By Kassym-Jomart Tokayev
NEW YORK, Oct 6 2023 – It is not a secret that the world is witnessing rising international tensions and erosion of the global order that has been in place since the establishment of the United Nations. Divisive blocs, which have not been seen since the Cold War, are making a swift return. As a result, our planet is facing severe threats, including a new global arms race, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons, and the proliferation of wars in all formats, including hot, hybrid, cyber, and trade.

In this atmosphere of tension and increasing geopolitical turbulences, it is vitally important to develop new approaches to strengthening inter-civilizational dialogue and trust.

Diplomacy is, undoubtedly, key to facilitating cooperation. Kazakhstan has always supported solving disputes exclusively at the negotiating table based on the UN Charter. Our country has consistently promoted principles aimed at achieving lasting peace, security, and sustainable progress across the world.

Despite best efforts, conflicts remain ubiquitous in many regions of the world.

To build a new system of international security, the world requires a new global movement for peace. I believe the role of religious leaders will be indispensable here. Approximately 85% of the world’s people identify with a religion, making it a significant factor in our lives.

Religious leaders therefore have a significant influence on global affairs. Moreover, the sacred value of human life, mutual support, and the rejection of destructive rivalry and hostility are a set of principles shared by all religions. As a result, I am convinced that these principles can form the basis of a new world system.

Pope Francis delivering his inaugural keynote speech at the Seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in the Kazakh capital on September 14. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri, INPS Japan President

How can religious leaders help push for world peace?

How can this work in practice?

Firstly, religious leaders can contribute to healing the wounds of hatred following an enduring conflict. Syria is a case in point. Kazakhstan welcomes the fact that hostilities have all but ended in that country. We are glad to have contributed to this through the Astana Process peace talks, which since 2017 facilitated negotiations between representatives of the Syrian government, the opposition, as well as Turkey, Iran, and Russia.

Yet while the hot phase of the conflict is over, the divisions within the country remain. Spiritual leaders can play an important role in healing Syrian society through the power of religion.

Secondly, human nature is contradictory. There will always be provocations and hatred. Recent actions to burn the holy Quran in a number of northern European countries are negative trends that undermine the culture of tolerance, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence. In this regard, the targeted communication of religious leaders in preventing such situations and trends is crucial.

Thirdly, new technologies are radically changing all spheres of human life. These changes are mostly for the better, including improved healthcare, unlimited information online, and ease of communication and travel. At the same time, we observe how societies are being fragmented and polarized under the influence of digital technology.

In the new digital reality, it is also necessary to cultivate spiritual values and moral guidelines. Religion has a key role to play here, too, as all faiths are based on humanistic ideals, recognition of the supreme value of human life, and the aspiration for peace and creation.

These fundamental principles should be embodied not only in the spiritual sphere, but also in the socioeconomic development of countries and international politics.

Without reliance on humanistic ideals and ethics, the rapid scientific-technological revolution can lead humanity astray. We are already witnessing such debates with the advent of general artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, moral authority and the word of spiritual leaders is crucial today.

That is why I am proud that for 20 years, Kazakhstan has been hosting the triennial Congress of Religious Leaders. Established in 2003 in direct response to the rise in interfaith disagreements and extremism following the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States, the Congress has strengthened interfaith dialogue by bringing together religious leaders.

It has enabled meaningful dialogue on ways to combine efforts to promote better understanding between representatives of different cultures and religious communities.

Prior to becoming the president of Kazakhstan in 2019, I had the honor to serve as head of the Secretariat of the Congress.

I observed how the Congress promoted tolerance and mutual respect in contrast to hatred and extremism.

Last year, our country held the Seventh Congress of Religious Leaders. It was attended by delegations from 50 countries, including representatives of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and other religions. I was honored to welcome Pope Francis, the second visit by the head of the Catholic Church to Kazakhstan following the visit by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

Over the past two decades, the Congress became a platform for inter-civilizational dialogue at the global level. I believe it made a significant contribution to Kazakhstan’s success in forging a stable and harmonious society from a population made up of more than 100 ethnic groups and 18 confessions that live in peace in our country today.

Through its commitment to religious tolerance and human rights, Kazakhstan sets an example for the world, showcasing the importance of interfaith dialogue in creating a more peaceful and harmonious global society.

