LONDON: Many pundits are predicting a civil war in the US due to a host of worrying reasons. They say that the US political system has become dysfunctional. The democratic institutions are weak. There are poverty, racism, gun violence and mass shootings that are eating away at the fabric of the society.
For many years now ever since Modi came to power in India the American media has expressed reservations about Indian democracy. When PM Modi paid a state visit to the US last year, the New York Times commented, ‘ in hosting Modi, Biden has pushed democracy to the background’.
The Washington Post highlighted what it called the, ‘ press freedom crisis in India’. The Western media in general has also been working in a sync to demonize Modi. They claimed Modi is a Hindu nationalist, using government institutions to target opposition leaders and pursuing Hindu majoritarian policies. Modi, they said, had autocratic leanings.
Former President Barack Obama even gave a grave warning. He said that, ‘if the rights of minorities were not protected and if Muslims are targeted in India then there is a strong possibility that the country at some point will start pulling apart’.
The media had another issue with Modi mainly his neutrality over Ukraine. President Biden wisely ignored the jaundiced media and signed big deals with India. The US is to supply advanced fighter jets and armed drones to India. A 2.5 billion dollar investment by US based Micron technology in a semiconductor chip assembly unit in Gujarat will be in production by next year.
According to Micron Technology President and Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra, this will make India a leading world player in computing architecture and artificial intelligence technologies and there will be new opportunities for memory and storage and transforming how the world uses information to enrich life for all. India’s Solar Panels maker, Vikram Solars is making a $1.5 billion investment in the US. The US has included India in the Mineral Security Partnership. The MSP is a collaboration of 14 countries and the EU to catalyze public and private investment in responsible critical minerals supply chains globally. Minerals are essential to the global economy and to the technologies powering the clean energy transition.
Meanwhile, India conducted the world’s largest democratic exercise without any major violence. The peoples’ verdict has been accepted. A united India is marching ahead. There has not been a single word of praise by the Western media for India’s successful elections. Such is the Western media’s antipathy towards India and it has hit tnadir. There is a moral and professional bankruptcy. These media outlets are nothing but propaganda sheets.
Let us now turn to the US. Many pundits are predicting a civil war in the US due to a host of worrying reasons. They say that the US political system has become dysfunctional. The US democratic institutions have been weakened. There are poverty, racism, gun violence and mass shootings that are eating away at the fabric of the society. According to Feeding America, 34 million Americans regularly face hunger. 38 million people live in poverty. The national debt is 21 trillion dollars. Extreme right wing groups are spoiling for a fight.
Christian fundamentalists too are eager to change the country and impose their form of ideology on the society. While the Western media continuously talks about Hindu fundamentalists it never talks about Christian fundamentalists or White supremacists with the same fervour.
A once confident, trailblazing nation is not so sure of itself anymore. So sure was America of its place in the world that the political scientist Francis Fukuyama said, “This is the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
Under the circumstances the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, if it had succeeded, would have been a catastrophic event which could have plunged the country into a nightmare scenario. America has escaped a possible civil war thanks to the assassin’s bullet missing Donald Trump. However there seems to be no soul searching by the media. Had a similar thing happened in India, the Western media would have predicted an imminent break up of India? They would have blamed Modi for his so-called Hindutva policies. The outpouring of anti-Hindu sentiments would have reached a crescendo.
And yet here we are. India under Modi has had an election in which there were 969 million eligible voters.
On the other hand, the US is looking increasingly shaky as it gears up for a fractious election in which the stakes are high and the fear of a civil war tangible. Nearly two-thirds of American adults told The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in December that democracy itself could depend on who wins the November presidential election. Pundits have warned the US was ‘one inch away from civil war’ – rather like the 1960s when civil unrest was triggered by political killings.
On the international front the futile proxy war that the Western countries are fighting with Russia through Ukraine has put the world on the brink of a 3rd World War. Russia’s Putin has said as much. If the Western and NATO forces entered the Ukraine war, that would be a trigger for Russia to declare an all out war. The Ukraine president Zelensky is seeing his country being destroyed by Russia and yet he cannot see the folly of his actions. Trump has a much more nuanced position on the Ukraine war and his election could avert a world calamity. The only international leader who could broker this peace is Modi.
The Indians are not schadenfreude about America’s plight. It is a reality that the country is facing.