Gurpreet Singh  

As the world’s so-called largest democracy heads for a general election in May, 2024, overseas Indians need to mobilize to rid their home country of a Hindu supremacist leader.  

Narendra Modi first got elected as the Prime Minister of India in May, 2014. He has completed almost ten years in power.  

A diehard member of the RSS, a right wing and intolerant cultural organization that wants to transform India into an official Hindu state through social engineering, Modi is the leader of the ruling BJP, which is known for its anti-minority stance.   

Previously the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi was complicit in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms. Though he was never charged or convicted, he was denied visa by foreign governments until he got elected to the highest office. His nine years of rule coincides with the release of a BBC documentary that exposes his involvement in the Gujarat episode. Not surprisingly, Modi's government not only banned the documentary, but tried to browbeat the BBC office in India.  

However, that is not the only crime committed against humanity by Modi. Attacks on all religious minorities, including Muslims, have increased under his rule. As if this was not enough, Modi and his supporters have intensified their assaults on political critics and the opposition. The police and surveillance agencies are being used to terrorize dissidents. Independent media voices are being trampled with impunity.  

In short, Modi has turned the entire India into Gujarat, where political polarization made him the hero of majoritarianism. After all, Gujarat was the laboratory where his experiment with bigotry paid rich dividends, enabling him to sustain power for a very long time. Even today, his party continues to reap the benefits of the 2002 bloodshed. The last assembly election gave them another victory, after the BJP leaders shamelessly invoked the ghosts of the anti-Muslim massacre.   

Let’s face it that the RSS and the BJP never hid their designs, and yet the majority has voted them to power twice with huge mandates. Emboldened by such support, Modi has become more ruthless and arrogant.  

This is not to say that previous governments were perfect and never indulged in wrongdoings. What is unique about a BJP government is that it is being run by the mandate of the RSS that started its journey in 1925.  

Through public drills and assemblies across the country from the time of British India, RSS has been able to poison the minds of thousands of people to create an exclusionary Hindu nation. Ironically, they never participated in the freedom struggle, and rather remained disinterested in it. So much so, one of their supporters assassinated Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a towering leader of the passive resistance movement. Gandhi was murdered for advocating secularism and Hindu-Muslim unity, and for opposing the idea of a Hindu nation. The RSS was briefly banned after this incident.  

Modi hypocritically reveres Gandhi, while some of his party colleagues openly admire his killers. Nothing can be more contradictory than Modi’s admiration for a controversial figure, V.D. Savarkar, who was the instigator but acquitted for the lack of evidence.  

In spite of such baggage, the RSS and the BJP continue to challenge the patriotism of anyone who questions them for the ongoing repression in India. Whoever dares to criticise them can be easily branded as anti-national and thrown behind bars.  

The world largely remains ignorant to the ugly reality of the RSS, which drew inspiration from tyrants like Hitler. Its founders also justified the Jewish holocaust. But global leaders, especially in the western world, are obsessed with China and Russia. They are trying to pander to Modi against their traditional enemies by conveniently overlooking his misdeeds that actually call for sanctions. They need to be called out by the Indian Diaspora for being selective when it comes to the human rights situation in India.  

Indians abroad who are concerned with these developments have a time window of one year to work hard to rid India of Modi and the RSS.       

The 2024 election is not going to be an ordinary affair. A year later, the RSS will celebrate its birth centenary on a grand scale, and is likely to redefine India as "Hindu Rashtra" where non-Hindus are to be treated as second class citizens. It’s time that the global citizens of Indian heritage get organized and reclaim the country of the dreams of our freedom fighters, who had envisioned an egalitarian and humane society. Particularly for those living in North America - where the Ghadar Party was formed in 1913 - this should be a great cause of worry.  

The Ghadar movement was started by Indian immigrants to launch an armed uprising against British occupation and establish a secular republic. Let’s follow their example. Today, the ballot has replaced the bullet, and we can think of travelling back to India to strengthen the hands of those who are already fighting against the RSS at personal risk, and encourage our loved ones to defeat the BJP in the May 2024 election. Alternatively, you can remain here and do canvassing either online or through phone calls. Holding public rallies to raise awareness worldwide is another option to sensitize the western media and politicians about what’s happening in India, and to build international pressure to ensure that Modi does not precipitate another 2002-like violence to win the next election. Notably, Modi's government has failed to deliver on its promises of making India economically self-sufficient and strong. The lack of opportunities is one reason why most migrants are forced to come to Canada from India. This has given Modi a reason to indulge in the politics of religion even more aggressively. So far, he has kept his support base intact by delivering on the BJP's core promises to the Hindu voters over the years.  

We need to urge everyone vote strategically, to kick out Modi and bring in another alternative that is secular and tolerant. Nevertheless, we must not give a blank cheque to any non-BJP party. Make them accountable as well, for their past mistakes of either hobnobbing with the RSS, or playing majoritarian politics for short term gains that laid the ground work for Modi to ascend to power.  

Barring a few parties which have consistently opposed the RSS ideology, others have tried to outdo them by using the Hindu nationalism card out of sheer opportunism. We must identify honest candidates and grassroots level activists who can bring real change. People may not realize that the RSS has already done great harm to Indian society, through penetration in the administration, judiciary, the armed forces, the cinema, the media and the academia; any attempt to dismantle the power structures they have created might take years. Even if Modi and the RSS are ousted, it will still be a long way to go to wipe out the residue of their legacy of hatred.