While human rights in India have been trampled by extremist forces, death knell has been sounded for one of the pillars upholding civil rights. Last week, the BJP government froze the assets of the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI), claiming that the organization was in violation of Indian law. Amnesty International has been in the crosshairs of the Hindutva mob entrenched in the corridors of power in New Delhi but the straw that broke the camel’s back is the scathing report on recent riots in New Delhi. Other catalysts that brought down the blade of the guillotine on the champion of civil liberties are Amnesty International’s exposé of India’s gross violation of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir, and the passage of recent legislation that could adversely affect Muslims.
Besides crushing Indian minorities under the yoke of tyranny and declaring India a purely Hindu state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government appear intent on besmirching any independent scrutiny of India’s human rights defilements.
Indian adventurism in Ladakh and violating the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between China and India and incessant barrage of rockets and heavy artillery across the Line of Control (LOC) between Pakistan and India was meant to divert international attention from Indian brutalities in Kashmir and elsewhere against Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and low caste Hindus the Dalit.
Unless a groundswell of opposition emerges from India’s increasingly beleaguered civil society, there’s little hope that Modi’s human rights record will improve
While it may be painful to observe images of AI shutting down its Indian offices, one may recall the current political opposition in India, the Congress Party had been guilty of the same crime. Touched to the quick by the scorching reports of AI during the Kashmir uprising in 1990, Narsimha Rao, then Prime Minister of India, had retaliated with hostility. The barbarism displayed by Indian forces in crushing the Kashmiris’ just struggle for their rights was exposed by AI. To give him due credit, Narsimha Rao may have been incensed at the scathing reports of the upholders of human rights, yet instead of bringing down the shutters on them, he had created the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to examine the charges of repeated allegations of rampant human rights violations in Kashmir. The feeble opposition then, including the BJP, considered the move by Narsimha Rao as a public relations exercise; over a period of time, the NHRC became more autonomous and powerful. In the current milieu, Narendra Modi, instead of adopting democratic or diplomatic courses of action like setting up a watchdog, has resorted to bullying AI.
After the current dispensation ruling New Delhi, froze all its bank assets, AI chose to suspend its activities in India. This was the fifth time it felt compelled to discontinue its operations in the country. Earlier instances include the shutdown in 2009, when AI’s applications to be allowed to accept funds from abroad were repeatedly denied and it faced budget shortfalls. Nine years later, under Modi’s watch, in October 2018, one of India’s national anti-corruption organizations, the Enforcement Directorate, accused Amnesty of violating the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and seized some of its bank accounts.
The hostility constrained AI to close its offices in Bengaluru and lay off some staff. Later, in 2019, India’s Income Tax Department sent a letter to the organization accusing it of tax irregularities. Amnesty called all this a “pattern of harassment” related to its role highlighting widespread human rights abuses in the country.
The Modi government’s continued harassment and intimidation of organizations that uphold the conscience of society, has two critical implications for India’s democracy. First, such behavior obviously threatens the exercise of civil liberties and personal rights. This, in itself, is deeply disturbing. Second, it can also undermine the legitimacy of government institutions charged with law enforcement and anti-corruption, because they are being asked to act in completely partisan and dubious ways to hound nongovernmental organizations. For now, the Modi government’s intolerance of foreign institutions that question it is growing.
Given the significant asymmetry of power between the NGOs and the government in almost every instance, the latter has prevailed. Unless a groundswell of opposition emerges from India’s increasingly beleaguered civil society, there’s little hope that Modi’s human rights record will improve. That’s especially true given that the Indian judiciary, long known for its independence, is increasingly submissive to Modi, too. If there is one small sign of hope, it is that the NHRC has issued a formal note to the home ministry asking it to clarify its grounds for freezing the financial assets of Amnesty International. Whether it elicits a meaningful response is doubtful.
At best, if it persists with its inquiries it could put the government on notice that even a quasi-governmental body finds its actions questionable. And so, the Modi government may still continue to use its draconian executive powers to target the harbingers of criticism.
The disturbing aspect is that despite these blatant violations of human rights and gagging the organizations that keep an eye on the tyranny, no condemnation has come from other international watchdogs like the UN. Perhaps the world is too engrossed in combating the scourge of the pandemic COVID-19.
The writer is a retired Group Captain of PAF. He is a columnist, analyst and TV talk show host, who has authored six books on current affairs, including three on China