Hasan Minhaj's take on the Indian elections was ill informed, ignorant and missed out on many facts
- In Politics
- 05:05 AM, Mar 22, 2019
- Manasa Manjunath
So this Sunday Hasan Minhaj gave a sermon about the Indian elections and what it means to be Indian. It’s been 70years since the British left but it seems like people have still not got over trying to tell us what’s good for us. Now Hasan may have you eating out of his hand comparing himself to an Oreo and belittling your idea of India but let’s start right there with shining the light on some half-truths spouted by him. You see, the episode on Indian politics is hardly an Oreo. Cause an Oreo is what it claims to be. A Cookie.
In no way good for you but tastes pretty sweet all the same. Hasan’s knowledge of Indian and Indian politics is more like that can of orange juice that claims to be good for you, only when you look at the label on the back you realise that it’s only about 2% orange and the rest is just BS. And while all you know about India maybe Henna tattoos, Holi and goat yoga, Hasan doesn’t do much better. While saas-bahu serials, Karan Johar movies and that same old trope of Indians being straight A students might pass for a comedy show, you can hardly claim to educate an audience about something as complicated as Indian politics with that being your idea of what it takes to be Indian.
My beef with Hasan is that he perpetuates the same hackneyed view about India and Indians, while using his Indian origins as a stamp of authentication. Just like every big western media outlet and many English language media houses in India, he’s out to further a narrative of India being a lawless third world country where minorities are oppressed. India has its share of problems admit but shining a light on only some parts while leaving the rest in the dark is a very disingenuous way of telling the truth and very unfair to an entire community. In choosing to define himself as Indian and Muslim, the latter becomes a shield behind which to hide in the face of criticism.
The bias in the show starts subtly but is clearly there for anyone to see. In choosing to interview Indian immigrants who grew up in 70s and 80s India who’s only memory is of the emergency and the licence raj, Hasan sets the tone of an authoritative state that suppresses dissent with an iron hand. While we aren’t the most shining example of press freedom in the world, we hardly deserve to be compared to China and Saudi Arabia. A look at the twitter timelines of our journalists and the headlines of most leading English dailies is enough to know that. All the warnings have a right of place in 70s India. A time during which Indira Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother, declared an emergency in the country when the Supreme Court ruled that her election was invalid for having used unfair means. Thereby suspending civil rights, gagging the press and the opposition was put under preventive detention. It was during this time that the infamous sterilisation camps also happened.
Hasan says Modi came into power on the back of economic promises that he hasn’t been able to deliver. Citing articles from the NYT and BBC that unemployment is at an all-time high. He goes on to talk about Modi government’s most controversial scheme of demonetisation that hurt many poor farmers and that was heavily criticised from all quarters. I cannot comment on the success or failure of the scheme but I do know that calling demonetisation a massive failure is a massive lie. The IRS in the aftermath of the demonetisation identified many inconsistencies and is still in the process of carrying out raids on some very rich and powerful people for hoarding black money. But in choosing to only talk about Demonetisation and ignoring the Jan Dhan yojana and GST, Hasan is guilty of presenting only half of the facts. Under the Jan Dhan yojana Modi has enabled millions to have a bank account. Not just bringing them into the financial system but by ensuring that any subsidies go directly into these accounts, essentially eliminating the middle men who normally pocketed all the money meant to benefit those who really needed it. With the GST he tried to simplify the tax structure across India, thereby eliminating the long waits at state borders which tended to destroy produce. The implementation left much to be asked for but in a country of 1.3billion, where such a policy has never been seen or heard of, a perfect implementation is near impossible. Both moves were hailed and applauded by the IMF, is that why Hasan chose to not talk about them.
Speaking of finance, let’s talk about that 40billion$ scam under the congress. As Hasan says in the 2minutes he dedicates to corruption under the congress, it is the second biggest scam in the world. Now take a moment to appreciate the scale and irony of it. The only bigger scam came from America under Nixon. 40billion$ for a country like India is huge money. While Hasan jokes about it saying Aunt Becky could’ve sent 80,000 kids to USC, spare a thought for the millions it could’ve fed and for how long? But the 2G scam, as it has become infamous, is only the tip of the iceberg. The Congress party has a history of corruption as long and illustrious as the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that presides over it.
