India’s Sham Democracy

It’s been that way for a long long time. More misleadership to be expected. Capitalist democracy is an oxymoron. Always was.

By Stephen Lendman

India is like America. Democracy is fantasy. Two major parties dominate. In India most often. Others compete. At most, some become junior coalition partners. Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governance control things. They take turns. They’re largely two sides of the same coin.

Indian elections ran in nine phases. From April 7 to May 12. The longest election in Indian history. Over 800 million were eligible to vote. Over 8,000 candidates competed. They did so for India’s Lok Sabha. It’s House of the People. Its lower house. Parliamentarians represent 543 constituencies. Turnout exceeded 66%. Highest ever for general elections. On May 16, results were announced.

Ruling Congress party candidates were trounced. They won 44 of 554 seats. BJP aspirants won a majority 282 seats. The BJP National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 336 seats. Money power triumphs no matter who wins. Like in America. In Europe. In Israel. Most elsewhere . Democracy is fantasy. Narendra Modi (see image) is India’s new prime minister. He’s no democrat. Or agent of change.

He’s pro-business writ large. He’s notoriously anti-populist. He’s neoliberally one-sided. He represents strongman rule. His Gujarat tenure was ruthless. He was responsible for its 2002 massacre. Up to 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered. Thousands more were injured. Hundreds went missing. Children were burned alive. Rape and other atrocities were committed. Widespread looting occurred. Property destruction was vast.

Modi initiated what happened. He condoned it. He remains unaccountable. In 2012, a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team cleared him of involvement. Muslims justifiably were enraged. Cold-blooded mass murder was whitewashed. State terrorism triumphed. Perhaps more of the same ahead with Modi in charge. Not according to New York Times editors. They headlined “With Narendra Modi, a Change in India.”

They praised what demands denunciation. They lied claiming Modi’s victory “reflects a changing country more willing to extend governance to those outside the established elite.” Obama congratulated him. He invited him to Washington. Modi promised “economic revival.”

“He set a good tone…(He) promised to work for the good of all Indians,” said Times editors. He omitted explaining which ones he means. Wall Street Journal editors headlined “India’s Modi Moment,” saying:

“(H)e has a rare mandate to enact (greater) market-opening reforms” than already. “Indian equities soared…”

“Mr. Modi’s record offers reason for optimism.” He’s an “archetypal energetic executive…(He) welcomes foreign investment. He has a gut sense of the economic aspirations of ordinary Indians. Picking (men) of ideas to balance his own strength as a man of action would be a winning combination.”

Washington Post editors called Modi “a compelling alternative as a leader with a record of overseeing a decade-long boom in the state of Gujarat, primed by aggressively tackling infrastructure and energy bottlenecks, paring excessive regulation and attracting private investment.”

“He has promised to do the same for the country at large, sketching ambitious plans for new cities linked by bullet trains.”

Arundhati Roy calls India’s model one “designed to uphold the consensus of the elite for market growth” at the expense of fairness. It “metastasized into something dangerous.” High-level corruption reflects it. So does hardline rule.

Roy compared Hindu persecution of Muslims to Hitler’s treatment of Jews. “What kind of India do they want,” she asked earlier? She described a “limbless, headless, soulless torso left bleeding under the butcher’s clever with a flag driven deep into her mutilated heart?” She commented on India’s election, saying:

“…”(W)e’re always told there’s going to be a trickle-down revolution.”

“You know, that kind of opening up of the economy that happened in the early ’90s was going to lead to an inflow of foreign capital, and eventually the poor would benefit.”

“Well, trickle down hasn’t worked, but gush up has. After the opening up of the economy, we are in a situation where…100 of India’s wealthiest people own 25 percent of the GDP.”

“Whereas more than 80 percent of its population lives on less than half a dollar a day.”

Roy noted horrendous malnutrition, hunger and human misery. India’s growing middle class comes at the expense of a “much larger (permanent) underclass.”

