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Monthly update: 53 Dec 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1 Babri Mosque: Dec 8, 2023; The demolition of the Babri Mosque remains a contentious issue in India as on the anniversary of this event, the country grapples with its legacy and the ongoing struggle for religious harmony. 16134971https://www.trtworld.com/discrimination/indias-black-day-31-years-since-babri-mosque-demolition-16134971

2 Gyanvapi mosque; Dec 8 2023: The Allahabad High Court will resume on Friday the hearing on a petition filed by the Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee challenging the maintainability of a suit seeking “restoration” of a temple at the site of the Gyanvapi mosque.

3 Prof Christophe Jaffrelot : Dec 8 2023: Prof Christophe Jaffrelot, an authority on India’s Muslims, spoke on ‘The Plight of Minorities under Modi’s India’ at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. He painted a sombre picture.Statistics from 1978 to 2016 showed the number of Muslims in the Indian Administrative Service was around four to five per cent, although Indian Muslims were 14.5pc of India’s population. In the Indian Police Service Muslims were a mere 2 to 2.5pc. The only institution where Indian Muslims exceeded their percentage of the population were Indian jails! As for the judiciary, there were only one or two Muslims among the 30 justices of the supreme court of India. Although Jaffrelot did not mention it, Muslims in the Indian military have been reduced from a third at partition to 2pc today. However, he mentioned the bureaucracy of occupied Kashmir as being “de-Kashmirised.” Economically, the Indian Muslims have only 9.5pc of India’s wealth, whereas the Hindu upper castes (Brahmin and Bania), with less than half the population of the Muslims, have 36pc. Moreover, there is no difference in the percentages owned by so-called Muslim upper and lower castes, indicating a more or less wholesale communal exclusion — not unlike the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany even if widespread vigilante violence against Indian Muslims is still of a lower order. The lack of access to government jobs is a prime reason for the poverty of India’s Muslims. Accordingly, 64pc of Muslims are either self-employed or work as casual labourers. Indian Muslims are by and large not part of the ‘salariat’ of India! The Dalits and Other Backward Castes of India have representation in the salariat mainly as a result of the BJP’s ‘positive discrimination’ to break the traditional dominance of the upper caste anti-BJP Hindus of the south. Educationally, the Muslims are also losing ground. In Kerala graduates among Hindu upper castes are 22pc whereas among Muslims it is 4pc. In UP the percentage for Hindu upper castes is 50pc whereas for the first time ever graduates among upper-caste Muslims have declined from 14pc to 12pc. https://www.dawn.com/news/1796056

4 USCIRF ; Dec 6 2023;The U.S. religious freedom watchdog on Friday again called on the Biden administration to designate India as a "country of particular concern" under the U.S. Religious Freedom Act, citing its alleged targeting of religious minorities overseas. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent federal government commission, said "recent efforts by the Indian government to silence activists, journalists, and lawyers abroad pose a serious threat to religious freedom." https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-religious-freedom-watchdog-implores-biden-administration-designate-india-2023-12-16/

6. Cleansing of Muslims from Uttarakhand begs National Attention: Dec. 7. 2023: by Syed Ali Mujtaba: The hill state of Uttarakhand is the first state in India where a systematic campaign for ethnic cleansing of the Muslims is gathering momentum but this facet of Indian reality is hardly

pricking the national consciousness. No one is calling for ‘national chintan’ which is necessary because today 14 percent of Muslims are being driven out from Uttarakhand tomorrow, 14 percent of Muslims from India can also be driven out. There are three reasons for the expulsion of Muslims from Uttarakhand. First, Muslims have polluted the pristine purity of the holy land or Dev Bhumi of the Hindus. Second, is the claim of the exclusive indignity of Hindus that is threatened by the Muslim's presence that is altering the demography of the state. Third is the alleged perfidy of the Muslims, who are launching several jihads on the hapless Hindus of the hill state. These arguments are propagated through 1,400 RSS

shakhas in Uttarakhand. The Hindu religious leaders are calling for the expulsion of Muslims even advocating acts of violence that include mass rape and genocide. This is amplified through right-wing publications, local press, and social media platforms. One can recall the notorious Dharm Sansad, a religious parliament that was organized in Haridwar, on December 17 -19 2021 where speakers urged people to keep their “swords sharpened” at home

to kill the Muslims. Some even gave a call for a “safai abhiyan”, or cleansing drive of the Muslims, and asked the police, army, and leaders to take part in the drive out Muslims from the state. The prominent among those who made hate speeches were Prabodhanand and Darshan Bharti, who continue to spout hate and instigate violence against Muslims in Uttarakhand even today “Members of the Muslim community are creating a ruckus here, spreading non-vegetarianism, throwing meat and cow meat in the

Ganga to defile it. If we don’t take note, then it will become Kashmir. There should be one state for Hindus at least,” says a Hindu priest Anandswaroop threatening, “If the entry of Muslims is not banned, then Hindu priests will take to the streets.”There is hatred towards the Muslims. “Drive away the Muslims. Muslim rule won’t be tolerated.” The other slogans are; “Muslim mukt Uttarakhand chahiye” – We want a Muslim-free Uttarakhand. Posters were pasted outside Muslim shops warning “all love jihadis” have to leave the town. It was signed by Dev Bhoomi Raksha Abhiyan. Newspapers reported that Muslim residents were complaining that Hindu mobs had torn down the signboards and banners of their shops. Such posters even appeared in many other villages and towns asking Muslims to vacate their shops. Rallies were held in many parts of Uttarkashi – in the towns of Barkot and Chinyalisaur and villages of Naugaon, Damta, Barnigad, Netwar, and Bhatwari – against Muslims.The slogans were raised: “Jihadiyon ko jo dega sharan, unki behen betiyon ka hoga haran” (those who give shelter to jihadis, their sisters and daughters will be kidnapped) and “Hinduon ko jagana hoga, Jihadiyon ko bhagana hoga” (Hindus need to be awakened; jihadis need to be chased away). Hindu militants are openly calling for mass expulsion of the Muslims. Muslims’ homes and shops were marked with an ‘X’, and residents were forced to vacate the place. Purola was the first town in Uttarakhand where the call was made for ethnic cleansing. After the successfully forced exodus of many Muslim

families from Purola, local Hinduta organizations joined

hands to force Muslims to leave the state in Barkot, Uttarkashi, and Haldwani. A similar campaign to drive out Muslim residents was tried in at least three other towns – Ghansali, Augustyamuni, and Satpuli. Newspapers reported that a letter was sent by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to the Tehri District Magistrate giving an ultimatum to

the Muslims Community to leave the place or forcibly get expelled. There is a common chorus across the Hindutva

organizations that Uttarakhand is a sacred land of Hindus

and Muslims should be barred from living there. The

objective of the campaign is to expel Muslims from the entire “holy” state. The Hindu zealots are also threatening to close mosques and stop Namaz prayers in the Muslim place of worship. Darshan Bharti, founder of the Devbhoomi Raksha Abhiyan, said “Do you want Dev Bhumi to be the land of gods or the land of shrines and mosques?" he urged to stop namaz there.Muslims in Badrinath town were asked by the administration not to hold Bakrid prayers inside the town. They were asked to offer prayers in Joshimath, a neighboring town, nearly 25 miles away from Badrinath. Muslim residents of Badrinath are mostly migrant laborers working on reconstruction projects. In places where there is no mosque, people gather for collective prayers on the terrace for Friday prayers. But Hindu residents demanded the sub-divisional magistrate to end this practice of collective prayer. Muslims who constitute about 14 percent population in Uttarakhand have been living there as far back as the 13th century. Muslims in the state mostly run small businesses like fruit and vegetable stores, barber salons, and motor repair garages. Many trace their residence in the state back at least two or three generations. Muslims across Uttarakhand are grimly contemplating their futures in the state. As Muslims are warned to leave Uttarakhand or face violent consequences, many are no longer able to trust the local police administration to protect them from violence. They are quietly fleeing their homes and the lands where many were born and raised, where they have studied, played, and worked to raise their families. Some lamented, “Today they are driving us out of Uttarakhand, tomorrow, they will drive us out of India.”