As the world continues to be embroiled in political uncertainty, a bridge of rapprochement between cultures and civilizations is required more than ever. I am determined to ensure that Kazakhstan facilitates global dialogue between religions and nations, including through the work of the Congress of Religious Leaders, thus contributing to mutual understanding and respect in societies.

The writer is the president of Kazakhstan.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Riccardo Mesiano
DILI, Timor-Leste, Oct 6 2023 – In 2002, a group of young people in Timor-Leste were asked to look ahead into the future and write down on a postcard what they hoped their country could achieve by the year 2020.

Twenty years later some of these postcards were retrieved from the time capsule, revealing the hopes and ambitions of a previous generation of young voices across Timor-Leste.

From visions of a peaceful and just country, to demands for strong democratic institutions, improvements to homes and living standards and an expansion of job opportunities, these young people had firm beliefs on where their country could and should be by the year 2020.

17-year-old Jose Marcal, for example, wrote that by 2020 he hoped “to erase corruption, collusion and nepotism and domestic violence, create job opportunities for young people and construct new schools for students so that we can focus on our study, because we are the future to build this country’”

Today, Timor-Leste has made significant progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is working to realize the aspirations set out by young people two decades ago, on the restoration of the country’s independence. Yet their voices continue to play an important role in shaping the country’s development trajectory.

Credit: UN Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste’s second Voluntary National Review (VNR 2023)– an annual report which takes stock of and assesses national progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, incorporates the voices of young people as an important accountability tool in the implementation of the SDGs and the 2030 agenda.

The report, which was presented at the UN High-Level Political Forum in New York in July, was not only guided the aspirations young people made 20 years ago but also by the perspectives and recommendations from todays’ young generation.

To gather these critical contributions and support the Government prepare for the VNR process our Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO) in Timor-Leste played an indispensable coordination role; mobilizing both financial resources and expertise from the UN resident and non-resident agencies to help gather data and facilitate stakeholder engagement.

As well as coordinating the first general consultation with government representatives and other stakeholders, our office also supported the government hold intergenerational dialogues and conversations to capture the essence of young peoples’ aspirations and ensure they feed into more targeted and inclusive policy making going forward.

As the Head of this Office, my role in leveraging our team’s leadership and coordination capacities was key to ensuring the UN’s support to Timor-Leste’ VNR was as coherent as possible, and vital to ensuring the voices of young people could shine through during that process.

Youth supporting peace and partnerships for the Goals

Drawing on youth insights from the country’s first ever VNR last year was another important step. The 2022 presentation showed that SDG 16 and SDG 17, which focus on peace, justice, strong institutions, and partnerships for the goals, were viewed by young people as crucial underpinnings for development in Timor-Leste.

Aside from this emphasis on strengthening justice systems and institutions, young people pointed to SDGs 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10, encompassing quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation, and infrastructure, and reduced inequalities, as key catalysts to meeting the targets of the 2030 agenda.

From a youth perspective, Timor-Leste’s most significant successes from national development efforts over the past few years, lay in the areas of poverty reduction (SDG1), eradicating hunger (SDG2), improving access to clean water and sanitation (SDG 6) affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), reduced inequalities (SDG 10) and building safe, inclusive and sustainable cities (SDG 11).

Speaking ahead of the 2023 presentation of the VNR, a representative from the Government of Timor-Leste explained that they spotlighted young people’s voices in the SDG review process because it offers an important, ground-up perspective on key development issues and shows their expectations for the future.

As the postcards from the time-capsule clearly show, Timor-Leste’s journey towards a sustainable future is a shared one. Two decades later, and the Government of Timor Leste, together with the UN, and civil society partners remain committed to ensuring young people, their needs and desires are accounted for in the country’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Riccardo Mesiano is Head of the Resident Coordinator’s Office in Timor-Leste.

Source: UN Development Cooperation Office.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI , Oct 6 2023 – When COVID-19 claimed millions of lives across India, Kerala state at the southern tip of the subcontinent stood apart for low mortality rates that experts attribute to good governance, a robust public health delivery system and strong civil society support.

Kerala, a state of 35 million people, has consistently ranked above the rest of India on the Human Development Index (0.84), with literacy, life expectancy, and human rights records comparable to that of developed countries. It enjoys an infant mortality rate of 12 per thousand live births and a female literacy rate of 92.07 percent.

