Raashid Wali Janjua
THE Modi-led BJP government has left Nazis behind in its repressive actions and political persecution of the minorities. Starting with the revocation of the UN sanctioned and constitutionally mandated Articles 370 and 35-A that guaranteed constitutional rights and autonomy for the persecuted Kashmiris, has led to an uprising in the Muslim dominated disputed region of Kashmir. Cocking a snook at UN Resolutions the Modi regime has put entire region of India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir under a constant lockdown, a euphemism for a jailed existence sans internet and freedom of movement. For the first time in Indian history all Kashmiri leaders regardless of their earlier political affiliation have joined hands to denounce the Indian high handedness by appealing to international community for a deliverance from the worst apartheid imposed upon them.
Coming on the heels of the Kashmir blunder the Modi regime committed another egregious crime by excommunicating a large Muslim population through a highly divisive and unlawful Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) according to which all religious minorities other than Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh that had migrated to India before 2014 would be granted Indian citizenship. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has condemned the Act as discriminatory on the basis of religion. The Muslim community in the state of Assam and other north-eastern states of India along with the Muslims inhabiting the length and breadth of India have risen in protest against this discriminatory law that targets Muslim community, exacerbating religious polarization in the country. When the Muslim youth rose in protest in Jamia Millia, Aligarh Muslim University, Nadwa College, Jawaharlal Nehru University and other educational institutions, the most brutal tactics were used through police to suppress the dissent. What has gone wrong with India? And what is the impact of these brutal policies on the Indian society and politics is the million dollar question. How a religion that once prided itself on the non-violent creed of “ahimsa” has come to be equated with exclusion and belligerence? The sepulchral gloom of the human recipients of the Hindutva violence is in sharp contrast to the syncretic inclusivism of a faith that places premium on “Moksha” ie human salvation. The melting pot of different faiths and beliefs has now been replaced by a hate creed that does not tolerate any other faith or religion. The Hindutva fanatics have spawned a culture of antipathy stamping out all vestiges of pluralism in India. Pluralism and integration have given way to religious intolerance and ethnic particularism in Modi’s India.
The Indian Muslims that constitute only 13.4% as against 80% of Hindus are the subject of worst discrimination in access to jobs, healthcare and education. Muslim community in almost all states of India holds lower paying jobs besides having shorter life spans because of an institutionalized discrimination against them. The recent amendment in CAA and introduction of National Register Certification (NRC) aims at cultural exclusion of Muslims from the Indian social and political mainstream as well. India’s 1.3 billion Muslims who form nearly 15 per cent of the country’s population fear that the measures are aimed at marginalizing them. Not less than 140 petitions have been filed by Muslim groups, opposition parties and activists, who say the law violates India’s secular constitution and is a slow and insidious attempt to erase the social and economic signature of an already persecuted Muslim minority that had inhabited the subcontinent since centuries. Cultural violence against Muslims has become the state policy under Modi regime’s Hindutva world view. Hindutva term signifies not only Hinduism but a deeper concept of adopting a way of life that is culturally Hindu. Anyone that does not follow the Hindutva creed in its most narrow sense is apostatized and ex-communicated from his or her Indian roots. The term Hindutva was coined by Vinayak Damadar Savarkar in his 1923 essay, “Hindutva: who is a Hindu?” Savarkar elaborated his concept of Hindutva in the following words; “To the Hindus, the independence of Hindustan could only be worth having if it ensured ‘their Hindutva — their religious, racial and cultural identity’, swarajya to the Hindus must mean only that ‘rajya’ in which their ‘swatva’, their ‘Hindutva’ could assert itself without being overloaded by non-Hindu people. The RSS ideologue Golwalker in his controversial 1966 book “Bunch of Thoughts” subscribes to the concept of a “cultural nationalism” inspired from the original writings of V.D Savarkar that celebrate eradication of all religious and cultural symbols other than Hindu religion. The BJP leaders openly say that the Muslims can only survive in India as adherents to the Hindutva creed.
The BJP government of Prime Minister Modi has misconstrued the electoral mandate as permissive of a reengineering of the social and cultural landscape of the country by targeting the Muslim minority. India’s 1.3 billion Muslims who form nearly 15 per cent of the country’s population fear that the measures are aimed at marginalising them. Not less than 140 petitions have been filed by Muslim groups, opposition parties and activists, who say the law violates India’s Secular Constitution. India, being a signatory of the Global Compact for Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration, has to respect the human rights of all migrants. The violation of the human rights through discriminatory CAA has elicited the UNHRC Commissioner’s intervention through an application to Indian Supreme Court requesting to make the UN body a third party to an application filed against CAA by an Indian civil servant. The controversial law and illegal annexation of Kashmir have been condemned by Turkey, Malaysia and even an American federal panel on international religious freedom. The world’s conscience needs to be awakened as a rabidly xenophobic and bigoted Hindu regime perpetrates the worst human rights’ excesses against Muslims based on visceral religious hatred. The blood of the innocent Muslim community cries out for justice. The international community and Muslim countries need to take note of the injustice being perpetrated by poisonous creed of a racist regime.
— The writer, a Retired Brig, is a PhD scholar at NUST, Islamabad.
