Col Muhammad Hanif (R)
SINCE independence of India in August 1947, it has been proved by the ground realities that the minorities in India, especially under Modi-led, RSS inspired, BJP rule are under dire threat of attacks by the Hindu mobs, with the government looking the other side and the Judiciary likely to give pro government and Hindu majority sympathetic decisions. Following examples will prove this contention. In 2002 about 2000 Muslims were killed by the Hindu mobs during Hindu-Muslim riots in the Gujrat state, where Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister, and the government and the Gujrat police just looked on.
And, as stated by the BBC News dated 22 April 2011, despite a senior police officer’s sworn statement to India’s Supreme Court alleging that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had deliberately allowed anti-Muslim riots in the State, a court in India said, investigators have found no evidence against Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, in connection with a riots case in 2002. The inquiry into a massacre during the riots also found no evidence against the 58 co-accused.
On 6 December 1992, thousands of activists belonging to extremist Hindu groups and political parties along with BJP leaders entered the historic Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India, built by the Mughal Emperor Babur in 1528, and demolished that during the day time, while the government of the time and the police looked on without any action. The Hindus did so to build a temple there. The demolition of the Babri Mosque had sparked violence that killed some 2,000 people.
And, after 28 years, as stated by the, BBC News of 30 September 2020, a court in India has acquitted top leaders of the governing BJP, including LK Advani, MM Joshi and Uma Bharti, of any wrongdoing in the destruction of Babri Mosque by Hindu mobs in 1992. The verdict also acquitted 32 of the 49 people charged, whereas 17 had died while the case was underway. The court said there was insufficient evidence to prove the demolition had been planned. Earlier, the Indian Supreme Court had indirectly legitimized the demolition of Babri mosque by ruling that alternative land be given to the Muslims to build a mosque.
The Muslim minority in India was also subjected to lynching on the pretext of rearing or transporting the cow. According to the India Spend content analysis of the English media, the Muslims were the target of 52% of violence. And, 97% of these attacks were reported during Modi’s rule, from 1914 to 2021.
In India the Hindu extremists are even forcing the Christians through violence to convert to the Hindu religion. According to the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA) dated 1 October 2020, the Christians are being attacked in India for rejecting idol worship. The Chhattisgarh Christian Forum Arun Pannalal said that in October 2020 about 2,000 villagers vandalized the houses of at least 14 Christian families, to force them to quit their faith. The Hindus want the Muslims, Christians and others to either reconvert to the Hindu religion or to leave India.
Modi government’s passage of the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), in December 2019, that specifically fast-tracks asylum claims of non-Muslim irregular immigrants from the neighbouring Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, had hurt the Indian Muslims, as the law had led them to believe, that, millions of Indian Muslims living in the country for generations, could be stripped of their citizenship rights. When the Delhi Muslims protested against the law, they were attacked and many were looted and killed by the Hindu mobs, while the police and the government looked the other way..
Apart from the above facts, the Indian government is also doing state terrorism with the Indian Sikhs and the Muslims of the occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The Hindu dominated Indian Army had assaulted on the Sikhs’ Golden Temple in 1984 in Amritsar, killing thousands of Sikhs. That operation had outraged the Sikhs around the world, who accused the troops of desecrating the faith’s holiest shrine. Based on their grievances, the Indian Sikhs are demanding an independent homeland, called Khalistan, (current Punjab state).
Another example of India’s brutal state terrorism is the genocide of the people of Jammu and Kashmir being done since October 1947 by trampling their human rights by denying to hold a plebiscite ordered by the UNSC vide its Resolution 47 of 5 January 1949, to decide whether the Kashmiris wanted the state to join Pakistan or India. To crush their ongoing freedom struggle, India has used above 700,00 troops, causing countless HR violations. From 1989 to 2020, Indian troops have martyred 95,686 Kashmiris, widowed 22,920 women, orphaned 107,802 children and molested or gang-raped 11,219 Kashmiri women.
On 5 August 2019, the Modi Government, in utter violation of the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir, ended the special status of the occupied Jammu and Kashmir and divided the State into two union territories through an Act of the Indian Parliament. To pre-empt the Kashmiris reaction, India has arrested all the Kashmiri leaders and the Kashmiri youth, and since then above 900,000 Indian Army troops are carrying out genocide of the Kashmiris, especially killing of the Kashmiri youth in the fake armed encounters.
The above discussion proves that during the Modi-led BJP’s rule in India, the rights and life of the Indian minorities will remain under threat, and the Kashmir dispute will remain a threat to the regional peace. Therefore, it is necessary that while the world’s HR organizations and the UNSC remain vigilant to protect the Indian minorities, the UNSC should resolve the Kashmir dispute to avoid a war between two nuclear neighbours.
—The writer is an ex-research fellow of IPRI and senior research fellow of SVI, Islamabad.