Small farmers among others suffer. Around 250,000 committed suicide. “If you try to talk about (it) on Indian television channels, you actually get insulted…” Roy’s new book is titled “Capitalism: A Ghost Story.” It explains well. It makes a strong case. It shows globalized capitalism created unprecedented inequality, violence, racism and ecocide.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian/journalist/sharp critic of New Delhi policy. He called BJP candidates winning decisively a clear mandate. He’s not encouraged. He expects worse of what voted rejected ahead. He commented on Hinduism’s strong pro-Israeli sentiment. “Hindutva and Zionism shared a muscular nationalism that developed – because of their context – a programmatic apathy to Islam and Muslims,” he said.

In 1884, BJP candidates won two seats. This year “the tide turned,” said Prashad. It did so despite Modi’s genocidal legacy. Anti-Congress sentiment mattered more. India has “a powerful Hindu Right government with a very weak opposition,” Prashad added. “It is the worst of all worlds.” Congress prioritized neoliberal policies. They combined “liberalization, privatization and globalization.” Prashad calls it “an explosive mix that brought India in line with the planet’s rising inequality.”

It’s grown steadily for years. Especially so in the new millennium. Extreme depravation affects around “680 million Indians.” Congress policies exacerbated things. Inequality escalated during its tenure. Voters reacted. Its candidates were rejected. BJP ones replaced them and then some. Both parties represent monied elites. Corruption is deep-seated.

BJP and Congress largely govern the same way. Prashad said Modi’s Gujarat “malnutrition rate is so high that it is worse than the average…in sub-Saharan Africa.” Its development model is exclusively pro-business. Modi family-controlled companies profit handsomely. He “ran as a development candidate with a carefully calibrated argument,” said Prashad. He turned truth on its head. He claimed neoliberalism didn’t create inequality. He blamed corruption. He “tied it to the mast of Congress.”

He rode an anti-ruling party wave. He did so successfully. He reflects hard right Hindu nationalist extremism. He’ll form his government going forward. He’ll have to decide whether it’s “the ideology he concealed in plain sight or from the campaign rhetoric…he delivered,” said Prashad.

Election results showed India’s left considerably weakened. Its alternative is rebuilding “strength outside parliament through popular political struggles,” Prashad stressed. Did ordinary Indians get what they wanted, he asked? Was it “good governance or Hindu nationalism?”

On the one hand, they get what they voted for, good or bad. On the other, they’re stuck with the worst of both worlds they deplore. Hardline pro-business Hindu nationalists are empowered for the next five years. For hundreds of millions of deeply impoverished Indians, it’ll feel like a lifetime.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

Indian court Supreme Court bans Tamil Nadu’s traditional bullfights after animal welfare outcry

India continues to move forward, with more comprehensive legislation to protect animals because the right of an animal to remain free from harm trumps tradition. Meanwhile in dominion nations, bullfighting and animal sacrifice are legal—protected under the guise of freedom of religion. In dominion nations religion trumps compassion, as they regress back to biblical values established in Genesis. By the way, to anticipate derisive comments: Of course there is animal abuse in India, but there is also legislation to combat it. The laws are on the side of the animals, whereas in Judeo-Christian nations the laws favor human exploiters and abusers. India is moving forward in these regards, the USA is regressing steadily back to the values of primitive Genesis mythology.

The ban may signal the end of the jallikattu bull fighting festival in Tamil Nadu
india-jallikatu

Every year dozens of people are injured and some die during the festival in Tamil Nadu

The Indian Supreme Court has banned a version of bull fighting which has been popular for centuries in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Jallikattu is an annual festival in which thousands of men chase the bulls to grab prizes tied to their horns.
The court said that use of bulls in the sport “severely harmed” the animals and was an offence under the Prevention of Cruelty to the Animals Act.

Animals rights activists have described it as a “landmark” verdict.

“This is a landmark victory for animals in India. Year after year, court guidelines or laws were violated during jallikattu and bull races, and countless bulls and people have suffered and even painfully died,” a a spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) told the Press Trust of India.

The Supreme Court had previously banned the practice in January 2008, but reversed its order four days later, saying the sport could be allowed if certain guidelines were followed.

The state government, which had appealed against the order, saying the ban hurt the sentiments of the people, assured the Supreme Court that it would follow the guidelines to make the sport safe.

In 2011, the state government introduced a law to regulate jallikattu to prevent deaths and injuries to spectators during the sport.

