INDIA: Growing Isolation Under Right-Wing Rule

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Analysis - Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Sep 16 1998 (IPS) - By forcing the independent World Commission on Dams (WCD) to cancel its public hearings in South Asia, the Indian government has sent out signals of growing intolerance, paranoia and xenophobia.

The cancellation of the WCD visit and hearings, scheduled for Sep. 21 and 22, marks a new stage in the process of lowering of India’s global stature and its growing isolation under the rule of the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, especially after the nuclear tests of May.

Less than a month ago, New Delhi had welcomed the WCD. The Commission was set up in February, with a mandate from a conference last year of 37 “stakeholders” including the World Bank and International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

The Commission is chaired by Kader Asmal, South Africa’s water resources minister, and includes representatives of the dam- building industry, governments and NGOs.

The WCD’s public hearings on “Water and Energy in South Asia: Large Dams and Alternatives” were scuttled owing to active lobbying by the BJP. At the core of this rabid opposition is the Narmada dam project located in Gujarat, the western state where the BJP rules. The World Bank, following an independent review, walked out of the project on environmental grounds in 1992.

The Gujarat government had first welcomed the Commission. In May, it invited Asmal to visit Gujarat. Later, under pressure from the construction lobby and BJP lawmakers, it made a U-turn. By late August, it was threatening to prevent the commissioners from visiting Gujarat and even to arrest them.

On Sep. 11, the BJP prevailed upon the national government to tell the Commission that its visit is not “opportune”. It cited the argument that issues relating to the dam are “coming up before the Supreme Court during this month. Keeping this in view and all other relevant factors”, the visit should be cancelled.

WCD chairman Asmal says the cancellation “has caused me great pain and sorrow. This is an international tribunal with people of distinction.” The move is drawing protests from the world over.

The ground cited by New Delhi is flimsy. The dam-related litigation goes back to 1994 and there have been scores of hearings. There is nothing special about the next one. There is no bar by the Supreme Court on an external review or independent scrutiny. In any case, the WCD is a non-official body without a legal mandate. Its working cannot be considered as interference with India’s domestic legal process.

The dam on the Narmada, called the Sardar Sarovar Project, has come in for criticism because of its high costs, the likely displacement of over 200,000 people and the submergence of 220,000 ha of land, including 14,000 ha of forests.

The project’s benefits (1.8 million ha irrigation) are modest. Besides, there are cheaper, environmentally preferable, alternatives which will displace far fewer people, without compromising on irrigation potential.

Gujarat has repeatedly violated the conditions on which the project was cleared by Indian authorities, the most important being stage-by-stage resettlement of displaced people six months before submergence. More than half the refugees are tribals and forest-dwellers, among India’s most vulnerable people.

The real reason for Gujarat’s opposition to the WCD’s visit has little to do with legality. It is a combination of three factors: fear that the WCD’s hearings would turn the floodlights on the controversial scheme; the BJP’s growing hostility to any critical public debate on accountability, especially on environmental issues; and finally, the increasingly aggressive nature of nationalism under Hindu-chauvinist influence.

This last factor is closely related to the nuclear tests and the bellicose anti-Pakistan rhetoric that followed, especially over Kashmir, duly reciprocated by Islamabad. This variant of nationalism is based on a militarised view of a society’s strength, and an obsession with weapons of mass destruction.

This flows from the BJP’s view that “Hindu India’s manhood” was destroyed by centuries of “invasion”. Most such theories of “invasion” are historically baseless. Today’s Hinduism is only remotely connected with that of antiquity. The BJP denies India’s multi-religious, multi-ethnic character.

Domestically, the second factor spells suppression of all debate on the ground that the entry of “external” agencies such as the WCD is an “intrusion” and violation of India’s “sovereignty”. Thus, BJP legislators from Gujarat, including Home Minister Lal Kishan Advani, met the prime minister to plead that the WCD’s visit would be “totally misconceived.”

There are signs of growing intolerance in BJP-ruled states. In Gujarat alone, there have been some 40 attacks by Hindu fanatics on Christians, and several cases of Bible-burning. In Uttar Pradesh, missionaries have been harassed, and in Maharashtra, threatened as “aliens”. The BJP is notoriously anti-Muslim.

The cancellation of the WCD visit further strengthens the same trend. It invokes fraudulent nationalism to suppress debate on an important environmental issue, with far-reaching ethical and human implications. If the trend persists,India, once tolerant and syncretic, could soon become a bigoted society where no debate is possible, and dissent is suppressed on tawdry pleas.