The Bofors scam under Rajiv Gandhi, that’s Rahul Gandhi’s dad or Indira Gandhi’s son, was one of the first big scams in Indian defence. Even under Indira Gandhi, under the pretext of licence, huge bribes were paid to ministers and offices, earning her administration the moniker of licence raj. As Shashi Tharoor pointed out, corruption is not just the virtue of the congress, it is rampant in the Indian political system and you will be hard pressed to find a few who are as clean as the white Kurtas they tend to sport. But corruption is a virtue that has been honed to perfection in the Congress in the last 10years they were in power. There was the coalgate scam, the helicopter scam, the CWG scam, and those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head! Which goes to show that the 2G scam was not a one off or an aberration but just the one that takes the cake because of the sheer audacity and scale of it all. Even as we speak, in New Delhi sit one Christian Michel and Rajeev Saxena, infamous middle men who have brokered multiple defence deals under the Congress. So broke was India that the Congress couldn’t buy the helmets, bullet proof jackets and boots that our soldiers so desperately needed! But such details don’t exactly go with the narrative that Hasan needs to establish.
Which is why he turns to comparing Trump and Modi. Their ways of greeting people may be similar and their slogans more or less the same, but that’s where all similarity between the two ends. While Trump is the heir to a million dollar fortune, Modi grew up in a small town in a poor family. The man rose from being a small time RSS and BJP volunteer to become the PM of the largest democracy in the world all by himself. While Trump’s America first put American interests ahead of the world’s, Modi’s India first slogan is meant to convey that for him and his party the improvement of the country takes precedence over growing their bank balances. Coming on the back of multiple congress scams, it is little wonder that his slogan found resonance in millions of Indians. But it’s exactly this sort of in-depth analysis that Hasan chooses to avoid because it doesn’t play along with his narrative.
Modi’s similarity to Trump and his links to the RSS is Hasan just laying the foundation for what is to come and the real reason the show was made at all – Hindu nationalism. Minhaj talks about the rise of the Hindu right wing nationalists in the 4 years since Narendra Modi has come to power. He speaks about the multiple lynchings of Muslims and Dalits by Hindus in the name of the cow as gruesome pictures flash in the background. No one is denying the lynchings or that it is a failure of law and order but to paint all incidents as having the same motive, belies Hasan’s sinister motives of painting anyone who supports Modi as a fundamentalist opposed to minorities. While the motive of some lynchings indeed was cow slaughter, others range from reasons as petty as a seat on the train to a grudge handed down generations. If only Hasan had dug a little deeper than the top 2 results on a google search, he could have presented a more nuanced story. But as he then goes on to speak of stripping Muslims in Assam of their citizenship with zero background information, he goes from having a subtle agenda to revealing his true intentions. These Muslims who Hasan claims will be disenfranchised are in reality illegal Bangladeshi immigrants who have settled in villages in the north east and seriously skewing the demographics in these areas. Furthermore, there are increasing reports of violence against natives and natives being driven out of their homes and lands that they have lived in for generations. Giving these illegal immigrants the right to vote in such cases, would severely mar the representation of the natives and deprive them of a voice. But that goes against the narrative of violence against minorities so of course Hasan doesn’t bother getting down to the nitty gritties.
While we are on the topic, another serious question that needs to be asked is who these minorities are. If you consider India as a whole Hindus are, of course, the overwhelming majority. But as Hasan says, India is not as simple as you think. And this becomes clear when you start looking into the states. In a state like Kerala, Hindus, Muslims and Christians form more or less an equal part of the population. In the state of UP, that Hasan chooses to focus on, Muslims form a small minority. But what he doesn’t talk about when he talks about Kashmir, is that the region is a Muslim majority one. Hindus used to form a minority in the state until they were driven out by a genocide 30years ago. This small community of Hindus from Kashmir – called the Kashmiri Pandits – are refugees in their own country, thanks to the genocide financed by Pakistan. Again, a fact that found no mention in Hasan’s show.