Every year, dozens of people are injured and some are killed during the festival. Organisers say bullfighting is a sacrosanct Indian tradition, mentioned in ancient scriptures. They say the sport has existed for more than 2,000 years and is an integral part of Tamil culture.

‘Animals have the right to live peacefully’: Supreme Court bans Tamil Nadu’s traditional bullfights after animal welfare outcry

Harish V. Nair

Upholding animal rights and pointing out the “untold cruelty” the bovines are subjected to, the Supreme Court on Wednesday banned centuries-old Jallikattu-bullfights and bullock-cart racing- organised during festivals in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states.

Significantly, the bench headed by Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan favoured elevating the rights of the animals to “constitutional rights”.

“The Parliament, it is expected, would elevate rights of animals to that of constitutional rights, as done by many other countries, to protect their dignity and honour,” the bench said.

Banned: Jallikattu, which includes bullfights and bullock-cart racing, is organised during festivals in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states

The court order came on a petition filed by Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) against the judgment of Madras High Court, which allowed the sport to continue.

Besides referring to the cruelty the bullocks are made to endure, the bench also spoke about a large number of the animals getting injured and even dying during the event.

The court directed governments and AWBI to take steps to prevent the infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering on animals saying “all living creatures, including animals, have inherent dignity and a right to live peacefully and right to protect their well-being”.

Welcoming the SC order, animal rights association People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it is a landmark victory for animals in India.

“Year after year, court guidelines or laws were violated during Jallikattu and bull races, because of which countless bulls and people have painfully died,” Dr Manilal Valliyate, PETA India, said in a statement.

“Animal also has honour and dignity of which it cannot be arbitrarily deprived of. Its rights and privacy have to be respected and protected from unlawful attacks”, the bench said.

The apex court said organisers of Jallikattu are depriving the rights guaranteed to the bulls under Section 3 of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

“Sadism and perversity is writ large in the actions of the organisers of Jallikattu and the event is meant not for the wellbeing of the animal but for the pleasure and enjoyment of human beings, particularly the organisers and spectators”, the court said.

Dating the Indian Woman

Rakhee Ghelani, rakheeghelani.com

_A few regular readers have asked me recently why I haven’t written much about dating or Indian men lately. Truth be told, there really isn’t much to tell. I haven’t dated for a long time, and am actually quite happy that way. I do still have some interesting experiences trying to understand men here, but I’ve been precluded from writing about most of them thanks to some male friends who have specifically asked that I don’t write about them. I’ve honoured their requests, but unfortunately it’s meant some of my best material will never be published. But for those of you who know me personally, a couple of glasses of wine should be enough to coax the stories out of me.

I have however observed and learned a lot about Indian women lately by talking to a few single male friends. I’ve been pondering why so many of my male friends don’t seem to date. These are lovely, eligible, educated, attractive, enlightened and interesting men, yet they seem to be perpetually single. One sighed as he recounted dates that he had been on. Another avoided the question by deflecting it, recounting tales of a female friend who is having trouble finding a potential mate despite “seeing” many men through the arranged marriage circuit. But all had stories of why they don’t really date Indian women.

Dating in India here is mainly for those with an education and some wealth, so these stories really are limited to that section of society. But what I’ve heard from my discussions with my male friends is that they find the expectations of women they meet simply too much. For example one friend recounted sitting on first dates with women and being asked questions about his income. Worse still another was ordered by a potential date that he would need to earn more to support her because she didn’t want to work. Another felt like he was at a job interview when he was given a long laundry list of questions about his future plans and thoughts. There was no romance, no giggling and certainly no anticipation or flirting. Rather these men were being put through an inquisition to see if they were eligible for the role of husband to Daddy’s little princess.

The bottom line is that many Indian couples in the more affluent sectors of society are caught between two evils: the old, stifling feudal traditions of the country and the growth of a rigid, highly materialistic petit bourgeois mentality. —Eds.

A modern Indian couple.

Needless to say there were no second dates. Just a lot of frustration and disappointment.

Even when they meet a woman who does seem like she’s actually interested in them and not their bank balance, they continue to be apprehensive. Some have watched friends marry women who go from being lovely and supportive to domineering and emotionally abusive the minute the wedding sarees have been put away. One commented that it appears as if the love and affection that led to marriage seems to have been a complete farce to just close the deal.

