Lethal Modi’s genocide narrative: R2P’s role ?
TRUE, some rulers are badly known in the history of their evil deeds and anti-humanist policies, by any means, Indian PM Narendra Modi is no exception to this rule. Modi’s crafted state policies reflect the worst narrative of Muslim genocide in India.
Indian Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday said, “Far more dangerous than Omicron is ‘O Mitron’! We are measuring the consequences of the latter every day in increased polarisation, promotion of hatred & bigotry.”
In December, numerous Hindu religious leaders and politicians gathered in Haridwar (a prominent pilgrimage site for Hindus in the northern Uttarakhand state), where hardliner Hindu speakers called on the community to arm themselves for genocide against the Muslim minority.
According to the Genocide Watch, ‘’India is plagued by religious and regional tensions. In 2002, hundreds of Muslims and Hindus were killed in inter-religious violence in the state of Gujarat. Many thousands more fled their homes. Dozens of worship places and houses were destroyed.
Some government officials were involved in the riots as they purposely refused to intervene and stop the killings, and even supplied weapons and planned attacks by Hindu mobs. Because of its religious, caste and economic discrimination, India is at Stage 5 polarization’’.
With Modi’s taking over power in 2014, many Hindus have now been persuaded to believe that India’s biggest problem is its Muslims.
Before 2014, most Indians thought their chief concerns were poverty, insufficient economic growth and corruption.
Instead of addressing the real issues that India faces today, the BJP has increasingly fallen back on supremacist politics to deflect attention and evade responsibility. To keep winning elections, it needs to keep polarizing Hindu voters against Muslims and spinning ever more outrageous campaigns to demonize Muslims.
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), apparently a terrorism prevention law, has instead routinely been rampantly used by the Modi Government to detain those deemed critical of the government, from lawyers and activists to journalists, priests, poets, academics, civil society members and Kashmiri civilians. Between 2014 and 2020, 10,552 people were arrested under UAPA.
Gregory Stanton, the Founder and Director of Genocide Watch, said during a US Congressional briefing there were early “signs and processes” of genocide in the Indian state of Assam and Indian-administered Kashmir.
‘’We are warning that genocide could very well happen in India,” Stanton said, speaking on behalf of the non-governmental organisation he launched in 1999 to predict, prevent, stop and seek accountability for the crime.
“According to research from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, India is at a high risk – number two in the world – for a genocide… We call on all of you to recognize that the hatred being expressed in India is at a very serious level. We can’t let the Biden Administration repeat the mistakes of the past.”
The recent calls— by the BJP-RSS members in Haridwar and in Delhi— have clearly endorsed that Islamophobia has now become a foghorn.
The lethal silence of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah about these uncivilized calls are enough signs of promoting hatred and hostility against the Indian Muslims.
Leading global human rights watchdogs have said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Islamophobic policies and tolerance of open incitement by Hindu extremists for Muslims’ genocide are pushing India towards mass violence against and massacres of Muslims.
Michael Kugelman, from the Wilson Centre, hit out at the Indian government over its silence. “Not a peep, much less a condemnation, from the govt. Sad truth is that this deafening silence isn’t the least bit surprising,” he tweeted. The reality is that Muslims appear to be under attack in India.
Similarly, today, admiration for ethnic and racial ideology—Nazism, in particular, often reframed with a genocidal hatred for Muslims—is rampant in the Hindu nationalist camp— and has never been as mainstream as it is now. Ostensibly, Narendra Modi is following a Nazi legacy of genocide.
Arguably, the contemporary international criminal law continues to consider genocide as horrific in its scope precisely because perpetrators identify “entire human groups for extinction” and “seek to deprive humanity of the manifold richness, its nationalities, races, ethnicities, and religions provide” (Krstiæ, Appeals Chamber judgment, para. 36).
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) states that whether or not a country has ratified the Convention, it is legally bound by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law.
The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty (1948), the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG).
As for India’s legal bindings, though, the UN Convention has been ratified by India in 1959, and thus, it becomes an obligation to abide by the same under Art. 51(c) of the Indian Constitution.
Whereas since many Hindu extremists—calling for genocidal violence —still roaming free whilst India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi maintaining a conspicuous silence, thus, India breaches its obligations to the Genocide Convention.
Though UNSC’s Responsibility to Protect (R2P) populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing have emerged as an important global principle since 2005, its implementation remains inconsistent and selective.
Despite the fact that Modi’s hands were clearly involved in butchering 2000 Muslims as Gujarat’s CM in 2002, sadly, no Pinochet like-trail was tried against him.
Juan E Mendez, the first United Nations Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide (2004-2007), has termed the situation in India, home to 200 million Muslims, “dangerous” and “deeply disturbing”.
While giving an interview to Aljazeera, he advocates that making calls for killing millions in any legal context is a crime, the crime of threats at the very least.
But unfortunately, so far, there is no appropriate response from the international community, particularly the UNSC’s role of R2P. By no means, the UNSC could ever escape its responsibilities. Modi’s genocidal mindset against the Indian Muslims ranks India as the worst state for minorities on this planet.
Should not Narendra Modi face a Srebrenica-like trail if he continues to commit crimes against humanity (first and second-degree genocide)?
—The writer, an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-international law analyst based in Pakistan, is member of European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on IR, Critical Peace & Conflict Studies, also a member of Washington Foreign Law Society and European Society of International Law.
