DNA

Islamabad: ‘If Modi gets a two-thirds majority in the ongoing general elections in India, he would gear up for undoing secular clauses from the Indian constitution to ultimately declare India a ‘Hindu State’, said Professor Dr. Moonis Ahmar, former Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Karachi, at a roundtable discussion organized by the Institute of Regional Studies on ‘Dynamics of Indian Elections and its Implications for Pakistan’.

Speaking on the subject, Prof Ahmar said that under Modi’s third terms as Prime Minister of India, the Bhartiya Janata Party’s distorted and polarized narratives would continue to grow unabatedly, and a result, all the minorities would have to face the music in case of not conforming to RSS’s social order.

On Pakistan-India relations, Prof. Ahmar said that relations between the two countries would largely remain disturbed as the Modi regime would probably be lobbying for the absorption of the Gilgit Baltistan (GB) through its propaganda network, adding that, such motives could be a continuing source of tensions between Pakistan and India.

Despite Modi’s hardline stance on the GB, and state-sponsored terrorism mantra, there could be some breakthroughs in terms of trade resumption, and easing of visa restrictions but in near completion of his third terms as a PM, he opined. Why because Modi would like to leave a legacy as a peacemaker since it would be his last stint in the power, he added.

However, looking at the ground realities, the current elections in India would be a one-on-one contest between BJP-led NDA and Congress-led INDIA, said Prof. Ahmar and thus it was difficult to predict Modi’s clean sweep, he added.

He further argued that the two-thirds majority would not be a piece of cake for Modi as there was no ‘Modi Wave’ in these elections as such which was there in 2019 elections primarily because of the so-called Pulwama incident in February 2019, he added.

Prof. Ahmar said that the Congress-led INDIA alliance had been banking on Modi’s communal politics for a long but it could not make a significant impact in terms of increasing their vote bank in the past, however, in recent elections there were chances that INDIA might be able to capitalize on Modi’s highly charged polarized politics, he argued. In addition, the persecution of opposition leaders and workers by the BJP and systematic strangulation of freedom of the judiciary at home had also a ripple effect on the society said Prof. Ahmar but how it reflected in the election results was yet to be seen, he added.