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<ul><li>Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, tweeted "Eid Mubarak" wishing for peace and happiness today morning. </li><li>But the situation in Jammu and Kashmir remains tense with limited provisions in play. </li><li>Students in the Kashmir Valley are also planning on protesting the Eid celebrations organised by the central government. </li></ul>The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished Indians a happy Eid al-Adha. However, the valley is clearly staying away from celebrations as the mood remains sombre after the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/jammu-and-kashmir-and-ladakh-will-now-be-two-separate-union-territories/articleshow/70531866.cms">bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir</a> on 5 August. <div type="twitter" handle="narendramodi" handlename="Narendra Modi" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1134082549041393672/QbihPzrL_normal.png" favoritecount="78373" retweetcount="8830" status="My best wishes on the occasion of Eid al-Adha. I hope it furthers the spirit of peace and happiness in our society. Eid Mubarak!" createdat="1565577756000" id="1160743356974030849"></div>

 Kashmiri students have boycotted a lunch invite from the central government to express their protest, according to IANS. And, in spite of Modis promise that normalcy will return to the valley during the festival, food and ration shops are open only in certain areas. The same applies to ATMs as well. Nonetheless, the government is trying to ensure that people have round the clock access to basic amenities, like electricity and water, with staff on standby in case there’s a breakdown. Students protest Nearly 250 students at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have stated that they will not be attending the festivities organised at the university’s guest house. Other students in the Kashmir Valley have also stated that they will be staying away from any kind of festivities on campus. Jammu and Kashmir governor, Satya Pal Malik, recently sanctioned ₹1 lakh to organise Eid festivities in the valley. But according to the students at AMU, the money is given to buy their consent. "We take this as an opportunity to reject Delhi's authoritarianism and drama played in Parliament on August 5," they said in a statement. Restrictions and Section 144 The Jammu and Kashmir administration had eased the prohibitory orders in Kashmir Valley for the past few days for people to make purchases for Eid. And, while there have been no reports of violence on Sunday, Section 144 has been reinstated in certain areas. Even in Srinagar, restrictions were reinstated on Sunday afternoon. The <a href="https://twitter.com/PIBHomeAffairs/status/1160500494566977536/photo/2">spokesperson</a> for the Ministry of Home Affairs shared that the central government is trying to make sure that there are enough groceries for the people living in the area. Bakeries, poultry and mutton shops will remain open. Health institutions are also operational and 300 special telephones have been installed for people to get in touch with their relatives. Even so, a security alert has been issued ahead of Independence Day on August 15. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/the-phone-and-internet-blackout-in-kashmir-is-so-total-that-locals-reportedly-dont-know-india-rewrote-their-constitution/articleshow/70587309.cms">The phone and internet blackout in Kashmir is so total that locals reportedly don't know India rewrote their constitution</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/fake-news-spread-in-jammu-kashmir-about-article-35a/articleshow/70502051.cms">Fake news is adding to the anxiety around tensions on the India-Pakistan border</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/what-is-article-370-of-the-indian-constitution-all-you-need-to-know/articleshow/69684790.cms">What is Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and why it is in news today - Everything that you should know</a>

Muted Eid celebrations in the Valley amidst partial curfew and August 15 security

The protests and counter protests at the Jawaharlal Nehru University are refusing to die out. What started as an event to mark the death anniversary of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, by alleged students of the University, at the campus has snowballed into a gigantic political controversy, resulting in detentions under sedition charges, assault on journalists amongst other things etc. 
 
Here is the timeline of what happened at the JNU campus: 
 
- Alleged students of the JNU had organised an event to protest against judicial hanging of Afzal Guru in 2013 and also to express solidarity with Kashmiri migrants. 
 
- Posters were put up at the Sabarmati dhaba of JNU campus about the same. Also, a programme-‘A country without a post office — against the judicial killing of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt’-was supposed to take off. 
 
- This didn’t go down well with ABVP members, who protested against the event, demanding expulsion of the organisers. 
 
- A disciplinary enquiry was taken up by the university administration. The administration claimed the organisers went ahead with the event without permission. 
 
- A protest march was also carried out and ABVP members accused JNU students of shouting anti-India slogans. A video also appeared in which students were heard shouting slogans like ‘Kashmir ki azadi se, bharat ki barbadi tak, jangh rahegi jari’. 
 
- Now, ABVP members and JNU students are at loggerheads. In the face-off, JNU students say they did not shout any anti-national slogans. 
 
- A sedition case against unknown students was registered at Vasant Kunj (North) police station and the university also barred eight students from academic activity pending an enquiry. 
 
- JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on sedition charges and ordered to three-day police custody. 
 
- Students of JNU gave a shutdown call and #JNUShutdown started trending everywhere, demanding Kumar’s release. JNU teachers also joined the students in boycotting classes. 
 
- On February 14, the Patiala House saw violence as a mob, wearing lawyer’s robe, slapped and kicked supporters of Kanhaiya Kumar. Journalists and students bore the brunt of the violence. 
 - Over 400 journalists had taken out a procession after mediapersons were attacked by lawyers at the <keyword id="286287" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Patiala-court">Patiala Court</keyword>. The Supreme Court had slammed unruly behaviour of the lawyers and ordered that both the clients and media persons should be given security in the premises of the courts. 
 
 
 
- On February 17 also, violence was witnessed outside Patiala House Court when two groups of lawyers clashed with each other. Pro-India slogans were raised by lawyers who called themselves 'deshbhakts' and referred to those stopping them as 'deshdrohi'. 
 
- The group of lawyers that attacked journalists said that they cannot be termed 'goons'. Lawyers were heard chanting ‘Vande Mataram’. The Supreme Court was also informed that Kanhaiya Kumar was attacked in the court premises. 
 
- Some reports of stone-pelting at the Patiala House court also surfaced. 
 
- SC restricted the number reporters to five and two supporters of arrested students for the hearing. 
 
- Kanhaiya Kumar has been sent to judicial custody till March 02. Before his hearing, journalists were yet again attacked in the scuffle between two lawyer groups. 
 
- Doctor has been called to provide medical aid to Kanhaiya. 
 
- Kumar has maintained that he did not shout any anti-national slogans and few outsiders were involved in raising anti-India slogans. 
 
