‘Modi may declare India a Hindu state’

Islamabad: Dr Moonis Ahmar, former Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Karachi, has said that if Modi gets a two-thirds majority in the ongoing general elections in India, he would gear up for undoing secular clauses from the Indian Constitution to ultimately declare India a Hindu State.

Dr Ahmar was addressing a round-table discussion on ‘Dynamics of Indian elections and its implications for Pakistan’ organised by Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) here Friday.

Prof Ahmar said that under Modi’s third terms as Prime Minister of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s distorted and polarised narratives would continue to grow unabatedly, and as a result, all the minorities would have to face the music in case of not conforming to Rashtriya Sevak Sangh’s social order.

On Pakistan-India relations, he said that relations between the two countries would largely remain disturbed as the Modi regime would probably be lobbying for the absorption of the Gilgit Baltistan (GB) through its propaganda network, adding that, such motives could be a continuing source of tensions between Pakistan and India.

Despite Modi’s hardline stance on the GB, and state-sponsored terrorism mantra, there could be some breakthroughs in terms of trade resumption and easing of visa restrictions, he opined. Why because Modi would like to leave a legacy as a peacemaker since it would be his last stint in the power, he added.

However, looking at the ground realities, the current elections in India would be a one-on-one contest between BJP-led NDA and Congress-led INDIA and thus it was difficult to predict Modi’s clean sweep, he added.

He further argued that the two-thirds majority would not be a piece of cake for Modi as there was no “Modi Wave” in these elections as such which was there in 2019 elections primarily because of the so-called Pulwama incident in February 2019, he added.

Dr Ahmar said that the Congress-led INDIA alliance had been banking on Modi’s communal politics for long but it could not make a significant impact in terms of increasing their vote bank in the past, however, in recent elections there were chances that INDIA might be able to capitalise on Modi’s highly charged polarised politics, he noted. In addition, the persecution of opposition leaders and workers by the BJP and systematic strangulation of freedom of the judiciary at home had also a ripple effect on the society, he said but how it reflected in the election results was yet to be seen.