[A wave of angry nationalism has swept India in recent weeks, triggered first by a Feb. 14 suicide bombing that killed 40 Indian security personnel in the disputed region of Kashmir and then by a military confrontation with Pakistan, the country’s oldest foe.]
By Niha Masih and Joanna Slater
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Indian demonstrators wave the national flag as they shout
slogans against Pakistan
during a protest at India Gate in New Delhi on Feb. 17, 2019, after an attack
on a paramilitary Central
Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy in the
Lethpora area of Kashmir. (Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty
Images)
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NEW
DELHI — The first time Sandeep Wathar received a message on
Facebook from a total stranger calling him a traitor, he was amused. When
dozens more followed, he knew something was wrong.
After India and Pakistan nearly went to war last week, Wathar, a
29-year old professor of civil engineering in the southern Indian state of
Karnataka, vented his frustration on social media. In a Facebook post, he used
expletives to refer to India’s ruling party and said it had endangered millions
of lives.
Two days later, students and members of a right-wing Hindu group
gathered outside his office demanding he apologize for his “anti-national”
comments. As a police officer looked on, the crowd ordered Wathar to kneel and
beg for forgiveness. So he did. “It’s very obvious now that it can happen to
anybody,” Wathar said.
A
wave of angry nationalism has swept India in recent weeks, triggered first by a Feb. 14 suicide bombing that killed 40
Indian security personnel in the disputed region of Kashmir and then by a military confrontation with Pakistan,
the country’s oldest foe.
Television
anchors have called for revenge and portrayed any questioning of the Indian
government or armed forces as equivalent to helping Pakistan (one particularly
strident channel recently pushed the hashtag #ExposePakLovers).
That message
has been amplified by the country’s leadership: Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
who is seeking reelection later this spring, has cast opposition parties as disloyal
for asking about the efficacy of India’s Feb. 26 retaliatory airstrike on
Pakistan. Modi leads a Hindu nationalist political party and since his election
in 2014, hardline Hindu groups have become more assertive, sometimes resorting
to violence.
In
recent weeks some of those publicly critical of the government or India’s
military have been suspended from their jobs.
Kashmiri
Muslims living elsewhere in India have faced the brunt of backlash, with students being hounded out of their
universities and vendors being physically attacked. Late last
month, the country’s Supreme Court ordered the government to step up
protection of Kashmiris and other minority groups.
The recent climate marks a new turn for India, said Harish
Khare, a leading columnist and former editor of The Tribune newspaper. He
blamed the current government, saying it had “stampeded the country into a
volatile, edgy, anxious nationalism.”
The dramatic
events of recent weeks have raked up old conflicts — such as the anti-India
insurgency in Kashmir and the rivalry between India and Pakistan —
in a new social media age. India is the largest market in the world for both Facebook and WhatsApp and the fastest-growing market
for Twitter.
Online mobs have been swift to attack even the
unlikeliest of targets. Mita Santra’s husband was one of the paramilitary
officers killed in the Feb. 14 suicide bombing in Kashmir. But after the
38-year old teacher publicly stated in the wake of her husband’s death that war
should be the last option, she was roundly criticized on social media (other
online users later rallied to her support).
Santra, who lives in the state of West
Bengal, remains defiant. “This is a democracy,” she said. “I have the right to
say what I want.”
For others, the consequences of speaking their mind have been
more serious. Days after the Feb. 14 attack, Madhumita Ray, a professor of
sociology in the state of Odisha, appeared on a local news show where she had a
heated exchange with a retired army colonel.
Ray said war with Pakistan was not the
solution and evoked Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. She also
mentioned the Indian army’s excesses in places like Kashmir and India’s
northeast. Ray said the retired colonel shot back that she was “anti-national”
and people like her should be “slapped.”
Manoranjan Mishra, the television anchor who moderated the
segment, said he received angry calls and messages after the show aired,
including one saying Ray should be killed. The channel decided not to upload a
video of the segment to its website.
“When sentiment is high, we shouldn’t hurt the emotions of our
viewers,” said Mishra. The only other time he recalled a similar level of
public anger was when deadly communal riots convulsed the state of Odisha in 2008.
But back then, “social media was not in the picture,” he said.
A few days later, Ray says she was asked to resign from her post
by administrators at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in
Bhubaneswar (a college official said that Ray had resigned citing personal
reasons). Ray said she had expected a reaction to her comments, but was shocked
to find the cost was her job.
In another sign of the times, a government minister publicly
questioned the patriotism of a prominent journalist who had asked him about proving the impact of
India’s Feb. 26 airstrike on an alleged terrorist camp in Pakistan. Such
questions “belittle our armed forces” and are a “matter of shame,” said Piyush
Goyal, the minister for coal and railways.
Wathar, the professor who was forced to kneel and apologize, is
unsure of his own future. His college has instituted a committee to examine the
episode and has asked him to explain his online comments. Meanwhile Sachin
Bagewadi, 21, a computer science student from a right-wing Hindu group who took
part in the incident, said Wathar’s “anti-national” post had received a fitting
response.
“I didn’t think anybody would get
offended by an ordinary person like me,” said Wathar. “I was only raising a
question to the government.”
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