One reason for Kerala’s high development indices is its remittance economy, with large numbers of its people finding work abroad — an estimated four million are known to be working in the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries alone. Remittances to Kerala averaged 715,789,912 million US dollars annually during the 2004—2023 period.

However, the same expatriate workers became a liability during the pandemic. As they streamed back home, the state government mounted tight monitoring at its four international airports at Kannur, Calicut, Kochi, and Thiruvananthapuram while following up with quarantine, source tracing and tracking to prevent the virus from spreading in the densely populated state (860 people per square kilometre).

“There are many layers to the measures ordered by the state government, extending to individuals, community, public health systems and private hospitals,” said Jaideep C Menon, professor of adult cardiology and public health at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi.

Voluntary Agencies

“Everybody pulled together. Community kitchens run by panchayats ensured essential supplies of grains, vegetables, fruits, petroleum products or drugs,” said Jaideep Menon. Additionally, he said, there were awareness creation programmes run by government-backed self-help groups like ASHA and the women’s voluntary agency Kudumbasree.

“There were instances of essential drugs like Factor VIII for haemophilia, cancer care medicines, etc., being sent through the police networks to remote public health centres (PHCs) during lockdowns. Radioisotopes — supplied to hospitals solely by the Babha Atomic Research Centre — were flown in on specially chartered flights and moved to recipients with police help,” Jaideep C said.

According to Jaideep Menon, the police force proved to be an effective arm of the government’s COVID-19 response, not only for facilitating the movement of essentials but also for providing effective policing that was needed to implement contact tracing and quarantine during the first wave of the pandemic that ran from March to November 2020.

Groups such as the Distress Management Collective India networked influential Malayalis (as Kerala natives are called) living around the world to source medicines, vaccines, and equipment such as oxygen concentrators for COVID-19 patients in dire need.

“On receiving the oxygen concentrators, we delivered them to people with breathing difficulties in remote places of Kerala,” says Anil Jabbar, a local coordinator in the state for the DMCI. “The instructions on how to calibrate and use the equipment were then provided over smartphone videos to protect ourselves from getting infected.”

Coordination expertise came from Vinod Chandra Menon, a founder member of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and former Asia regional director of the International Emergency Management Society, Oslo.

“The odds in Kerala were tremendous because of a moving population – in fact, the first recorded Covid case in India was that of a female medical student in Wuhan who flew back home to Kerala on 23 January 2020,” said Vinod Menon.

“What was instructive was the professional way in which the authorities handled the case,” said Vinod Menon. “She had no symptoms but based on her travel history in China, she was placed in an isolation room, and her throat swab and blood samples were flown to the National Institute of Virology in Pune, where the samples tested positive for COVID-19.”

“It was clear from the start that early detection and early response was the way to go, and Kerala averted a major disaster by simply following the standard operating procedure that was laid down from the start,” said Vinod Menon.

“Unlike in most of India, Kerala’s interdepartmental coordination was excellent and meshed together with voluntary agencies and women’s help groups thanks to backing from the highest levels of government right down to the villages.”

While the number of COVID-19 fatalities in India remains contentious, with some estimates placing it above 5 million, calculations based on National Survey Data indicate that between 1 June 2020 and 1 July 2021 alone, there were 3.2 million deaths from the virus.

In contrast, Kerala’s data, even after the second wave between April and March 2021, suggested “relatively limited spread, fairly effective mitigation and better surveillance of both infections and deaths than in most parts of the country,” according to Murad Banaji a lecturer in applied mathematics at the University Oxford with an interest in analysing the pandemic in India.

It helped that Kerala had been primed up for community participation, interdepartmental coordination, participation of local self-governments and social mobilisation by voluntary agencies through the experience of responding to a massive flood that devastated the state in 2018 and a Nipah virus epidemic in 2018—2019.

Said Sandhya Raveendran, who is both a surveillance officer for Kollam as well as the deputy medical officer for the district: “We hit the ground running. Even before the first case was identified, we were ready with mock drills and rapid response teams, thanks to the legacy of handling a Nipah virus outbreak.”

Sample collection teams, consisting of a medical officer, a nurse or laboratory technician and a driver, all equipped with PPE kits, fanned out daily along predetermined routes after prior intimation to sites that were due to be visited, said Sandhya Raveendran.