Monthly update: 52 Nov 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1 Bollywood; Nov 2 2023; Muslims are looked as suspicious people in and outside India, and the phenomenon has increased manifold after the Hindutva government of Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi came to power since 2014, said a recent study. Indian film industry, Bollywood, played the main part in adding fuel to the fire by making a lot of movies on Muslims and presenting them “as terrorists and negative ones”, the report said. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/11/01/bollywood-played-main-part-to-defame-muslims-in-and-outside-india.html

2 Aligarh to be renamed; Nov 9 2023; As part of its campaign to erase the footprints of Muslims from India, the BJP-ruled Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is planning to change the name of Aligarh city. The Municipal Corporation has decided to change the name of Aligarh to Harigarh.The city Mayor, Prashant Singhal, has revealed plans to submit a proposal to the state government for official endorsement, English newspaper The Hindu reported. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/11/08/anti-muslim-bias-bjp-govt-to-change-aligarhs-name-to-harigarh.html

3 Halal food bans: Nov 20 2023: The government of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest State imposed on Saturday a ban on halal-certified products. To justify its move, the Uttar Pradesh government has levied a range of dubious accusations against organizations involved in the halal consumer products industry. https://globelynews.com/south-asia/uttar-pradesh-india-halal-ban/

4 False Muslim identity; Nov 26 2023: Khant is not the only one to adopt a false Muslim identity while committing a crime. From men angry at being turned down by women to content creators seeking to make their inflammatory videos go viral, this modus operandi of pretending to be Muslim has found increased use over the last couple of years. Experts say that in a communally polarized environment, the identity of an accused or suspect in such cases gets more amplified than the crime itself, thus intensifying Islamophobia in India. https://scroll.in/article/1059500/why-people-are-pretending-to-be-muslim-in-india

5 Elections and Muslims: Nov 2 2023:“Conflicts, elections will always spawn these kinds of narratives (and) the nature of this conflict is an opportunity to grind a Hindu versus Muslim axe,” said Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar.“It is being weaponized by state actors to rally the bases with divisive rhetoric and sensationalist misinformation,” said Jones, who studies misinformation. https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2415806/world

Monthly update: 51 Oct 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1 Hate speech in Indian Parliament; Oct 2023; On September 21, Kunwar Danish Ali, an Indian Muslim member of parliament with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), was subjected to Islamophobic comments and communal slurs by a legislator from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri called Ali a “pimp”, a “terrorist” and used the pejorative “circumcised” among other derogatory remarks inside the Indian parliament. Instead of expelling Bidhuri from the party and taking action, they are promoting him as a star campaigner. So what does it [signify]? That the party is legitimising the hate speech which he delivered in parliament. The way they have created the atmosphere [in the country] and in the state where I belong, Uttar Pradesh, they want to create the same in the parliament. They just want you to be like a living corpse: the rights which are given to you by the constitution? You should not ask for those rights. I am more pained now that after this incident [there is] not a single condemnation from the prime minister, not a single condemnation from the ruling party of India. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/4/the-bjp-is-legitimising-hate-speech-indian-muslim-mp

2 caste census; Oct 5 2023; The findings from Bihar, one of India’s poorest yet politically significant states, have the potential to upend the country’s politics, with demands being made for a similar nationwide census, opening the doors for a revamp of the country’s affirmative action plans amid calls to grant proportional benefits to marginalised castes in line with their share of the population. These demands, however, threaten to weaken Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s hold over many of these marginalised castes, just months before the 2024 general elections https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/4/how-a-landmark-caste-census-in-india-threatens-modis-grip-on-power

3 Indian government is the aggressor; Oct 2023; Silence engulfed the audience when The Wire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani told them that the biggest producer, director and actors of hate as well as violence in the country is the Indian government itself. The silence made Arfa ask them if they felt that she was exaggerating. She then moved on to say, “I have evidence to support it. As a journalist, this is my work to have facts and figures to support my statement.” The Delhi-based journalist was speaking to a jam-packed audience at the West Bengal Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat’s (WBMEM) symposium ‘Violence Free India: The Way Forward’ in Kolkata on Sunday (October 1). The senior journalist further said, “There is a report by Hindutva Watch that in the first six months of 2023, there were 255 hate speech cases that took place in India. And 80% of this happened in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.” She also mentioned the Washington Post’s investigative report which said that during the Karnataka election, hate was a part of BJP’s election campaign. At least 1.5 lakh people were employed to spread hate against Muslims and the Congress party and were told that if they wanted to be saved, they should vote for the BJP. “Every government and prime minister has their policies and agendas to work for. [But] this government only has an agenda to spread hate and violence,” she added. The retired judge also said, “There has been violence done by the Supreme Court as well in the Babri Masjid case. When ASI in its report had said that there was no temple structure inside Babri Mosque, then how can they give a decision in favour of Hindus? By what logic was it done? This is promoting violence.” The general secretary of WBMEM, Manzar Jameel explained to the audience the need for having chosen the topic for the symposium. He cited many recent incidents of violence in which minority communities like Dalits and Adivasis faced attacks and it is increasing day by day. https://thewire.in/government/the-state-is-the-biggest-producer-of-hate-and-violence-in-india-arfa-khanum-sherwani

5 RAW; Oct 9 2023; while India and Israel have maintained a long-standing diplomatic partnership, their intelligence agencies have also seen increased collaboration in recent years. Officially, India doesn’t have an assassination policy, but in 2014, The Hindu reported that Modi had suggested that he would “authorise India’s intelligence services to stage cross-border strikes against terrorists.” Since then, this covert policy appears to have been implemented on a number of occasions. Perhaps the most recent examples were the alleged targeted killings of “ISI assets” Maulana Ziaur Rahman, a cleric with ties to Pakistan-based, Kashmir-focused Lashkar-e-Taiba last month in Karachi; and Paramjit Singh Panjwar, the chief of the Khalistan Commando Force in Lahore back in May. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231002-has-india-taken-a-leaf-out-of-mossads-assassination-handbook/?mc_cid=91b9f10fb2&mc_eid=f50a97be6b

4 India Israel axis; Oct 28 2023; The ongoing Israel-Palestine war has triggered Islamophobic sentiments across the world. The US had a case of fatal stabbing in Illinois, guns pointed at protesters in Pennsylvania, harassment of Palestinian staff in restaurants and offices, and vandalism at synagogues. According to an article in The Washington Post, the FBI has reported an increase in threats against Muslims due to the ongoing war. Pro-Palestinian protesters in Europe have also faced severe backlash from local police, with some protests even being banned. The Canadian government also raised concerns over growing Islamophobia amid the ongoing conflict. A similar trend of rise in Islamophobia was witnessed in India as well since the war erupted. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has galvanised the far-right Hindu nationalists who are fanning the anti-Muslim rhetoric in India. The Hindutva followers believe that Israel and India share a common enemy: the Muslims. In a brief video released by Al Jazeera on X (formerly Twitter), Hindu supremacists are seen marching and making prayers at their religious sites in support of Israel. Likewise, a priest in India is seen appealing to Israel to allow his followers in India to join Israel because he believes that he and his followers have been fighting the same ‘diseases’ as Israel (Muslims) for the past 14,00 years. Additionally, a popular Indian anchor can be seen stating that “Israel is a victim we are a victim too. Israel is fighting this war on behalf of all of us.” All these incidents of solidarity with Israel in India are not because of their close religious association with the Jews of Israel or much understanding of the promised land, but rather because they support all events that incite Islamophobia and anti-Muslim in their country and abroad. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2443259/nurturing-hate-how-india-is-promoting-islamophobia

5 Senator demands India to end prosecution of minorities: Oct 23: In an embarrassing move for the Government of India, United States Senator Tammy Baldwin has introduced of a Senate resolution calling for an end to religious and political persecution in India in order to "defend" the principles of democracy and justice in the country. The resolution underscores the centrality of religious freedom as a fundamental human right and emphasizes the responsibility of the United States to speak out against its violation wherever it may occur.
https://www.counterview.net/2023/10/us-senator-floats-resolution-to-end.html

Monthly update: 50 Sep 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1 Lynching of Muslims in India; by Syed Ali Mujtaba; 03/07/2023; Beef Lynching; There are two festivals in India when Muslim killings invariably take place each year under the current political dispensation. First is Ramnauvi, a Hindu religious festival and second is Idul Adha or Bakraid, the Muslim festival when domesticated animals are sacrificed as a part of religious rituals. While the story of the killing of the Muslims during Ramnauvi is a bit old now and will be repeated next year, the fresh is the Bakrid killings of the Indian Muslims. Muhammad Zahiruddin a 55-year-old Muslim truck driver was lynched to death in Bihar by a Hindu extremist mob despite the police being present at the site. This happened just days before the Muslim festival of Eidul Adha. The truck was carrying cattle bones to a factory that makes medicinal ingredients to be used to make gelatin for the pharmaceutical industry. Earlier, Affan Abdul Ansari, a 32-year-old was beaten to death by a brutal Hindu extremist mob in Maharashtra over suspicions of carrying cow meat. In another incident in the same state, a 23-year-old Muslim man named Lukman Suleman Ansari was lynched to death by a Hindu extremist mob, the newspaper reported. Hindu militant mobs have increasingly been targeting Muslims over baseless accusations of transporting cattle ahead of the Eid-ul -Adha festival. These mobs, also known as cow vigilantes, are known for attacking and often lynching Muslims accusing them of transporting cattle or consuming beef with impunity. Recently a Muslim couple was attacked by Hindu extremists for bringing home goats for Eid ul Adha. The Muslim couple was called “terrorists” and attacked by a mob of Hindu extremists in Mumbai city after they brought goats meant for sacrifice into their housing complex. The couple Mohsin Khan and Yasmin Khan told the media that “If bringing the goats inside the housing colony was against the law, then they should have filed a police complaint against us. “We were assaulted, molested, and mentally harassed by the mob that gathered to protest against us.” Yasmin Khan said; “They started manhandling us… During the scuffle they also tore my clothes, forcing me to call the police.” “They did not allow us to enter the [housing] society and called us terrorists… and said “we should not be allowed to stay in the society,” she reported. This’Bakareid’ Muslims in Uttarakhand were barred from offering Eid prayers and told to pray 25 miles away. Muslim from Badrinath town in Uttarakhand were instructed by police to not hold Eid prayers inside the town. They were ordered to offer Eid prayers in Joshimath, a neighboring town, nearly 25 miles away from Badrinath. Muslim residents of Badrinath are mostly migrant laborers working on reconstruction projects at temples. A meeting with members of the minority community, priests, and contractors engaged in the projects was held with the police where they were asked to offer the ‘namaz’ of Bakrid in Joshimath and not in Badrinath.” Hindu militants in Uttarakhand state have called for mass expulsion of Muslims and ethnic cleansing over the past few weeks. In Uttrakhand, there is an “alarming rise of hate speech, vigilantism, and targeted communal violence against the Muslim community. In Uttrakhand local Hindutva groups are openly inciting religious hatred and hostility and violence against Muslims. This is to instigate fear among the Muslims so that they can run away from there. Muslims’ homes and shops are marked with an ‘X’, and residents are forced to vacate the place. Many very old-time residents including BJP and Minority Cell leader Mohammed Zaid, have fled their homes due to the threat of violence. Newspapers have reported that a letter has been sent by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to the Tehri District Magistrate giving an ultimatum to members of the Muslims Community to leave the Jaunpur valley and in particular the towns of Nainbagh, Jakhar, Nagtibba, Thatyur, Saklana, Damta, Purola, Barkot, and Uttarkashi. The government, the judiciary, and the media have not intervened

