Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Lakshadweep to highlight the massive under-utilized tourist potential. Having snorkelled & dived in Lakshadweep and Maldives, I can honestly tell you Lakshadweep lacks nothing. So why are the opposition making fun of this visit? You see in the 1980s Rajiv Gandhi and family visited Lakshadweep and it suddenly became the go to destination. However except one island – Bangaram admirably and sustainably managed by CGH – no other licenses were granted and the entire area was kept backward and poor with limited connectivity.
Today the PM essentially heralded what should become an economic opening up of an extraordinary region of India that has deliberately been kept poor. What’s worse for the opposition is that Lakshadweep is 97% Muslim. Their entire narrative of Muslims discrimination and alienation has already collapsed in Kashmir where the insurgency has ended (major terror attacks will happen for a while though). Imagine if Lakshadweep develops – then the entire “Muslims in danger” – “Muslim genocide” narrative crumbles. In many ways Kashmir & Lakshadweep demonstrate the difference in approach to Muslims of the Congress & BJP.
Congress used to keep them poor & ghettoized & racked with crime – with a feudal polity, so they could be exploited as a vote bank. The feudal lords of the community would be made minister, MP etc., to perpetuate their venal hold on the community.
BJP on the other hand, keeps getting criticized for not having Muslim MPs & Ministers – but that (representation in lieu of emancipation) has never been the BJP-RSS approach to anything. It’s always been ground-up empowerment – a classic example being Modi himself – an OBC tea seller to a Prime Minister now.
PM pushed through the system because of Hindutva’s belief in a caste less society engineered – slowly and steadily – without social disruption.
The BJP is empowering pasmanda Muslims through education, Muslim women through electricity, toilets, laws and breaking the dependence of Sunnis on feudal elites so loved by the Congress – the same feudal elites who commoditized their people – radicalized them and used violence as a tool of political negotiation so that they would get MPships and Minister ships while ordinary Muslims died in riots.
Basically INC’s idea of the “good Muslim” is Pakistan – where rapine feudal elites have used and abused their own people. I’m using INC here generically – SP, BSP, RJD, DMK etc all do this. This is the reason all these parties and self proclaimed “brave” journalists hate the Modi, the BJP & RSS.
Because these 3 broke the rules of the game and are putting “community representatives” – essentially feudal exploiters who can speak English out of business. Modi is hitting these feudals & their patrons where it hurts. Imagine if a Muslim depends on the state for medicine, laws, education, electricity. He no longer needs the mediation and “sifarish” of his local feudal Lord. Why will he listen to his mullah or Lord or local thug anymore?
This not only impacts the feudal classes revenue directly – but also their social relevance & their ability to organise contract violence to parties on demand. He’s making them obsolete. Also a word here about the casteist Hindus who keep calling Modi “Maulana Modi”. Yeah – so apparently following the RSS’ dictum of ground level individual empowerment is “Muslim appeasement”. There’s no argument you can make with these people because they just pathologically hate Muslims just like they hate lower castes, reservation, inter caste marriage etc. these regressives have NEVER been part of the Hindutva idea – even though they constantly try to claim they are.
Basically regressive “trads” = INC dream come true – they serve the INC agenda. They also get conveniently dressed up as “true Hindutvawadi” by either clueless or deliberately mischievous Indian and Western commentators with an agenda to peddle – much the same way Saudis in the past used to label internal dissent as “Islamist radicals” to foreign governments and label them “secularists” to a domestic audience.
The trads have NEVER had electoral power and they’ve always been the class that collaborated with invaders and got Jizya exemptions for themselves at the cost of the blood and misery of BC,SC,STs. Ignore them. Let’s focus on Lakshadweep and make the Modi-BJP-RSS dream come true. Let’s make it a world class destination and economically emancipate every part and segment of Indian society.
Abhijit Iyer Mitra is a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, Observer Research Foundation.
Subscribe to our channels on Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.