Thread by @FriedrichPieter

Although the emerging pandemic gave #Modi over a year which he could have spent preparing for what one journalist termed a “viral apocalypse,” he instead spent it laying symbolic foundations for the Hindu Nation which the #RSS seeks to build.

twocircles.net/2021apr28/4419…

Now, as COVID spirals out of control, the Modi regime’s priority appears to be to keep doing what it does best: image management.

Yet the gleam of Brand Modi risks being dimmed by the shadow of stigma. People around the world are waking up and smelling the chai. Within India, millions are mad as hell and refusing to take it anymore.

The nation has been in upheaval for nearly 18 months. The COVID crisis has brought events to a fever pitch.

At the pandemic’s outset, Modi had already faced months of relentless protest against his regime’s new Citizenship Amendment Act (which premises acquisition of Indian citizenship on religion).

In March 2020, what remnants of the brutalized protests was left were swept aside by what the regime calls “the longest and strictest lockdown in the world.”

While the RSS praised Modi’s COVID response and enjoyed the opportunity to begin assuming police-like duties, Modi assumed a ceremonial role to fulfil the decades-old ambitions of the BJP.

One of the Hindu nationalist party’s central goals was to establish a temple at a disputed site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. In the 1990s, Modi helped organize a nationwide campaign to remove a pre-existing mosque from the site.

The campaign reached its climax when, after listening to speeches by RSS-BJP leaders, a mob tore the mosque down, paving the way for Modi to assume the mantle of a priest as he laid the foundation stone for the new temple on 5 August 2020.

The date was auspiciously chosen to coincide with the anniversary of another longstanding RSS-BJP demand — the 2019 annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in a nation now ruled by Hindu nationalists.

“He travelled to Ayodhya in the middle of a raging pandemic to be the master of the groundbreaking ceremony of the temple, in spite of heading the government of a constitutionally secular country,” wrote peace and conflict researcher Dr Ashok Swain.

“Modi does not anymore pretend even as the leader of a secular country. He sees himself and overtly acts like a king of a Hindu Kingdom.”

In December 2020, Modi again acted as both king and priest, performing prayers as he laid the foundation stone for a new parliament building in Delhi.

“This is not the redesign of buildings, it is instead Modi’s way of placing himself at the centre and cementing his legacy as the maker of a new Hindu India,” wrote British sculptor Anish Kapoor.

Architecture as propaganda, he noted, is often used “to give a good face to a fascist regime.”

Lately, the regime needs a facelift — and it’s lashing out at anyone who points out the obvious.

To suffocate dissent, Modi’s regime has locked up academics and activists, charged journalists with sedition, shuttered Amnesty International India, blocked critical social media, started a spat with a pop star, and harassed a foreign newspaper.

#ResignModi #Resign_PM_Modi

As India gasps for air, however, countless innocents are paying a price forced upon them by a regime that values its iron grasp on power over the lives of the people. #ModiResign #Modi