N. P. Upadhyaya, Kathmandu: The US Administration led by President Donald Trump though is in knowledge of how the Indian regime under fundamentalist Indian Prime Minister Modi possesses hatred against the minority Muslims and by extension the followers of Islamic religion across the globe, however, the commanding authorities in Washington D. C. appear surprisingly hesitant in scolding India to end the continuing Islamophobia.
The reluctance in taking India to task by the US could be due to the fact that India and the US are now partners in the scheme of the much publicized Indo-Pacific Strategy.
Beginning early February this year to be more specific, Islamophobia in India has taken a new height which if allowed to continue for some more time then eventually the oppressed Muslims and the community of the Hindu Dalits’ may take to the streets and begin demanding a separate identity for themselves to the utter embarrassment of the Hindutwa team led by PM Modi and his hawkish squad.
The chances remain high.
If pushed to the extreme then the cat begins scratching the wall, it is said. And this could be the beginning of the approaching big split in India. PM Modi and his team unfortunately have failed to read the writings on the wall.
Since the US government as such has so far remained cautious, as stated earlier, in reprimanding its new found ally-the Indian republic in a straight manner for a variety of understandable political reasons however, some prestigious organisations associated with the federal structure of the US administration, for example, the USCIRF (The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) has very recently ventured to take India to task on the dirty, ugly and inhumane technique with which the already beleaguered Muslim minority are being mal-treated by the Indian government more so after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, need to be appreciated.
The hatred against the followers of Islam in India is so intense that the majority of the Hindus who one way or the other advocate the prevalence of Hindu supremacy allege that the Muslims from the Tablighi Jamaat were the real carriers of the Corona Virus inside the Indian Territory.
The Muslims, as the Hindu supremacist in India say were trouble makers as well.
Under this manufactured pretext the Muslims have of late become the prime target of the Hindu chauvinists.
The reverberations of this Islamophobia in India has approached, better late than never, the Arab world which feeds the Indian population in millions.
According to a rough estimate, the Indian nationals working in the Arab countries drain colossal amount for India.
For example, the Indians working in United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman send money back to India $ 13.823 million; $11. 233 million; $ 4. 587 million; $ 3. 250 million respectively.
This means that the starving Indian nationals work in the Muslim countries and yet tease the Muslims in a bizarre way.
What if these countries retaliate and send the Islamophobic Indians back home? Or what if these nations pounce upon people who follow Hindu faith?
As the rumors have it, some fanatic Hindus working in these countries have been fired/dismissed for having engaged in defaming the Muslim religion by residing in these countries.
The United Arab Emirates, for example, has in some way or the other recently sounded through princess Hend al-Qassimi who urged India to take urgent steps to protect the rights of its Muslim minority.
Princess Hend took the lead by and large.
More or less the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC) and Kuwait too have already registered their highest annoyance against India and have hoped that the continuing state sponsored violence against the Indian Muslims will come to an abrupt end soon.
But the Indian government remains undeterred.
The hatred for the Muslims for example, writes a Swedish Professor Ashok Swain in his tweeter account referring to a recent sad incident wherein a Muslim pregnant woman was very inhumanely treated. He says, “It has to be a heartless Hindutva regime which can not only arrest and imprison a 3-month pregnant Muslim researcher scholar from Jamia but also uses its horrible troll machine to malign her character”.
The Indian fanaticism has unfortunately found its entry into Nepal which is also a majority Hindu country but having a past track record of living with the Muslims inside the Nepali territory in a brotherly manner.
In fact, Nepali Muslims often claim that they felt safe and secured when Nepal used to be a Hindu country officially.
Some Hindu fanatics in Nepal copying the Indian PM Modi’s line of Muslim hatred too believe that it is the Muslim community that has remained instrumental in the spread of Covid-19 in Nepal to which it is not true by any set of medical standards.
The potential carriers of the Corona virus could also be the Hindus and the Christians.
The USCIRF at the end of April/2020 (last month) has, better late than never, registered India’s notoriety by downgrading it to the lowest ranking tagging it as “countries of particular concern” (CPC) in its 2020 report, writes Suhasini Haidar for the Hindu Daily dated April 28/2020.
The report has been released by the federal government commission that functions as an advisory body.
Ms. Suhasini Haidar is the daughter of the most radical Hindu Indian scholar, Professor Subramniyam Swamy.
The Harvard Professor is talked to be the man behind the scene to encourage PM Modi.
This perverted Indian Professor Swamy was among the few Indian leaders who in the early 1990s brought political changes in Nepal forcefully that suited the Indian interests.
Needless to say, the common people were against the India desired/sponsored change.
Since then Nepal has become Indian protectorate a la Bhutan, it is widely believed inside the country save a few tilted leaders and intellectuals.
The report released in the USA takes serious note of the newly enacted Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the proposed National Register for Citizens, anti-conversion laws and also of the chaotic situation that prevails in Jammu and Kashmir.
The USCIRF then registers its grave worry on the very misuse of the government’s parliamentary majority that has created ugly scenes inside the Indian Union.
The USCIRF states (sic), “The national government used its strengthened parliamentary majority to institute national-level policies violating religious freedom across India, especially for Muslims.”
The panel said in its report that the Countries of particular Concern (CPC) designation was also justified because “national and various State governments also allowed nationwide campaigns of harassment and violence against religious minorities to continue with impunity, and engaged in and tolerated hate speech and incitement to violence against them ( the Muslims)”.
Strong action on India demanded:
The commission also recommended that the U.S. government take stringent action against India under the “International Religious Freedom Act” (IRFA).
It has also called on the US administration to “impose targeted sanctions on Indian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States under human rights-related financial and visa authorities, citing specific religious freedom violations”.
To recall, in 2005, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat was censured by the USCIRF.
To put the record straight, the commission had recommended sanctions against Chief Minister Modi for the 2002 riots and, to recall, the U.S. government had subsequently cancelled his visa for US travel.
Notably, the USCIRF 2020 report makes a specific mention of the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, writes Suhasini Haidar in her news story, “for not taking what it deemed as sufficient action to stop cases of mob lynching in the country, and for referring to migrants as “termites”.
Ms. Haidar recalls that In December 2019, the USCIRF had hinted the U.S. government to consider suitable and appropriate “sanctions against Mr. Shah and “other principal leadership in India” over the decision to pass the Citizenship Amendment Act that has come to harass and deny the inalienable rights to the Indian Muslims.
The Ministry of External Affairs has rejected the USCIRF statement as saying that it is neither “accurate nor warranted” and has also questioned the body’s “locus standi” in India’s internal affairs.
Observers in Nepal take the Indian Foreign Ministry’s outright rejection of the USCIRF findings as an act of India’s arrogance, however, such repudiation by the Indian side sounds hollow in the light of the continued insult and humiliation of the minority Muslims in India which has now gone down to even torture pregnant Muslim women as registered by the Swedish Professor Ashok Swain. That’s all.