Jacobin Radio: Achin Vanaik on Modi's India

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

Suzi continues to look at the spectacular global movements that have rocked the world in 2019. The mass protests are not dying out and as the year comes to an end, they are gathering force, as we see in India — with huge demonstrations challenging Narendra Modi’s rule. The government’s repressive response has only added fuel to the protests and strikes. Achin Vanaik, scholar-activist in Delhi, gives us the big picture of Modi’s far-right government and Hindutva policies that have sparked massive protest, especially the new Citizen Amendment Act which denies citizenship based on religion, excluding and further marginalizing the country’s 200 million Muslims.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Jacobin Radio, I'm Susie Weisman Radio. I'm Susie Weisman.
0:11.0	And in the past several weeks, protests have erupted across India in the most far-reaching
0:17.1	challenge to the Modi government since it came to power in 2014.
0:21.9	The state has responded with brutal and deadly force and dozens have now died
0:27.1	as a result of police violence aimed at protesters.
0:31.0	That's more deaths than have been reported in Hong Kong where the protest movement is in its seventh month.
0:37.0	The government clampdown in India has also involved blocking mobile internet, banning large gatherings and force has seemingly
0:45.2	only added fuel to the protests.
0:49.3	The spark for the protests across India was the passage of the controversial citizenship amendment
0:54.5	act that was pushed through the legislature by Modi's B.J.P. party and it introduces
1:00.9	discriminatory religious qualifications into citizenship laws,
1:05.0	giving Indian citizenship immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan,
1:10.0	but not if they're Muslim.
1:12.0	So the law has seemed to deliberately discriminate
1:14.6	against Muslim immigrants. Opposition parties say it's unconstitutionally
1:19.2	bases citizenship on religion and that marginalizes the country's 200 million Muslims.
1:26.0	So we've invited writer and social activist Aachimbanayak to help explain all of this to us.
1:32.0	He's participated in the protests in Deli. to help explain all of this to us.
1:32.6	He's participated in the protests in Delhi
1:35.6	and has been writing about Indian politics for decades.
1:38.4	He was a professor at the University of Delhi
1:41.2	and Delhi-based fellow of the Transnational Institute in
	...

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