The Modi/BJP government’s bigotry towards the Indian Muslims displayed in the Gujarat State in 2002 is already well known, when the Hindu mobs massacred hundreds of Muslims, and Modi as chief minister was accused of complicity. The ever increasing anti-Muslim sentiment of the BJP has been confirmed yet again by the recent events, while Modi is the prime minister (PM) of India.
Under Modi/BJP’s rule in India since 2014, the lynching of the Muslims by the RSS has instigated Hindu extremists, on the supposition that the cows are being reared or transported for meat, have surged. In February 2019, Human Rights Watch reported at least 44 such murders between May 2015 and December 2018. In this context, one important incident is being cited.
The Modi-led BJP has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism, where even its leaders openly vilified the Indian Muslims
As published in the NPR that in April 2017, Pehlwan Khan, 55, a Muslim dairy farmer from Haryana state, and his two sons were driving home from a cattle fair, with two cows in a truck, when Hindu extremists on motorcycles stopped them, and killed Pehlwan Khan in front of his sons. The attackers also recorded a video of their assault and posted it on social media.
After Modi won a second term in May 2019 with a two third majority, a new parliament was sworn in. As opposition lawmakers, particularly one Muslim politician, recited the oath of office, some BJP lawmakers taunted them with chants of “Jai Shri Ram.”
In an April 2019 report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned what it called the Indian government’s “allowance and encouragement of mob violence against religious minorities.” In June 2019, after a lynching in Jharkhand, the U.S. commission called on the Indian government to “take concrete actions that will prevent this kind of violence and intimidation.”
On August 5, 2019, PM, Modi ended Kashmir’s special status, divided the state into two union territories and clamped the lockdown/curfew in the state to crush the Kashmiris’ reaction. All the Kashmiri leaders and the youth have also been arrested and more than 900,000 security forces are carrying out genocide of the Kashmiris’. This is a proof of the BJP’s discriminatory policies towards the he Kashmiri Muslims.
In December 2019, the Modi government enacted the highly controversial Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), which is totally discriminatory to the Muslims. While the CAA grants Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhist, Christians, Parsis, and Jains who arrived in India before December 31, 2014, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, it denies the same facility to the Muslims”. The CAA adversely impacts about two million Bangladeshi Muslim migrants present in India since before 2014.
In defiance of the CAA, hundreds of thousands of people, Hindus as well as the Muslims in India, many of them students, had taken to the streets, including New Delhi. In the context of ending anti CAA New Delhi protests and sit-in, the following evidence shows how RSS motivated Hindu mobs were used against the Muslims and how Delhi police turned against them.
As per an article published in the New York Times on March 12, 2020, “on February 25, 2020, to eject a peaceful Muslim protest/sit-in in New Delhi, the police officers watched, as mobs of Hindus, with saffron stripes on their foreheads, attacked the Muslims and burned their homes, shops and mosques. Two thirds of the more than 50 people, who were killed were Muslims. Human rights activists are calling it an organized massacre”.
The newspaper says, “On 24 February 2020, Kaushar Ali, a Muslim house painter, was trying to get home when Hindu and Muslim mobs were hurling rocks at each other, blocking a street. Ali said that he turned to some police officers for help. That was his mistake. The officers threw him onto the ground, and severely beat him and several other Muslims. That abuse was captured on video”. These incidents clearly point towards the complicity of the Modi Government, which controls the Delhi’s police.
The above discussion proves that the Modi led BJP has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism, where even its leaders openly vilified the Indian Muslims. For instance, Dr Subramanian Swamy, a senior leader of the BJP, while speaking to journalist Isobel Yeung, has said that the Muslims need not be treated as equal to other citizens in India.
Therefore, under the prevailing BJP rule in India, it has become difficult for the Indian Muslims to lead a peaceful and dignified life. Also, it is not possible for the people of the occupied Jammu and Kashmir to get any worthwhile relief from the Modi Government in the near future, because the BJP’s rule is likely to prevail for long, as Modi will likely win next elections also by exploiting Hindu majority vote.
Hence, the only hope for the Kashmiris and the Muslims of India is, an economically stable and strong Pakistan with robust foreign and defence policies, which can adopt a strong, pro-active policy towards India, to get the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination, and provide a strong moral support to the Indian Muslims, while they defend their basic human and religious rights.
The writer is a former Consultant and Research Fellow of Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), Islamabad