As conditions for tens of millions of religious minorities in India deteriorate under the increasingly strident rule of Bharatiya Janata Party, a damning report by a US government panel has called for India to be put on a religious freedom blacklist over ‘drastic downturn’ under the current extremist regime of Narendra Modi. In its annual report published earlier this week, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said India should join the ranks of ‘countries of particular concern’ that will be subject to sanctions if they do not improve their records. The observations in the US report amount to a stark show of disapproval of India’s divisive new citizenship law, which the United Nations has called ‘fundamentally discriminatory’, as well as its policy of allowing violence against minorities and their houses of worship, engaging in and tolerating hate speech and incitement to violence, revocation of the autonomy of the occupied valley of Kashmir and police turning a blind eye to mobs who attacked Muslim neighbourhoods in February this year. The report, which is an eye-opener for the entire world, has called on the US to impose punitive measures, including visa bans on Indian officials believed responsible and grant funding to civil society groups which monitor hate speech.
Religious freedom in India continues to deteriorate and it has been on a gradual decline for at least a decade now. As a result, the plight of religious minorities is reaching new levels. Hindu extremism is on the rise with several of cases of harassment, intimidation and violence being committed against Muslims, Hindu Dalits, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Sikhs by groups such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang (RSS), Sangh Parivar and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), who are responsible for an organised campaign of alienation against non-Hindus or low-caste Hindus. According to Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir, in 2017 alone, 111 people were killed and 2,384 injured in communal clashes in India. The level of violence is expected to increase as the perpetrators continue to enjoy impunity for their crimes. Similarly, as the victims of such atrocities are forgotten by the government, they have little faith in ever seeing any justice done. This can only lead to ever-growing mistrust between the government and religious minorities in India.
The occupied valley of Kashmir is no exception to all this. The region is already one of the most militarized places in the world before the Indian government last summer began pouring in more troops. It imposed a security lockdown in which it shuttered important mosques, harshly curbed civil rights, arrested thousands of people, blocked internet and phone service. The moves preceded the Hindu nationalist-led government’s Aug 5 decision to strip Held Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status and remove its statehood.
The coronavirus breakout in India provided another opportunity to the extremist government of Bharatiya Janata Party to marginalize the Muslims. A spree of anti-Muslim attacks broke out across India soon after the BJP-led government blamed Tablighi Jamaat as being responsible for a large share of India’s coronavirus cases. While Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) called for a complete ban on Tablighi Jamaat and its Nizamuddin Markaz besides freezing of its bank accounts and closure of all its offices, Muslims were beaten up, nearly lynched, made to run out of their neighbourhoods or attacked in mosques, and branded as virus spreaders by the extremist Hindus.
While the crimes against Muslims in India have drastically increased, attacks from right-wing Hindus on social media have also seen a sharp rise. Under the influence of the Hindutva ideology, abusing Muslims and denigrating Islam has become normality for most of the Indian Hindus working in the Gulf countries. The fast rising Islamophobia from Indian expats living in the Gulf nations recently came under the radar of many Gulf citizens, activists and intellectuals. Due to anti-Muslim bias in India, the intelligentsia in Gulf countries has started critically examining the ruling BJP’s attitudes towards Muslims. Even Princess Hend Al Qassimi, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates, recently jumped in to school Indians over their Islamophobic tweets.
This week, Kuwait formally approached the Organisation of International Cooperation (OIC) to take ‘urgent measures’ to preserve rights of Indian Muslims. In a statement released on Monday, the General Secretariat of the Kuwait Council of Ministers expressed its deep concern about the treatment of Indian Muslims and called on the OIC to take necessary and urgent measures to preserve the rights of Muslims there. Abdullah al-Shoreka, a minister in Kuwait’s Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, tweeted that it was time for Muslims to speak up against the persecution of their brothers in India.
The Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group, has also welcomed the USCIRF report. “As a part of the Indian diaspora that only wishes well for the country of our birth, we view international criticism of India’s religious freedom record as distressing but painfully necessary, given the escalating level of persecution of minorities,” it said in a statement.
As voices from within India and around the world are increasingly condemning the growing wave of BJP-inspired hate crimes against minorities, New Delhi has finally come on the world radar and embarrassment is hardly the word to describe the growing lack of faith and credibility of India in the comity of nations at this moment. As momentum against state-sponsored violence in India builds, it is up to Pakistan now to use the USCIRF report to its own advantage.
