Ali Sukhanver
SURELY killing of George Floyd by a policeman was a very cruel act but it was an act of an individual; the whole of Trump Administration, the entire American society cannot be held responsible for this one-man’s show. It is something very unfair that whole of the US is being blamed for promoting racial indiscrimination. Things become horrible in reality when such type of actions take place under the shelter and supervision of the government as we see in India. Every day, countless Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Dalits have to pass through a grind just because they do not belong to the Hindu community. Once proud of its secularism, India has become a land only for the upper-caste Hindus; others are not allowed even to breathe freely. This is purely an inhuman approach and it must have been discouraged but unfortunately the members of the UN Security Council appreciated this approach by electing India as a non-permanent member of the Security Council.
The most sacred body responsible for maintenance of peace and harmony all over the world is UN Security Council. Whenever there is a situation of anarchy or civil war or any other type of disturbance in any country, it is the UN Security Council which decides about the deployment of UN peace troops in the troubled area. According to the UN Charter, it is the Security Council which responds to crises around the world on a case-by-case basis. The Charter further says that it is the ‘responsibility of the Security Council to monitor the work of UN peace operations on an ongoing basis, including through periodic reports from the Secretary-General and by holding dedicated Security Council sessions to discuss the work of specific operations’. More important is the fact that under Article 25 of the Charter the Council alone has the power to take decisions which Member States are obligated to implement while other organs of the UN have authority of making recommendations to the Member States. In short the Security Council is a very sensitive body of the United Nations, so the member-countries must be those having an unblemished reputation. In case of India, the situation is altogether otherwise.
Mistreatment and injustice with the religious and racial minorities in India is nothing secret; everyone is aware of it. According to a report recently published in the Christian Post, the early quarter of 2020 had been a very frightening period for the Christians in India. Attacks on Christians and their places of worship in India continued to escalate in both number and severity in the early months of 2020 with 27 violent incidents reported in March alone. The report referred to a document prepared by the United Christian Forum (UCF) which pointed out 56 threats against Christians as well as 78 incidents of violence against the Christian community between January and March of 2020. The UCF said that these attacks took place in Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana and Goa. In most cases, the attacks were perpetrated by mobs objecting to Christians holding worship services. There are countless examples of forced conversion of Christians to Hinduism. Hindu extremists are threatening the Christians that they would have to face serious consequences if they do not change their religion. Same horrible situation is being faced by the Sikhs and the Muslims too though they have never been an easy pill to swallow but the worst of all are the Dalits also known as the Untouchables. Their fate is to face violence and forced ‘social distancing’ at the hands of the upper-caste Hindus. Even their shadows are not allowed to touch the people from more privileged castes but when the matter comes to the rape of a Dalit woman, the upper-caste Hindu men try to ignore all that ‘untouchablity’.
On 13 January 2020 an article of Sumanti Sen was published in The Logical Indian which said, “Four Dalit women are raped every day in India. Every time a Dalit woman or a woman from any so-called lower-caste is subjected to sexual violence, it becomes clear that the prevailing structure of caste and the status of women in society are largely responsible for the violation of their human rights.” Unfortunately this all injustice, cruelty and suppression are being done under the supervision of the BJP. As far as Hinduism is concerned, it never promotes hatred and harshness on to those who are not Hindus but the BJP extremists are simply deforming the serene face of this sublime religious philosophy. Actual problem is neither India nor Hinduism; the problem is extremism and the rigidity demonstrated by the BJP and Mr. Modi. The countries which voted in favour of BJP’s India for non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council must have kept all these facts and figures before doing so. The most important thing is that we must never forget, by supporting the extremist mindset, we become a part of extremism. Extremism always leads to terrorism. Being called a terrorist is, however, a very painful thing.
—The writer is freelance columnist based in Multan.