(Images: Indiatimes)

Everything you need to know about the JNU unrest

Pulwama terror attack and how it has changed India in just a year

<ul><li>In the wake of the <keyword id="41453" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Suicide-attack">suicide attack</keyword> in <keyword id="43212" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Pulwama">Pulwama</keyword> last week, Kashmiri students are being forced to leave their colleges and return home out of fear for their lives. </li><li>On Sunday, 20 female Kashmiri students were forced to barricade themselves in a hostel in <keyword id="45016" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Dehradun">Dehradun</keyword>, the state capital of <keyword id="44522" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Uttarakhand">Uttarakhand</keyword>, as a mob raged outside. </li><li>There were also reports of Kashmiri students in Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra being assaulted as police forces received distress calls in these states. </li></ul>In the wake of the suicide attack in Pulwama last week, wherein 45 Indian soldiers were killed, it seems that students from Jammu &amp; Kashmir who are studying across different parts of North India have become an unlikely target of the anti-militant backlash. As a result, they’re being forced to leave their colleges and return home out of fear for their lives. On Sunday, 20 female Kashmiri students were forced to barricade themselves in a hostel in Dehradun, the state capital of Uttarakhand, as a mob raged outside. The mob reportedly claimed that the students had declared pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans - a claim <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/kashmiri-students-staying-outside-jk-face-backlash/articleshow/68040425.cms">they denied</a>. There were also reports of Kashmiri students in Punjab, <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/facing-threats-abuses-kashmiri-students-return-to-valley/article26297585.ece">Haryana and Maharashtra</a> being assaulted as police forces received distress calls in these states. Some students were also booked for reportedly “celebrating” the attack on social media. Meanwhile, at Aligarh Muslim University, Kashmiri students have been issued directions to “not leave campus”. To make matters worse, two colleges in Dehradun even issued a decree temporarily <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/in-dehradun-two-colleges-say-wont-admit-kashmiris-5588503/">banning the admission of students</a> from Jammu &amp; Kashmir, citing safety concerns amid aggressive protests from student unions allied with the <keyword id="42498" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="RSS">RSS</keyword> like the ABVP, VHP and <keyword id="6365937" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="bajrang-dal">Bajrang Dal</keyword>. In fact, in order to placate the student mob, which numbered in the hundreds, the head of the Baba Farid Institute of Technology, Dr Aslam Siddiqui, said that any students engaging in “anti-national” activities would be expelled and that no Kashmiri students would be admitted in the next academic session. The same stance was taken by S K Chauhan, the head of Dehradun’s Alpine College of Management and Technology. The day before, on Saturday, the Delhi Commission for Minorities, a minority rights panel, reportedly said that the local protests in the wake of the Pulwama attack were being co-opted by Hindutva groups <a href="https://thewire.in/communalism/minorities-panel-says-hindutva-groups-using-pulwama-to-target-muslims-kashmiris">to target Kashmiris and Muslims</a>. In response to these attacks, the Jammu &amp; Kashmir government has <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/jammu-and-kashmir-government-asks-liaison-officers-to-ensure-students-safety-1995057">directed its liaison officers</a>, which are stationed throughout the country, to work with local authorities to ensure the safety of Kashmiri students. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/pulwama-four-soldiers-killed-in-pulwama-during-encounter-between-indian-forces-and-militants/articleshow/68042373.cms">Four soldiers killed in Pulwama during encounter between Indian security forces and militants: Report</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/jaish-e-mohammad-from-pakistan-kills-45-indian-soldiers-but-government-denies-link/articleshow/68003080.cms">Pakistan denies hand in Pulwama attack claimed by a terror outfit based there</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/pulwama-attack-on-crpf-in-kashmir-condemned-by-pm-modi/articleshow/67997003.cms">India vows an ‘unforgettable lesson’ for the terrorists who killed 42 troopers</a>

Kashmiri students bear the brunt of post-Pulwama backlash

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Mukesh Gupta/ReutersIndian security personnel stand guard along a deserted street during restrictions in Jammu, on August 7, 2019.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>India has shut off internet and phone services in the disputed region of Kashmir since the start of the week, and imposed severe travel restrictions.</li><li>The blackout came as India changes its constitution to revoke the Kashmir region's substantial autonomy from India's central government.</li><li>While blackouts are common in Kashmir, reports say this is the most crippling yet.</li><li>Local journalists are unable to report, and many residents are so shut off that they don't know about the constitutional changes behind the blackout, local journalist Fahad Shah <a href="https://time.com/5646005/inside-kashmir-communication-shutdown/">wrote in TIME</a>.</li><li>Sick people are also struggling to call ambulances, which are in turn having trouble traveling to hospitals, Shah said.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>The communications blackout in Kashmir is so total that some people there don't even know that India rewrote its constitution to strip the region of its political autonomy, local reporters said.Indian authorities shut off the internet, cellphone, and landline services in the disputed region on Monday, and have yet to restore them.Security services have also blocked off many parts of the region and banned public gatherings.Authorities have also detained at least 300 local politicians and pro-independence activists to prevent protests, <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/at-least-300-kashmiri-politicians-detained-to-quell-protests-over-status">Reuters reported</a>, citing local police, and media.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Channi Anand/APIndian migrant laborers at a railway station in Jammu, preparing to leave the region amid government warnings, on August 7, 2019.</div></div></div>The blackout was imposed as India's parliament annulled the two articles in its 72-year-old constitution allowing the state of Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws and prevent outsiders from living and working freely in the region.Critics believe that by allowing Indians to buy property in the mostly-Muslim region, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is altering the state's demographic makeup to bolster Indian influence.In Kashmir many residents yearn for independence, or rule by neighboring Pakistan, which is Muslim-majority.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-india-revoke-article-370-quasi-independence-internet-tourists-2019-8">India shut off the internet and ordered tourists to leave the hotly contested Kashmir region, in a risky bid to end its quasi-independence</a><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Caren Firouz/Reuters; Altaf Hussain/ReutersA composite image of Imran Khan, current Prime Minister of Pakistan, in Bani Gala, Pakistan, in July 2017; and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the presidential palace in New Delhi, India, in May 2019.</div></div></div>Blackouts are relatively common in Kashmir - India cut off the state's internet <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-internet-shutdown-statistics-2019-6">134 times last year</a>. The blackouts are a tool to stop people from organizing protests, and to control the spread of information that Indian authorities deem unsavory.Some have been able to bypass the internet ban: India's state-owned BSNL telcom provider <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/news/journalists-in-kashmir-get-satellite-phones-after-internet-and-mobile-are-shut-down/articleshow/70530054.cms">sold satellite phones to journalists</a> on the ground for 100,000 rupees (around $1,400) so they could continue reporting. However, most people remain unable to communicate with the outside word.Security services have placed checkpoints all around the region, and there is no way to get past them, <a href="https://indianexpress.com/audio/3-things/lockdown-in-jammu-and-kashmir-china-and-pakistans-response-sushma-swaraj/5883822/">said Muzamil Jaleel</a>, an Indian Express editor who was in Kashmir at the time of the blackout.But according to local journalists, the blackout this time is the most severe they have known.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Danish Ismail/ReutersIndian security forces patrol a deserted road amid widespread roadblocks and curfews in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir's largest city, on August 7, 2019.</div></div></div>Because most Kashmiris can't access the internet or their phones, and therefore the news, many do not know about the changes to their constitution which are behind the blackout, Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah wrote in <a href="https://time.com/5646005/inside-kashmir-communication-shutdown/">a dispatch for TIME</a>.Many local outlets don't have the means to report the news, and some news sites are either not updated or completely blank.Police are also restricting journalists' movements in the region by occupying their offices and blocking key roads, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/kashmir-journalists-struggle-stories-clampdown-190806094953316.html">Al Jazeera reported</a>.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Greater KashmirThe online front page of the Greater Kashmir newspaper - one of the most widely-read English daily in Jammu and Kashmir - on August 8, 2019, amid the state's widespread internet blackout.</div></div></div>Because phones don't work, locals are also unable to call ambulances when they're sick, Shah said.Those who are able to find ambulances have also had their journeys to the hospital disrupted due to the roadblocks, he said."Kashmir has been turned invisible even inside Kashmir," Muzamil Jaleel, an Indian Express editor who was in Kashmir at the time of the blackout, <a href="https://twitter.com/ananthkrishnan/status/1158972132795265024">wrote on Tuesday</a>.Sagarika Ghose, a consulting editor with The Times of India, said: "Other than blocking journalists' access, the government has humiliated the people of Kashmir by shutting down their entire state."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Danish Ismail/ReutersA woman removes pieces of stones and bricks from a road in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on August 7, 2019.</div></div></div>Some residents have defied the informal curfews to stage protests against India, with many of them erupting into violence.Reuters, citing an anonymous police source, reported Tuesday that at least 30 protests involved stones or bricks being thrown, though details were scarce.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">KM Chaudary/APPakistani students burn a poster of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a protest over Kashmir in Lahore, Pakistan, on August 7, 2019.</div></div></div>Pakistan on Wednesday <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-pakistan-suspend-trade-downgrade-bilateral-relations-india-2019-8">cut off all trade and downgraded bilateral ties</a> in response to its actions in Kashmir, and has turned to US President Donald Trump and the United Nations for help.However, India insists that the Kashmir issue is between India and Pakistan only, and refuses to resolve the crisis with third-party members.On Wednesday, Indian diplomats accused Pakistan of trying to "present an alarming picture to the world" of the situation in Kashmir.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-trump-offer-mediate-state-dept-now-backpedal-2019-8">2 weeks ago Trump casually offered to mediate the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Now the situation is blowing up, he's nowhere to be seen.</a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-border-patrol-boot-camp-2019-7">We went inside Border Patrol boot camp and found the Academy isn't training agents for the job the White House is asking them to do</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

