If Modi Indeed Was A Dictator, India Would Be Like Communist China

The world may have forgotten the June of 1989, when thousands of unarmed students and activists were butchered by the Chinese state in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sir Alan Donald, the then British ambassador to China, wrote in a secret diplomatic cable to the UK Foreign Office that at least 10,000 people were killed; wounded students bayoneted as they begged for their lives and a mother shot as she tried to help her three-year-old daughter were just two horrific instances recorded by him.

The students were merely asking for 'democracy'; a word which is amorphous and selective in today's world as is 'human rights'. They sought freedom from corruption and nepotism in Communist Party of China, seeking freedom of speech and press.

When party leader Zhao Ziyang sought a peaceful dialogue with the students, he was arrested. Thousands of activists were reportedly kept under house arrest, some allegedly tortured in custody and many went missing.

Unfortunately, the government of India, under its Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, suddenly remembered its 'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai' slogan and ordered government-controlled TV channels to give minimum coverage to the massacre. He indicated to China that "it will not revel in China's domestic troubles and offer some political empathy instead". While in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev went one step further and switched off the microphone when human rights activist Andrei Sakharov rose on the podium to demand the recall of Soviet Ambassador to China as a protest.

The ripples of the movement were so powerful that they can still be felt by those who advocate for freedom from fear and state oppression in China. Young lawyer Xu Zhiyong was jailed in 2013 for four years for starting a movement to take the Chinese constitutional rights – rights to vote, speak, criticise the government, enjoy the dignity of the person – seriously. Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin was detained for 23 days in an unknown location for working in support of the families of human rights lawyers, journalists and other activists, who were under attack and went missing. However, it was the arrest of Liu Xiaobo, literary critic and human rights activist, which caught the world's attention. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who prevented further massacre at Tiananmen Square through his peaceful negotiations, died of cancer as a state prisoner with no permission to travel abroad for treatment.

Each year, hundreds of activists go missing in China for speaking against the government. A few of them who are eventually released and deported narrate frightening stories of alleged torture through beating, deprivation of food, water and sleep, forced confessions on state-controlled media. Nearly 2,761 such cases have been reported from 2012 to 2015. Hundreds of missing cases go unreported in the media as even the families of the activists are under house arrest and barred from speaking out.

Michael Caster, who worked with Peter Dahlin, has written a book titled People's Republic of the Disappeared based on the 'black jails' or 'Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location' which simply is an ambiguous term for undisclosed places where people who dare speak against the party or the government are kept following state-sponsored abduction. It has been legalised now.

Being paranoid about its own citizens, China has managed to strangle even the religious practices of its Muslim and Christian citizens. Uighur Muslims and Roman Catholics are under constant surveillance. Around 10 million Muslims in the country are not allowed any of their customs including long beards, hijab, keeping Islamic names or even fasting during Ramzan.

Uighur Muslims are being sent to unacknowledged 're-education camps' to unlearn Islam and discard religious practices. They are made to learn Communist Party of China principles, sing party songs and thank President Xi Jinping every morning at breakfast. Around 120,000 Muslims are said to be living in the camps, as also Christians.

Only churches set up by the government are allowed in China and they have no relation with the Vatican. Church leaders, who are recognised by the Vatican and not by the government, are detained as was the case of Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, who went missing last year. He reappeared after seven months of detention. In January this year, the government blew up Golden Lampstead Church in Shanxi province amid protests from its 50,000-strong congregation.

TV stations have been banned from airing programmes with 'excessive entertainment and vulgar tendencies' with two hours a day reserved for party news. Social media is closely monitored for anti-party activities.

In a democratic country like ours, the Golden Quadrilateral project of 5,846 kms linking Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi took 11 years to complete beginning from 2001 to 2012. But China completed 34,000 kms expressway in six years beginning from 1998. When land acquisition for road building starts in India, so does a slew of protests and court cases dragging the project for years. But China often takes the easy and not-so-democratic way out. In October 2011, the residents of a new enclave were given an ultimatum of three weeks to accept the government compensation and move out so their houses could be bulldozed to make way for roads.

And the world turns not only a blind eye but also deaf ears to the plight of the 1.4 billion citizens of one of the super powers which has effectively turned the country into a virtual prison through facial recognition, access to each person's smartphone, robot police and worst internet freedom in the world. Not to mention bull-dozing its way into neighbouring Tibet and India.

The United Nations which often hides behind silence when it comes to China's human rights violations, has suddenly found its voice to warn India about the army's "unlawful killings" in Jammu and Kashmir. Our human rights activists and liberals who have been hollering about the 'environment of fear' that has supposedly engulfed India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, must remember that they have all the freedom to write, shout on television channels, hold candles and take out marches, express their anger on the social media and bad-mouth India on western platforms; in Mao’s China which they look up to, they would just go missing for actions lesser than these while in India, which is a true albeit a flawed democracy, they will always have their freedom of speech and expression.

The Arundhati Roys of India must remember that while they "love India not as a nation but so much of the music, poetry, river valleys," they must also remember that if India does not remain as a nation with its state machinery, policies, military, there will be no more music, no more poetry and no more river valleys for them to save. No country can turn into their impossible utopia.

Though in the last four years we have seen a hitherto unprecedented attack on the actions and words of the country’s Prime Minister by the liberals, it is to Modi’s credit that he has continued on the path of development as an answer to all the attacks; be it connecting North-East to the rest of the country or improving the lives of tribals as an answer to extremism. It must only be because of the compassion he has for his fellow countrymen. Human rights and true freedom are not separable from India’s idea of non-violent justice.

Whenever I read about how China is slowly turning into a police state, I am reminded of Ayn Rand's novella 'Anthem'. A dystopian world divided in 'Cities', governed by councils, babies separated from mothers and raised by the state, their education, profession decided by a group of people. A collectivistic society where individuals live as mere ghosts of men and women, who have no idea of the existence of their freedom to think, to choose and to love. It is my hope that one day my country too will not turn into that dystopian society where freedom exists only for select individuals.

After all, as Albert Camus wrote in Resistance, Rebellion and Death, "If justice has a meaning in this world,… it cannot, by its very essence, divorce itself from compassion". It’s now time for liberals to choose between Mao’s China or Modi’s India.