Intolerant India | Economist 经济学人 2020.1.25 期

Intolerant India

不宽容的印度

Narendra Modi and the bjp are creating divisions that imperil the world's biggest democracy

Modi 以及印度人民党正在制造分裂，这个分裂危及了全世界最大的民主

Last month India changed the law to make it easier for adherents of all the subcontinent's religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) wants to compile a register of all India's 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants (see Briefing). Those sound like technicalities, but many of the country's 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless. Ominously, the government has ordered the building of camps to detain those caught in the net.

上个月印度通过修改法律，让除了伊斯兰教以外的所有印度宗教信仰者能够更容易地获得公民权。这意味着，执政的印度人民党要让全印度 13 亿公民进行名册登记，作为驱逐非法移民的手段。这些听起来是法律细则，但这个国家的 200 万穆斯林没有任何文书证明他们是印度人，所以他们面临着成为无国籍身份的风险。危险的是，政府已经命令建造营地来拘留这些人。

You might think that the bjp's scheme was a miscalculation. It has sparked widespread and lasting protests. Students, secularists, even the largely fawning media have begun to speak out against Narendra Modi, the prime minister, for his apparent determination to transform India from a tolerant, multi-religious place into a chauvinist Hindu state.

你或许认为这是印度人民党的计划是一个错估。这引发了广泛而持久的抗议。学生、无神论者甚至大量讨好其的媒体都开始公开反对首相 Modi ，反对他让印度从一个宽容、多宗教的世界变成沙文主义印度教国家的明显意图。

In fact, the scheme looks like the most ambitious step yet in a decades-long project of incitement. The bjp first rose to national prominence by agitating for the demolition of a mosque in the city of Ayodhya, to make way for a temple to Ram, a Hindu deity. The destruction of the mosque in 1992 by a mob of Hindu extremists, followed by deadly riots, only propelled the party's ascent. Likewise, a massacre of Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002, when Mr Modi was chief minister, made him a hero to Hindu nationalists around the country.

事实上，这个计划看起来长达数十年的煽动计划的最雄心勃勃的一步。印度人民党首先引起国内的关注，通过鼓动拆除Ayodhya 的清真寺以建造印度神 Ram 的庙宇。清真寺是被一群印度教极端分子在 1992 年所拆毁，随之而来的是致命的骚乱，推动了政党的崛起。相同的悲剧发生在 2002 年，当 Modi 还是首席部长的时候， Gujarat 州的穆斯林大屠杀让他变成了整个国家的印度教英雄。

Alas, what has been electoral nectar for the bjp is political poison for India. By undermining the secular principles of the constitution, Mr Modi's latest initiatives threaten to do damage to India's democracy that could last for decades. They are also likely to lead to bloodshed.

印度人民党的选举蜂蜜，印度的政治毒药。通过推翻宪法的世俗条规，Modi 最新的立法提案程序严重威胁了印度本可以延续数十年的民主。他们甚至有可能带来流血事件。

The sad truth is that Mr Modi and the bjp are likely to benefit politically by creating divisions over religion and national identity. Such subjects keep the party's activists and their allies in Hindu-nationalist groups energised—always a boon, given India's relentless sequence of state elections. They also distract attention from awkward topics such as the economy, which has struggled since the bjp's thumping election victory last year (see Finance section). Most important, Mr Modi seems to calculate that a sizeable minority of Indian voters are sympathetic to his constant insinuation that Muslims are dangerous fifth-columnists, always scheming to do Hindus down and sell out their country to Pakistan. That is enough to keep him in office. Because of India's first-past-the-post electoral system and a divided opposition, the bjp won its outright majority in parliament with just 37% of the vote.

不幸的事实是 Modi 和其政党正试图通过分裂宗教和国家认同来攥取政治利益。鉴于印度无休止的国家选举，这些话题能保持政党的活跃度，也保持了印度教国家主义追随者的活跃，这是一直对其是一个福音。他们也让那些在难堪话题上的关注力分散，——自从去年印度人民党大获全胜后经济始终在挣扎的边缘。最重要的是 Modi 看起来已经计算过，确实有一群印度投票者的少数同情那些穆斯林，那些穆斯林是 Modi 持续影射的危险第五专栏作家，他们一直计划拉印度教下水，并向巴基斯坦出卖国家。（但这并不重要，剩下的选民）已经足够让他留任了。因为印度古往今来的选举系统以及分裂的抵制，印度人民党虽然在投票率只有 37% 的情况下，依然赢得了国会的绝对多数。

Just now the bjp may be hunting for a new grievance. The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that had the effect of depriving it of its favourite cause, by clearing the way for a Hindu temple to be built at the site of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya. The citizenship ruckus appeals to the party for the very same reasons that it has prompted widespread alarm. The plan to compile a register of genuine Indians as part of a hunt for foreign interlopers affects all 1.3bn people in the country. It could drag on for years, inflaming passions over and over again, as the list is compiled, challenged and revised. Just how the register will be drawn up, and what the consequences of exclusion are, remain woolly. Indeed, Mr Modi is already claiming it has all been misunderstood. Meanwhile, the hullabaloo helps reinforce the notion, so electorally valuable to the bjp, that Hindus, although about 80% of the population, are threatened by shadowy forces that it alone has the courage to confront.

