Recently a female Muslim student on a college tour to Agra was ridiculed by her male classmates. When she refused to wear a Bharatia Janata Party cap, she was molested. Other female students on the bus were spared the treatment. The faculty members accompanying the students did not come forward to stop the hooliganism. The victim has shared her ordeal on Twitter.
Communal violence is not new to India. The hatred of the ‘other’ has always been there among the bigoted but it was never so much virulent. There has been a strong desire in India for bolstering a pluralistic, secular, democratic and diverse culture. The desire seems to be losing the battle in the face of chauvinistic intolerance.
This was probably not the India Jawaharlal Nehru had in mind when he said in 1948, “We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thoughts or in action.”
Under Prime Minister Modi India has morphed into a bigoted state where hate is let loose on religious minorities, marginalized communities and critics of the government. Sedition and counter-terrorism laws are used to curb free speech. Dissent is labelled as anti-national. There are tales of torture and extra-judicial killings by Indian security forces in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, and Jammu and Kashmir.
Muslims in Indian Occupied Kashmir continued to present the most doleful and piteous image durin these five years. Black laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) give soldiers immunity from effective accountability for crimes against humanity
Last week, 200 members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a radical Hindu group, attacked a Catholic school in Tamil Nadu and stripped some of the nuns who teach there. There was an attempt throttle them with their rosaries. Several nuns and other staff had to be hospitalized following the assault.
Muslims are the most frequent victims of the bulging hate in India. About 50 Muslims have so far been beaten to death by cow-protection groups since May 2015. Most of the victims were herders or cattle traders. No suspect has ever been credibly prosecuted.
Muslims in Indian Occupied Kashmir continued to present the most doleful and piteous image over the five years. Laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act provide soldiers immunity from effective accountability for crimes against humanity.
Dalits, formerly described as untouchables, remain alienated and persecuted. “They continue to be discriminated against in education and in jobs”, says the Amnesty International report this year.
There have been incidents of stripping and flogging Dalits in public for skinning cows. Thousands of Dalits earn their meagre livelihood from skinning dead cows and buffaloes and selling their hides to leather traders.
These 200 million Dalits now have taken to streets and are demanding their rights.
The government’s critics are also not safe from the wrath of right-wing groups. Journalists, writers, social media savvies and academics who lambaste the ruling elite for their wrongs are subjected to heinous reactions. Journalists Rana Ayyub and Barkha Dutt have been threatened with rape for criticizing the BJP. Several TV anchors have been forced to quit. In September 2017, Gauri Lankesh, a journalist-turned-activist, was shot down outside her home in Bengaluru city. She had been a vocal critic of militant Hindu nationalism.
Last week ago, the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said, “We are receiving reports that indicate increasing harassment and targeting of minorities – in particular Muslims and people from historically disadvantaged and marginalized groups, such as Dalits and Adivasis.”
The culture of hate, though, seems to give electoral edge to Mr Modi. The imprint it is going to leave on the democratic polity of India will be hard to erase.
The writer is an educationist and historian