Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is not an Oracle of Delphi. His own understanding of India, from a distance is not wholesome and he at times misses the woods for the trees. Having lived and worked in the academic field in the UK and US for several decades since the early 1970s, his perceptions are shaped by his own exposures to the West; and his eminence in welfare economics and pro-poor initiatives are well-appreciated. In a media interview, he has observed that the Modi government is one of the “most appalling” in the world. To pass such a judgment in the superlative was, on the face of it, an overkill. At the same time, the point Sen sought to press home was that the present government here is following “communitarian and majoritarian” policies which he termed a “national disaster.”
As Sen has stressed, Modi who heads the BJP government failed to give reassurance to the minorities that his government treats them all with equal dignity and justice. The Muslims, especially, got a raw deal from this dispensation and even from the previous Congress governments. The only Muslim minister in the present central government has been removed. There is hardly any Muslim in the BJP ranks in Parliament or state legislatures even as this community forms one-fifth of the population. True, the Congress party had taken care of Muslims at the political level but this sense of inclusiveness was not evident ever in the administrative apparatus.
Muslims are understandably incensed over the 2002 Gujarat Riots that saw the killing of large numbers from the community. Fact is also that Gujarat was prone to such riots for decades before Modi’s arrival on the political scene. Muslims collectively tried to run down Modi and the BJP at every election thereafter, but met with limited success as in the West Bengal polls. Fighting with the establishment will have its price to pay. Muslims as a community must ponder whether it is advisable for them to keep fighting Modi and the BJP as both are going strong. The RSS has recently held out an olive branch to the Muslims and claimed it would treat all Indians as a part of the wider Hindu family. India is a mosaic of cultures, races, religions, castes and communities. The only way to exist here is to co-exist and the way forward is to give each segment of the population their due. India’s developmental urges require it to forge unity as a prerequisite and tap the energies of its people, turning these into a synergy. Divided we stand, united we fall.