现在印度人民党或许正在寻找新的抱怨。最高法院在最近发布了一个法令，为了在 Ayodhya 的清真寺废墟上建造印度教寺庙清理道路。公民权的争议吸引了政党，是因为非常相似的理由——它促使了公众的广泛关注。这个计划通过编制印度人登记，并驱逐部分外国闯入者来影响全国的 13 亿人。它可以拖延数年，名册在编写、质疑、修改的过程中，可以一次又一次地激化情绪。但登记将会如何制定，排除外来者的结果是什么，仍然是模糊不清的。事实上， Modi 已经宣称这个政策是被误解了。同时争吵也强化了这一议题，对于印度人民党来说是有选举价值的：即尽管占有总人口 80% 的印度教徒仍然被黑暗力量所威胁，他们必须独自鼓起勇气来面对这个困境。

This imperils the inspiring idea of India as the world's largest democracy. Mr Modi's policies blatantly discriminate against his Muslim compatriots. Why should a secular government shelter persecuted Hindus from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but explicitly vow not to take a single downtrodden Muslim? The citizenship row is only the latest in a series of affronts, from the bjp's lionising of vigilantes thought to have killed Muslims to the collective punishment of the people of the Kashmir valley, who have suffered arbitrary arrests, smothering curfews and an internet blackout for five months.

这些做法打击了印度成为世界上最大的民主这个鼓舞人心的想法。Modi 的政策公然割裂他的穆斯林同胞。为什么一个世俗政权只庇护那些来自阿富汗，孟加拉國和巴基斯坦的受迫害印度教徒，而明确发誓不接受被压迫的穆斯林？这样公民序列是一系列的侮辱的最新的一次，印度人民党视这些私刑为荣，他们通过杀死穆斯林，对Kashmir valley 人进行集体惩罚，强制拘禁、窒息监禁以及断网 5 个月。

Since independence, India has confounded predictions that its democracy would crumble by accommodating its many constituencies of language, ethnicity, caste and religion. A secular and impartial government, even if flawed in many other ways, protects all these groups. The deliberate and sustained persecution of one of them constitutes an implicit threat against all— and so puts the political system at risk. Voters should recall that the bjp has experimented with policies that disadvantage other minorities, from low-caste Hindus who defy the party's view of their religion to speakers of languages other than Hindi.

自从独立以来，印度证明了预测失误，即它的民主将会被来自不同语言、种族、种姓制度以及宗教的选区选民所撕裂。一个世俗中立的政府，即使在很多地方有缺失，但依然应该保护所有的群体。这种蓄意持续迫害的其中之一造成了对所有人的隐性威胁——并且会将政治系统放到危险的边缘。投票者应该想起，印度人民党已经尝试推行对其他少数族群不利的政策，从那些反对政党的宗教政见的低种姓的印度教徒，到与印度教不同的语言的人。

Because his rabble-rousing has a human cost, Mr Modi is also tarnishing the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, a preacher of nonviolence. As it is, many Muslims have been lynched or beaten to death for supposed slights to Hinduism, such as loving a Hindu woman or killing a cow. From time to time the stoking of anti-Muslim sentiment leads to massacres like the one in Gujarat, in which more than 1,000 people were killed. By perpetually firing up Hindus and infuriating Muslims, the bjp makes fresh bloodshed more likely.

因为他的煽动需要付出生命，Modi 也开始模糊关于非暴力传道者 Mahatma Gandhi 的记忆。事实上，穆斯林会因为一些莫须有的错误被印度教徒处以私信或殴打致死，例如爱上印度教女性，杀死一头牛。日复一日地煽动反穆斯林的情绪，导致了超过 1000 人被杀的 Gujarat 的屠杀。通过激起印度教徒以及迫害穆斯林，印度人民党可能让新的流血事件再次发生。

Mr Modi may imagine he can keep communal tensions under control, ramping them up and tamping them down as his political fortunes demand. But even if he is only cynically exploiting religious bigotry, many in the Hindu nationalist rank-and-file are true believers. They are not easily restrained, as the slaughter in Gujarat showed. With his warlike rhetoric about Pakistan, his head-cracking in Kashmir and his flagrantly biased approach to citizenship, the prime minister has raised the zealots' expectations. He may not want to take things too far—he has a country to govern—but they will have no such compunction.

Modi 也许想象他能够控制日常的紧张状态，拉一拉，提一提，将其作为他的政治财富。但是即使他毫不顾忌地利用宗教狂热，许多印度教的普通民族主义者是其真正的信仰者。一旦发生了类似Gujarat 的事件，他们不易被制止。在他对巴基斯坦的好战雄辩下，在Kashmir 的强硬态度以及他对于公民权的极端偏见下，首相掀起了他狂热的预期。他也许并不想要让事情走得太远——他毕竟需要领导国家——但那些狂热者可能不会有丝毫的内疚。

Something worth defending

那些值得守护的东西

Happily, many Indians have already had enough, as the recent protests show. The Supreme Court, which this week declined to suspend the citizenship law, should heed this, show some unexpected spine and declare it unconstitutional. And rather than stoke hostility between two of the world's great religions, Mr Modi should look for other paths to voters' hearts.

可幸的是，许多印度人已经厌倦了，如同近期的抗议者所表达的。最高法院在这周拒绝推迟公民权法律的审议，他们应该听从抗议者的意见，竖起自己的脊梁，宣布法律违宪。而不是给世界上两个最大的宗教火上浇油。Modi 则应该看清投票者的心。