The phone and internet blackout in Kashmir is so total that locals reportedly don't know India rewrote their constitution

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A new report on global internet shutdowns found there were 122 major shutdowns in 2019, and in total they cost the world economy roughly $8 billion.</li><li>Internet shutdowns are frequently used to clamp down on civil unrest, particularly during protests and national elections. </li><li>The countries hardest hit by the economic cost of internet shutdowns in 2019 were Iraq, Sudan, India, and Venezuela.</li><li>One of the report's authors told Business Insider there is good reason to think the number of shutdowns will continue to rise in 2020.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul>Governments around the world are getting quicker and quicker to cut their citizens off from the internet, and according to new research, they're likely to get more trigger-happy.According to a new report from <a href="https://www.top10vpn.com/cost-of-internet-shutdowns/">Top 10 VPN</a>, there were a total 122 major internet shutdowns around the world in 2019 - not counting a further 90 regional shutdowns imposed in India alone. This added up to a total of 18,225 hours, and included social media shutdowns as well as complete internet blackouts.Internet shutdowns are a tool deployed by governments to quash civil disobedience amongst their citizens, and often go hand-in-hand with more sweeping - and sometimes brutal - government clampdowns.Naturally the shutdowns hugely disrupt people's daily lives, and Top 10 VPN put a cash figure on this disruption. Using the <a href="https://netblocks.org/cost/">Cost of Shutdown Tool</a> developed by NGOs NetBlocks and The Internet Society, Top 10 VPN calculated that internet shutdowns cost the global economy $8.05 billion in 2019.Four countries lost over $1 billion to shutdowns:<ul><li>Iraq imposed 263 hours of internet shutdowns, and suffered $2.3 billion in losses.</li><li>Sudan imposed 1,560 hours of internet shutdowns, and suffered $1.9 billion in losses.</li><li>India imposed 4,196 hours of internet shutdowns in specific regions around the country, and suffered $1.3 billion in losses. Top 10 VPN noted that in real terms the economic loss is likely to be higher because it was unable to include all India's highly localized shutdowns - the Indian government sometimes shuts off internet to specific city districts for a few hours at a time.</li><li>Venezuela imposed 171 hours of internet shutdowns and suffered $1.1 billion in losses.</li></ul>In 2019 India also imposed the longest-ever internet shutdown of any democracy. In August the Indian government imposed an internet blackout on the disputed territory of Kashmir which lasted more than 150 days, during which it axed Kashmir's semi-autonomous status.The indefinite shutdown was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-top-court-proclaims-kashmir-internet-blackout-unconstitutional-2020-1?r=US&amp;IR=T">ruled unlawful by India's supreme court last week</a>, and the government was given seven days to review the restrictions on Kashmir. <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/2g-may-be-back-in-jammu-broadband-in-kashmir-from-jan-15/articleshow/73256740.cms">Broadband and 2G internet were partially restored to the region</a> on Tuesday, although a block remained in place for social media sites.Often governments cite public safety as a reason for shutting off the internet, or curbing the spread of misinformation. However another surprising justification is preventing students from cheating during exams. Iraq, Algeria, and Ethiopia all enforced internet shutdowns during national exam periods - although Ethiopia kept the shutdown in force at the weekend when no exams were being held.According to the report the cost of internet shutdowns has shot up by 235% in the last three years. "Unless there is a dramatic shift in approach from the international community, we expect the number of intentional network disruptions to continue to rise," one of the report's authors, Samuel Woodhams, told Business Insider.Woodhams added that since the biggest correlating factor linking shutdowns in 2019 was major protests and national elections."As the events of 2020 have so far demonstrated, we can certainly expect popular protests in authoritarian countries to continue. As there are also several important elections planned in countries that have previously restricted access to the internet, there is good reason to believe the number of internet shutdowns will continue to rise in 2020," he said.Just five days into 2020 <a href="https://netblocks.org/reports/social-media-restricted-in-venezuela-on-day-of-national-assembly-leadership-vote-3AnEVk82">Netblocks reported</a> a social media blackout in Venezuela ahead of its National Assembly leadership vote. <a href="https://internetshutdowns.in/">Internet Shutdowns</a>, a site which tracks shutdowns in India, has logged three new localised shutdowns since the year began."Despite becoming increasingly common, internet shutdowns are a disproportionate and unnecessary measure that infringe on fundamental human rights and significantly damage the economy. There is also no evidence that they work in terms of restoring public order and may actually contribute to an escalation of violence," Woodhams added.

