Modi’s exemplary speech on terrorism in the Maldives is also full of hypocrisy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an exemplary speech at the Maldives during his first overseas tour among many more to come after winning the Lok Sabha election with a huge margin. India is keen to contain China’s influence over the small island nation in the Indian Ocean, which has immense importance for India’s naval domination in the region. Modi spoke about state-sponsored terrorism, taking a jibe at Pakistan, without naming it. Yet, whatever he said during the speech can be ironically used against him and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

During his speech in the Maldives parliament, Modi said that “state-sponsored terrorism is the biggest threat”. What he didn’t say, and no one expects him to acknowledge, is that state-terrorism is also another side of “state-sponsored terrorism”. During his reign, the state terror on the people of Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, etc, has intensified and has butchered people irrespective of their age or gender. This terror, unleashed by the agencies of the state, is also glorified by the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its parental body and the fountainhead of Hindutva fascism.

Why does Modi’s regime get irked whenever the United Nations Human Rights Council or any other international or domestic human rights watchdog criticise its use of brutal repression against the demonstrators seeking their United Nations-endorsed right to self-determination in Kashmir? Why the Modi regime censor media coverage on Kashmir and hounds those who talk about the rights of the tribal people (Adivasis), who have been fighting against the government’s move to evict them from their forests so that the land can be given to big mining corporations for plundering resources through deforestation? Why the Modi regime, which is vocal about “state-sponsored terrorism”, turns angry whenever questions are raised over the notorious Operation Green Hunt against the tribal people?

In the Maldives, Modi also took a jibe at the US and the Pakistani establishment by criticising the act of differentiating between a “good terrorist and a bad terrorist”. It’s indeed a right thing done by the prime minister. No one should differentiate between terrorists who kill innocent and unarmed civilians through bomb blasts and other forms of violence. However, can Modi exert pressure on his memory and recall what he and the entire Sangh Parivar under the aegis of the RSS have always stood for?

It was the BJP that gave a Lok Sabha election ticket to Hindutva terror accused Sadhvi Pragya Thakur knowing well that she faces charges of terrorism in the Malegaon blast case. Though the National Investigation Agency has diluted charges against Thakur and her other RSS-affiliated accomplices like Swami Aseemanand in all cases of Hindutva terror, she is still facing the charges in the court for her role in the Malegaon blasts. In her support, Modi himself stood up and accused the Congress party of inventing the term “Hindu terror”, though the actual term used is “Hindutva terror”, which criticises the ideological standpoint of the RSS, rather than the religion. Modi and the entire Sangh Parivar vehemently have always denied the existence of anything called Hindutva terrorism, when it’s a clear and present danger to the Indian society.

Modi strongly supported the terror accused Thakur and others, exerting his influence on the state machinery and the judiciary. Now, if that’s not state-sponsoring of terrorism then what else is? Modi’s hypocrisy is well exhibited when he and his party remain silent on the terror unleashed on hapless Muslims by the “Gau Rakshaks” or cow vigilante forces of the RSS. They support the 2002 Gujarat pogrom in which hundreds of Muslims were butchered by rumbustious Hindutva-incensed mob led by the RSS and its appendages, which incidentally paved way for Modi’s meteoric rise in an Islamophobic Indian society, and the 2013 Muzaffarnagar pogrom, which helped the BJP sweep the entire Uttar Pradesh during the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

For Modi, opposing Sri Lanka’s Easter attacks is a political hoodwinking act as his party reaped benefit from the anti-Christian terror attacks unleashed by the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Odisha’s Kandhamal in 2008, which killed 38 people. Modi has no guilt feeling in accommodating a notorious Hindutva terrorist like Pratap Sarangi in his cabinet, despite him being accused in a number of cases of Hindutva terrorism, including the gruesome murder of Australian evangelist Graham Steins and his children.

Hindutva fascism, which has erected Modi as its poster boy, has no allergy towards terrorism as it’s the terrorism of all forms, bloodshed and macabre atrocities from which its locomotive gets fuel. The Hindutva fascist enterprise is keen to build a global support base for its rule and dominate the neighbourhood with its aggressive foreign policy that turns India into an outpost of the US imperialism in southern parts of Asia. Modi’s visit and his talk on terrorism and global partnership, despite having relevance, is as hollow as his claims of fighting terrorism. Alike his global partners like the Zionist Israeli terrorists and the Wahhabi Saudi Arabian terrorists, Modi and his Hindutva fascist clan is keen to transform India into a vessel for the Hindutva terrorism, which is, of course, “good terrorism” for the Indian ruling classes and their masters based in the US.