India is going through difficult times where the “once fringe” fundamentalist groups have now become mainstream and, with the complicity of “fascists in positions of power”, are running the show, says leading human rights activist Teesta Setalvad.
One of the country’s leading campaigners against communal violence, who has been fighting for ensuring justice for the 2002 Gujarat riot victims, Setalvad, however, sees the recent Bihar polls as a silver lining behind the “dark clouds of communalism and fascism” that have “engulfed the country since the Narendra Modi-led government came to power in 2014”.
“A chief characteristic of the Modi government is that the fringe has now become the mainstream. You have people in parliament, people as ministers and people in position of power, who are unabashedly promoting religious fundamentalism,” Setalvad told IANS in an interview here.
“What we used to call as fringe are now actually running the show. The NDA is just a facade, it’s the RSS which is controlling the government and groups like the VHP and the likes of Bajrang Dals are running the show,” Setalvad added.
While there have been continuous criticism of the prime minister for remaining mum on incidents of intolerance, including the lynching of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri over rumours of eating beef , Setalvad asserted that silence is actually Modi’s “unspoken consent”.