Malik Ashraf
CITIZENSHIP Amendment Bill promulgated by Modi regime and the ruthless force being used against those demonstrating against that enactment is not only being criticized all over the world but the people within India who believe in secular identity of the country, human rights activists and intellectuals are also raising their voices against this inhuman, discriminatory and communal move. Harsh Mander, a human rights worker, writer and a teacher, in his article published in The Hindu commenting on the police brutalities against minorities in Utter Pardesh said, “Uttar Pradesh is in the throes of what is fast becoming a gravely culpable crime against humanity. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the Chief Minister has declared war on the minority communities of his State, inciting and encouraging his police forces to unleash upon them an unlawful and brutal reign of terror.
It is not as though police bias and violence against the minorities is unusual in communal violence. On the contrary, as I have often maintained, communal violence cannot sustain for more than a few hours unless it is actively encouraged by the State and the Police. But it accomplishes this, most of all, by culpable inaction; by deliberately standing by as mobs attack minorities. Often the police inflict grievous hurt on a disproportionately large number of minorities, in firing while dispersing mobs. But what we are witnessing in Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh is the police force itself becoming the riotous lynch mob. I have handled, as district officer, the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and the violence resulting from the movement to demolish the Babri Masjid. Since I left the civil service, I worked closely with the survivors of the Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar (U.P.) carnages, and the earlier communal massacres of Nellie (Assam) and Bhagalpur (Bihar).
What is unfolding in UP is on a scale and with a methodological deliberateness which I have not witnessed so far outside Kashmir and the North-East — touching a highly dangerous new low. I walk through many Muslim homes in U.P., my eyes clouding, my heart sinking in shame, witness to their ruin after a rampage of hate by men in uniform. Cars and scooters are overturned and burned, television screens and washing machines smashed, cash and jewellery looted, crockery, even toys shattered, a lifetime of a family’s belongings devastated in minutes, the family inconsolable. I have borne painful witness to these scenes too many times, in 1984, 2002, 2013. The difference in U.P. is that the marauding mob which mercilessly wrecked home after home of its Muslim residents was police personnel in uniform.”
The article is an eye opener for all those who believe in human dignity and human rights particularly the rights of minorities. It is a shameful indictment of the so-called biggest democracy in unprecedented crimes against humanity. The writer has also impliedly alluded to the human rights abuses and oppression against Muslims in Kashmir which he believes was on a much larger scale than in Utter Pardesh. The reality is that what is happening in India and IoK is a deliberate implementation of the RSS philosophy of Hindutva which is basically anti-Muslim. It is a real threat for the regional and global peace like the supremacist philosophy of Hitler which spelt disaster the world-wide.
The world surely cannot afford yet another catastrophe on a similar scale. Prime Minister Imran Khan has been warning the world about the lurking dangers in the region as a consequence of the implementation of Hindutva by the Modi regime in pursuance of which he scrapped the special status of IoK, bifurcated the territory into two entities and made it part of the Indian Union in defiance of the UN resolutions on Kashmir. In his tweet on Saturday Prime Minister Imran Khan was right on money to observe “ brutality of the Indian police reached new lows as its pogrom of Muslims in India continued as part of fascist Modi government’s ethnic cleansing agenda”.
Ethnic cleansing by India within the mainland and in the IoK needs immediate attention of the world community. The Modi regime needs to be stopped in its tracks before it is too late. It must be dissuaded from what it is doing in IoK. Eighty million people are under siege since the 5th of August and the Indian oppression against Kashmiris, as regularly being reported by the international media, continues unabated. Kashmiris are fighting for their right of self-determination promised to them by the world community and the UN through its resolutions. Indian action regarding IoK is an affront to the conscience of the world and the UN which has an obligation towards the people of Kashmir in regards to their right of self-determination. It is a shame that the world community and the UN seem least bothered to address the root-cause of the conflict in this region.
The situation in Kashmir has also brought the two nuclear powers face to face with each other. Pakistan is very much a party to the Kashmir dispute and therefore cannot allow India to get away with what it has done in IoK and continues to do. The world community and the UN must persuade India to reverse the course in IoK and unleash efforts to resolve the Kashmir dispute if they are really interested in peace and security of the region and the world at large. The US and its allies who are looking the other way to the situation in IoK blinded by their strategic and commercial interests also need to scratch their conscience and realize the fact that the possible armed confrontation between Pakistan and India, which are both nuclear powers, could have disastrous consequences, jeopardizing their own interests in the region.
— The writer is freelance columnist based in Islamabad.