“Key to containment was the early setting up of sentinel surveillance using RT PCR tests followed by the setting up of laboratories capable of performing accurate tests,” said Raveendran. “What became clear after four rounds of tests was that most of the cases were imported and that there was no community transmission.”

The laboratories were linked to an ‘integrated health information platform’ for real-time reporting of detailed results so that action could be rapidly taken at the field level and epidemiological investigations could be carried out by special rapid response teams.

By early March 2020, the state had the highest number of active cases in India, but using the trace, quarantine, test, isolate and treat strategy, by June 2020, Kerala managed to keep the basic reproduction number (transmission per primary infected person to the secondarily infected persons) at 0.454 against the India average of 1.225.

Decisive leadership

“What worked was decisive leadership from the top in setting up command centres in various districts under the district collector (chief administrator), following directives from the chief minister and the state health department,” said Jaideep Menon. “This led to health taking centre-stage for a prolonged period in both print and audio-visual media.”

“In sum, Kerala’s proactive approach to quarantine, infection prevention and control, the state’s strong public health system that could reach every household, and an empowered and literate community pulled together to combat the pandemic.”

He says the key lesson for the rest of India is that a robust disaster management plan must be instituted with clarity on who does what, adding that while all the states had voluntary agencies and local self-governments, they were not harnessed towards quick and effective intervention in the way Kerala did.

“Pandemics like COVID-19 are a distinct possibility in the future, and that’s why it is important to clearly define the role and mandate of each implementing agency by governments.”

Note: This article was supported by the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Internews.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct 6 2023 – Some time ago I watched the Indian blockbuster RRR (Rise, Roar, Revolt). It received universal praise for direction, screenwriting, cast performances, soundtrack (which won an Oscar) and thrilling action sequences. RRR is filled with gore; bodies beaten, pierced and torn apart. An overblown combination of Quentin Tarantino and Bollywood, far away from Satyajit Ray’s emotionally moving films, as well as Bollywood’s romantic comedies and mythological dramas. RRR never pauses for breath. The two male protagonists are supermen, not exposing many recognizable human traits, even if they might occasionally sing and talk about love. Hard to understand, since the few women of the story are cut-out clichés.

This to date most expensive Indian movie is actually a jingoistic show of patriotic pomp. A quasi-historical tale hiding the fact that the Republic of India (Bhārat Ganarājya) is a multi-faceted conglomerate, including concepts like Bhakti, love and devotion and Ahimsa, non-violence applied towards all living beings. Instead it appears to be a tribute to “Modi-land”, a politically constructed ideal chimera, based on the concept of Hindutva (Hinduness),where Hindu identity is considered as the essence of Bharat (India).

India was on 20th April declared as being the world’s most populous nation with 1,428 million inhabitants, of which more than 80 percent define themselves as Hindus, making religion a useful tool for political campaigning. However, the Hindu faith has countless variants and the nation is a subcontinent with 20 official languages and a plethora of customs and cultures.

The RRR movie fits well into the current Prime Minster Narandra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP’s embrace of its interpretation of Hindu Pride, Hindutva, was strengthened and supported by a growing economy. Nevertheless, there are cracks in the political fresco depicting a harmonious India, not the least widespread anti-Muslim prejudice. From fear of Muslims and neighbouring Pakistan many people take their refuge in BJP. Almost 15 percent of the Indian population are Muslims, meaning that The Republic of India has the third largest Muslim population in the world.

Playing the religious card and claiming an unprecedented economic growth Narandra Modi is now probably the most popular leader in the world. In the 2014 general elections BJP became the first Indian political party since 1984 to win a majority and becoming able to govern without the support of other parties. The G20 summit coincided with Modi’s aims to raise New Delhi’s global clout following nearly a decade-long tenure in power in which he has positioned himself as a leader intent on shedding the country’s colonial past – emphasizing the need to “liberate ourselves from the slavery mind-set.”

A view apparent in RRR, which is rooted in a vision of a genocidal racism of British colonialists. The British Governor of the Princely State of Hyderabad (today’s Telangana) might be equalled to any murderous Nazi-SS officer and is together with his sadistic wife flaunting dehumanizing prejudices against indigenous people. Muslims act as treacherous collaborators with the British and their subjugated Deccan Mughal Prince is an enthusiastic supporter of the Britsh Raj. To liberate a girl kidnapped by the villainous Governor-wife, the Hindu hero Raju disguises himself as a loyal Muslim officer serving the British Raj and as such he does not hesitate to kill and torture fellow Hindus, while planning a Hindu revolt and liberating the confined girl.