2 Modi and Israeli policies; Sep 5 2023; The Hindu far-right’s actions in Nuh, in India’s Haryana, echo Israel’s policies of trying to delete histories and legacies of the Palestinian people. In early August, the world watched in horror as authorities in the northern Indian state of Haryana demolished more than 300 Muslim-owned homes and businesses in Nuh – the only Muslim-majority district in the state.Hindu right-wing groups in Haryana followed up the violence with calls to boycott Muslim businesses and for Hindu-owned businesses to fire Muslim employees. Before the demolition drive, clashes broke out between Hindu and Muslim groups in Nuh when a procession led by the far-right Hindu organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad reached the district. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/9/4/modis-lesson-from-israel-demolish-muslim-homes-erase-their-history

3 Have the Muslims in Nuh, Haryana Now Become Persona Non Grata for the Judiciary? in India — by PIL Watch Group — 02/09/2023; case pertaining to the Nuh demolition is being treated like a pariah by all the benches before whom it gets landed. Meanwhile several contempt petitions and intervention applications filed before separate benches are in a state of limbo.

Orders pertaining to whatever little gets heard are not being uploaded on the court website Media reports indicate that right wing elements have put up posters locally at the demolition site ordering Muslims to move away. “According to the affidavits, 443 structures were demolished, of which 162 were permanent and the remaining 281 temporary structures. However, the fact-finding report says that as many as 1,208 structures at 37 sites spanning 72.1 acres were razed down.” [Source: Frontline Aug 25, 2023] So the Government affidavit admits to only 443 structures being demolished whereas the fact-finding mentions 1208 structures. Isn’t perjury? Why is justice being denied to those who have filed intervention applications and contempt petitions? Why are these not being heard? The case is not getting heard on the date listed and the next date of hearing is kept in abeyance.

The corporate media is maintaining a deathly silence on these developments.

4 Modi and Muslims ; Sep 12 2023;Fanatic supporters of BJP (readers must know that it is not representative of an average Indian) have torn down mosques, burnt shrines and graveyards; they have stopped Muslims on the street and have tortured them until they would yield to the demand of chanting praise for Ram, the Hindu deity; there are evidencing footages, when upon refusal to chant, the Muslims are mercilessly beaten and clubbed to death. Recently, a schoolteacher, possibly a devout follower and disciple of monstrous Modi, asked the entire class to slap their Muslim classmate as a punishment— the pupils queued up and laid their innocent, yet perennially damaging the self-esteem and respect of their classmate, a tight slap on the innocent victims face. That’s India of Modi. The world prefers to turn a blind eye to its farce of being secular. Kashmir has been on fire for almost five decades, and India with its usual disrespect to norms, attempted to rub dust in the eyes of the world opinion by wanting to host the G-20 summit in Srinagar. This blatant diplomatic insult has gone unpunished. Delegates of all countries, barring China, arrived in Srinagar to attend. The world is besotted by over a billion people market for its goods and services. Economic interest prevails over human dignity. Kashmir, which is home to 7.5 million Muslims, has been under siege of the oppressive Indian military. Today more than 600,000 soldiers not only monitor the movements through curfews and road blocks, but are also ever ready to instigate, so that they can have opportunity to indulge in wholesale massacre, murder, rape, loot and plunder. The world conscience is numb. Again with impudence Modi’s government had the audacity to legislate and make it easier for adherents of several South Asian religions facing atrocities anywhere in the world to acquire citizenship but the legislation pointedly excludes Muslims. This is one major step taken by Modi to convert the secular nature of Indian society into an intolerant Hindu state. Modi has been at the demolition of the Gandhian-Nehruvian principles of peace and tolerance. It all started when the BJP celebrated the tearing down of the Babri mosque at Ayodhaya to build in its place a temple for Ram, the deity. He followed the celebration with a Hitlerite massacre of at least 3000 or more Muslim men, women and children in his native state of Gujarat in 2002. He was filled with pride and arrogance on being labelled a true Hindu nationalist. Modi lives with this belief, obviously that all Muslims of India are essentially Pakistanis — scratch an Indian Muslim only skin deep, and you find a Pakistani is his philosophy. In the last nine years of his rule, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and other minorities have been beaten to cold death. Instead of dousing religious fanatical sentiments, the BJP government has been prodding die-hard Hindu elements to infuriate and later persecute Muslims. Modi’s philosophy of religious bigotry should be seen as a sign of danger to world peace— Hitler was appeased and the consequences are part of woeful history. If the world community, alongside the by and large tolerant Indian and noble Hindus do not react and stop this madness of religious frenzy at the central government level, we may witness a “Hindu Hitler” who will cleanse not just India, but the entire subcontinent and may be beyond. The madness must stop. Modi has been viciously changing the Muslim names of cities, towns and streets. The cities of Allahbad, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Aligarh, etc., are under the hammer so are the streets of New Delhi , that are named after not just Mughal Emperors but also after the many Muslim other rulers of the subcontinent. By changing names, Modi cannot rewrite history — its present status owes a debt to its glorious past of the last thousand years of Muslim rule that gave India their highest standards and mechanics of revenue collection, district management, arts and culture and above all good governance. Just as India hoodwinked its nonaligned status to the global spectators while it actually was sitting in the lap of Moscow, so is the case today of its appearance as a secular state, which surely it is not. Under Modi, India represents a communal mindset, emerging from the delusional version of Hindutva. If Rahul Gandhi and his I.N.D.I.A. association fail to check his march to win the 2024 general elections, Indians will be dancing around the pyre, upon which will burn to ashes, Indian democracy, alongside the principles of Gandhi and Nehru. If India ceases to be secular, it will cease to be India. The fault lines are many that can crack up and lead to disintegration, starting from Mizoram and others in Northeast and Khalistan in the Northwest. https://www.brecorder.com/news/40262873

5 Hindu Mob kills a youth Muslim; Sep 16 2023; Ayesha is seven months pregnant and has been inconsolable for four days nowThe 29-year-old has been oblivious to her own wellbeing and has stopped eating properly as she grieves the loss of her husband, Nurul Hassan, who was killed after a Hindu mob attacked a mosque in Pusesavali village in Maharashtra’s Satara district. About 8.30pm on September 10, Hassan, a 31-year-old civil engineer, left his home for the Isha prayers at a nearby mosque. His uncle Mohammad Siraj said there were about 15 people in the mosque and the prayers were in progress when they heard commotion outside. A mob had surrounded the mosque, chanting anti-Muslim slogans and making inflammatory remarks about Islam. “Around 150-200 Hindu men gathered outside the masjid and started throwing stones, damaging some parked vehicles,” he said. A witness wishing anonymity told Al Jazeera the mob broke the mosque’s door and barged into it. “They carried sharp weapons, iron rods, small pieces of granite and batons. As soon as they entered, they began assaulting everyone present. Hassan was hit on his head with an iron rod multiple times, causing him to collapse in a pool of blood. He was already dead when we lifted him from the spot,” he said, adding that at least 14 other people suffered injuries. According to Siraj, it started with a Hindu man allegedly hacking into the Instagram account of a Muslim minor and posting “objectionable content” against Chhatrapati Shivaji, a revered 17th-century Hindu king who fought the Mughals. The post went viral and triggered tensions between Muslims and Hindus in the area. Following an investigation, the police confirmed the post was not made by the Muslim boy and detained the accused, identified as Amar Arjun Shinde. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/15/shattered-muslim-engineer-killed-by-mob-at-mosque-in-indias-maharashtra

6 USCIRF Religious Freedom in India; Sep 7 2034; on During a Congressional Briefing held on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Nadine Maenza, former Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), has wondered why the Biden administration should raise issues of mass anti-minority mob violence -- particularly in Haryana and Manipur -- with Modi. Modi should be told that if such violence continues, the US will be “compelled by law” to designate India as one of the world’s worst offenders of religious freedom, she urged. Maenza's came against the backdrop India witnessing a troubling increase in incidents of alleged Hindu militant mob violence targeting minority communities. Haryana and Manipur have witnessed particularly egregious acts of brutality, a diaspora civil rights group said.

