almost always one-sided. ‘The main media reporting these attacks literally repeat the reports of the perpetrators, refusing to speak to the victims’ and thus become instrumental in perpetuating violence and discrimination. One example is the accusations made against Christians of deliberately spreading Covid-19 among Hindus.
But other examples of de facto discrimination of those who are not fully integrated into society according to the canons of Hindu extremism are not lacking. While the remuneration for a tribal worker employed in a factory or plantation is 150-200 rupees per day (1.40-2.20 pounds) as against a minimum wage of between 160 and 420 rupees according to the State of residence, 20 thousand rupees (205 sterling) is paid in compensation to the family for the death in a cell of a converted aboriginal.

Stefano Vecchia

Unlike most countries with a medium or high level of development, India has a population that is still growing rapidly and for the most part young, with an average age of 27.8 years, ten less than its neighbour and rival, the People’s Republic of China.

Consequently, choices must be primarily geared to support employment, education, and opportunities. However, it also has a population divided on two opposing and distant fronts of possibilities and well-being, with a numerical growth of billionaires among the highest in the world, yet has a population that remains for a substantial part close to or below the poverty line. The richest one per cent of the population has the same wealth as the poorest half and a GDP of 2.7 trillion dollars (roughly on a par with that of the UK) corresponding to an average per capita income of around 1,900 dollars a year. Now the economic indicators and social networks are mostly aimed downwards because if it is true that GDP is moving towards a projection of 8.2 per cent for the year, the increase in consumer prices at 6.1 per cent and the variability of the situation make it difficult to reach positive data.

In the years immediately preceding the pandemic, India had emerged as the country with the highest degree of poverty reduction, removing from a state of need – the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2019 estimates – 271 million inhabitants between 2006 and 2016. This is contrary to what is happening now, with India reporting the greatest increase in poverty. The United Nations, which already estimated the number of poor people in 2016 at 364 million (or 28 per cent of the population), now indicates that many millions have joined. These are urban poor who have regressed compared to the recent past but also millions of new poor due to the pandemic.
It is significant that the Pew Centre also estimates that the middle class has shrunk by a third in two years and that many Indians are returning to see the edge of the abyss of poverty.

Socio-economic imbalances, due to medium and short-term contingencies, inevitably end up being connected with the divergences, contradictions, and discrimination that this immense country continues to manifest 75 years after independence (August 15, 1947).
In all this, management and political guidelines have an essential
role and responsibility.
If some negative trends persist (high bureaucratization, inefficiency of the public system, personalistic management of power and nepotism, corruption in certain areas, opportunism and selectivity in the identification and management of problems, chronic inadequacy of funds for innovation, education, health, and welfare), these seem even more acute against the background of the potential, and often ambitious, objectives proposed to the population. This includes the contradictions that are spreading rather than smoothing out.
A case always cited but emblematic is the cancellation in the 1950 Constitution of any discrimination on a social, ethnic or religious basis. The continuous elaboration of laws aimed at the protection and promotion of groups – which are mainly lower-level castes and in some cases even higher or intermediate levels that in the recent history of India have failed to free themselves from a state of economic subordination or have entered it – shows a discordant reality.

It also shows how the support, or lack of it, for the less favoured groups is much used in the political management of the well-being or backwardness of a substantial part of Indians (approximately one third of the population) with inevitable inconsistencies and abuses. The multiplicity and plurality of modern India is a wealth that has its origins in its thousand-year history, but it has also been the main risk to its integrity since the Second World War. The current administrative division into 28 states and 8 federal territories defined on an ethnic and linguistic basis is a reflection of the attempt to coordinate diversity to avoid disruptive effects, but the often-opportunistic management of politics has relativized the benefits and rekindled the rivalries between the communities. (Open Photo: Kolkata. Crowd of people near the new market. 123rf.com)

(S.V.)

With an evident crisis in the availability of widely distributed agricultural production from Ukraine as a consequence of the conflict, India has emerged on the world stage due to the potential consequences of the choice to reduce or stop the export of wheat, first, and then of sugar with a limit on that of rice and other foodstuffs, with programs for further reductions.

At a time when there was a serious threat of what was also a conflict for essential resources with potentially devastating consequences for a substantial part of the world’s poor population, India has thus imposed its own strategic role.
First by denying the intention to proceed with restrictions on exports, then by activating them and finally by indicating that they will be maintained only for existing contracts or for special needs.

The Asian country is the world’s largest producer of wheat, with 109.5 million tons in 2021 but is far behind in the ranking of exporters with only 7 million tons destined for sale abroad. Faced with a drastic drop in Ukrainian (and partly Russian) exports, it was expected that India could intervene, both towards the countries that are used to receiving its wheat as well as other products (we are talking about Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Turkey), and to at least partially balance the shortcomings of others, starting with Egypt, the first world importer.
New Delhi has confirmed that the established commitments will be kept, but many of the recipients in need of every contribution to feed their population could suffer serious consequences. Especially Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh have a need without alternatives in importing from their large neighbour. Faced with the prospect of less consistent harvests due to an extensive drought and then an anticipated and violent monsoon, the government of New Delhi has sought to ensure the near future needs of its population which has reached 1.4 billion, now close to that of China. But also – several observers suggest – New Delhi needs to highlight its own role in a sector in which it can impose choices that do not involve the choice of a strategic field, particularly difficult due to its historical proximity to Russia.

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Gov.Media

Its commercial relations here are relatively reduced (5.93 billion dollars of Russian exports to India and 2.87 billion in the opposite direction in 2020-21), due to the geographical proximity to China, on which it depends for many products. But it is also a strategic rival, due to the growing proximity to the United States and the West, which is necessary in terms of the partnership for infrastructure and development, technology and production and, last but not least, in commercial terms.
The climatic situation, and the need for ‘a presence’ on the international level (in some way consistent with India’s still current role as flag-bearer of the Non-aligned Movement), have carried some weight in the drastic choices of the Indian government, but also in the internal situation, even more subject to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic which cost 525,000 deaths out of 43.3 million registered cases. For the executive headed by Narendra Modi, who is openly nationalist but has, on the economic level, been able to play the game of protectionism and liberalism, it was essential to continue to guarantee adequate remuneration to the strong producer lobbies, especially the more aggressive groups close to the capital, which between 2020 and 2021 waged a severe tug-of-war over the liberalization of wholesale sales of wheat, rice, and other heavily subsidized essential products. The New Delhi government, at risk of losing consensus, was forced to back down. (Open Photo: Elephant with Indian symbols. 123rf.com)
(S.V.)