Government-imposed internet blackouts cost the global economy $8 billion in 2019, and 2020 could be even worse

<ul class="summary-list"><li>India's parliament passed a new amendment to its citizenship law earlier this month, providing a pathway to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities while singling out its minority Muslim population. </li><li>The amended act has been <a href="https://twitter.com/UNHumanRights/status/1205451656495861761">slammed by critics</a> and has sparked deadly protests around the country.</li><li>The fight that has erupted over the citizenship bill is reflective of the country's <a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2124474/india-no-country-muslims">rising tide of bigotry</a> directed towards minorities, in particular, its Muslim population, which makes up about 14% of the country's massive 1.3 billion people.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>A controversial amendment to a law was recently passed in India, sparking deadly protests around the country and leading some to question the country's democratic values.On December 11, India's parliament passed an amendment to its Citizenship Act of 1955, which sets out guidelines for becoming a citizen in the country. The 2019 revision added a religious element to the bill, providing a pathway to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities who fled neighboring Muslim-majority countries Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The amended act has been <a href="https://twitter.com/UNHumanRights/status/1205451656495861761">slammed by critics</a> as anti-Islam, and they say it further marginalizes India's sizeable Muslim minority. Violent protests have erupted across the country in response, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-burning-protests-new-citizenship-act-2019-12">resulting in the deaths of six people</a>. Dozens more have been arrested or injured in clashes with police.The fight that has erupted over the citizenship bill is reflective of the country's <a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2124474/india-no-country-muslims">rising tide of bigotry</a> directed towards minorities, in particular, its Muslim population, which makes up about 14% of the country's massive 1.3 billion people.The bill has also handed more power to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government in crafting a country which affords more rights to its Hindu majority and leaves room for further discrimination in the areas of governance and public space. <h2>What exactly does the bill say?</h2>India's Citizenship Act was first established in 1955 and created comprehensive guidelines related to citizenship in the country.It has been amended several times, including at 2003 amendment that authorized the government to keep a national register of all of its citizens (referred to as the NRC). Today, the register has not yet been implemented except in the northeastern state of Assam, which is home to a Muslim-majority population. The most recent changes to the Citizenship Act (often referred to locally as CAB or CAA) were passed by India's lower house of parliament - the Lok Sabha - on December 10, before being cleared by the upper house of parliament - the Rajya Sabha - a day later. The bill was signed into law by President Ram Nath Kovind.The bill was introduced by Indian home affairs minister Amit Shah, a leading member of ‎Modi's right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and it promised to provide refuge for persecuted religious minorities from three neighboring Muslim-majority countries who entered India before 2015.Notably, the act excludes Muslim migrants "as they do not face religious persecution in these Islamic countries," India's parliament <a href="https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=195783">said in a statement</a> after the bill's passage. The bill also leaves out two neighboring Buddhist countries, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, which have experienced major refugee crises in recent years. There are about 59,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees residing in over 100 camps in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, according to <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article30328790.ece">Indian magazine Frontline</a>, and about 30,000 that live outside these camps.The bill also ignores what the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22491&amp;LangID=E">UN has deemed the world's most persecuted minority</a>, the Rohingya Muslims, who suffered ethnic and religious cleansing at the hands of the Burmese military in Myanmar. Authorities <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-india-idUSKCN1AU0UC">have reportedly pledged</a> to deport the estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees currently residing in India, despite facing danger in their home state. "The only religion that the Modi government follows is the Constitution of India," the statement added.In the statement, Shah "reiterated that the Bill is not against any Minority in India and the rights of each Indian Citizen will be equally protected."The bill does not apply to Assam and other indigenous areas.A spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25425&amp;LangID=E">called</a> the act "discriminatory in nature" and said it undermines India's democratic framework:"The law isn't truly about protecting the region's religious minorities," <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/17/india-citizenship-law-protests-narendra-modi-amit-shah-founding-fathers/">wrote Ravi Agrawal and Kathryn Salam of Foreign Policy</a>. "Instead, it challenges India's secularism by making religion part of the basis for citizenship."The Citizenship Act has spurred thousands of people from human rights groups, universities and religious groups to come out in protest this month. On December 15, clashes between police and students escalated on two Muslim university campuses - Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh and of Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi - resulting in police <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/17/india-protests-students-condemn-barbaric-police">using batons and tear gas on students</a>.The unrest has even led authorities to deploy army personnel and <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/curfew-relaxed-few-hours-guwahati-assam-boils-caa-1628386-2019-12-15">impose a curfew in Assam</a>, as protests boil over. <h2>This is not the first time the government has targeted its Muslim population</h2>India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has taken steps to further marginalize the country's Muslim population since coming into power in 2014.The NRC's exclusive use in Assam has been derided by critics as a way to of stoking religious tensions. According to a <a href="http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/C-01/DDW18C-01%20MDDS.XLS">2011 census</a>, Muslims makeup nearly 35% of Assam's population, and are a majority in eight of the state's districts. <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/assam-final-nrc-list-out-over-19-lakh-people-excluded-1593769-2019-08-31">In August</a>, 1.9 million people from the region were excluded from the register, effectively stripping them of citizenship. <a href="https://amnesty.org.in/news-update/uncertain-destiny-for-millions-in-assam-post-nrc/">Amnesty International</a> has criticized the NRC and says it leaves the futures of millions of people in the region uncertain.In September, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-building-mass-detention-center-illegal-immigrants-assam-citizenship-2019-9/commerce-on-business-insider">India began construction</a> on a large-scale detention center in the Goalpara district of Assam meant to hold at least 3,000 detainees, according to Reuters. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-india-revoke-article-370-quasi-independence-internet-tourists-2019-8">And in August</a>, India also revoked part of its constitution which gave the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir a special status and quasi-independence. Over the past four months, Kashmir, which is home to a significant Muslim population, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/kashmiri-artists-resisting-india-months-long-lockdown-191207062705088.html">has been off from communication, held on lockdown</a>, and is now directly under the control of India's federal government in New Delhi. As part of shutting down communication, residents in Kashmir have lost access to phone lines and the internet. According to advocacy groups, the internet shutdown in the region is the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-internet-shutdown-in-kashmir-is-now-the-longest-ever-in-a-democracy/2019/12/15/bb0693ea-1dfc-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html">longest-ever crackdown imposed on a democracy</a>. Only authoritarian countries, like China and Myanmar, have experienced longer internet shutdowns.The four-month internet blackout has been so severe that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-kashmir-accounts-removed-internet-blackout-2019-12">WhatsApp is deleting the accounts</a> of residents in the region because they've been inactive for so long. <h2>State-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims has had dire consequences</h2>The Modi government's attitudes and policies towards minority groups has sparked racially motivated clashes, and observers say that the ruling Hindu party has fostered a culture of impunity through its inaction in addressing violence.Shah, who crafted the citizenship bill, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-speech/amit-shah-vows-to-throw-illegal-immigrants-into-bay-of-bengal-idUSKCN1RO1YD">vowed in April</a> to throw illegal Muslim immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh into the Bay of Bengal. He has also <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/lok-sabha-2019/story/bjp-amit-shah-hindu-refugees-mamata-bannerjee-1499691-2019-04-11">previously referred</a> to illegal immigrants as "termites." India has also seen an increase in attacks against its Muslim minority in recent months. A February 2019 report from <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/02/18/violent-cow-protection-india/vigilante-groups-attack-minorities">Human Rights Watch</a> found that between May 2015 and December 2018, at least 36 Muslims were killed across 12 Indian states. Roughly 280 people were injured across 20 states during the same period, the rights group added.In a particularly gruesome case last year, an eight-year-old Muslim girl was kidnapped, raped, and killed in Jammu and Kashmir by a group of Hindu men with the intention of committing the crime <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/six-men-convicted-in-rape-of-8-year-old-girl-that-shocked-india/2019/06/10/cde7b17c-8b5f-11e9-b162-8f6f41ec3c04_story.html">in order to drive away Muslim nomads in the area</a>. The country has also seen a <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/asia/in-southern-kashmir-there-s-little-enthusiasm-for-india-s-elections-26253">crackdown on protests</a>, attacks on the <a href="https://thewire.in/politics/narendra-modi-amit-shah-bjp-india-media">free press</a>, and history books <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/india-modi-culture/">have been rewritten</a> in favor of Hindu achievements.<h2>India is inching towards fascism</h2>Experts have noted that India is straying away from its democratic values under the Bharatiya Janata Party. "There is absolute political consensus within the Bharatiya Janata Party that India is culturally a Hindu country," Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-17/citizenship-law-moves-india-closer-to-being-hindu-country">Los Angeles Times</a>. Harish Pullanoor, an editor at Quartz India, <a href="https://qz.com/india/844672/along-with-narendra-modis-rise-india-has-displayed-classic-signs-that-foreshadow-fascism/">wrote</a> in 2016 that India was "displaying classic signs that foreshadow fascism," including the disenfranchisement of religious minorities. "The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders," wrote Umberto Eco, an Italian philosopher, who wrote of a <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/">list of features</a> that define a fascist state.In April, several Muslim merchants in Old Delhi described fears of religiously-motivated violence against them. "I could be lynched right now and nobody would do anything about it," Abdul Adnan, a Muslim businessman, told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/modi-india-elections.html">The New York Times</a>. "My government doesn't even consider me Indian. How can that be when my ancestors have lived here hundreds of years?"According to The Times, the consensus among Indian activists and liberal political analysts is that the country, under Modi, has become "more toxically divided between Hindus and Muslims.""In plain language, they are what we now call communal fascists," Aditya Mukherjee, a retired historian told The Times. Historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in an op-ed in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/14/india-was-miracle-democracy-its-time-downgrade-its-credentials/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/14/india-was-miracle-democracy-its-time-downgrade-its-credentials/">The Washington Post</a> in August that it was time to downgrade India's status as a world-class democracy. "Given the lack of any sort of credible opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the atmosphere of fear among religious minorities and the attacks on a free press, we are now a 40-60 democracy," he wrote of India.

