Former finance minister and Congress veteran P. Chidambaram on Thursday said the Narendra Modi government subscribed to pluralism in the world but supported majoritarianism in India.
Taking to Twitter, Chidambaram said: “The new Quad consists of four countries that reflect the pluralism of the world. US (secular, but mainly Christian), India (secular, but mainly Hindu), Israel (Jewish) and the UAE (Islamic). If pluralism can be harnessed for the good of the world, can it not be harnessed for the good of India? The Modi Government subscribes to pluralism in the world but supports majoritarianism in India!”
While the Congress has consistently accused the RSS-BJP of subverting the constitutional scheme by executing a majoritarian agenda, India never attracted global attention for diminishing democracy as it has during the Modi regime. While independent agencies have described India as an electoral autocracy and referred to attacks on civil liberties and freedom of expression to buttress the charge of diminishing democracy, Modi had to digest sermons on democracy and Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy during his last visit to the US.
Modi and his ministers have always asserted at international forums that India was fully committed to democracy and Gandhian values but now the Opposition leaders are pointing at the dichotomy in the government’s attitude. While Modi hails Gandhi’s value system abroad, the RSS-BJP ecosystem has trended “Godse Zindabad”, hailing his killer, on both his birth and death anniversaries.
Chidambaram had recently written about Modi’s apathy towards human rights violations, pointing out the Prime Minister’s silence on cases such as Bhima Koregan in which activists and intellectuals are in jail for over two years without trial.