From December 2022 to November 2023, India holds the presidency of the G-20, an intergovernmental discussion board comprising the world’s 20 largest economies — 19 international locations and the European Union. Domestically, the G-20 is offered as a chance for India to set the agenda and promote itself on the worldwide stage.
Nevertheless, amid the good advertising alternative that the G-20 seems to represent for India, there’s a actual concern that India will market a model of itself that’s exclusionary, by cautiously erasing elements of its society that don’t align with the present Indian authorities’s imaginative and prescient of India. That is already seen within the selection of emblems and venues that might be spotlighted all through G-20 conferences, which selectively show a singular spiritual identification regardless of India’s spiritual and identification pluralism.
The present Indian authorities below Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been characterised as Hindu nationalist, and it’s no shock that this ideology shines via in a number of locations in regard to the G-20.
Take, as an illustration, the selection of outing throughout an early diplomatic briefing, when India invited diplomats to visit the prison cell of Savarkar, a Hindu nationalist leader imprisoned in the course of the British colonial period. Savarkar was a leading advocate for exclusionary Hindu nationalism and stays an icon for the ideology so far.
Take into account additionally India’s discourse on its “culture” work group. India writes that this element entails “conserving India’s cultural heritage” and showcasing “unity in diversity.” But, reference to cultural heritage from Sunni Islam — India’s second largest faith — doesn’t exist on the website. Whereas monuments such because the Qutb Minar in Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra are UNESCO World Heritage websites, and have sometimes featured in India’s “Incredible India” tourism branding, right here they’re merely absent. Equally, the web site touts Modi’s outreach to the Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, and Tribal communities in India, however India’s Sunni Muslims usually are not talked about.
This can be a warning signal: As a part of its Hindu nationalist undertaking, the federal government arguably constructs Muslims as permanent outsiders. Whereas the tradition work stream of G-20 claims to need to help range, cultural industries that don’t subscribe to Hindu nationalism’s worldview are merely erased.
This erasure is dangerously harking back to previous cases of violence, such because the demolition of a the sixteenth century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, and up to date threats to destroy the Gyanvapi Mosque in close by Varanasi, which Hindu nationalist factions declare to be standing on the ruins of a Hindu temple demolished by Muslim invaders. A petition within the Supreme Court docket looking for to ban Muslims from getting into the Gyanvapi Mosque is ongoing.
The need to erase the presence of Islam even resulted in removing of a bus stand in November 2022, as a BJP politician alleged that domes on its prime resembled a mosque. Extra just lately, in January 2023, authorities within the state of Uttar Pradesh demolished yet one more mosque, reportedly as a part of a road-widening undertaking.
As Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay writes, the conferences India has organized for the reason that begin of its presidency could have already helped India safe worldwide legitimacy and widespread recognition for Hindu nationalism. It’s because India is intentionally wielding its G-20 presidency as a type of mushy energy, via strategic communication to form discourse about India. India’s cultural diplomacy, which has for a long-time centered on its capability to soak up peoples and their cultures right into a land of potentialities, is now in stark distinction with Hindu nationalist cultural diplomacy.
As Ravinder Kaur argues in her guide “Brand New Nation,” India is branding itself internationally to traders as a beautiful funding vacation spot for world capital, and domestically to its residents by promising the restoration of misplaced ethnonational glory. There’s a actual fear that India’s strategic model communication on the G-20 will solely additional legitimize Hindu nationalism. In spite of everything, Hindu nationalism could have been born in Indian cities, however that isn’t the place it gained its power. Fairly, as Kaur concludes, “it was achieved in the cosmopolitan surroundings of Davos and in the posh studios of brand managers eager to ‘serve their nation.’”
India has declared the theme “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” — or “One World, One Family” — to information its presidency. The G-20 can take this theme in two methods: They’ll both conceptualize the household as a homogenous entity, thereby legitimizing exclusion. Or they will acknowledge the inherent range of the world, and use the theme as a real alternative to honor nationwide and worldwide range.
India should promote and help its numerous cultural heritage, and counter the erasing of minority tradition. Others should do their half, too: G-20 states should insist that the discussions heart on selling range and inclusion, by encouraging interplay between communities. One factor is obvious: What have to be prevented with utmost care is giving legitimacy to an exclusionary nation-branding undertaking through which minorities are banished to the sidelines.
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