India unrest to continue after Modi stokes religious tension

Bloomberg

Escalating protests against India’s new citizenship law have raised concerns that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone too far in appealing to his Hindu nationalist base, increasing the risk of communal bloodshed and threatening to undermine his plans to attract investment.
Police stormed university campuses across India to quell week-long protests by students against a law that bars undocumented Muslims from neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan from seeking citizenship while allowing migrants from other religions. Modi’s top political opponents organized rallies against the law, with the Congress Party’s Rahul Gandhi calling the legislation “mass weapons of polarization.”
Sporadic violence has broken out, with at least 60 students injured during clashes with police on Sunday night in Delhi. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, protesters vandalized a police station and set cars on fire, prompting officers to fire in the air, Press Trust of India reported.
Neither Modi nor opposition parties are backing down, showing that his appeals to a base that wants India to abandon its secular roots could undermine his efforts to attract foreign investment. Asia’s third-biggest economy is growing at its slowest pace in more than six years and unemployment is the highest in more than four decades.
“If the protests become bigger and gain momentum, that might have a bearing on the market,” said Abhimanyu Sofat, head of research at IIFL Securities Ltd. in Mumbai. “For now it has changed the focus from economic issues the country is grappling with, like lower growth and higher inflation. More of the government’s bandwidth may be taken up with handling the protests, which is a concern.”
Still, India’s benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index jumped to a record Tuesday fueled by $13.3 billion of net overseas purchases this year. The rupee has gained 1.2% in the past month, making it Asia’s best-performing major currency after the Taiwanese dollar.
Calls for Calm
Modi issued a series of tweets on Monday defending the law and calling for peace, two days after he told an election rally protesters could be identified by the clothes they wear, a reference to headscarves and other Islamic attire. He blamed the violence on “vested interest groups” and said the legislation reflects “India’s centuries old culture of acceptance, harmony, compassion and brotherhood.”
Opposition parties announced a nationwide protest on December 19 and three large states said they would not implement the new law. The defiance comes within days of Modi losing his hold over Maharashtra, India’s richest state, where opposition parties and a former ally formed a government.
Modi’s political opponents also demanded a judicial inquiry into police forcibly entering the Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi.
Hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the capital’s police headquarters till past midnight on Sunday, demanding the law be overturned while deriding Modi and his powerful home minister Amit Shah.
Shah showed no signs of trying to calm the dissent on Monday, pledging at an election rally in Jharkhand that work on the controversial Ram temple would soon begin after the Supreme Court handed complete ownership of the site to Hindus over Muslims on November 9. Riots near the site in 1992 killed at least 1,000 people.