N. P. Upadhyaya, Kathmandu: The Swedish Professor of Indian origin Ashok Swain rightly has observed through his Twitter account dated February 29/2020 that “While Imran Khan’s Pakistan is renovating 400 Hindu temples to hand over to the minority Hindus, in Narendra Modi’s India the Mosques of minority Muslims are under regular attacks.
The Professor who is taken in India as a sharp critique of Modi and his Hindu team’s steering of Indian administration further adds in his Twitter from Dubai that “In New India, a Muslim must surrender himself to die when a Hindutwa mob comes attacking. If he resists and tries to survive, Modi-Shah’s police will put him behind bars. There is no escape for a Muslim under PM Modi”.
Professor Swain is correct in his blunt saying as the entire civilized world saw for itself the “deliberate brutal attack” on the minority Muslims last week and that too at a time that coincided with the visit of the President of the free world, Donald Trump to Delhi on a two day India visit.
In a fresh press interview granted to the Press TV dated 25 February the same veteran professor from Sweden Ashok Swain says, I quote him, ” As the world battles a devastating refugee crisis, this part of the planet is also struggling with yet another form of issue. India has been witnessing a growing environment of fear and panic among the citizens specially the Muslims in the last few months”.
He further says that a newly enacted citizenship law which many call confusing has widened at an atmosphere of mistrust towards Indian Prime Minister Modi Narendra and his Bharatiya Janata Party-BJP.
Sensible observers in South Asia, Nepal included, claim that the new citizenship law has raised worries abroad that PM Modi wants to remold secular India into a Hindu nation while marginalizing the country’s 200 million Muslims, a claim that PM Modi and his terror like team denied.
The law has reportedly expedited the citizenship applications for persecuted minorities from India’s three Muslim majority neighboring countries, but not if they were Muslims”.
Nepal though is a majority Hindu country, however, tolerance factor is unimaginably high in this India tortured nation. Fanatic India could learn several lessons from Nepal on Tolerance.
While US senators like Bob Menendez and Bernie Sanders took their own President Trump to task for not uttering even a single word against the calculated attacks on the minority Muslims during his visit to India, however, international leaders took the Indian brutalities to notice and criticized India to the hilt.
Apart from the sharp comments from the US senators, on February 27, the Indian government faced statements from the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and several Democrat and Republican leaders in addition to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and notably the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Communal violence since February 24 that has left at least 38 plus people dead.
Who else better knows this than the MBS?
In the meanwhile, the NDTV reports dated March 1/2020 that demonstrations and sit-ins were organized by members of the Indian community in more than eighteen cities across Europe on Saturday February 29/2020 to express solidarity with the victims of the clashes in Delhi and to demand immediate action against those responsible.
The protests, attended by around 1500 people, were held in cities including Brussels, Geneva, United King Dom, Helsinki, Cracow (Poland), The Hague, Stockholm, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Glasgow, Canadian–Indian-nationals, and London, adds the NDTV.
And Bangladesh too joined these countries and condemned the Delhi’s communal violence.
India’s new protectorate Nepal has no courage to deride at India as Delhi is Nepal’s political Mecca.
Nepali leaders fear Delhi’s wrath.
Notably, in Berlin, the protestors marched towards the Indian embassy raising slogans against the police atrocities on the victims and the inaction by the Indian government.
Interestingly, the protestors in Berlin also placed flowers in front of the Indian embassy as a gesture of condolence to the Delhi victims mainly the Muslims.
“The brutality and extent of violence that was witnessed in Delhi recently has shaken us all. It is high time we stand against this hate-filled ideology that has divided India right down the middle”, said an Organizer in Krakow, Poland.
The climax of it all was seen in the French capital, Paris wherein the local French people joined Indian nationals to observe a minute of silence. They also laid white roses, a symbol of anti-Fascist resistance in Europe, near the Indian consular office in Paris, reported the NDTV.
These demonstrations apparently tempted the CNN to Tweet which says in part, “Violent communal clashes killed dozens in New Delhi during President Trump’s visit to India”. All this was happening at the same time as President Trump was …. telling the world that Modi has got everything in control”, adds the CNN Tweets dated March 1/2020.
To recall, for months the Indians have been protesting over the controversial law which gives Indian citizenship to asylum seekers from three neighboring countries, as mentioned in earlier paragraphs, …. a number of people in India have died as part of the ongoing clashes.
However, India remains undeterred. Though for the moment the attack on Muslims have come down but yet the fear factor among the minorities living in India remain as high as had never been before.
The Turkish President Erdogan was among a few International leaders who scathingly criticized for having threatened the lives of the Muslims in India.
Thanks, better late than never, the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC) that has been tentatively under the tight control of the Saudi regime, better say under Prince MBS’s tight fist, issued a statement condemning the Delhi violence.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said of Delhi violence that” whenever a racist ideology based on hatred takes over, it leads to bloodshed.
While the US President was busy in his India trip (which saw the Delhi’s dangerous violence and was much similar to the calculated Sikh genocide of the fateful year of 1984 initiated by the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi. (RIP).
Beant Singh Pa-Ji, a Sikh by birth who was the personal security aide of Madame Indira Gandhi shot her dead in the garden. Mrs. Gandhi breathed her last the next moment-within fraction of a second.
The then frightened Sikh community still has not forgotten the horrifying days (the genocide in fact) in India for the Sikh community.
Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy said the sole responsibility of the violence that ensued in Delhi last week, leaving both Hindus and Muslims dead, lies in the hands of the country’s right wing Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “fascist regime.”, says the Dhaka Tribune dated March 4/2020.
The eminent author and a Human Rights veteran that she is in her own right says in a scathing opinion piece published in ‘Scroll.in’ was quoted as saying by the Dhaka Tribune that, “A democracy that is not governed by a constitution and one whose institutions have all been hollowed out can only ever become a majoritarian state. You can agree or disagree with a constitution as a whole or in part – but to act as though it does not exist as this government is doing is to completely dismantle democracy. Perhaps this is the aim. This is our version of the coronavirus. We are sick.”
Calling the violence, a battle between fascists and anti-fascists Roy wrote, “It is a manifestation of the ongoing battle between fascists and anti-fascists – in which Muslims are the first among the Fascists’ ‘enemies.’ To call it a riot or a ‘danga,’ or ‘Left’ versus ‘Right’ or even ‘Right’ versus ‘Wrong’ as many are doing, is dangerous and obfuscatory.”
She then sums up by saying that “the sole purpose of the NPR-NRC-CAA is to destabilize and divide people not just in India but across the whole subcontinent. This is our version of the coronavirus. We are sick”.
The sharp critique of PM Modi and his Hindutwa tea (Modi, Amit Shah, Jay Shankar, Ajit Doval and Yogi Adityanath nicknamed as gang of four) Arundhati’s address at a rally in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on March 1, 2020 was covered by Anandabazar as well but has been largely absent from other mainstream Indian news media, writes the daily Star dated March 3, 2020.
Better late than never, joining the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC), the Iranian Foreign Minister too have in a pinching manner issued a statement on Delhi violence wherein the minister Javed Zarif that “Iran condemned the “wave of organized violence against Indian Muslims” and urged Indian authorities to “not let senseless thuggery” prevail.
Iranian regime is the first Muslim country which has pointedly termed the Delhi violence as the one “sponsored by the State”.
In response, India summoned the Iranian Ambassador Mr Ali Chegeni based in Delhi and expressed its reservations on the minister’s hard hitting comments.
India and Iran have enjoyed decades of cordial ties, notably.
Much ahead of the Iranian sharp comments on Delhi violence, the OIC too condemned the violence in Delhi and alleged discrimination against Muslims. The OIC opined that “the violence and destruction of property had chiefly targeted Muslims.
The statement from the OIC must not have come without informing the Prince MBS. If so then let’s presume that slowly but very steadily the Muslims around the world have come to a conclusion that Indian regime is being controlled by unscrupulous political personalities.
A Tweet issued by the OIC on February 27/2020 condemns the recent & alarming violence against Muslims in India, resulting in the death & injury of innocent people & the arson and vandalism of mosques and Muslim-owned properties. It expresses its sincere condolences to the families of the victims of these heinous acts”.
India has come under fire in the United Kingdom Parliament with Labor, SMP/2020, Liberal Democrats and Conservative MP’s, criticized Modi government for the Delhi RIOTS and the Citizenship (Amendment) act and urged the UK government to take stronger action, reports the Time of India online portal dated February 4/2020.
BJP member and former Bengali actor Subhadra Mukherjee has resigned from the ruling party over recent violence wherein 40 people were killed by Hindu extremists in New Delhi, reports the Geo News dated march 1/2020.
The Bengali actress says in her statement that “I joined the BJP in 2013 as I was impressed with the party’s way of functioning. But in recent years, I have noticed that things are not going the right way. I felt that a sense of hatred and judging people by their religion is taking over the ideology of BJP. After giving several thoughts, I have decided to quit,” she was quoted by local media as saying.
In its update to the Human Rights Council on rights concerns and its progress across the world, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted both Kashmir and the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act. The latter and the violence into which the capital city has descended as a result of it was described as a cause for “great concern.”
‘I am concerned by reports of police inaction in the face of attacks against Muslims by other groups”, says High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, write the Wire. In her address to the Human Rights Council, in its 43rd Session, her mention of India began with the detention of political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir.
On the CAA, Bachelet said the following, says the Wire:
“In India more broadly, the Citizenship Amendment Act adopted last December is of great concern.
“Indians in huge numbers, and from all communities, have expressed – in a mostly peaceful manner – their opposition to the Act, and support for the country’s long tradition of secularism”, adds the Wire.
Madame Bachelet has reportedly filed a petition at the Indian Supreme Court against Delhi violence.
To conclude with the Guardian editorial dated February 26/2020 (President Trump had already left Indian capital) which reads in part, “As shocking as the outburst of hatred in Delhi has been, with the deadliest religious violence the capital has seen in decades, it cannot be understood either as an unforeseen eruption, nor as the ineluctable expression of centuries-old intercommunal hostility.
The Guardian edit further adds, ” The BJP’s Hindu nationalism is a politics that rose to power by fomenting violence against vulnerable religious minorities. Given the police’s disgraceful performance, Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party, was right to demand the resignation of Amit Shah, Mr. Modi’s home minister and close ally – and a man who has himself described from Muslim-majority Bangladesh as “termites” to “throw into the Bay of Bengal”.
The rest could be understood as how India is run being run under fanatic whims. Thanks Nepal, new Delhi’s new protectorate has so far not uttered even a single word against the deadly Delhi violence. That’s all.