It stated, in August, an armed "Hindu militant procession wreaked havoc in Muslim-majority areas of Haryana, resulting in arson, stone pelting, and physical violence", adding, "Tragically, this violence claimed the life of a 19-year-old imam and five others. Concurrently, Manipur's predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo tribe has faced violent attacks by the majority Hindu Meitei population since May, including beheadings, immolations, and horrifying gang rapes." Maenza said that for the past four years, USCIRF has been calling on the US Department of State to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), a label reserved for the world’s worst violators of religious freedoms. “For at least the last five years, religious freedom conditions have deteriorated in India, making them now among the worst in the world,” Maenza opined. “We can’t just ignore the facts on the ground, especially with Manipur on fire… it is important that [the Biden administration] raise these issues directly with Prime Minister Modi and explain how – without change – they will be compelled by law to designate India as a CPC.” During the briefing, Florence Lowe, co-founder of the North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about atrocities against the Kuki-Zo, shared a harrowing personal account of her family's experience in Manipur. “My family home was attacked and my 77-year-old mother had to run and hide from the mob that had burned their church… they have lost everything to arson and looting,” she recounted. “It boggles the mind to realize that they are the lucky ones,” she added. “That same day, other people of my tribe were not as lucky. Some were bludgeoned to death, over the next few days others were raped, gang raped, burned to death. They did not even spare a 7-year-old boy.” Investigative reporter Astha Savyasachi, who was part of a fact-finding team that investigated the cause of the recent "anti-Muslim" violence in Haryana, debunked "myths spread by Hindu supremacists blaming Muslims" for the violence. “Right-wing groups instigated the violence through a sustained hate campaign against Muslims [in which] provocative media content targeting Muslims was circulated on social media by far-right Hindu extremist groups,” said Savyasachi. She added that in addition to raising "genocidal anti-Muslim slogans", the Hindu militant procession was "heavily armed". Despite the blatant provocation, police and the administration “largely remained indifferent” to the violence, bulldozing over 1,200 Muslim-owned shops and businesses in the aftermath. Activist Sharjeel Usmani stated that the violence in Haryana follows a pattern seen in other cases of mass Hindu mob violence across India. “First, the Hindu militant outfits attack Muslim localities. They burn down properties, vandalize mosques, demolish shrines, beat up Muslims,” Usmani said. “Then the police accuse Muslims of [committing] the violence they were victims of… and [they] launch their own series of violent measures against Muslims, [including] arresting Muslim youth and demolishing Muslim properties.” “The kind of impunity the Hindu right-wing in India enjoys today has not happened before in history, ever,” he added. “And this government has incentivized the hate, so much so that the more cruel you are to Muslims, the more chance you have of being successful in your politics.” https://www.counterview.net/2023/09/biden-urged-to-warn-modi-us-can-declare.html

7 Hyderabad massacre; Sep 1 2023; So, the richest and largest princely state that was ruled by a Muslim simply couldn’t be integrated very easily into the new nation. It was just far too triggering for the soft Hindu state. Upon witnessing the refusal of the ruling Nizam, the new Indian state then opted for force. They unleashed a so-called “police action” that would last far too long and see far too many Muslim victims, who were subjected to the “revenge” of their Hindu “friends” and neighbors who always felt that the Hyderabad State was illegitimate, if not an entirely foreign entity. As per The Quint, basing itself on a committee report that had been suppressed by succeeding (Hindu nationalist and secular) governments till 2013 (for obvious reasons), the victims were into the tens of thousands. The numbers lie anywhere between 27,000 to 40,000 individuals either put to death immediately or killed after first being inhumanly subjected to extreme forms of torture and sexual violence. https://muslimskeptic.com/2023/09/17/operation-polo/

8 Arundhati Roy on minorities in India; Sep 19 2023; “If you’re living in India right now and if you’re a Muslim, the law applies differently to you,” says an impassioned Arundhati Roy to an intimate audience at a theatre in the small city of Lausanne. It is the night before she will be awarded the prestigious 45th European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement to honour her 25 years of writing and the French translation of her book, “Azadi”, the Urdu word for freedom. The audience hangs on Roy’s every word as she discusses various pressing topics: from the dire realities of minorities in India to Kashmir and Manipur, caste, rising nationalism underwritten by corporate money, climate change and the fight of the Adivasi people. Roy magnifies the hypocrisy of democratic foreign governments attending a press-conference-free G20 Summit recently held in India in trading deals, weapons, planes, and fleets in exchange for silence. “They know”, Roy says damningly. All G20 dignitaries, though she emphasizes the President of France, Emmanuel Macron and the President of the United States, Joe Biden who both respectively hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this year. Macron extended an invitation to Modi for Bastille Day; an act Roy finds incredulous, while Biden hosted Modi in June. Roy’s stance is unequivocal; world governments are complicit; they know exactly what is happening under the Modi regime. They know that Kashmir was subject to the most prolonged communication blackout in a democracy. Roy says, “Today there can be no voice from there [Kashmir]. The journalists have been silenced; the press club is closed. The newspaper can only publish either advertisements or government and army press releases. Everybody has to speak up. You cannot say only Kashmiris should speak – they’re not allowed to speak.” They know about the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 that barefacedly discriminates against Muslims. Roy’s unflinching draws parallels to Nazi Germany reminding us, “the idea of a government asking people to produce a set of documents that it will approve to decide who is a citizen and who is not was last done in Nuremberg by the Third Reich.” They know about how the Delhi Police forced grievously injured young Muslim men lying on the street to sing the Indian national anthem while they prodded and kicked them. The imagery of a dying man while being forced to recite a national anthem is as gruesome as it is symbolic. Roy traces the meticulous orchestration, strategic organizing and sinister weaponization of language from right-wing politicians and relentless 24-hour news cycles referring to minorities as “termites” and “illegals” and how successfully this operation has penetrated the public psyche. “When Coronavirus came, it was Muslims are spreading Corona,” echoing historical accusations against the Jewish community by the Nazis that they were spreading typhus. As Roy is awarded the 45th European Essay Prize at the Lausanne Palace, she begins her lecture by saying, “I am going to make an urgent intervention right now”. She explains that her 25 years of writing have mapped step-by-step India’s descent [although she states some see it as an ascent] into majoritarianism and then fascism. Roy has signalled a warning, heed of where India has been heading since it entered the free market and then since the BJP came into power in 1998. She humbly describes herself as a failure – while she is anything but – she says to the audience that her writing has been met with mockery and criticism even in liberal and progressive circles and has not yielded the BJP or fascism from its slow climb to power. “One has written and written and yet things have become deeper, harder, more violent and more frightening”, she says. The time for warning is over. “We are in a different phase of history”, Roy says firmly. This difference is highlighted in the recent hate crimes Roy shares with the audience: a chilling video of a teacher instructing her Hindu students to slap a 7-year-old Muslim boy. While a barbaric civil war has been burning in the state of Manipur, not only did the Manipur police hand over two women to a mob who were paraded naked through a village and gang raped but women who belonged to the same community as the rapists stood by the rapists and even incited their men to rape. Roy explains a “banality of evil”, the sickening regularity of Muslims being publicly lynched and the celebration of lynchers. The process of Muslim segregation and ghettoization, burning down hundreds of Christian churches, shutting down of Amnesty International, mysterious no-fly lists that government critics find themselves on and pressure on academics both local and foreign – they know, she compels. While Biden and Macron were fawning over Modi, Muslims were fleeing a small town in northern India, Uttarakhand, after Hindu extremists marked an “X” on their doors and asked them to leave in their open pursuit of a Muslim-free Uttarakhand. In fact, “there is nothing they don’t know about the man they are embracing”, Roy concludes. Even while knowing, the world powers have consciously chosen to give Modi oxygen. While Western governments peddle narratives of strengthening their economies and countering China’s influence and many are soon up for re-election in their home countries, Roy has a divergent perspective. Roy does not mince her words: “This is a form of racism, they claim to be democrats, but they are racists. They don’t believe their professed values should apply to non-white countries; it is an old story of course. Democracy for themselves and fascism or whatever else for the non-white world.” Roy goes on to say, “If world governments imagine that the dismantling of democracy in India is not going to affect the whole world, they must indeed be – delusional.” When Roy says, ‘everybody has to speak’, she is not just referring to the Indian population. While she has always detested the phrase, “giving voice to the voiceless”, she stresses the importance of voice. “It is not about speaking on anyone’s behalf”, she explains, “it is about speaking for yourself on what kind of society you want to live in”. When asked by a Swiss panellist, “What can we do?”, Roy replies – “Speak to your governments”. As the world as a whole grapples with a rising tide of nationalism and authoritarianism, Roy’s words reverberate as an undaunted clarion call. Roy tells the audience that there is a tremendous fight back against fascism in her home country, she also declares, “None of you must pretend you didn’t know what was going on”. In her closing remarks, Roy’s words cut through the air like glass taking her audience as she sometimes does in her writing to a place they fear most. She says unapologetically, “What is happening in India is not that loose variety of internet fascism, it’s the real thing. We have become Nazis. Not just our leaders, not just our TV channels and newspapers but vast sections of our population too. Large numbers of the Indian Hindu population who live in the US, Europe and South Africa support the fascists politically as well as materially. For the sake of our souls, for those of our children and our children’s children, we must stand up. It does not matter whether we fail or succeed, that responsibility is not on India alone.” https://maktoobmedia.com/opinion/listening-to-arundhati-roy-warn-about-india-at-european-essay-prize-event/

9 India’s Justice System: Sep 22 2023; India’s Justice System Is No Longer Independent: Part I: In the first article of a 3-part series on the erosion of India’s judicial independence, Saraphin Dhanani discussed the structure of India’s judiciary and the pivotal moment in 2018 when four justices alerted the world about the institutional decline of the Indian justice system resulting from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule. In well-functioning democratic systems, the judiciary plays a crucial role as a counterbalance to autocratic tendencies. But the Modi government has deftly deconstructed the scaffolding of the judiciary by refusing to appoint judges, influencing the outcome of watershed cases, quashing political opponents using the executive’s leverage in courts, and capitalizing on judges’ self-interest and identity politics. The court’s management of the citizenship verification project in the state of Assam and the lawsuits initiated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against leaders of opposing political parties serve as stark examples of the dismantling of the judiciary’s scaffolding in Modi’s India.