The world's largest democracy is heading toward modern-day fascism

<ul class="generic-article__summary--ul content--ul"><li class="generic-article__summary--li content--li">With at least two major regional elections in 2020, all eyes are on how the BJP will arrest the fallout from the citizenship act and local poll defeats.</li><li class="generic-article__summary--li content--li">Analysts say the BJP will concentrate on centralising power and a hardened focus on Hindu nationalism.</li></ul> December was a difficult month for <a href="https://www.scmp.com/topics/india" class="link-text">India</a> Prime Minister <a href="https://www.scmp.com/topics/narendra-modi" class="link-text">Narendra Modi</a> and Amit Shah, his top lieutenant in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).The BJP is facing the biggest challenge of its five-and-a-half-year rule as it scrambles to defuse crises on multiple fronts. How Modi and Shah, the home minister, respond to these problems could determine whether the party maintains its comfortable political edge over rivals, observers say. The current problems – <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3043741/thousands-take-part-rival-protests-over-indias-citizenship-law" class="link-text">mass protests</a> over a controversial <a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042045/modis-surgical-strike-muslims-puts-india-war-itself" class="link-text">citizenship law</a> and back-to-back state election defeats – are seen in some quarters as an early sign that the public is pushing back against their aggressive advocacy of the Hindu nationalist agenda over broader national interests. Activists wear masks of Home Minister Amit Shah, Indian Prime Minister <keyword id="6354477" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi">Narendra Modi</keyword> and West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh during a protest against the citizenship bill. Photo: AFP The two men are lifelong members of RSS, the hardline Hindu nationalist group that serves as the ideological fountainhead of the BJP. Political researcher Neelanjan Sircar said the state election defeats also happened “due to the BJP’s desire to centralise power in Modi and Shah. It does not want strong regional leaders and units”. At the moment, the biggest headache for the BJP going into 2020 is the mass protest action around the country over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, which was passed on December 12. The law paves the way for immigrants from non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and <keyword id="6354759" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bangladesh">Bangladesh</keyword> to obtain Indian citizenship. Demonstrators, many of whom are students, say the legislation brings out into the open what they claim is the BJP’s plan to systematically drive out the country’s 200 million Muslims as it seeks to create a Hindu Rashtra, or a Hindu nation. The belief is that the CAA, along with the government’s plan to initiate a National Register of Citizens, will create a scenario wherein Muslims who do not have documents to prove their citizenship will be declared illegal immigrants. Hindus and other minorities will not face such a predicament. Modi and Shah have found themselves in an embarrassing bind over this issue because while Shah had explicitly outlined this plan in multiple speeches – saying it targeted “infiltrators” and not Muslims – Modi came out after the protest to directly contradict this position. The prime minister declared his government had no plans to implement the National Register of Citizens. ELECTION SETBACKS If this was not enough of a quandary, the BJP is also reeling from two setbacks in state elections. Earlier in December, the BJP’s oldest ally, the regional party Shiv Sena – with which it has partnered for 25 years – cut ties with the Modi administration and formed a coalition government with the opposition Congress to govern the state of Maharashtra following state polls there. On Christmas Eve, the BJP lost power in Jharkhand, a small but crucial state which holds 40 per cent of India’s mineral wealth. Despite ruling the state for five years, the BJP could only manage 25 seats in the 81-member assembly, while the Congress and its ally got 46 seats. This was its fifth major loss in regional polls in the last year. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a rally to launch the BJP campaign for the upcoming Delhi assembly elections. Photo: EPA-EFE With at least two major regional elections in 2020, in the capital New Delhi, and in the eastern state of Bihar, all eyes are on how Modi and Shah arrest the fallout from the citizenship act saga and the poll defeats. Also weighing on their popularity is the slowing economy, which grew at its lowest rate since 2013 in the July-September quarter. Sircar, an assistant professor at the Ashoka University in the state of Haryana, cautioned against using state poll results as a crystal ball into Modi and Shah’s longer term fate as the ruling party had been struggling to win state elections even before it cruised to a general election victory in May. The Congress, which held power for decades and which continues to be led by the country’s influential Nehru-Gandhi clan, swept regional polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan months before the general election. But what the results do reveal is that local elections are no longer swayed by Modi’s popularity alone, said Sircar, whose research interests include studying election data. After 2014, when Modi first came to power, his party won state elections in most major states and governed over 70 per cent of India’s land mass until March 2018. This has now come down to half, partly due to the BJP’s efforts to centralise power in the two leaders, said Sircar. Meanwhile, continuing confusion in the opposition ranks is harming efforts to build an anti-BJP front. The Congress, for instance, still has a temporary party chief in <keyword id="689" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sonia-Gandhi">Sonia Gandhi</keyword> after her son and former party chief Rahul Gandhi quit, taking blame for its election defeat. The fragmentation of opposition unity is likely to rear its head during the upcoming Delhi elections, in which the Congress might not want to ally with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to defeat the BJP. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and ex-party president Rahul Gandhi (L) attend a sit-in protest. Photo: AFP HONEYMOON PERIOD Another crucial reason why the current situation might not affect the BJP’s long-term standing is timing. There is an important reason it introduced the legislation in the first six months of its five-year term. “The BJP has been very effective in setting its own narratives and winning elections. Hence, while it does seem like the BJP is floundering, it is too early in its term for it be considered a threat to their popularity,” said Sudha Pai, a retired professor in political science from New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Pai points to the 2019 elections, when Modi managed to divert attention away from issues such as development, infrastructure, a slump in the economy and the highest unemployment rate in 45 years, to rake up nationalism against Pakistan and come back to power with an enhanced margin. The BJP has probably learned this from experience. In 2016, India’s campuses were rocked with student protests against the government but this did not feature in the discourse during the general elections. The face of the protests, youth activist Kanhaiya Kumar, lost by over 400,000 votes to a controversial BJP leader, Giriraj Singh. A man wearing a mask of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves the BJP flag during a rally in New Delhi. Photo: AP COURSE CORRECTION? Since Modi’s re-election in May, his government’s two major moves – the decision to revoke <a href="https://www.scmp.com/topics/kashmir" class="link-text">Jammu &amp; Kashmir’s special status</a> and bifurcate the state, and the citizenship law amendment – have seen a similar approach being employed. Both were passed in Parliament without much debate, despite acrimonious opposition.Even in the face of the protests, Modi and Shah have remained defiantly supportive of the police action, which has so far resulted in 23 deaths. Most of these occurred in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, where the BJP’s controversial chief minister <keyword id="43254" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Yogi-Adityanath">Yogi Adityanath</keyword> hailed the police crackdown. But both Pai and Sircar believe the protests and Jharkhand defeat will come as a rude shock to the BJP. “No matter what the final outcome is, there is a sense that the mood in the country is changing, that nationalism might not be enough to win elections any more and that the BJP is not invincible,” said Pai. Such widespread protests have not occurred in the last few decades. “Somewhere, this is affecting Modi’s popularity, bit by bit,” Pai said. Indian Prime Minister and BJP leader Narendra Modi. Photo: DPA Opinions are mixed on whether these issues will result in a course correction in the next four years of the BJP’s term. Sircar does not see a shift by the BJP any time soon. “I don’t see the BJP’s model changing. Centralising power in their own hands is a very important project for both Modi and Shah. Taking decisions without consultation is also integral to it; to consult means to slow down the process,” said Sircar. Pai, however, is slightly more optimistic, but also believes the next four years will see a hardened focus on Hindu nationalism. “It depends on what happens with the protests and how long they sustain. But I think the BJP will realise that nationalism and warmongering have diminishing returns. It will have to deliver.”