Others have watched newly wed women just quit their job and flat out refuse to contribute financially to the household once they are married, even though there are no children or parents to look after. Here in India, most with means have a maid who cleans and even a cook, so there isn’t much work to be done to maintain the household except boss other people around and attend kitty parties (the term used in India for “ladies who lunch”). It seems while women cling to the idea of female empowerment, some don’t really want to live the reality. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for someone not working if they don’t want to and can afford not to, but surely in a marriage it’s a decision that should be made jointly.

And no, this certainly isn’t every woman. None of my married female Indian friends behave like this. They all work very hard at both their job and their relationships. But I do certainly hear a lot of issues from my male friends who would like nothing more than to settle into a relationship with a great girl who appreciates them for who they are.

I wonder if it’s in part to do with the dating culture. It seems to me that modern India is at a cross-roads when it comes to relationships. One foot is trying to take the western path of dating and finding your own mate, while the other is firmly stepped in tradition which relies on arrangements and nuclear female roles. So while it’s fine to date and find your own mate, dating is still treated by some as if they are just brief introductions that will lead quickly to marriage rather than a prelude to romance and courtship.

While more couples do live together before marriage here, it’s still quite taboo and certainly not the norm. Many people still live with their parents until marriage, and then live with their in-laws, so for them there really is limited scope and places for western-style relationships to develop. One of my platonic friends won’t even allow me in his house because he doesn’t want to explain to his parents who I am, so what hope does he have in building a long-term relationship with someone that lets them see how he behaves in his own space.

No matter how modern many people appear, their lives are still constrained by so many taboos and hidden rules that make being able to date freely difficult. In a weird way, it kind of makes sense that dating for some women has become more like an opportunity to interview someone and close the deal quickly if a suitor is appropriate. They can then do what they wish after marriage, because of course divorce is still considered taboo (although it is increasing, but sadly I suspect not as much as infidelity).

It all makes me sad. Sad for the women who are making these choices to work within the system, and so sad for the great men out there who would make fantastic husbands but of course won’t compromise themselves for it. For them, the feeling that they are not much more than a meal ticket and a credit card is almost palpable. They and their potential wife, deserve so much better.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Business Consultant, Writer and Traveller. She is a Melbourne girl of Indian origin. After completing degrees in Law, Commerce and Management, her career followed a rather traditional path for 16 years. In 2011, in her mid-30′s, she decided it was time for a change and chose to leave Australia and move to India. She was granted Overseas Citizenship of India, which means she can live and work in India forever. She settled in Mumbai in 2012, and has been working as a writer, business consultant and entrepreneur since.

The Pestilence of Great White (mostly Christian) Hunters

By Ruth Eisenbud, Animal Issues Correspondent
Annotated by Patrice Greanville

Yet another human degenerate striking a pose over animal needlessly murdered. It is his breed that should go into prompt extinction.

This is a follow up to LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND HEARTLESS [https://www.greanvillepost.com/2014/02/02/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-heartless/]

Thomas Babington Macaulay, a coldblooded imperialist.

Why is it that almost all the photo ops of hunters gloating over their prey are white Christian males, and more recently, women of the same demographic? The canned hunt of a rare black rhino in namibia was auctioned off by a hunting association in Texas, heavily infused by a christian perspective, to an inheritor of dominion for $350,000. The glory of dominion comes with a hefty price tag, but then man’s dominion over the animals carries with it the imperative of triumph over nature and animalkind.

“The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.’” —Genesis

Hunters —and in general sociopaths—scoff at images like this. They see neither the message nor its sheer beauty.

The magnates of Indian corporations and government officials go out of their way to proclaim they are vegetarian from birth, as this comes with a certain amount of status… There are no photo ops of the rich and famous among these ranks posed triumphantly over animal corpses.

Although Indian princes had long practiced “recreational hunting of tigers and other animals, the floodgates were open with the arrival of European conquerors, chiefly the British. It was precisely British imperialist Lord Macaulay who brought the notion of the”Great White Hunter to India (as they did to Africa):

Lord Macaulay

An Indian movie star, Salman Khan (see below), from the semitic religion of Islam, was arrested for deer hunting in Rajistan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/salman-khan-deer-killing_n_2939720.html

Another imbecile displaying his "prowess".