Monthly update: 49 Aug 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1 Muslims killed: Aug 1, 2023: A Railway Protection Force jawan on Monday (July 31) morning shot dead four people who were on a train near the Palghar railway station in Maharashtra. Among those killed was an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) and three passengers – all Muslim men with beards – across nine carriages.The accused RPF constable has been identified as Chetan Singh. According to the PTI and Hindustan Times, Singh first shot dead a senior officer, Tikaram Meena in coach B-5. He then shot and killed a passenger, Abdul Kaderbhai Bhanpurwala, a passenger in the same coach. Singh then walked through four coaches without using his weapon until he came across a passenger in the pantry car, identified as Sadar Mohammed Hussain, and killed him Singh then walked through two other coaches before shooting his third victim, Asghar Abbas Shaikh in coach S-6. A purported video of Chetan Singh speaking to passengers while standing over Asghar’s bloodied body was went viral on social media in which the RPF constable says: (‘They operate from Pakistan, this is what the media of the country is showing, they have found out, they know everything, their leaders are there… If you want to vote, if you want to live in India, then I say, Modi and Yogi, these are the two, and your Thackeray’) https://thewire.in/security/railway-protection-force-constable-shoots-dead-asi-three-others-in-train

2. Muslims targeted: Aug 2 2023: Indian authorities on Tuesday imposed a curfew and deployed hundreds of paramilitary forces to different parts of the northern Haryana state in response to violent clashes between Hindu and Muslims that have left at least four people dead. A mosque was set on fire early Tuesday and a Muslim cleric was killed in Gurugram city outside the capital, Delhi. https://www.dw.com/en/india-several-killed-in-hindu-muslim-clashes-near-delhi/a-66405908

3. A Warning About India: Aug 2 2023: But even as India is poised to rise in economic and geopolitical heft, a recent Financial Times column by Martin Wolf points to a more sinister side of things: the Hindu nationalism that has grown under Modi and his BJP party. “Today’s India is an ‘illiberal democracy,’” Wolf writes, referencing the term Fareed coined. Per the democracy-scoring think tank Freedom House, which rates India as only “partly free,” Wolf notes that civil rights in India “have deteriorated substantially under BJP rule since 2014. … For someone who has long admired the vigour and diversity of Indian democracy, this growing illiberalism is depressing. It is particularly depressing given India’s rising role in the world. I can see no good reason why a predominantly Hindu society should not tolerate minority faiths. I can see no reason either why it has to assail a diverse civil society. Yet that is where the Modi government seems to be going.” At ssue are Hindu identity and inclusion, as Wolf puts it—whether one must be Hindu in order to truly be Indian (the view of some Hindu nationalists)—and the protection of minority rights against majoritarian government. Violence sometimes provides disturbing evidence of intolerance, as Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar write for The New York Times, but a related illiberal problem concerns the decline of Indian media freedom. At New Lines Magazine, Surbhi Gupta talks with former NDTV anchor Ravish Kumar, who now broadcasts on his YouTube channel. “If a person is saying how the Indian media has collapsed, that is not activism—that is the reality,” Kumar tells Gupta.

3. India going to extreme right: Aug 3, 2023:Since 2014, under the rule of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a new chapter has being authored in India’s history, whereby the country has come to deviate from the basic principles of democracy, minority rights, and executive accountability. This needs greater recognition and urgent action. Democracy is under increasing threat from authoritarianism in India. While the trappings of procedural democracy exist, the mere holding of elections does not guarantee whether people will be able to exercise their rights without fear, whether constitutional bodies will be able to act without the need to show favour, or ensure an elected government will act in ways that respect the rights of minorities. The 2014 elections in India brought the Modi-led BJP to power on the promise of delivering development and Hindu nationalism (Hindutva). The 2019 elections – where BJP election spending was at the time the highest in the world, and partly funded by a new, unique, and opaque instrument of party-financing called the electoral bonds – focused on nationalism and Hindu majoritarian appeals almost exclusively. Over the last decade, India has gone through a series of spectacular upheavals resulting from centralised and divisive decisions; these include the sudden demonetisation of a majority of the country’s paper currency in 2016, the overnight abrogation of autonomy and change of statehood for the Indian administered region of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, and the creation of a religious route to Indian citizenship with the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2021. Meanwhile, routine changes to rules, institutions, and processes that often don’t make the headlines but are radically transformative in how they seek to curb free expression, suppress political opposition, and narrow accountability have also occurred. At different times, academics and students at universities, farmers, media persons, human rights activists, tribal leaders, atheists, and sportswomen have all faced intimidation. Some have been beaten up. Others have faced charges of sedition and imprisonment for simply expressing dissent. Insurgent and indigenous populations in the country have witnessed a growing repression in response to demands for political freedoms, and religious minorities, especially Muslims and increasingly Christians, have been constantly “Othered” and attacked on fabricated charges. Muslims have faced lynchings on the sole suspicion of possessing beef. Christians have been attacked on charges of allegedly seeking to carry out faith conversions. Governing through a mix of what I have called “postcolonial neoliberal nationalism,” the BJP is supported, controversially, by large conglomerates (like Gautam Adani and Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani from Modi’s home state of Gujarat) and a far-right, nation-wide paramilitary group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with its militant Hindu nationalist family of organisations (Sangh Parivar). Hindutva adherents deploy a proliferating vocabulary of “Jihad ” accusations as a way to attack Muslim fellow citizens; here, an insinuation of Jihad is made against different aspects of Muslim life and livelihood. The most prominent of these is the conspiracy theory of “Love Jihad,” which is the allegation that inter-faith marriages, particularly between Muslim men and Hindu women, are part of a sinister, planned conspiracy. Likewise, Muslims are blamed for spreading the coronavirus, for buying land, for selling vegetables (“Corona Jihad,” “Land Jihad,” “Vegetable Seller Jihad”) and much more, in turn exposing them to social ostracism or violent retaliation from the Hindu right-wing. India’s ruling party does not have a single elected Muslim member of parliament, and textbooks in the country were recently revised to delete mentions of prominent Muslim forebears or eras. The zeitgeist of Islamophobia in India is multidimensional and pervasive; it manifests in various registers so that Muslim Indian citizens are seen as suspect, Kashmiri Muslims are constructed as latent terrorists, Muslim refugees such as the Rohingya are called pests, and neighbouring Pakistan is represented as an existential enemy as opposed to a rival. Faced with growing violence, effective democracy requires functioning checks and balances, but the mechanisms for seeking accountability are often rusty and rare. Court appeals are notoriously slow and, in many significant cases, judicial quietude has been eminently on display. The television media in India is not polarised in the standard sense with different extreme perspectives on display, but uniformly disciplined through aggressive corporate takeovers and enforced political perception management. Oversight bodies, such as the Enforcement Directorate, have been selective in pursuit of cases against opposition politicians. The leader of the prominent opposition Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, has appealed to the Supreme Court following a judgement by Gujarat High Court in which he was disqualified from parliament on the accusation of defaming the surname “Modi.” Meanwhile, there is a critical and accelerating push towards digital authoritarianism through a mix of increased surveillance and changes to legal provisions. BJP “IT cells” (Information Technology cells) farm Hindutva trolls who have been known to resort to graphic misogyny, gender-trolling, and coordinated abuse. Whatsapp is a prime means of spreading misinformation and disinformation. Social media companies censor content at government requests, which are at unprecedented levels, and the rates of internet shutdowns across provinces have also increased. Modi’s face is plastered on every other billboard and it is well-nigh impossible to open a newspaper that does not carry his image every day. Reflecting unusual levels of narcissism in public, he once wore a suit with his own name stitched in gold all over it, and is known to crave the camera in staged settings. Meanwhile, he does not engage with serious allegations made by a governor-rank figure against his handling of Kashmir’s politics or the Pulwama attacks. Aside from courting diaspora Indians overseas through appeal to a nativist pride, and participating in choreographed spectacles with assorted far-right international leaders, he keeps to a teleprompter script, offers a highly curated and benign presence on his weekly radio program and on twitter, and touts women’s empowerment while maintaining a studious silence in the face of the most egregious violence in the country (whether it is anti-minority lynchings by Hindu mobs or savage gang-rapes such as that of the 8 year old Aasifa in Kathua in 2018 or the Kuki-Zo tribal Christian women in Manipur in 2023). The Modi myth proffers the idea of a paternal, ascetic, and efficient leader at the helm of a civilisational resurgence of India as a “Vishwa Guru” (world leader). In parallel, Modi’s foreign policy is marked by notable Indian refusals to vote at the UN against Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and the curious absence of any reference to China in his speech following the Galwan confrontation on the Indo-China border in Ladakh. Modi’s Home Minister, Amit Shah, refers to India as having its own non-Western version of human rights – “human rights with Indian characteristics” – which is a remarkable adaptation of China’s “democracy with Chinese characteristics.” Indian and Chinese attitudes share several similarities towards the populations of contiguous regions of Kashmir and Xinjiang respectively, and the rhetoric of anti-Western assertion is common to both countries. Modi’s External Affairs Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, pushes back against international concerns of democratic erosion and escalating violence against minorities by calling for an end to colonial mentalities, thus weaponising Western history to restrict current critique. Political projects inimical to democracy in multiple countries are led by “Electorally Legitimated Misogynist Authoritarian (ELMA)” leaders who claim a monopoly on nationalism. Further, they come to power challenging neoliberalism, while profiting from crony capitalism. Along with the “Modi-fication” of the county in the last decade, India has seen its global rankings for democracy, media freedom, religious freedom, poverty, and hunger slip. Strategic minilateral engagements and the needs of economic statecraft notwithstanding, any facile Western notion that a country rapidly turning to authoritarianism can offer a counter to an authoritarian China needs careful re-examination. https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/increasing-authoritarianism-in-india-under-narendra-modi/

4. Residents flee: Aug 3 2023: Residents of a slum cluster in Gurugram’s Palra village in sector 70A fled the area on Wednesday, a day after open threats were issued. The cluster members are predominantly from West Bengal read Muslims) and were told to “go back where you came from” by a mob of members of some right-wing outfits on Tuesday. The slum dwellers were also assaulted by the mob which consisted of about 25 motorbikes with two-three men each. Some members stayed back, while some spent the night in a forested area.