All this fits well into BJP’s efforts to depict the Indian subcontinent’s 4 500 year long history as being developed within a Hindutva frame. This in spite of the historical presence of thousands of kingdoms, diverse peoples, different religions, being the birth place of at least three world religions, and with the powerful presence of Christianity, Parsism, and not the least Islam – blending into the creation of a unique and rich Indian culture.

A common trait among leading BJP politicians seems to be that their chauvinistic Hindutva vision has convinced them that everything that do not conform with their simplistic view of “Bhārat culture” might be considered as intrusion/pollution of Hindu past and present. The splendours of the Mughal culture is exorcised from school books and Muslim rulers like Akbar are referenced as cruel invaders. The names of Muslim sounding towns are changed; Allahbad has become Praygray, Aurangabad is Chhatrapatri Sambhaji Nagar, and Osmanabad has become Dharashiv, while the official name of the Indian Republic now has been established as Bhārat Ganarājya.

Anything awkward in the history of this utopian Hindu Bhārat is swept under the carpet, or whitewashed, like the legacy of untouchability and exclusion, misogyny and intolerance. There is also an apparent discomfort with BJP’s rather tarnished history. For example, Nathuram Godse who murdered Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 was an esteemed member of the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organisation, which still is the ideological fountainhead of the BJP. He killed Gandhi because the Mahatma’s insistence on a secular India, integrating members of all religions and castes (the entire caste system was declared to be illegal).

In spite of Modi’s popularity it is generally agreed that BJP is considered as a North Indian, Hindi-speaking and upper-caste party, even if BJP has declared that “the caste system is responsible for the lack of adherence to Hindu values and the only remedy is to reach out to the lower castes.” The major themes on the party’s agenda has been banning cow slaughter and abolishing the special status given to the Muslim majority state of Kashmir, as well as legislating a Uniform Civil Code in conformity with “Hindu values”. Most of the people living in Kashmir do not vote for BJP and neither do those of the Sikh dominated Punjab, while non-Hindi speaking people in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala are reluctant to share BJP’s ideology and prone to consider the party as adhering to Ethnic democracy, meaning that it is supported by a prejudiced majority.

The RSS organisation was in 1925, founded on the claim that India was a Hindu nation and Hindus were thus entitled to reign over the Nation’s minorities. The RSS’s original base was higher-caste men, but in order to grow it had to widen its membership and lower-caste recruits were accepted, among them a young Narendra Modi, who soon became a pracharak—the group’s term for its young, chaste foot soldiers. He rose quickly in the ranks. RSS is by BJP often described as the party’s “scout branch”, but it is more than that – it is a uniformed paramilitary organisation in which young men obtain physical fitness through yoga, weapon- and martial arts exercises, taught Hindutva ideology, as well as partaking in activities encouraging civic awareness, social service, community living, and patriotism. Pracharaks are full-time functionaries, renouncing professional – and family lives while dedicating their lives to the cause of the RSS.

Modi rose in the RSS ranks and in 1987 he entered its political branch – BJP. When Modi joined the party it had only two seats in Parliament. It needed an issue to attract sympathizers and found one in an obscure religious dispute. In the city Ayodhya it was among local Hindus rumoured that a mosque had been built above an ancient temple dedicated to the god Ram, a Vishnu avatar. In 1990 a senior member of BJP called for the demolition of the mosque. Two years after, a crowd led by RSS partisans completely razed the mosque.

This happened when economic liberalization under the BJP’s regime was resulting in increased economic growth, urbanization, and consumerism. A new, affluent middle class developed, becoming the core electorate of the BJP. In a rapidly changing world persons were searching for an identity, several found one in Hindu nationalism, turning to gurus, and sectarian movements, participating in yoga classes and watching saffron-clad ideologists on TV. The Ayodhya incident and the following bloody clashes between militant RSS members and Muslims, triggered by press campaigns, and Pakistan supported terrorist attacks, enabled the BJP to capitalize on a growing Hindu nationalism. BJP membership soared, and already by 1996, it had become the largest party in Parliament.