After a torrid December, how will India’s Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and the BJP fare in 2020?

<ul><li>The stand-in finance minister <keyword id="6355222" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="piyush-goyal">Piyush Goyal</keyword> took time in the middle of his speech to praise a recent blockbuster, <keyword id="71431" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Uri">Uri</keyword>. </li><li> “Single window clearance for ease of shooting films, available only to foreigners, is now going to be made available to Indian filmmakers as well,” Goyal said. </li><li>Modi government’s affair with Bollywood is a recent phenomenon. </li></ul>Budget 2019 had, possibly, the maximum reference to Indian showbiz of all the finance bills presented in the country’s history. To start with, the stand-in finance minister Piyush Goyal took time in the middle of his speech to praise a recent blockbuster, Uri, which glorified the Narendra Modi government’s decision to conduct ‘surgical strikes’ into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. He then went on to solicit Bollywood’s love with a change in rule, which should not have been there in the first place. “Single window clearance for ease of shooting films, available only to foreigners, is now going to be made available to Indian filmmakers as well,” Goyal said. And that was not all. He also said that “regulatory provisions will rely more 14 on self-declaration. We will also introduce anti-camcording provisions in the Cinematograph Act to control the menace of piracy.” Goyal also highlighted how the government pushed for a lower tax on cinema tickets through the GST (goods and services tax) Council. Let’s look at how the relationship has evolved in the last four and a half years. It’s showtime Modi government’s affair with Bollywood is a recent phenomenon. In fact, in the first three years of the regime, the government’s relationship with the film industry was rather tenuous. One of the government’s appointees, the former chairman of the film certification board, the CBFC, Pahlaj Nihalani was a big thorn in the flesh for the country’s film industry. He infamously took the moral high ground and censored multiple films, most famously Anurag Kashyap’s Udta Punjab. Even after the Bombay High Court <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/bollywood/story/udta-punjab-latest-dveelopment-cbfc-bombay-high-court-verdict-censor-board-13840-2016-06-13">struck down</a> the CBFC demand for cuts in the film, Nihalani <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/06/14/pahlaj-nihalani_n_10451088.html">said</a> , “the door for films with obscene and vulgar content.” Despite the fans’ anger and the industry’s anguish, he remained the chief of the ‘censor board’, as CBFC is colloquially known in India, for 2 years, while <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP-l_JY2Vng">he intermittently flattered the </a>government and the prime minister. Not just the working professionals in Bollywood, the government faced a severe backlash from the students of cinema too. In 2017, Gajendra Chauhan’s appointment as the chairman of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), triggered <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-problem-with-gajendra-chauhan/">a huge uproar</a>. Students <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/ftii-students-call-off-hunger-strike-to-attend-classes-wont-engage-with-govt/">went on a protest</a>, that even turned violent for a bit, saying Chauhan was qualified to lead a reputed institution like the FTII. The students, who alleged that Chauhan’s appointment was a political move and not based on merit, found vindication when Chauhan <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/im-a-bjp-soldier-will-do-whatever-is-assigned-gajendra-chauhan-4553227/">said</a>, “I am a BJP soldier and I will do whatever is assigned any duty assigned to me.” However, things turned for the better in 2018. Firstly, the new CBFC chief, the accomplished writer and lyricist Prasoon Joshi, has cannily handled the two divergent groups-- the government and the film industry. Secondly, some members of the film industry also served the government well. Two films released towards the end of 2018 were just what prime minister wanted, months before seeking re-election. The first film, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/accidental-prime-minister-is-at-the-epicenter-of-a-massive-political-controversy-in-india-just-with-its-trailer-launch/articleshow/67286606.cms">The Accidental Prime Minister</a>, was based on a revelatory book about all the corruption scandals of the previous government led by the Congress. It was the country’s first biopic made on a living prime minister, and showed the Manmohan Singh administration in poor light, and deservedly so, as many would argue. However, that government was voted out in 2014. The other movie of 2018, which helped the cause of the Narendra Modi government, was the slick story of border conflict, Uri. <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/budget-2019-piyush-goyal-all-praise-for-uri-in-parliament-says-the-josh-was-unmatched/articleshow/67789368.cms">The movie was a hit</a>,and it allowed the government to revive nationalistic sentiments that are directly proportional to the amount of hate for Pakistan. A little gratitude for pliable filmmakers was probably in order. Who knows, others may fall in line too. See also : <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/budget/news/budget-2019-live-updates/liveblog/67784324.cms">Budget 2019 Highlights and News Live: Proposal: no tax on income up to ₹5 lakhs</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/explainer-the-modi-governments-pension-scheme-for-informal-workers/articleshow/67790926.cms">Explained: The Modi government’s pension scheme for informal workers</a>

