So, the big headlines are how India is going to be condemned internationally for its fascism under Modi – nothing new, one might say! The leftist oriented international newspapers do this day in day out: the only difference is now foreign politicians are getting involved. My advice to any reader is DON’T PANIC. This is not as serious or scary as it seems to be.
So to recap, this week, when we are celebrating Republic Day and worship of the Goddess of learning, something astonishing is happening in the world stage. A coalition of groups of MEP (Members of European Parliament) are going to debate and pass resolutions against India about how it handles Citizenship. More specifically it is about CAA. So why are European countries trying to meddle in India’s internal matter? The answer is they are not. Many countries have said that they will not interfere with a sovereign nation, and the European Union has distanced itself from the resolutions explaining that such meddling is not official position but merely resolutions moved by political groups.
If we look at those groupings we get a clue about what is going on behind the scenes. Four of them are : Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D),, Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance (Verts/ALE), Renew Europe Group (Renew) and European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) Group . As one can guess by their names, all of them are ‘liberals’ in the Indian sense of the term. Their main objection to CAA is all too known mantra – ““the fueling of religious intolerance and discrimination against Muslims”. It is accompanied by usual hysteria that CAA will lead to statelessness of unprecedented proportions. It is obvious where they are getting their ‘facts’ from. Their ideological thinking makes little things like facts or independence of a country unimportant to them.
The final grouping, Group of the European People’s Party (PPE) is somewhat conservative as it was originally formed to reconcile Christianity with democracy. But they share a common ideology with the other groups — a suspicion of nationalism. Due to their religious perspective – linked directly to the dream of a worldwide Catholic church which recognizes no borders — they are also against nation-state sovereignty. For this reason, they also contributed a lot to building up of European Convention on Human Rights, so that power of nation-states can be controlled.
If we analyze carefully, instead of getting hysterical about how white men are criticising us, we find there are two sinister strands of thinking here. One is the colonial mindset; they have not been able to shed the idea that white Europeans should tell natives how to behave and they expect to be obeyed. So they have taken up the White man’s burden of civilizing the native Indians (encouraged by the philanthropist George Soros, a read for another day) and will order an independent sovereign nation to repeal an Act about its citizenship. Another is the liberal – secular ideology that insists that only Muslims can be victims and one’s own nation and culture is to be hated and one’s state should be replaced by One World government. The first trend is not so dangerous: India is not going to be colonized again. But it is the second against which we Indians must fight, materially and intellectually.
Papia Mitra