India's Modi accused of targeting Muslims as election gathers momentum

Hello and welcome to Access Asia. I’m Delano d’souza. Coming up on the show this week, Thai opposition leader Peter Limja Renat speaks to France 24. The lawmaker, currently awaiting A verdict from Thailand’s constitutional court, opens up on the country’s strict Les Majesty laws. The heat is on across large parts of the continent, record-breaking temperatures triggering school closures for millions of children across Asia. And the campaign rhetoric turns divisive as India’s election rolls on. The vote was initially billed as a referendum on Modi, but the Prime Minister and his party are accusing the opposition of appeasing India’s Muslims. Thai opposition leader Peter Limjaranat has spoken to France 24, the Harvard educated lawmaker and his Move Forward party won the most votes in last year’s elections. But he failed to assume the top job after being blocked by the military appointed Senate. He’s currently awaiting verdict from Thailand’s Constitutional Court, which accuses him of trying to amend the country’s strict Les Majeste law. So I think les Majeste law is still an issue here in Thailand could be slapped with les Majeste law just a day or two ago. Comedian is going to be slapped with Les Majeste law. A folk songwriter is going to be an activist is going to be jailed for three years. This happened within 24 hours of this interview. I’m going to find alternatives just to make sure that the goal of, you know, keeping the king as revered as possible and above politics does not get used to destroy political opponents. Now you can watch that full interview on our website funds24.com. Now, large parts of Asia are experiencing an extreme heat wave. Temperatures soaring from India to the Philippines, the heat resulting in a spike in heat stroke related deaths and school closures for millions. The latest heat wave comes after month of April, which was the warmest on record, Leo Mcguinn reports. In the Indian city of Ahmadabad, sprinklers are deployed at this intersection in an effort to provide motorists some blessed relief from the scorching heat. The heat wave that has battered Southeast Asia has been ongoing for a number of weeks. The mean temperature in eastern India was 28.12 Celsius last month, the warmest since records began in 19 O1. While May is expected to bring cooler temperatures for many areas suffering from the extreme weather, that will not be the case in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. With temperatures expected to reach as high as 44°C in the next week, going out in scorching weather conditions is extremely difficult. When sit inside my car, even the car heats up. The air conditioner is also failing to give us any respite. So what do we do to cope with such heat? Next door in Bangladesh, temperatures soared so high last month that primary schools were forced to close. According to one expert, the country’s urban schools are often overcrowded with little ventilation, making it impossible to work in such heat. Further east in Thailand, temperatures have regularly topped 40°, with numerous cities recording all time record highs. According to the Health Ministry, nearly as many people have died of heat stroke this year as in all of 2023 combined. Since June last year, every month has been the warmest such period on record, with scientists blaming climate change for more frequent, severe and longer heat waves during the summer. Now, as the temperature warms in Asia, so is the heat in India’s election campaign. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is vying for a third consecutive term, but the opposition warns it would hasten India’s democratic decline. To talk more about the state of the election so far, we can bring in Mithali Mukherjee, director of journalist programmes at the Reuters Institute and Oxford University. Thank you very much for speaking to us here on the program today. Mitali Indian elections have always been tawdry affairs, but things seem different this time around. We have the Prime Minister who’s openly making Islamophobic statements. We even have the whole minister who essentially said this time around it’s a choice for development. So the BJP or a vote for jihad, which is the Congress party. What’s going on? Delano, thank you for having this conversation. Of course, I think part of this is an extension of what the key parties rhetoric and tone has always been from 2012 onwards. It is particularly acute at this point in time. Just to put some context to what’s happened so far, we are in a situation with polling where more than half of the seats have already polled. There are signs that voter turn out has been quite low across phases, which could be indicative of both voter exhaustion but also reflecting what is deep and acute economic anxiety for many parts of India. This is a situation where India’s GDP is growing at a fairly robust rate. But it is also a reality that India is struggling with deep unemployment as high as 80% among some of the Indian youth which is the 18 to 24 category and also very very high food inflation that’s been hitting households across India. In that context, it is quite ironic that the BJP has now been in power for 10 years, has chosen not to talk about any welfare policies, not to talk about the so-called economic development that they claim has been their big plank over the last 10 years, But to double down on rhetoric. I think what’s a bit shocking, Delano this time round is the fact that there is no, there are no apologies to the tone that has been struck. So whether it is in the form of extremely toxic advertisements and social media content, you know, either depicting the Muslim community as the evil invaders or it is the rallies in which Prime Minister Modi himself has referred to this community as infiltrators. So it is very, very sharp. It’s very divisive. I think people are a bit taken aback by how how transparent tone has been this time around exactly because we even had the population foundation of India that’s come out with a press release saying that some of its findings are being misrepresented by the economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister to create a fear. So essentially Mitali, what we’re seeing is facts and figures that are are being spun to fit a narrative. I think you know facts and figures is sort of the starting point of questioning this document itself. Delano. First, the very, very awkward timing or perhaps well timed release of this report that seems to be in the middle of election campaigning and polling. Second, the fact that this report at no point acknowledges the fact that a census in India has not been conducted as promised in 2021. So you’re basically extrapolating the data from 1951 up to the the figure that you would want to. It is also, I think deeply shameful that a report that claims to look at what population growth trends have been, have focused only on the Muslim community and talked about a growth in percentage. Now if you were to extend that to other communities in India, like the Buddhist community for example, you would see a growth of over 1500% from the year that they have started tracking it in the 1950s to the point that they’ve gotten to it is it is dubious. It is clever, too clever by half. And I think it is quite disappointing to see this sort of tone and tenor being picked up. But I think Delano, it also sort of falls back to the fact that the Narendra Modi government and the party at large are beginning to feel a lot of pressure from different quarters in terms of what their approach has been to the Muslim community in in what has been a very, very communal and toxic tone so far. And it almost seems like this is an excuse to put saying, well, look, the Muslim community is also growing, not looking at absolute figures where the Hindu community has actually grown three times that figure. And how is this polarization being covered in the Indian media? I think before we talk about the term polarization, we should be clear about what’s happening here. It’s not a lot of communities that are being polarized. This is an anti Muslim campaign that the BJP has set forth on through this election period. In terms of how it’s covered, I think another few steps need to be taken back on what has happened across the Indian media landscape through the course of the last 10 years. Mainstream media as we define it, which is not the small digital platforms but large television networks, newspapers and the like, have taken a very, very clear pro government approach. There has been in little to no criticism of the Prime Minister or of any policies. There has been no highlighting of what is a serious problem in terms of not just the anti Muslim rhetoric but on ground violence against the Muslim community. And there has been very, very little time spent talking about what seemed to be the core problems right now that Indias large voting population is facing which is unemployment, which is an extreme inequality within society and which is of course rising costs. Now Mitali, we’ve seen the Opposition’s Rahul Gandhi, who has for years really discussed Modi’s cozy relationship with Indian billionaires, particularly Mukesh Shambani and Gautam Adani. But now we’re also seeing the Prime Minister suggest that the Congress has been accepting truckloads of cash. Take a listen to what Rahul Gandhi had to say in response. For the first time, you have spoken in public about Adani and Ambani. Is it your personal experience that you know they deliver money in trucks? Do one thing, send CB i.e. D to investigate them thoroughly at the earliest. Don’t you hear Modi? I want to repeat to the nation that the amount of money Narendra Modi has given to them. We are going to give the same amount to India’s poor. Mitali. How did two of India’s biggest industrialists get dragged into this election? It it seems very interesting, Delano. And just to pick up on, you know, the bit that Rahul Gandhi was alluding to about Enforcement Directorate allegate, not allegations, but investigations. As we speak, one Chief minister of India has finally been released on bail. Another chief minister remains in jail on accusations. And I would like to highlight word that word, accusations of corruption. This has seemed to be a standard norm for the government where the Enforcement Directorate has been directed at both civil society faces and of course key opposition leaders. The Ambani and Adani family or the family businesses I should say, over the last few years have garnered a really large space within the business community. It has increasingly been seen as a duopoly. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister and the BJP party itself has been accused of favouring both these conglomerates, the Reliance family or the family business more for telecom and the Adani group as well, both in terms of shielding them from serious business allegations as also encouraging them. In a somewhat strange move at a recent rally, the Prime Minister chose to lash out at both these business houses saying they’re the ones that have been fueling corruption and it is the opposition that has been taking money from them. I think if one were to run the data back, the Congress has consistently and Rahul Gandhi within that has been consistently pointing out that there are serious problems in terms of of the favours that are given to both these parties. Bear in mind these these business houses, bear in mind both own and run fairly large media institutions in India. The Reliance Group owns something called Network 18 that also includes CNBC, a business channel. And the Adani Group most recently took over a large television network called NDTV Mitali. We’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us on the program today. Mitali Mukherjee there now election laws in India state that each voter is no more than two kilometers away from a polling booth. That meant a team of 10 poll officers needed to travel two days to ensure a Hindu monk living in a forest in the state of Gujarat could cast his ballot. The 42 year old monk was the sole registered voter in the area. Now, each polling booth also needs to be staffed by at least six polling staff and two police officers. That’s it for this edition of Access Asia from all of a sudden. Team, thank you very much for watching.