Modi government’s new found love for Indian Cinema

In 1906, in a lodging house for Indian students in Highgate, a pleasant area of north London, a young lawyer called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi dropped in on a law student called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who happened to be frying prawns at the time. Savarkar offered Gandhi some of his meal; Gandhi, a vegetarian, refused. Savarkar allegedly retorted that only a fool would attempt to resist the British without being fortified by animal protein.
The meeting is said to have begun hostilities between the two young Indian nationalists; whether or not the story is apocryphal, there were real reasons for antipathy.
The two men had very different approaches to the struggle against Britain. Gandhi, who became leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), was a pacifist with an inclusive attitude towards Muslims and Christians. Savarkar, who would lead the Hindu Mahasabha, was a right-wing majoritarian who spawned the idea of hindutva, or Hindu-ness--the belief that the Hindu identity is inseparable from the Indian identity. Congress eclipsed the Mahasabha and, since history belongs to the victors, the story of India's independence movement became one of non-violence. But the strand of thought that Savarkar represented was more important than is generally recognised, and is enjoying a revival.
A member of the Mahasabha broke away to form the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or national volunteer organisation, in 1925, modelled, some say, on the British army. A social rather than explicitly political organisation, it presented itself as the world's largest non-governmental group, in which like-minded, khaki-uniformed men could gather for dawn calisthenics. It recruited boys at an impressionable age, as the Jesuits did, the better to inculcate them with discipline and with passion for the cause. One such was the eight-year-old Narendra Modi. The future prime minister attended training sessions with the RSS, was subsequently inducted as a cadet, and in 1985 was assigned by the RSS to its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he rose to lead.
Mr Modi is India's strongest leader since Indira Gandhi, and its most controversial. The source of controversy is his failure in 2002, when chief minister of Gujarat, to avert a massacre of Muslims, which opponents attribute to a hostility to Muslims born of the ideology that Savarkar spawned. Mr Modi has never apologised for the massacre, though he said last year that he felt regret over them, as he would at seeing a puppy run over in the street. Nor has he made any attempt to distance himself from the RSS.
The RSS, meanwhile, is becoming more overtly political. Mohan Bhagwat, its current leader, is somewhat in the mould of Savarkar, paraphrasing his beliefs and promoting Hindutva. In August this year Mr Bhagwat directly echoed Savarkar by saying all who live in "Hindustan" are in fact Hindus, whatever Muslims, Christians or secular Hindus might say. More striking, the RSS leader has switched the organisation's methods. Now, far from eschewing party politics, the group has become an enthusiastic and effective actor within it. The RSS's millions of members and volunteers (no one knows just how many active ones there really are) played a big role in electing the BJP by a landslide in 2014. At least 19 ministers in government, including Mr Modi, have a background in the RSS. Its leaders are seconded to senior posts in the party too. So the ideas of the man who inspired the RSS matter more than ever before.
<h3>The naked jumper</h3>
The lawyer described by a British official in 1906 as "a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner" does not sound like the muscular hero that Indian nationalists crave, but Savarkar clearly had a certain dash. In 1910, while he was in London, he was charged with conspiring to wage war against the king and with providing weapons used to assassinate a Briton in the Indian civil service, sentenced to two life terms--50 years--in jail and sent back to India. While the steamship "Morea" was berthed in Marseille harbour, he slipped away from his guards, leapt, almost naked, into the sea and swam ashore. Unfortunately for the eulogists, he was promptly caught by French police and bundled back to the ship.
His daring did, however, win him fame, and also created legal history. France's government, annoyed that Britain had overseen an arrest on its territory, wanted Savarkar returned. Britain refused so the matter went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It ruled his arrest was indeed "irregular", but decided Savarkar might as well stay in India. The case was one of the earliest heard by the tribunal.
Savarkar's next stop was the Andaman Islands--a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. This palm-fringed tropical paradise served as a penal colony for the British. Cellular Jail in the capital, Port Blair, is now a memorial for freedom campaigners. In a park opposite stands a row of statues of independence heroes. One is of a slender man with a pinched face behind round spectacles. A pen protrudes from his jacket pocket, one hand rests on a part-furled umbrella and the other wags a finger at the sky. You might mistake him for a prissy bank manager, but a plaque identifies him as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The park is named after him.
Ranjit Savarkar, his great-nephew, who runs the Savarkar trust, says that he showed great fortitude in jail. A trained yogi, he overcame thoughts of suicide. Other inmates nicknamed him "Barrister Babu", for his London legal training. Already a published historian and poet, he used Cellular Jail to work on his writing--literally: he wrote on its walls. He spent a decade there before being moved to the mainland in 1921. He was subsequently freed, after pledging to keep out of politics--a promise which the ideology he was developing in jail suggests he did not intend to keep.
A fierce nationalist, he adored Guiseppe Mazzini, who fought for the unification of Italy, writing about him in the hope of inspiring resistance to the British in India. Savarkar believed that India is really composed of, and must only be run by, Hindus. In his 1924 book, "Hindutva", he drew on cultural, philosophical and religious practices of ancient Hinduism, a rich faith that allows immense variety in how it is followed. But he also distinguished the ideology of hindutva--an attempt to unite disparate Hindus in a political project--from the religion. He himself was an atheist, and disapproved of aspects of traditional Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as superstitious--a stance that would upset many today. He was an early outspoken opponent of caste discrimination. In the 1920s and 1930s others among the emerging Indian political elite opposed "untouchability", the rejection as sub-human of those considered "below caste". But Savarkar went further, saying modern India should drop altogether the idea of dividing people by caste.
His attitude towards Muslims, who made up a quarter of the population before partition, and other non-Hindus was less liberal. He regarded them as alien and separate, in effect not as real Indians. He was fiercely opposed to the formation of Pakistan and what his great-nephew calls the "appeasement" of Muslims. He believed that they, along with the Europeans, had crushed Hindus for a millennium--a sentiment echoed by Mr Modi in an address to parliament after his election this year, when he spoke of ending "1,200 years of slave mentality" in India.
Aside from his view of Muslims, the big difference between Savarkar and the nationalists in the INC lay in their contrasting attitudes to violence. He also wrote one of the first Indian accounts of the uprising in 1857, centred in Delhi. Known as the "Mutiny" to the British, it is referred to by many Indians as the "first war of independence"--echoing the title of Savarkar's book, "The Indian War of Independence". It was a gruesome episode, in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but Savarkar was untroubled by the violence, and seemed to justify the murders of British women and children. His works are steeped in a desire for revenge against those who have humiliated Hindus, and his frustration with the passivity of his co-religionists: "I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race." In his early years, he circulated manuals on bomb making. He approved of--and probably assisted in--the assassination of colonial administrators. He was suspected, for example, of encouraging a student radical who shot dead Sir Curzon Wyllie, a government official, one summer night on a Kensington street in 1909.
<h3>Rewriting history</h3>