Another moral imbecile displaying his “prowess”.

Though he offered bribes to poor villagers, they refused to cooperate and reported him to Wildlife Services. In Christian nations wildlife services takes bribes in the form of fees, as it functions to aid and abet in every step of the hunting process from licensing to implementation.No one in dominion nations is arrested for hunting. In fact there are canned hunts of exotic animals, pigeon shoots, python slaughterfests, wolf derbies, squirrel slams and culls of every animal. The latest declared culls, being the effort to kill all the mute swans of New York City along with the destruction of 3000 deer in eastern Long Island.

Though Lord Macaulay brought the Great White Hunter to India, with the scheme to invalidate Indian values, with liberation from its dominion masters all the excesses of hunting have now been banned by The Wildermess Protection Act of India. India has had the good sense to return to its traditionally more compassionate view of animals, based on the wisdom of ahimsa: reverence for ALL life:

"For there is nothing inaccessible for death.
All beings are fond of life, hate pain, like pleasure,
shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life
is dear." Jain Acharanga Sutra.

•••
Salman Khan Deer Killing: Bollywood Actor And Others Charged WIth Killing Rare Species

Ironic that for uber-egotistical celebrity Salman Khan being human does not include compassion.

Ironic that for uber-egotistical celebrity Salman Khan being human does not include having any compassion.

Bollywood film actor Salman Khan smiles during the launch of his ‘Being Human’ flagship clothing store in Mumbai on January 17, 2013.

An Indian court will try five Bollywood actors, including action hero Salman Khan, for allegedly killing two rare deer in a western India wildlife preserve 14 years ago.

Attorney K.L. Vyas says that while Salman Khan was charged with shooting the bucks, Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre and others allegedly abetted the crime by encouraging him while hunting in Rajasthan state.

The Indian court system is notoriously slow, and it often takes years and even decades for a case to go to trial.

••••

If convicted, the actors could face three to six years in prison. They deny the charges.
Four of the accused appeared before a magistrate Saturday.

On Thursday, Sanjay Dutt had a conviction for illegal possession of weapons upheld, and the Bollywood leading man now faces prison time.

In India, a Spectre is Haunting Us All

Is a Resistance Coming?

Homeless girl in Mumbai. Poverty is horrific and ubiquitous in India.

by JOHN PILGER

In five-star hotels on Mumbai’s seafront, children of the rich squeal joyfully as they play hide and seek. Nearby, at the National Theatre for the Performing Arts, people arrive for the Mumbai Literary Festival: famous authors and notables drawn from India’s Raj class. They step deftly over a woman lying across the pavement, her birch brooms laid out for sale, her two children silhouettes in a banyan tree that is their home.

It is Children’s Day in India. On page nine of the Times of India, a study reports that every second child is malnourished. Nearly two million children under the age of five die every year from preventable illness as common as diarrhoea. Of those who survive, half are stunted due to a lack of nutrients. The national school dropout rate is 40 per cent. Statistics like these flow like a river permanently in flood. No other country comes close. The small thin legs dangling in a banyan tree are poignant evidence.

The leviathan once known as Bombay is the centre for most of India’s foreign trade, global financial dealing and personal wealth. Yet at low tide on the Mithi River, in ditches, at the roadside, people are forced to defecate. Half the city’s population is without sanitation and lives in slums without basic services. This has doubled since the 1990s when “Shining India” was invented by an American advertising firm as part of the Hindu nationalist BJP party’s propaganda that it was “liberating” India’s economy and “way of life”.

Barriers protecting industry, manufacturing and agriculture were demolished. Coke, Pizza Hut, Microsoft, Monsanto and Rupert Murdoch entered what had been forbidden territory. Limitless “growth” was now the measure of human progress, consuming both the BJP and Congress, the party of independence. Shining India would catch up China and become a superpower, a “tiger”, and the middle classes would get their proper entitlement in a society where there was no middle. As for the majority in the “world’s largest democracy”, they would vote and remain invisible.

