Srinagar
Repressive measures against minorities and protesters in India have been sharply criticized by Freedom House, a key US watchdog of democracy, in a report warning of democratic decline worldwide.
Its Freedom in the World report 2020 targets India, which claims to be the world’s largest democracy, for a “harsh crackdown on political rights and civil liberties” including seven months of military lockdown and internet shutdown in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which discriminates against Muslims, and the suppression of protests, as well as violence and harassment against journalists and academics, were also highlighted as “threatening the democratic future” of India.
The report blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for India’s “alarming departures from democratic norms.”
Although India’s 1950 Constitution enshrines equal treatment for every religion, it was pointed out that Hindu nationalists have in the recent decades increasingly challenged state secularism, arguing that India’s identity is fundamentally a Hindu one.
Although BJP denies its policies are anti-Muslim, the country’s Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah has referred to Muslims in the state of Assam as “termites”.
During the past year, Freedom House said “25 of the world’s 41 established democracies experienced net losses” of freedom.
Among the worst offenders is India. The recent anti-Muslim pogroms in New Delhi — which killed 46 people and were carried out with the connivance of senior police officers — are indicative of the country’s illiberal direction under Prime Minister Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP.
Freedom House notes that the BJP has “distanced itself from the country’s founding commitments to pluralism and individual rights, without which democracy cannot long survive.”
The report said, “The first major step was the central government’s unilateral annulment of the semiautonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. Federal authorities replaced the state’s elected institutions with appointees and abruptly stripped residents of basic political rights.
“The sweeping reorganization, which opponents criticized as unconstitutional, was accompanied by a massive deployment of troops and arbitrary arrests of hundreds of Kashmiri leaders and activists.—APP
