Daily Times

Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan has said that due to political dominance of the BJP-RSS brand of Hindu nationalism, democratic and secular face of India is now dead and buried.

“Inspired by the rise of ethnic nationalism in Germany and Italy in the last century, the RSS developed an organized cadre and encouraged violent extremism and terrorism to achieve its objectives,” President Masood said in an interview with an English journal. He said that Hindutva doctrine has posed a serious challenge to the modern global system and a threat to the world peace. “India’s neo-fascism is more dangerous than that of the Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini because of the number of its organized cadre. The current in-office Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) practices the Hindutva ideology, whose custodian and advocate are the world’s biggest paramilitary non-governmental organization – Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh, with an estimated 6 million volunteers as its members,” he cautioned.

Khan asserted that Hindutva is not only directed against the Muslims and other minorities of India but this also serves as a hanging sword for the so-called low caste Hindu communities.

Terming Hindutva a primordial system designed to establish the supremacy of elitist, upper-class Hindus, the President said some people wrongly believe that in this day and age, this primitive system would be defeated by the democratic, populist wave of our times, powered by the information revolution, new technologies, and universal human rights movement.

He said that recent times have once again demonstrated that modern global systems and polities are not immune from the serious risks of the rise of neo-Fascist doctrines, masquerading as popular movements, and the manipulation of the democratic system to create political space for tyranny. In 2019, a series of steps were taken by the BJP to further the Hindutva cause.

These steps include; the attack against Pakistan on February 26, the use of the false claim of a successful “surgical” strike to brainwash its voters to garner support, the abolition of the disputed status of the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, a skewed and biased decision on the Babri mosque, the new citizenship act against Muslims, Khan maintained.

He added that earlier isolation of Indian citizens, especially Muslims, in concentration camps in Assam, and the threat of the National Register of Citizens and National Population Register – both meant to disenfranchise minorities, especially Muslims.

He went on to say that all these strategies were right out of the Hindutva playbook. In the process, the death squads of the BJP-RSS regime have used mob lynching, massacres, arson, and pogroms, with a combination of unabashed flourish, cunning, and implausible deniability. Mass protests and global condemnation do not seem to have deterred them but goaded them to gloat over their achievements.”

The AJK president said in their unbridled frenzy, BJP-RSS duo have left behind a trail of death and destruction, a tale of human suffering, and a saga of instability in India and beyond. The enlightened political forces and the civil society of India have opposed this onslaught on India’s overall humanitarian society and political system.

“Buoyed up by their electoral strength, the BJP-RSS regime is also bent upon forging ahead to ‘purify’ Bharat Bhumi, and to establish ‘Akhand Bharat’. This would mean a combination of ethnic cleansing and irredentism,” AJK President said.

He said that Indian civil society alone will not be able to stop this avalanche. It would need the support of actors of civil society from the neighboring countries and the international community.