Daily Times

Political and religious figures and analysts on Sunday said that Indian designs and plans on minority rights are continuously flouting all international laws and conventions with impunity.

They said that people of all parts and regions of India have been deprived of their basic rights by the launch of violent attacks by Modi’s Hindutva activists on Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians across India. In its charter, the United Nations (UN) defines fundamental human rights as the basic settled principles, enshrining freedom of religion, faith, speech, franchise, and equality of all citizens regardless of any ethnic or religious background.

As World Human Rights Day is being observed across the globe, minorities in India and illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) continue to reel under violent and brutal Indian RSS people attacks, occupation of properties, and political injustice. Also, India, being a multi-faith nation, declares itself a secular country in its constitution, and promises protection of religious freedom to all its citizens. However, contrary to these solemn pledges, religious minorities and other vulnerable communities are suffering the worst discrimination and persecution in this so-called biggest democracy of the world, and the conditions have deteriorated in recent years, regrettably.

Demographically, a huge part of the Indian population consists of followers of the Hindu religion. The Human Rights Watch, in its recent report on India, has stated that the BJP-led government had badly failed to properly enforce the Indian Supreme Court’s direction to provide protection to Muslim and Christian minorities, who mostly come under attacks of mobs, led by charged followers of RSS activists of Hindutva ideology. Supported by the BJP government and under the patronage of the police, Hindu extremist groups are launching attacks on religious minorities and other vulnerable communities for not following the Hindutva ideology.

It is worth mentioning here that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had claimed in his address to the US Congress in 2016 that for his government, the Constitution was its real holy book. However, in December 2019, his government passed a law that granted citizenship to all religious minorities, even from neighbouring countries, except for Muslims, with legal experts saying it violated the country’s secular constitution.

Ahsan Nawaz, a senior official from the Ministry of Human Rights, and an expert on human rights told APP that the National Register of Citizens legislation was extremely regressive and a violation of India’s constitution. Father James, a noted rights activist from Peace Centre, said that recently India, particularly the Indian capital, New Delhi, experienced its worst communal violence, targeting the Muslim religious minority community in more than 30 years. The death toll reached 43 and parts of northeast Delhi remain under lockdown. After the incidents of violence against minorities in India, Prime Minister Modi responded after days of silence, Father James added.

Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Religious Harmony and Pakistani Diaspora in Middle Eastern and Muslim Countries, Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi said that under Modi, India’s ethos is Hindu, and peace and brotherhood require religious minorities to know their place. It is this sort of Hindu nationalism that led to attacks on Muslims, their homes, schools, and their places of worship.

He believes that the political business model of Modi’s BJP during the election days is to keep India on a permanent boil while keeping the temperature of communal minorities high. He says since Narendra Modi won his first election, it has become obvious that his style of leadership, contrary to the vision of Indian founders Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, poses an existential threat to the country.

UN experts in September this year raised the alarm about reports of serious human rights violations and abuses in the northeast state of Manipur in India, including alleged acts of home destruction, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, forced displacement, torture, and ill-treatment. The UN experts had pointed to an inadequate humanitarian response in the wake of the grave humanitarian situation in Manipur following the latest round of community conflict between the predominantly Hindu Meitei and the predominantly Christian Kuki ethnic communities that erupted in May 2023.

Meanwhile, a recent report, released by the Research Section of Kashmir Media Service on the occasion of World Human Rights Day (being observed today) said that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, was indeed a hallmark and milestone, but Kashmiris human rights continued to be violated with impunity. It said that among the 30 basic human rights enlisted in the UDHR, not even one exists in the IIOJK. The report pointed out that Indian forces, including army, paramilitary, and police personnel, in their unabated acts of state terrorism and atrocities have martyred 96,279 Kashmiris, including 7,322 in custody and fake encounters since January 1989 till date. It said that these killings rendered 22,968 women widowed and 107,941 children orphaned.

It said that the troop, paramilitary, and police personnel molested or disgraced 11,259 women and destroyed and damaged 110,509 residential houses, shops, and other structures. It maintained that Indian troops, paramilitary, and police personnel subjected over 8,000 people to custodial disappearance during the period. The report said, “846 Kashmiris, including 17 women, have been martyred since the repeal of the special status of IIOJ&K by the Hindutva BJP Indian government on August 5, 2019 in the occupied territory.”

It said that the troops molested and disgraced 129 women during the period.

Meanwhile, Hurriyat leaders, in their separate statements, have appealed to the United Nations and international human rights organizations to send their teams to take stock of the worst human rights situation in the occupied territory