Unlike what Hasan says, Kashmir is an integral part of India and one claimed by Pakistan two months after the partition. Ever since then, Pakistan has wagged military wars in 1947, 48, 65, 71 und 99. And in the last 30 years the Pakistani army has increasingly created, trained and financed terrorists to attack India. The parliamentary attack in 2005, the siege of Mumbai in 2008, the Uri attacks in 2015 and the latest in Pulwama are just those that have had the highest casualties. The air strikes in Balakot were to eliminate a terrorist base that was the origin of the Pulwama attack. While Hasan spouts half truths about escalation between two nuclear armed nations, he neglects to mention that India has a no first attack clause, meaning we would never initiate a nuclear attack unless and until we were attacked with nuclear arms in the first place. In its 70years, India has never been the aggressor and only chosen to defend itself while Pakistan continues its belligerence. Pakistan continues to harbour internationally recognised terrorists. Remember where one Osama bin Laden was found? Did Pakistan accept that he was indeed there? Of course not! Because that would stem the flow of funds into the country. But even this small correlation is too much to expect from the host of the patriot act.
Going back to the thread of violence against minorities – Hasan talks clearly about the riots in Gujarat in 2002 under CMship of Narendra Modi and the lynchings under his PMship, what he neglects to mention are the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 and the genocide and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1989 under Rajiv Gandhi, the Muzzafurpur riots under Manmohan Singh and many more. There are multiple reports that show that communal violence under the Congress was more than it is under Modi. The Congress has only ever offered lip service in the name of protection of minorities but its actions have always gone against what it has spoken for. Case in point – the Shah Bano case where the Congress overturned the decision of the Supreme Court, to pay maintenance to a divorced Muslim woman, so they would have the backing of the Mullahs in the lead up to the elections. More recently the Congress fought against making triple talaq - Muslim man can divorce his wife just by uttering talaq three times - void. Just yesterday Rahul Gandhi announced that anyone with any association with RSS would be fired. Now if that isn’t fascism, then I don’t what is. The Congress’s protective instincts for minorities arises every election in the form of freebies but they do little to ameliorate their condition. It is in their benefit to keep them poor and uneducated, hence ensuring a permanent vote bank for them.
Minhaj says that Narendra Modi was elected on the back of his economic promises. I don’t think I’ve heard a greater oversimplification. The election in 2014 was not just a verdict on corruption but a rejection of the Congress’s vision, or should I say lack of vision, for India. You see for 70years The Congress party has offered the same three basics to India’s poorest – Roti, Kapda aur Makaan – food, clothes & a roof over their heads. Indira Gandhi’s gareebi hatao (remove poverty) slogan was sung by her son in 1989, by her daughter-in-law in 2004 and now again by her grandchildren in 2018. And yet somehow these basics have always eluded them. Narendra Modi gave these millions an escape from this vicious cycle. He wasn’t just throwing basics their way but a vision of the future. And how he has delivered in the last 5 years! India is cleaner than ever under the Swacchh Bharat mission, every last house has been electrified, toilets are being built, more than 10million houses have been built, LPG cylinders are being made available to the poorest, and Narendra Modi has given them a better life. One in which they wouldn’t be beholden to whoever was in power. Narendra Modi promised them their dignity.
This election, as you rightly pointed out, is indeed a vote on what it means to be Indian. For many of us who have grown up in an India under Congress, an India that is truly free, fair and has a future is a dream we cherish. That means an India that can and will defend itself in the face of aggression, an India that has the same laws and opportunities for all Indians and an India that has a vision. An India where we hold power over politicians rather than the other way round. So thanks for your “Bunch of thoughts” Hasan but like Harry said to Malfoy back when kuch kuch hota hai was still relevant, I think we can tell the wrong sort for ourselves.
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