In recent months, India made global headlines for all wrong reasons, starting with the now debunked National Registry of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), revoking the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir, and finally the lynching of the minority Muslims in Delhi – what one commentator called “the killing fields of Delhi” -raising questions on the state of democracy and human rights in the otherwise secular democratic India. The Indian liberal democracy is now clearly under threat by policies and actions of the Narendra Modi government and itsHindutva agenda – an ideology seeking to establish the hegemony of Hindu religion and the Hindu way of life.
Unfortunately, the rising trends of reliance on simplified historical narratives, hostility to minorities and migrants/refugees, contempt for political plurality and the rhetoric of populism and populist politicians are common place in India today, posing huge challenges to democracy and rights of the minorities envisioned by the founding leaders Gandhi-Azad-Nehru. The new CAA passed by the Hindutva-dominated parliament in December 2019 offers citizenships to persecuted religious minorities (e.g., Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Christians, Buddhists and other minorities)from three neighboring countries (i.e., Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh), who entered India before 2015 – but not if they are Muslims. Analysts and legal experts view CAA as a violation of the principles of the Indian Constitution, which recognizes the rights to equality and freedom of religion, may potentially “delegitimize Muslim citizenship” and make them “stateless” in their own country.
A growing hostility to Muslim threatens the future of democracy in India. According to many, what happened in Delhi was the preamble to a full-blown pogrom of Muslims in India
Across India, thousands protested against the citizenship law. Many state-level governments went to the Supreme Court challenging the CCA; nearly 140 petitions have been filed by Muslim groups, opposition parties and activists, who consider that the law violates India’s secular constitution. Students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who protested against the CAA and NRC were attacked by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers and police. The protesters demanded release of students and professors arrested on sedition charges for speaking at Aligarh Muslim University during an anti-CAA protests. An armed man, believed to be a BJP thug, opened fire at an anti-CAA rally inside the Jamia Millia Islamia University campus killing one and injuring several other students.
In Delhi, where the carnage took place in the last week of February 2020, thousands of Muslim men/women, university students and others flooded the streets of the capital, and gathered in northeast Delhi, a predominantly Muslim area, in peaceful sit-in protests against the CAA. There were more Muslim women than men in the sit-in protests. During the protests, a series of hate speeches were made by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, warning the protesters to wind down for face dire consequences. Prime Minister Modi, during an election rally in Delhi, fired his “toxic” bullet against the anti-CAA protesters saying that the protesters could be easily “identified by their clothes” – implying that they were Muslims.
Just days before the mayhem began, two top BJP law makers – Minister Giriraj Singh and MP Kapil Misra – made further inflammatory and provocative speeches against the protesters. They both condemned the anti-CAA protesters: “Muslims should have been sent to Pakistan in 1947 after the partition of India” said Minister Giriraj Singh, while MP Misra threatened the crowd: “either the cops must clear them out, or we will take things into our own hands.” The hate speeches were celebrated by BJP party workers as they apparently enabled them to act violently on behalf of the state against Muslim minorities.
Ultimately, the BJP activists and thugs did what they wanted – a web of organized violence by Modi supporters and terror groups, aided by the police, began their operations against the anti-CAA protesters. Over 50 people were killed, mostly Muslims, but also includes Hindus and on-duty policemen, with over 200 injured, in the course of next three days. Those killed were ordinary people going home from their work, businesses, and daily chores such as groceries. Many pro-BJP groups chanting Hindu nationalist slogans torched mosques, roadside transports, plundered shops/businesses and houses owned by Muslims.
The entire northeast area was turned into a war zone with targeted killings of Muslimfamilies.In some instances, Muslim males who are unlike Hindu males are commonly circumcised were forced to show their genitals for ascertaining their religion before they were brutalized. Feared for their lives, many abandoned their houses to safety and took refuge in shelters set up by voluntary relief workers. This was one of the worst violence in the capital in decades. It is no wonder that Shashi Tharoor, a former minister under the previous Congress-led government, said that “it was safer to be a cow than a Muslim in India.”
The Delhi protests that erupted into violence are not only about CAA; it has intricate links to the next National Population Register (NPR) and a possible NRC for the entire country as repeatedly asserted by the Home Minister Amit Shah. The NPR is a list of residents in the country, both citizens and non-citizens, while NRC is the list of citizens only. The BJP government has a grand design to oust all so-called “illegal” Bangladeshis living in India, including the Assamese Muslims – the “”termites” and “infiltrators”in Amit Shah’s parlance. The BJP government considers CAA as an internal matter of India. The Indian Muslims, who constitute nearly 15 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion people, fear that the steps are aimed at marginalizing them.
Critics fear that the NPR data may be used to deciding citizenship status, requiring furnishing of new documents such as date and place of birth of parents. This would be difficult for many, not just Muslims, to furnish date of birth certificates.According to a report published in the Daily Ananda Bazar, Prime Minister Modi is a citizen by birth, but lacks documents to back the claim. The report, amid the ongoing turmoil on CAA, has created quite a stir. In Assam alone, nearly 2.0 million Assamese Muslims are at risk – due to lack of proper and eligible documents – and already wrongfully left out of the 2019 NRC list, hurriedly setting off the move to CAA to deal with the domino effects of the NRC outcomes. With CAA, the BJP government has failed to dispel the fear about any future Pan-India NRC. In the process, BJP wants to make the Muslims second class citizens in India.
A growing hostility to Muslim threatens the future of democracy in India. According to many, what happened in Delhi was the preamble to a full-blown pogrom of Muslims in India. The United Nations and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed deep concerns over the CAA and the Delhi carnage. The CAA, according to US Commission, could result in the “wide-scale disenfranchisement” of Muslim in the country.The “majoritarian”rule of the BJP government for a Hindu “Rashtra” (state) is increasingly becoming the face of India today, promoting intolerance, communal hatred and minority insecurity within the country. As a result, the very idea of India as a secular and democratic state is now at stake.
The writer is an international developmentspecialist and advisory professor, National Research Centre for Resettlement, Hohai University, Nanjing, China