As much as India is confronted with the specter of intolerance, so does Canada, my adopted home. When Modi came calling here earlier this year, he and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper got on well. Both represent the ultra-right in respective countries. The middle-man in this new-found friendship was Conservative MP Patrick Brown, who lauds himself as “honorary Gujarati” and who was dearly called “brother” by Modi.
Brown has made at least 15 trips to India, and has promoted Gujarat to Canadian companies. In an earlier column, I have said that both Modi and Harper have similar traits, such as arrogance and self-importance and lust for power. They have each given their respective parties a big push, with Modi leading the BJP in the last election and Harper dominating Canadian politics since he acquired the prime minister’s office in 2006.
Harper is trying to hang on to the post this year. Whether he will survive for another term is to be seen on Oct. 19, the day of the voting. The public polls predict he has a lead but the polls can change as the voting day approaches. I have read two books on Harper recently, Harperland: The Politics of Control, by Lawrence Martin, and Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, both seasoned journalists. There have been other books.
In the books I read, they focus on Harper’s personality and background. Martin focuses on Harper’s rise to national politics and how he used his close friends to climb up and ultimately seize control of the reconstituted Progressive Conservative party which merged with Canadian Alliance, after being one of the founders of the Reform Party. He was first elected as MP on a Reform Party ticket from Calgary Southwest in 2002.
Modi, on the other hand, didn’t have such an impressive run at the national level, but held the reins of chief ministership in Gujarat for a long time. His was a sudden move to national politics, discarding old hands such as Lal Krishna Advani and Sushma Swaraj, to mention but two.
In the campaign to the Canadian election, the Conservatives are engaging in “identity politics” as well as “politics of fear”. One of the key issues in the election is that of niqab, the veil worn by many Muslim women. The issue raised its head when one Muslim woman, Zuneera Ishaq, of Pakistani origin, went to court to appeal against the government order that the niqab must be removed when taking the citizenship oath. The court upheld her plea, and the federal court, on the government’s appeal, upheld the lower court’s decision. The government has gone to the Supreme Court. The turban was also an issue in the police and the military, with the Sikhs winning the fight.
However, the issue has divided not just the Muslim community but also Canadians at large. There are charges and counter-charges and both the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP) have supported the niqab. It’s become a “wedge issue” and, as some political pundits have said, it could either hit or favour the Conservatives.
No doubt the Conservative stand could gain the Harper the majority of the “white vote”, especially in Quebec and the Conservative heartland of Alberta. But how it fares in other provinces, particularly Ontario, which has the highest number of seats in Parliament, is to be seen.
This issue is raging in Canada as much as the Dadri killing in India. Ever since the BJP came to power at the centre, India has seen a sharp rise in intolerance. It’s nice to know that Modi has at last opened his mouth, instead of just smiling for selfies. The politics of hatred in India has ruptured the heart of India. It’s not shocking that some authors like Nayantar Sahgal, one of my favourites authors when I was growing up, and the Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi has retuned their respective awards.
When BJP came to power, there was fear that secularism was going to be under threat. In the short time, the party is ruling India’s destiny the fear has grown sharply and many sensible or right-thinking Indians are aghast at what is happening to the soul of India. I just finished reading Siddharth Deb’s book, The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India, and he eloquently informs what India is turning into.
With the BJP in power in Goa, we have seen how the secular soul of Goa is besmirched with communalism. The recent shuffling of the cabinet in which Alina Saldanha was demoted is a lesson for the minority communities to beware. Mathany Saldanha must be stirring in his grave. I always thought that Mathany did a gross mistake in throwing his lot with the BJP, seduced no doubt by the redoubtable Manohar Parrikar. First, to have given Francis D’Souza a raw deal and now Alina made to eat crow (forget beef, with the prospect of a beef ban looming), the BJP has shown how much it loves the minority community in Goa.
India sits on the communal faultline, as much as my adopted country, Canada is abandoning its secular character, which is enshrined in the Charter of Rights. Quebec has shown its xenophobic stance with its religious intolerance, and there’s fear that Harper may cause a national meltdown if he persists in following divisive politics.
PS: One heartening piece of news I want to convey is that for the first time in Canadian elections a Goan, Tanya de Melo, is running on a NDP ticket in Etobicoke Centre, a part of the municipality of Etobicoke which had a large population of Goans, especially after the Asian exodus from Africa in the early ‘70s.
(Eugene Correia is a
senior journalist.)