Today, some Indians adulate him. On the day your correspondent called in at Cellular Jail, a party of jovial men in their 80s and 90s, an official "Eminent Committee of Freedom Fighters", was also visiting. Among the last surviving veterans who battled the British in the Quit India movement in the 1940s, they raised gnarled fists to chant "Jai Hind", posed for pictures and praised Savarkar as strong. The local MP called veer (brave) Savarkar a "ferocious, dangerous man who frightened off the British". Rashida Iqbal, the jail's curator, assessed him as "one of the most important freedom fighters". Port Blair's airport, like the park, bears his name. Some 2,000km away, in his native Maharashtra, a street and a park in Mumbai also each carry his name. (In London a blue plaque identifies his former home in Highgate.)
Savarkar's enthusiasm for violence sits uncomfortably with conventional ideas of how India got its independence. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and then the Congress party (successor to the INC) promoted a pacifist narrative of history, the idea that Gandhi and the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, a social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement, triumphed through non-violent resistance. That meant downplaying the bloodshed of 1857, in which atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, and also the roles of Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Bose, the Bengali leader of an Indian National Army against the British in the second world war and an ally of Hitler and imperial Japan, led some 40,000 soldiers against the British. (He didn't get far, though the Japanese briefly handed him control of the Andamans.) Patel, the "Iron Man of India", had the Bismarckian task of uniting the country. He oversaw the integration of 562 princely states into India, threatening and using military force. Operation Polo in 1948, a five-day conquest of Hyderabad, a wealthy and Muslim-run state in the south, was bloody indeed. Official estimates, only made public in 2013, suggest the fighting and subsequent Hindu-Muslim clashes there killed between 27,000 and 40,000 people. Some historians claim the real toll might have been five times higher.
The way the story of Indian independence is told is beginning to change. Mr Modi and the BJP are keen to celebrate muscular, nationalist figures. Patel is likely to have a much higher profile in future: in the national budget, in July 2014, the government set aside $32m to erect a statue of him in Gujarat, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, by 2018. And while Mr Modi frequently invokes Gandhi's name and beliefs, he refers almost as often to Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century nationalist who revived Hinduism and promoted it abroad. Mr Modi is said to be named after him (the swami was originally called Narendra Nath Datta) and frequently poses before his photograph. Vivekananda's ideas on invigorating Hinduism foreshadowed Savarkar's hindutva project.
Savarkar's profile is lower, but is also rising. Educational comics, hagiographies and patriotic films retell parts of his life story. In 2008 Mr Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, inaugurated a website (savarkar.org) that promotes a man "largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades", and in 2012 he launched a Gujarati-language biopic. A previous BJP-led government put Savarkar's portrait in parliament. On his birthday this year, May 28th, the prime minister paid homage to him there. Mr Modi tweeted about Savarkar's "tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland". Ranjit Savarkar's group plans various events to mark the 50th anniversary of Savarkar's death in 1966. (Aged 83, he submitted to what he called atmaarpan--refusing food, water or medicine in order to die. It took 20 days.)
Yet Savarkar remains immensely divisive. He was a fiercely outspoken critic of Gandhi, still India's top national hero: he called Gandhi weak, a "sissy" and far too willing to collaborate with Britain. Gandhian talk of man's common humanity he regarded as utopian to the point of naivety. In articles from the 1920s to the 1940s Savarkar lambasted Gandhi as a "crazy lunatic" who "happens to babble...[about] compassion, forgiveness", yet "notwithstanding his sublime and broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head." Gandhi promoted ahimsa, a Buddhist rejection of violence which Savarkar called "mealy-mouthed". He said Gandhi was a hypocrite for supporting violence by the British against Germany in the first world war. Nor did he cheer Gandhi's prominent backing for the Ottoman Caliphate Movement, designed to win Indian Muslims to oppose British colonial rule.
Over the years, Savarkar was eclipsed by his rival. During the 1920s and 1930s, the INC benefited from its ability to claim plausibly that it spoke for Muslims as well as Hindus, which made it a more credible interlocutor with the colonial authorities. Perhaps more important, it had an impressive organisation and, in Gandhi and later in Nehru, accomplished political leaders.
By the mid 1940s Savarkar and his supporters in the Mahasabha (which he led until his death) had a new gripe against Gandhi. They were enraged at the prospect of Pakistan seceding from India. Gandhi, in their eyes, did nothing to stop that "vivisection". Worse, he seemed to favour Pakistan when it sent forces to violently seize Kashmir, evidence to Savarkar that warlike Muslims were again crushing passive Hindus. When Nehru applied economic sanctions on Pakistan (refusing to pass on its share of central-bank funds from before independence), Gandhi launched a fast in protest and forced him to back down. To Savarkar's followers in the Mahasabha, that constituted national betrayal.
On January 30th 1948 Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi. The killer, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Mahasabha, edited its newspaper and was an associate of Savarkar's. Godse's explanation of his actions echoed Savarkar: he said he murdered Gandhi for his "false notions of Hindu-Muslim unity" and in fury over the secession of Pakistan. Savarkar was arrested and tried as a plotter in the murder. He denied all and was acquitted. That did not convince everybody. As the leader of the Mahasabha, who had praised the efficacy of violence and railed against Muslims, it was reasonable to suspect he had at least inspired Gandhi's killer. A.G. Noorani, author of a book on Savarkar and Godse, goes further. He draws a parallel to the Kensington murder of Wylie in 1909, saying the elder man had twice pressed others to pull the trigger. "I would definitely call him complicit in the assassination of Gandhi," he concludes. He points, too, to an official commission of inquiry into Gandhi's death, in the late 1960s, which drew on testimony unavailable at the original trial. It found the evidence was "destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group". Following Gandhi's murder the RSS was also banned, for a year. Yet the final reason why Savarkar should remain unacceptable in modern India goes beyond suspicion over Gandhi's murder. It lies in his attitude to his fellow, non-Hindu, Indians. In his own writing he relates joyfully how as a 12-year-old boy he led a gang of schoolmates to stone his village mosque and smash its windows and tiles, in the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots. Relating how "we vandalised the mosque to our heart's content", he adds that when confronted by Muslim boys, he and his pals wielded knives and sticks and chased them away.
Throughout his writing he sets out Muslims as savage, immoral, sensual and eager to destroy the Hindu way of life. In 1937 he wrote of there being "two antagonistic nations living side by side in India", an idea that relies on using religion as the defining characteristic of any Indian, one utterly against the secular constitution of India. And while he occasionally wrote admiringly of the political and religious fervour of Islam, or rather of Muslim political leaders, he did so to encourage his fellow Hindus to match or exceed it.
In India today the fear of communal clashes--between Hindus and Muslims--should not be overblown. But it is never far away. Especially before elections, parties exploit religious tensions. Those who promote hindutva and echo Savarkar whip up stories of "love jihad", alleging that Muslim men convert large numbers of Hindu women by seducing them. Earlier this month a BJP parliamentarian praised Godse as a "patriot" equal to Gandhi. Members of the increasingly influential RSS feel emboldened. Such majoritarian politics, when a larger religious group sets out to absorb or flatten a minority, is utterly destructive. One need only look at the failure of Pakistan as a reminder of that. Sarvarkar could be a brilliant, eloquent and progressive leader. He could also be extremist, violent and divisive. If his influence grows, India's tolerance and moderation will be at risk.
"Notwithstanding his...broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head," wrote Savarkar
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Savarkar (back row, second left) was arrested and tried as a plotter in Gandhi's murder. He was acquitted
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