Like his good friend Donald Trump, Narandra Modi has by his enemies been provided with several characteristics they consider to be dangerous. He is reluctant to give press conferences and in-depth personal interviews, but based on those and some knowledgeable acquaintances he has been described as a person having all traits of an authoritarian, narcissistic personality, and in addition he practices a puritanical rigidity, having a constricted emotional life, and an enormous ego, which apparently covers up an inner insecurity. Like Trump, Modi is also prone to reveal harmful conspiracy theories, like India being targeted by a global conspiracy, in which every local Muslim is likely to be complicit.

When Modi served as chief minister in the Gujarat state a train with pilgrims and RSS militants was returning from Ayodha. When it stopped at the station of Godhara quarrels erupted between the pilgrims and Muslim food vendors, resulting in a fire that burned 58 Hindus to death. Independent investigators deemed the tragedy to be a tragic accident, though RSS consider it to be a Muslim terrorist attack. Horrific lynchings of Muslim men and women followed, Narendra Modi was accused of condoning the violence that allegedly was supported by police and government officials accused of providing rioters with lists of Muslim property owners. Officially 1,044 persons were killed, while The Concerned Citizens Tribunal estimated that 1,926 persons had been lynched. Parallel to accusations of having been knowledgeable about politicians and administrators’ crucial role in the lynchings, Modi-collaborators were accused of corruption and even extra-judicial killings.

Apart from these unresolved incidents Modi’s reforms during his time as Gujarat minister have benefitted his political career. His regime supported the establishment of new industries, reformed the bureaucracy, and made huge investments in electricity and infrastructure. The state’s growth rate boomed as subsidies were provided to politically connected conglomerates and state-owned players.

The “Gujarat model” has been a prerequisite for Modi’s fame as India’s great modernizers. However, even if Modi after his election victory in 2014 pledged to add 100 million manufacturing jobs, India actually lost 24 million of those jobs between 2017 and 2021. COVID-19 was blamed for the failure, but 11 million jobs had already been lost before the pandemic hit. This might be compared with similar, but much smaller economies, like those of Bangladesh and Vietnam, which manufacture employment doubled between 2019 and 2020, while India’s share barely rose by two percent. Currently, Vietnam exports approximately the same value in manufactured goods with its 100 million people, as does India with its 1.4 billion. Modi’s huge investments in logistics and transport has so far not provided the expected results. Indian investors tend to offshore their profits and demonstrate a preference for financial assets. Private investment was in 2019-20 only 22 percent of GDP, down from 31 percent in 2010-11. One obstacle to investment is India’s profoundly unequal society. Modi’s economic strategy puts wealth before health. The Modi government is reluctant to prioritize investments in primary health care and education.

In 2019, the Modi government declared “war on pollution” but allocated a scanty USD 42 million. Female employment have been dropping for over three decades, with only 7 out of 100 urban women now employed. Modi’s tactics to blame minorities for economic shortcomings, social ills and other problems that could be amended by more effective policies may prove to be disastrous and lead to unmitigated violence. One example is his government’s crackdown on Sikh separatist movements and alleged extra-judicial killings of Sikh militants in Britain and Canada, which has reawaken and militarized Sikh opposition and soured diplomatic contacts with Canada. Likewise is the Government’s move to revoke the Constitution’s Article 370, which granted some autonomy for Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, likely to fuel Muslim anger and desperation and so is the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, making religion a criterion for obtaining Indian nationality. Only non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are eligible for citizenship. Added to this are new laws passed to make interreligious marriages more difficult.

The extreme Hindu pride violence depicted in RRR might be more of a source for worries than admiration for its stunning visual effects and joyous patriotism. It is doubtful if Indian unity can be realised through State homage to an idealized Hindu past, combined with an obvious marginalization of minorities. Instead of being impressed by Indian moon landings, prosperity for the wealthy and adoration of “great” leaders, it might probably be more constructive to look into and address pollution, waste, inequality, poverty, poor health, and education. History proves that harassing minorities cause general human misery. It might be much more beneficial to study history through a scientific/objective lens than as BJP and RRR adhere to invented traditions, i.e. cultural practices and ideas perceived as arising from people in a distant past, though they actually are quite recent and consciously invented by identifiable political actors.

IPS UN Bureau

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