5. Ethnic cleansing: Aug 7 2023: The ongoing violence in Nuh and Gurugram, Haryana which reportedly led to the killing of five people at the time this article was written, including a masjid Imam, as well as the destruction of a mosque and shops is only the latest in a long list of similar “communal incidents” and lynchings across India. In another simultaneous act of gut-wrenching killing by ethnic profiling of three Muslim men including a tribal superior officer by an RPF constable Chetan Kumar in a moving train, is emotionally very distressing and unsettling. Similarly, the killings, rapes, and displacement of another tribal Christian minority community taking place in Manipur for months bear to the testimony that minorities are neither safe in their houses nor in public places anymore. However, to characterize such repeated bouts of targeted violence against Muslims as merely “communal riots” is a gross misrepresentation. It downplays and normalizes what are essentially acts of a slow and systematic ethnic cleansing aimed at intimidating and dispossessing the Muslim minority community. Paul Brass, in his seminal book ‘The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India,’ introduced a framework called the “institutionalized riot system” to comprehensively understand Hindu-Muslim violence in contemporary India. This framework provides a functional explanation of how violence is deliberately manufactured by powerful actors, notably to consolidate voters along religious lines during periods of intense political mobilization or electoral competition. However, Brass’ framework, primarily rooted in data up to 2002, does not fully encapsulate the drastic transformation of India into a Hindu majoritarian state in recent years. Under the current regime, violence against Muslims is not an aberration happening at the time of election, it is an essential governing tool. With the BJP and Cahoots espousing openly divisive rhetorics and implementing discriminatory policies, anti-Muslim hatred and violence has dangerously become normalized in India. Policies such as the impending Citizenship Amendment Act, the National Population Registry (NPR), and the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) overtly discriminate against the Muslim community. State institutions like the police not only enable riots through inaction but are often complicit in direct violence against Muslims as found in several reports and academic examinations. The electoral successes the BJP has achieved after riots prove that such violence pays political dividends for them. Meanwhile, the expanding footprint of Hindu nationalist groups like Bajrang Dal and VHP further facilitates violence and intimidation against Muslims across India. The combination of discriminatory laws, state complicity, electoral incentives for violence, and mobilization by extremist groups has created an environment where anti-Muslim hatred and violence has become systematically enabled and embedded in society rather than an aberration. Across India, Modi’s era has seen a manifold increase in violent attacks on Muslims by cow vigilantes, allegations of Muslim men “seducing” Hindu women to convert them, frequent calls and attempts to economically and culturally obliterate Muslim identity, and the ruthless crushing of Muslim protests against discrimination. Police investigations and court trials against Hindu perpetrators are deliberately lax, while Muslims live under constant threat of being penalized as “anti-national” on flimsy pretexts. This institutional capture and climate of violence is forcing Muslims to recede from the public sphere. With their lives, livelihoods and religious spaces under literal attack, accompanied by a sense of political disenfranchisement, Muslims face conditions seemingly designed to exclude, subjugate and erase them. The ultimate goal is to render Muslims politically irrelevant and culturally invisible, reducing them to second class citizens afraid of fully participating in public life. It is the violent enforcement of a Hindu supremacist ideology that dreams of finally “solving” the Muslim problem created by Partition – by making them vanish from the national mainstream. When a minority group is systematically targeted through violent dispossession of property, restrictions on cultural expression, physical atrocities, and symbolic markers of inferiority and exclusion, it constitutes a slow and systematic ethnic cleansing regardless of absolute fatality figures. Death tolls should not blind us to the structural violence at play. While Brass’ framework of an institutionalized riot system provides valuable insights into the deliberate production of manufacturing of communal violence by riot agents for political ends, it has limitations in fully explaining the endemic and pervasive nature of present-day violence against Muslims in India. Contemporary anti-Muslim violence is not confined solely to riot-prone areas or election periods, but has become ubiquitous even in remote villages, small towns, and public spaces at any given moment. The strategic lynchings of Muslims captured on camera and made viral during or after the acts in many cases, the daily anti-Muslim rhetoric permeating mainstream national media, the proliferation of hate speeches and genocidal calls with minimal condemnation from secular opposition parties due to fear of majority Hindu reprisal, and the lack of judicial redress all point to a normalization of violence that cannot be sufficiently elucidated through the institutionalized riot system framework alone. While electoral motivations are relevant, the current climate suggests a more complex mix of underlying ideological, social and political factors at play in the embedded majoritarian hatred against Muslims. Brass’ model therefore requires augmentation to account for the wider socio-political processes, power dynamics and majoritarian nationalist ideologies legitimizing endemic anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India. The ongoing violence must be seen not as an aberrant clash but as part of this endless chain of violence enabled by state institutions, aimed at challenging the very existence of the Muslim community in the national imagination. Each attack pushes the boundaries of what levels of violence can be normalized. The friction and scrap wounds accumulate until the victims are eliminated or submit totally. We must stop using the misleading label of “communal riots” which embedded in the analytical framework of the concept ‘the institutionalized riot system, and call out the elephant in the room – the slow and systematic ethnic cleansing of Muslims from the body politic. Our constitution guarantees minority rights as fundamental, non-negotiable principles. Allowing their systemic violation erodes India’s own survival as an inclusive democracy. The time for diplomatic silences is over. If we all concerned citizens do not stand up when one group is existentially persecuted, there will be no one left to stand up for us when our own freedoms are extinguished.Abdul Moid

6. Muslim homes bulldozed; Aug 8 2024; Abdul Rasheed says police locked him in a bus as a bulldozer demolished his shops in India’s northern Haryana state where a Muslim-majority district saw communal clashes last week.“I was heartbroken. My family and children depended on the rent we received from the shops. We had rented shops to both Hindus and Muslims,” he told Al Jazeera on Sunday, adding that the authorities “gave no notice or showed any order, and bulldozed everything”. Rasheed’s is among more than 300 Muslim homes and businesses bulldozed by Haryana’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government since Thursday in yet another instance of collective – and selective – punishment of a community over religious violence. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/7/vengeance-muslim-homes-shops-bulldozed-150-arrested-in-indias-haryana

