OBSERVER REPORT ISLAMABAD Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said the world was acknowledging the anti-democratic and fascist ideology being imposed in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K) and in mainland India. In a tweet, featuring the cover of The Economist, the prime minister said the fascist ideology of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the biggest threat to regional peace and stability. He also pointed out that already eight million Kashmiris and Muslims in India were suffering because of Modi’s fascist policies. An article whichappeared in the weekly magazine read that Modiled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in India had “stoked divisions in the world’s biggest democracy.” The cover of the magazine showed the BJP’s election symbol, a saffron lotus flower, growing out of barb wire. The article addressed the recently passed controversial citizenship law and the growing intolerance in the country. “Last month India changed a law to make it easier for adherents of all subcontinent’s religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time BJP wants to compile a register of all India’s 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants,” says the article. The article rightly recognises that the law targets the Muslims of India specifically as “many of the country’s 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless”. Referring to the law as part of a “decades-long project of incitement”, the Indian publication rightly recognises that the incumbent ruling party has used it as “electoral nectar”. “What has been electoral nectar for BJP is political poison for India.” The Indian publication further adds that Modi’s latest initiatives threaten Indian democracy and is “likely to lead to bloodshed”.
