South Asia Citizens Web

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the then main opposition party in India and widely tipped to emerge as the largest party in India’s sixteenth parliamentary election, released its election manifesto 1 in New Delhi on April 7 last, the day the nine-phase election stretching from April 7 to May 12 commenced. . . . the page 39 of the 42-page document has attracted attentions of the commentators, both within the country and also abroad. Never mind that the issue is really not a hot topic in this election. The section is captioned: ’Independent Strategic Nuclear Programme’. Evidently, the issue dealt with therein explains the extent of interest, in certain limited circles, triggered by it.

Anhad has put together this video on Zohra apa using footage from various Anhad programmes where she participated.

The Lok Sabha election has produced what was easily the worst conceivable outcome by giving an outright majority to the Bharatiya Janata Party under a man who is widely believed to have been complicit in mass killings of Indian citizens belonging to one faith, and who even 12 years on has not been fully exonerated by the country’s legal system despite its compromised, semi-functional nature, and vulnerability to diabolical manipulation. Make no mistake. Despite a limited (31 percent) national vote, Narendra Modi’s victory is the result of a Rightward shift in society, and the triumph of Hindutva combined with neoliberal capitalism.

Earlier this month, India, the largest democracy in the world, held its national parliamentary elections. As was widely expected, the result was a clear and potentially epochal victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the country’s leading right-wing party, and its leader, the pugnacious, nationalistic and neoliberal Narendra Modi, whom the Economist — in a somewhat unprecedented anti-endorsement — recently described as “a man who is still associated with sectarian hatred.”