M Muaaz Saqib
THE recent abolition of Article 370, and resultantly 35-A, of the Indian Constitution has led to the end of the uneasy truce between India and Pakistan. The abolishing of Article 370 is the result of major legal infirmities and deep malice; however, that has already been addressed by both foreign and domestic academics at length. The purpose today is providing a dire warning of the future from the lessons learned from the past, by understanding how exactly is Modi’s regime the true heir apparent of Hitler’s Germany. To predict the future actions of the Indian regime led by Modi’s BJP, with reasonable accuracy, one only has to look at the history of the Third Reich and its fascination with powerful symbology. The Nazi Party first came into power legitimately through election, just like the BJP. After coming into power, the first thing that was done by the Nazis was to create such conditions that would give them more dictatorial powers then they would’ve originally enjoyed in a republic. This was achieved by the Nazi Party through the Reichstag fire and the following Reichstag Fire Decree; and the same has been achieved by the BJP through the Pulwana incident, and the following unconstitutional scrapping of Article 370, through a mere presidential decree.
Before either the Nazi Party and the BJP could fully spread their ideological wings and put their endgame in motion, they had to ensure that they made the legislatures of their states irrelevant; and had complete control over the media, the judiciary and the armed forces. In Modi’s regime, the armed forces and the media were the first to fall in line, the judiciary took longer, but now seems to be determinedly subservient to the current regime. Any voices of dissent, which are the only few voices of reason in a populist regime, are swiftly silenced; misinformation in the form of cinematic propaganda and doctored news is effectively rolled out in the BJP’s regime, following the effective methods first pioneered by the Nazi Party’s Joseph Goebbels. After both the Nazi Party and the BJP had ensured that all the necessary arms of their states were in their complete control, they pushed their strategy of hostile expansionism. In Nazi Germany, this was mainly spearheaded by Hitler’s righthand man Heinrich Himmler, and his lieutenant Reinhard Heydrich. Whereas, in Modi’s BJP it is being implemented by the likes of Amit Shah and Ajit Doval.
The ideologies behind both the Nazi Party and BJP/RSS expansionist policies are the same, and that is capturing living space for their respective demographics, while simultaneously exterminating/exiling the “inferior people” living in those places. Modi’s excursion in Kashmir is for the same reason, to populate the place with his followers, as was Hitler’s dream of creating a Lebensraum (Living Space), for his version of pure Germans. Although, before Modi can achieve his dream of Hindutva Lebensraum, he has to first deal with the Kashmiris living in it. Hence, Modi has converted the valley of Kashmir in the world’s largest prison/concentration camp. However, the Kashmiris of IoK, are now extremely battle-hardened and weathered towards Indian aggression, and controlling them is not proving as easy for the BJP, as they would’ve hoped. The scrapping of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution by the BJP has burned all remaining bridges that Modi’s regime had with the subjugated India-occupied Kashmiri population, or the state of Pakistan. Now in this situation Modi feels with that severely restricted by his extremist dogma, the only option available is to go forward with even more fervour. As the BJP will try to further increase its living space, which they believe they rightfully deserve, the most logical place for them to expand their Hindutva Lebensraum would be Azad Jammu & Kashmir.
Modi might try to attempt this as he believes that the United Nations is no longer the policing organisation it was envisioned to be, and as far as India is concerned, the UN is now toothless. This belief that the UN is unequipped to stop Modi, has again been adopted by Modi, right out of Hitler’s playbook. After World War-I, the League of Nations was created by the victorious allies with the singular purpose of preventing another World War. To this effect the League of Nations, unwilling to actively cause another major conflict, adopted a pacifist principle of appeasement to prevent conflicts from escalating. This approach was aggressively exploited by Hitler while conquering new territories, by flamboyantly ignoring the powerless League of Nations, and doing as he wished; this in turn led to the League being disbanded as their appeasement policies led to the singular event they were created to prevent, The World War-II. Presently, Modi is also of the opinion that the UN will not be able to hinder his plans, and to support his assumption, the United Nations does indeed seem to be in no hurry to reprimand him; possibly not realizing that the United Nations stands at the precipice of disaster, one which might render them obsolete and change the world as we know it for good.
—The writer is practising lawyer in the High Court of Sindh at Karachi.