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Erosion of the liberal ethos in the Indian elite

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Erosion of the liberal ethos in the Indian elite Empty Erosion of the liberal ethos in the Indian elite

Post by confuzzled dude Fri Aug 07, 2015 10:25 pm

"There has been an erosion of the liberal ethos in the Indian elite," says Sunil Khilnani, director of the South Asia Studies Programme at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. "Twenty to 25 years ago secularism was healthier in some ways."

For since independence, as the historian Ramachandra Guha puts it, India has not become a "melting pot" but remained a "salad bowl" culture. While there has always been friction between the different constituents of that culture, the rise of the BJP, which first came to power nationally in 1996, marked a hardening of sectarianism.
Days earlier, shock had greeted official confirmation of the discovery of the country's first Hindu terror cell, thought to be responsible for a series of bombings previously blamed on militant Muslim groups. There were links to a former student leader in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalists who form the country's main opposition, and to an army colonel. This last aspect was particularly worrying, given the welcome tradition of apoliticism in the armed forces.

The month before that, Hindu right-wingers, dubbed "Saffro-Nazis", killed more than 500 Christians in Orissa, forced many others to convert and displaced tens of thousands, all supposedly in retribution for the murder of a local leader for which Maoists claimed responsibility.
http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2008/12/india-attacks-internal-threat

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