The banality of evil, the normalization of evil, is now manifest in our streets, in our classrooms, in very many public spaces. The mainstream press, the hundreds of 24-hour news channels, have been harnessed to the cause of fascist majoritarianism. India’s constitution has been effectively set aside. The Indian Penal Code is being rewritten. If the current regime wins a majority in 2024, it is very likely that we will see a new constitution.
They would have known that, at the same time they were feting Modi, Muslims were fleeing a small town in Uttarakhand in northern India after Hindu extremists affiliated with the BJP marked x’s on their doors and told them to leave. There is open talk of a “Muslim-free” Uttarakhand. They would have known that, under Modi’s watch, the state of Manipur in India’s northeast has descended into a barbaric civil war. A form of ethnic cleansing has taken place. The Centre is complicit; the state government is partisan; the security forces are split between the police and others with no chain of command. The internet has been cut. News takes weeks to filter out.
You Mustn’t Pretend You Didn’t Know - The Los Angeles Review of Books