There was no tiger economy for them. The hype about a high-tech India storming the barricades of the first world was largely a myth. This is not to deny India’s rise in pre-eminence in computer technology and engineering, but the new urban technocratic class is relatively tiny and the impact of its gains on the fortunes of the majority is negligible.

Indian slum: usually side by side with affluent areas.

When the national grid collapsed in 2012, leaving 700 million people powerless, almost half had so little electricity, they “barely noticed”, wrote one observer. On my last two visits, the front pages boasted that India had “gatecrashed the super-exclusive ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) club” and launched its “largest ever” aircraft carrier and sent a rocket to Mars: the latter lauded by the government as “a historic moment for all of us to cheer”.

The cheering was inaudible in the rows of tarpaper shacks you see as you land at Mumbai international airport and in myriad villages denied basic technology, such as light and safe water. Here, land is life and the enemy is a rampant “free market”. Foreign multinationals’ dominance of food grains, genetically modified seed, fertilisers and pesticides has sucked small farmers into a ruthless global market and led to debt and destitution. More than 250,000 farmers have killed themselves since the mid-1990s – a figure that may be a fraction of the truth as local authorities wilfully misreport “accidental” deaths.

“Across the length and breadth of India,” says the acclaimed environmentalist Vandana Shiva, “the government has declared war on its own people.” Using colonial-era laws, fertile land has been taken from poor farmers for as little as 300 rupees a square metre; developers have sold it for up to 600,000 rupees a square metre. In Uttar Pradesh, a new expressway serves “luxury” townships with sporting facilities and a Formula One racetrack, having eliminated 1225 villages. The farmers and their communities have fought back, as they do all over India; in 2011, four were killed and many injured in clashes with police.

For Britain, India is now a “priority market” – to quote the government’s arms sales unit. In 2010, David Cameron took the heads of the major British arms companies to Delhi and signed a $700 million contract to supply Hawk fighter-bombers. Disguised as “trainers”, these lethal aircraft were used against the villages of East Timor. They may well be the Cameron government’s biggest single “contribution” to Shining India.

The opportunism is understandable. India has become a model of the imperial cult of “neo-liberalism” – almost everything must be privatized, sold off. The worldwide assault on social democracy and the collusion of major parliamentary parties — begun in the US and Britain in the 1980s– has produced in India a dystopia of extremes and a spectre for us all.

Whereas Nehru’s democracy succeeded in granting the vote – today, there are 3.2 million elected representatives – it failed to build a semblance of social and economic justice. Widespread violence against women is only now precariously on a political agenda. Secularism may have been Nehru’s grand vision, but Muslims in India remain among the poorest, most discriminated against and brutalised minority on earth. According to the 2006 Sachar Commission, in the elite institutes of technology, only four out of 100 students are Muslim, and in the cities Muslims have fewer chances of regular employment than the “untouchable” Dalits and indigenous Adivasis. “It is ironic,” wrote Khushwant Singh, “that the highest incidence of violence against Muslims and Christians has taken place in Gujarat, the home state of Bapu Gandhi.”

Gujarat is also the home state of Narendra Modi, winner of three consecutive victories as BJP chief minister and the favourite to see off the diffident Rahul Gandhi in national elections in May. With his xenophobic Hindutva ideology, Modi appeals directly to dispossessed Hindus who believe Muslims are “privileged”. Soon after he came to power in 2002, mobs slaughtered hundreds of Muslims. An investigating commission heard that Modi had ordered officials not to stop the rioters – which he denies. Admired by powerful industrialists, he boasts the highest “growth” in India.

In the face of these dangers, the great popular resistance that gave India its independence is stirring. The gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012 has brought vast numbers into the streets, reflecting disillusionment with the political elite and anger at its acceptance of injustice and a modernised feudalism. The popular movements are often led or inspired by extraordinary women — the likes of Medha Patkar, Binalakshmi Nepram, Vandana Shiva and Arundhati Roy – and they demonstrate that the poor and vulnerable need not be weak. This is India’s enduring gift to the world, and those with corrupted power ignore it at their peril.

John Pilger’s film, Utopia, about Australia, is released in cinemas on 15 November and broadcast on ITV in December. It is released in Australia in January. www.johnpilger.com