7 MOdi and upcoming elations; Aug 12 2034 ; The only one that springs to mind is his growing fear that, with opposition unity solidifying from month to month, the BJP is in danger of losing the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. So he has gone back to the one antidote with which he is familiar, and which worked unfailingly in Gujarat, and in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This is stirring up hatred of Muslims and other minorities in the Hindu majority. He did not plan the Manipur violence, but these played into his hands just as the Pulwama attack had done four years ago. It is against this background that one needs to examine the riots that broke out in Nuh. Compare this with Modi’s steadfast refusal to condemn, and his tacit legitimisation through silence, of the lynching of more than 50 Muslims and Dalits by self-appointed gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes), his three-month long silence as Manipur has burned, and now his calculated silence over the outbreak of communal violence in Nuh, Gurgaon and Palwal. This makes the difference between a Hindu who understood, and wanted to foster, the essential tolerance of Hinduism, and a fake devotee who is abusing it to perpetuate his personal power at the expense of his country becomes starkly apparent. As I write, Prime Minister Modi has maintained his now-familiar enigmatic silence on the eruption of communal violence in Nuh, Gurgaon and Palwal for nine days. Through his silence, he has endorsed the Haryana home minister’s placing of the blame squarely upon Muslim youth in Nuh who allegedly attacked devotees who came to offer prayers at the Nalhar temple. This allegation has been so readily accepted that even The Hindu reported that “soon after they (the yatris) started the second leg of their journey from the Nalhar temple to a Radhakrishna temple 60 kms away, they were attacked by a mob . As stones were thrown at them and vehicles and shops set ablaze the devotees ran back to the temple in terror. They sat huddled inside for five hours as the mob surrounded the temple”. This description left out several key facts. The most important of these is that it was preceded by a full year of carefully planned provocation of an entirely peaceful Muslim population by the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, to which the Haryana government consistently turned a blind eye. The first was that while the Nalhar temple was ancient, the pilgrimage to it, titled a Jalabhishekh Yatra (offering of holy water from the Ganges to Lord Shiva) was only three years old, and had been launched by the VHP, with the express purpose of reclaiming Mahabharat-age temples from the Muslims. The article also did not mention that most of the pilgrims in the Jalabhishekh Yatra were not ordinary men and women of all ages but almost exclusively young men.The second was that the fracas in Nuh town was caused by a string of provocations that had begun a year or more before the violence occurred. The first provocation took place in 2022 when a mazaar (a sufi shrine) was vandalised, but the elders of both communities contained the reaction. This year, however, saw a rapid fire string of further provocations. First, a self styled gau rakshak named Monu Manesar, who is a Bajrang Dal activist on the run from the Rajasthan police for killing two Muslims, Nasir and Junaid, earlier this year, posted a succession of inflammatory videos and promised that he would attend the Shobha Yatra at the Nalhar temple on Monday personally, to bathe the Shivling in Ganges water. Second, another notorious Muslim baiter and self-advertised member of the Bajrang Dal, Bittu Bajrangi, uploaded a series of venomous anti-Muslim videos on various channels, in one of which he claimed derisively that ‘Nuh was the Hindu community’s sasural (in-laws’ house)’. No one failed to understand the insult. A third agent provocateur who had also announced his intention to join the Yatra this year was yet another Bajrang Dal member who is known by his nom de guerre, ‘Rambhakt Gopal’. He gained notoriety in 2020 by firing a revolver at protestors demonstrating against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Shaheen Bagh, shouting “Yeh lo azaadi (Here’s your freedom)” as he retreated, still holding his revolver up, into the protective ranks of a hundred Delhi policemen who did nothing to deter him. In the run up to the Nuh march, Gopal had uploaded two videos, the first of armed persons in a jeep terrorising women and children in a Muslim village, and the second, captioned “Taking away the cow smuggler” was of young men dragging a Muslim into an SUV.Neither Monu Manesar nor Gopal turned up at Nuh, but the damage had been done and the town was seething with young men who were determined to take revenge. It was in these conditions that, after visiting the Nalhar temple, the Jalabhishekh Yatris decided to go through the centre of Nuh town to their second shrine, the Radhakrishna temple at Singar village, 60 km away. This made the resulting violence unavoidable. Then followed the now familiar BJP routine of blaming the victims for the atrocities they had suffered. By Friday, just four days after the riot in Nuh, the Haryana police force that had done absolutely nothing to prevent a well publicised riot, had arrested as many as 141 persons and registered 55 FIRs in connection with the violence. It has not given any data as to who, precisely, they have arrested. But it is safe to assume that just as happened after the East Delhi riots three years ago – where despite 40 out of 53 persons killed being Muslims and most of the property destroyed being Muslim-owned, all but a handful of those arrested were also Muslims – most of those who have been arrested in Nuh will also turn out to be Muslims. What there is data for already is the revenge that the police has taken upon the Muslims of Nuh. Almost all of the more than 750 homes, huts, shops, restaurants and cinema halls demolished by the Haryana government in the immediate aftermath of the riot, allegedly for suddenly discovered illegal construction, belong to Muslims.

Throughout this tragedy, Modi has maintained his sphinx-like silence while his advisers worked out how to convert the resulting increase in Hindu-Muslim animosity into votes for the BJP in 2024. The first fruit of their cogitations has not taken long to ripen. On Wednesday August 9, a bare 48 hours after the Muslim property destruction drive began, the Haryana BJP chief, Om Prakash Dhankar, had the brazen-faced gall to accuse the Congress and the Aam Admi Party of having instigated the riots. He and his five-member delegation did this without even having visited Nuh, but after the police had prevented a Congress delegation from going to the town on Tuesday and an AAP delegation from doing so on Wednesday. The causes of the communal conflagration in Manipur may have been local, and the violence unplanned, but the same cannot be said of the tragedy that has befallen the Meos of Nuh. Judging from Modi’s past actions, Nuh is likely to be followed by more communal violence triggered by the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, but blamed upon local Muslims. As the BJP feels more threatened by the INDIA alliance, such provocations are set to multiply. India is therefore likely to go through the fires of hell before the next election. And if the BJP somehow comes out as the victor, it will almost certainly be the last proper general election this country will see. https://thewire.in/politics/elections-2024-india-most-dangerous-phase

8 Arundhati Roy on Indian women; Aug 13 2023; Renowned Indian author and commentator Arundhati Roy has expressed serious concern at the rise in violence against women – that too encouraged by women who look at the faith of the perpetrators to decide whether to support them or not. Arundhati Roy said, “Today we are in a situation where women are justifying rape, where women are telling men to rape other women. I am talking about not just Manipur. I am talking about so many cases – whether it’s in Hathras, whether it’s in Jammu and Kashmir. “Depending on who is raping who, the women stand up for that (particular) community. This means we have gone psychotic. There is something very wrong,” she said, calling upon every citizen to stand up before it is too late. The Booker Prize winner said, “You have a situation where the police are handing over women to a mob to be raped. You have a situation where an officer of the Railway Protection Force is walking down bogies shooting Muslims and saying you must vote for Modi.” She was referring to the July 31 incident in which RPF constable Chetan Singh gunned down three Muslim men and a senior officer in a Jaipur-Mumbai train. Arundhati Roy cautioned about accepting the theories being spun that the RPF constable was mentally unstable. “And it is a mistake to think this person is mad. This person is sane. This person is absorbing all the propaganda day and night that’s coming out at him.” She drew attention to how a member of the Muslim community would feel in a similar situation. “I am just not talking about me. Imagine if you are a Muslim. You might have a parking problem that might end in your death, in your lynching. You might be going home from Delhi to Aligarh to see your parents, and you might end up dead. This is the country we are living in now.” Arundhati Roy described the unabated violence in Manipur as “ethnic cleansing” in which the Indian Central government is complicit. “It’s a kind of ethnic cleansing because the Centre is complicit, the state is partisan, the security forces are split between one partisan lot, the police, and the others with no chain of command,” she noted, with a word of caution as to how other states need to be careful. “From Manipur to Haryana to all the other states that are going to stand for elections… it’s like a fuse is being lit,” she warned, appealing to everyone to stand up for peace and harmony. She took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not doing enough to end the Manipur violence. “There’s a war, women are being raped, paraded naked, colonies are being burnt. Muslims are having cross marks on their doors, they are fleeing, and he is tweeting ‘I had appam last night for dinner’ https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/08/11/arundhati-roy-expressed-serious-concern-at-rise-in-violence-against-women-in-india.html

9 Muslims in India; Aug 15 2023; a April 2023 database (prepared by Muslim Mirror) of hate crimes in India that recorded 37 attacks in 30 days; an attack a day against Muslims in Modi’s India is the “new normal”. It is horrible, terrifying. Today, Muslims are lynched not for their poverty or riches but for a single reason—they are Muslims. They are visual pollutants. They have a particular way of life that cannot be assimilated into our land of sadhus and sannyasis. And that way of life was imported from foreign lands. The punyabhumi must be cleansed of the bad blood of Muslims who eat our gau mata, who marry our sister. The fear and horror with which the Indian Muslims are passing days under the Modi years can hardly be grasped by Desi and Videshi intellectuals, academics, researchers and columnists. Yes, they may present the pathetic marginalisation of Indian Muslims on all fronts of life with data, statistics, charts, and graphs. But they cannot feel a Muslim’s fear during his train travel in cow belt states or during his Friday prayer at a mosque. Fear is looming large in his surroundings. His good neighbours may become the worst enemies, provided the situation demands so. Betrayal is lurking behind each door. If the time comes, it will exhibit its monstrosity with full force. When our neighbours are clapping hands and worshipping the ubiquitous presence of the most adorable man on earth, the mass murderer, then the news of genocide calls loses its steam. The steam of genocide is manufactured at each home with countless WhatsApp forwards and hate messages. Where nothing happens, as in Samuel Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot (1952), the actors either turn into tramps like Vladimir and Estragon. It also produces the torturer like Pozzo and the persecuted like Lucky, who relishes the tortures inflicted by his master with each pull to the strap tied to his neck. Here, however, everyone has been a tramp. Here is a fascist master, and under his shelter live millions of lackeys to serve him. He has killed good Muslims and the nameless bad Muslim multitude with the same animality. Only with one weapon—by fuelling the flames of hate between the two communities in pre-independence and post-independence India. Millions of doctored videos are being made and uploaded by millions of desh bhakts, YouTubers, and social media handlers, supportive of the single cause of Bharat mata—cleansing the bad blood from the anchal of Bharat mata. Millions of viewers and subscribers, and their hate-filled comments fail to shock the Indians. Many enjoy it—from the school-going boys and girls to the last HIndutva warriors, dying with a dream of Hindu Rashtra in their eyes, holding a smartphone in their shaking hands.

10 State managed violence; Aug 20 2023; Since 31st July 2023, violence by Hindutva forces has escalated into a large-scale pogrom against Muslims in Haryana and adjacent areas, starting from the town of Nuh, Haryana. It began with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s “Brij Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra” where known cow vigilantes and murderers such as Monu Manesar and Bittu Bajrangi announced their presence and participation.

