India goes to war with Pakistan while 10% of its population still shits on the street.
I just feel they have more important things to worry about.
‘When people have a sense of our military capability, nobody will ever dare to cast an evil eye on our nation.’ - Modi.
Good day, spectators,
And Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister has never really been one for subtlety.
And with his economic promises and sweet words turning to dust, with his ‘Digital India’ transformation failing to power rural hospitals, and with his ‘Clean India’ mission still leaving millions shitting on the streets – the East’s biggest nationalist strongman is in a bit of a predicament. So what is left to do?
The answer is, as always, the oldest trick in the book: find an enemy, any enemy, and bomb them. Only, Modi already has his ‘enemy’… Muslims. And after whipping up Hindu nationalism for over a decade—the next step was easy.
Yesterday, as India launched airstrikes deep into Pakistani territory over what may well be the most flaccid pretext since George Bush’s ‘WMDs’, we witnessed the full spectacle of a failing regime’s desperation. The timing, of course, was impeccable – just as reports confirmed that 30% of Indians still live below the poverty line, that 40% of children suffer malnutrition, and that more households own smartphones than have access to a place to go to the loo..
the farce of the ‘surgical strike’.
India bombed the hell out of Pakistan last night and the supposed justification is almost comically thin. A terrorist attack last week in the highly contested region of Kashmir was instantly – and I mean instantly – blamed on Pakistan as a whole nation.
Pakistan’s offer of a joint investigation was dismissed with the same casual contempt Modi shows for most parliamentary procedures. It’s his way or no way.
Within 48 hours of that offer, Indian jets were crossing the border while news channels played their well-rehearsed roles: graphics of missiles streaking across screens, retired asthmatic generals puffing on about national honour, and the inevitable hashtag campaigns.
Never mind that the same government can’t keep the lights on in Mumbai’s slums.
Never mind that more Indians die from diarrhoea than terrorism.
The show must go on and so it does.
the nationalist’s bargain: your toilet, their blood.
Here’s the real mathematics behind modern fascism: when you can’t deliver development, deliver dopamine hits of nationalism instead. Modi knows this equation by heart. His whole life as a militant and nationalist has been leading up to this.
Consider the numbers: India spends $72 billion annually on defence while 300 million citizens lack access to toilets. It boasts the world’s fourth-largest military budget while ranking 107th in hunger indices. It can coordinate precision airstrikes but can’t stop farmers from literally drinking pesticide to escape the crushing weight of unpayable debt.
At this point we can see it isn’t incompetence but policy. An uneducated population seething about empty stomachs is dangerous whereas an uneducated population cheering for war is easy to manage.
India’s war is actually at home.
While our TV screens show explosions in Pakistan, the less-known war continued unabated in India. If you’re not aware, let me tell you what life is like in Modi’s India:
Muslim neighbourhoods are bulldozed for ‘illegal construction’
Opposition leaders jailed on transparently political charges
Universities purged of critical voices
Journalists arrested for ‘sedition’ over social media posts
Sound familiar? It should.
This is the essence of Modi’s project: create external enemies to justify internal repression. This same week, as these bombings are ongoing, his government quietly extended the controversial UAPA anti-terror law – a tool used far more often against student protesters and journalists than actual people causing terror.
The biggest tragedy in all of this is that this gambit works – for now at least.
Modi’s approval ratings will spike as they do for most leaders during times of war. The talking heads will cheer it on. The uncomfortable questions about failing infrastructure and unbridled capitalism will be drowned out by patriotic noise.
But the underlying rot is still there. Let me be explicitly clear; India is a shit country.
It’s a massive economy with so much potential but it only serves only the privileged. Institutions hollowed out by sycophancy. A democracy gasping its last breaths. This is why there are millions and millions of people living in filth and squalor. Why the caste system lives on and why Modi wants to go to war. Distractions.
When the fireworks fade, Indians will still be hungry and have no access to a shitter. The only question is whether they’ll still be distracted enough not to care.
What do you think, folks? Has Modi’s desperation finally come to a head? Or is this just another successful chapter in the authoritarian playbook? Drop your thoughts below.
(And if you liked the read, don’t forget to ❤️ and restack.)
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Read more from the spectacle:
Fucking hell. Deaglan 😂 that title pulls no punches
The overall premise of your article is bang on (abject poverty is by far the most pressing issue not just in India, but across the subcontinent). And your observations regarding the hypernationalist authoritarian playbook that Modi employs are accurate for the most part - as are the implied/stated parallels with his contemporaries. Pakistan is to India what Iran is to Israel, i.e. the 'mastermind of terror' and 'root of all evil'. I suppose we should be thankful that the Indians give us a little more variety by making three boogeymen (Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahedeen) directly responsible as opposed just 'Khhhamas'.
That said, if you go back to 2019 (Pulwama) or 2016 (Uri), you'll get a sense of how the Pahalgam episode is likely to play out this time around. There will be some tit for tat strikes, some damage will be done on both sides and their respective media mouthpieces will go on overdrive with the jingoism for their respective audiences to claim victory (with incredible amounts of mental gymnastics to define what exactly constitutes 'success'). And in another 3-5 years something similar will happen again and that too will play out similarly.
Simply put, India and Pakistan are in a stalemate as far as Kashmir is concerned. Each side controls a portion of the disputed territory while claiming it in full. In my view, both are uncompromising in this regard because they perceive Kashmir as vital to their own water security - all the major rivers flowing into Northern India and Pakistan's agricultural heartlands originate from the Himalayan mountain ranges in Kashmir. Both countries have a nuclear arsenal with a second strike capability and enough warheads to annihilate each other. To add to that, India also has to simultaneously contend with China, where many parts of the 4,000km border that they share across the north eastern sector of the Himalayan range (where it meets the Tibetian plateau) is disputed. Resultantly, India can never fully deploy it's army on the Western front against Pakistan, which reduces the disparity between both sides as far as conventional military power is concerned (the latter has a smaller standing army for obvious reasons).
As far as 'terrorism' (a term I have come to absolutely loathe given how loaded it's become) goes - India has a track record of funding and arming separatists in Pakistan's Balochistan province for the better part of 50-60 years. There are also allegations (which seem plausible, although the details are murkier and difficult to to ascertain) that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgency in the northwest (along the Afghan border) gets some clandestine support from the Indian intelligence as well. Likewise Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus has long provided various Kashmiri groups (particularly those who favour joining Pakistan) with much of the same. Essentially, both sides treat these cessationist movements as instruments to inflict harm upon the other at a limited scale while being able to maintain plausible deniability. And the ultimate losers of course are ordinary Baloch, Kashmiris, Pashtuns.