This yatra swiftly seized control of the annual Hindu religious “kawad yatra”, with VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders making provocative declarations online, hinting at violence against Muslims in Nuh. All of this escalated into an organized pogrom which started at Nuh and quickly spread to Gurgaon, Sohna and Palwal, where in Gurgaon particularly, Hafiz Saad, an imam at Anjuman Jama Masjid was murdered by Hindutva mobs. The organized nature of this violence is exposed by how Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal members continued to provoke Muslims of Mewat through their social media outlets while also carrying weapons during the supposed religious procession. The carrying of swords and other weapons has even been questioned by BJP’s own Minister of State and Gurgaon Member of Parliament Rao Inderjit Singh. Over the years, Hindutva forces have particularly targeted the Mewat region, a Muslim-majority area.The Mewat region also happens to be one of the most impoverished areas in the country, with Mewat being declared India’s most underdeveloped district in 2018. The Brahmanical Hindutva fascist forces, over the years, have continuously attacked people in Mewat in the name of cow protection, with the BJP-led Haryana government even introducing a cow protection legislation that has allowed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-associated mobs, cow vigilantes, impunity to function directly out of police stations and government offices. Under this garb, many Muslim farmers and cattle herders have been lynched under false allegations of cow smuggling. Others have had their cattle stolen by Hindutva mobs and forcefully placed in expensive gaushalas. The pogrom in Nuh has seen continuous support from state institutions. In the case of Hafiz Saad, in his last conversation with his family, he stated that the police had secured his mosque and were claiming to protect him. A few hours later he was stabbed and murdered. The BJP-led government in Haryana has used this as an opportunity to continue the fascist trend of bulldozering homes, medical stores, shelters and huts and Muslims in Mewat, with hundreds of houses being demolished by bulldozers in the name of curbing ‘illegal encroachment.’ This same politics has been utilized in Uttar Pradesh against Muslim activists and journalists, in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, even using the G20 summit as an excuse to demolish homes. Ministers in the Haryana government like Anil Vij have openly claimed that these demolitions are the “ilaaj” (solution) for the pogroms in Haryana, aiding the Hindutva mobs and actively using state institutions to participate in this organized and planned attack against Muslim in Haryana. We call on all democratic forces to unite against state-sponsored violence through cow vigilante groups.

11 Muslim lynched; Aug 20 2023; A Muslim man was lynched in the Alwar district of India’s Rajasthan over suspicions of illegally chopping wood in a forest in the Rampur area, Indian media reported. According to The Hindu, the victim, identified as 27-year-old Wasim, and his friends were in a pick-up jeep when a mob attacked them near the Narol village on Thursday https://www.dawn.com/news/1771009

12 Arundhati Roy on Democracy in India ; Aug 26 2023; Arundhati Roy, has told ITV News she fears for the survival of her country's democracy due to the unchecked and dangerous rise of Hindu radicalism. Ahead of India's elections next year, she says we are all "braced for a campaign of blood" after a surge in shocking attacks on Muslims, including many fatal, across the country in recent weeks. The incidents include: Three train passengers reportedly killed just for being Muslim by a Hindu policeman, who is caught on camera saying afterwards "If you want to live in India then you need to support Modi"; A 19-year-old deputy Imam killed while sleeping, reportedly by a right-wing Hindu nationalist gang who stabbed him 13 times and torched his mosque; Muslim homes and businesses burnt by vigilante Hindu groups, some while police were present, it's claimed; Hundreds of Muslim homes being bulldozed to rubble by authorities in one state, leading the regional High Court to question whether it amounts to state sponsored "ethnic cleansing"; A Hindu militant telling an adulating crowd that if Hindus don't get their way, then blood will be spilt. https://www.itv.com/news/2023-08-25/leading-author-speaks-out-on-attacks-against-muslims-in-india

13 Dozer policy; Aug 3 2023; Situated merely a few hundred metres away from the Krishna Janmasthan Temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura is Nai Basti, a Muslim-dominated vicinity. And it now lies in ruins. On August 9 and 14, locals say that the administration along with the police undertook large-scale demolitions, pushing at least 500 people to homelessness. This demolition drive that destroyed 137 homes was orchestrated by the railway authorities, Mathura police and administration with an aim to clear alleged ‘encroachments’ near the temple complex and upgrade the 12 km railway track between Mathura and Vrindavan from metre gauge to broad gauge. Adding to this, a Mathura-based journalist told The Wire that while previously traditional economic activities undertaken by Muslims such as meat slaughter and sale were targeted, now attacks focus on the Eidgah, their place of worship, and their homes such as Nai Basti, make it difficult for Muslims to exist in Mathura as a religious community.https://thewire.in/communalism/they-bulldozed-our-life-mathuras-muslims-struggle-as-the-state-crushes-their-homes

Monthly update: 46 June 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1 Hindutva ideology and the Nazis: June 111 2023: A US-based human rights group “Justice for All” has drawn a parallel between the Hindutva ideology and the Nazis, citing the ongoing persecution of the minorities in India. The organization’s report titled “The Nazification of India” compares 12 different mechanisms of hate and persecution from the Nazi playbook, and how they are being implemented in India today. The Chicago-based human rights organization in the report said India, which projects itself as the largest democracy in the world, has become the weakest at the hands of the fascist Hindutva ideology. It said the Hindutva ideology is not only inspired by Nazis and Fascists of Europe, but their treatment of the Muslim minority closely follows developments that resulted in pushing Jews to the gas chambers. The report said, India today is ruled not just by a political party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but its mother organization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It said that what was happening in India today was “clearly demonstrates that India is on a dangerous trajectory to becoming a Nazi-inspired, fascist, majoritarian state, where its minorities and particularly its more than 200 million Muslims, face an impending danger of genocide.” “The fact that these parallels are seen is not a surprise since the early leaders of the RSS openly declared that the Nazi model was a good one for India to adopt. And recently, Hitler’s popularity has grown widely in the country,” it said. The report also explored how Narendra Modi not only got away with facilitating a pogrom but was also elected the Prime Minister of India – twice. It further noted that “while Modi’s fortunes continue to rise in India, India’s positioning around the world continues to fall.” Authors of the report cited the Freedom House, which “downgraded” India in 2021 to “partially free,” as well as the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index that placed the ‘world’s largest democracy’ in the category of “Flawed Democracy.” It also mentions Reporters Without Borders, which, in 2022 placed India “among the worst countries in terms of media freedom, ranking it 150th out of 180 countries.” The report pointed out that the non-profit Genocide Watch has already warned that the situation in India “reached the stages of polarization, preparation, and persecution respectively, the 6th, 7th, and 8th stages of the Ten Stages of Genocide”. “The world must heed these warning signs and act as a matter of urgency to prevent history from repeating itself,” it insisted. The report wants global leaders to “condemn the gross human rights violations occurring in India and pressure the government to hold true to India’s secular constitution.” https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/06/10/american-hr-group-draws-parallels-between-hindutva-forces-and-nazis.html

2 FIR: June 113 2023: The Vashi Police on Sunday registered a First Information Report (FIR) against a 29-year-old man for allegedly sharing Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s photo as his status on WhatsApp. The accused, a resident of Navi Mumbai, is a manager in a private firm had put Aurangzeb’s photo as his status on WhatsApp and someone took a screenshot of it and shared it with some people on WhatsApp. A right-wing organisation’s worker got his hands on the screenshot and approached the local police to file an FIR against him.

3 Anti Muslim Cinema: June 13 2023; In recent years Indian cinema is being fed on the growing trend of anti-Muslim hate movies. The Bollywood film industry is churning out the distorted portrayal of Muslims in the last nine years or so and such plots have matured to their real structure after the BJP government has come to power under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. Movies made in these years include; The Kashmir Files (2022) Padmaavat (2018), Lipstick under My Burkha (2016), Tanhaji (2020), and recently The Kerala Story (2023) Farhana etc. All these movies have an anti-Muslim anti-Islam slant blaming the Indian Muslim community for following a barbaric, oppressive, harsh, uncivilized religion. The goal of such films is to permanently damage the entire social fabric of India. https://countercurrents.org/2023/06/anti-muslim-cinema-a-new-trend-nuturing-under-hindutva-culture/

4 Muslims forced to flee town: June 14 2023; Muslims in a north Indian town have been asked by Hindu groups to abandon their livelihoods and the homes they have lived in for generations About a dozen families have fled Purola, a small town in northern India’s Uttarkashi district in Uttarakhand state, after notices were pasted on homes and businesses asking them to vacate the town. The threats, issued mainly by two far-right Hindu groups – the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal – follow an alleged attempt by two men to kidnap a 14-year-old Hindu girl on May 26. The two accused in the kidnapping case were immediately nabbed by residents and handed over to the police. They have been charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and other laws. One of the accused in the kidnapping bid was a 24-year-old Muslim man, leading to allegations by Hindu groups that the kidnapping attempt was a case of “love jihad” – an unproven conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of luring Hindu women into romantic relationships in order to convert them to Islam by marriage. But residents of Purola say the May 26 incident was used by the Hindu groups to intensify their years-old movement that seeks to free the Himalayan state, known for its many Hindu pilgrimage sites and temple towns, of the Muslim community.There are about 400-500 Muslims in Purola, a town 140km (87 miles) from state capital Dehradun with about 10,000 residents.On May 27, government officials allegedly asked Muslim traders to shut their shops as some Hindu groups had planned a rally to protest against the attempted kidnapping of the girl.“We had to shut our shops because we had no option,” Mohammad Ashraf, 41, who has a garment shop in Purola, told Al Jazeera. On May 29, the Hindu groups and hundreds of supporters organised another rally, calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the area. According to the residents, provocative slogans were raised against the minority community at the rally. The mob also vandalised some shops and removed signboards bearing Muslim names. Since then, most Muslim-owned businesses have been shuttered in Purola while the rest of the market is buzzing with activity. Muslim traders approached the local administration for help and urged them to act against people threatening their livelihoods, but they say their requests fell on deaf ears.“The [Muslim] boy has been arrested. The police are investigating the matter. What more do they want? Do they want us to leave our homes and shops? Where will we go? We have been living here for years,” a Muslim trader told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by the authorities. In Barkot, another small town about 30km (19 miles) from Purola, an “X” sign was seen on the doors of some Muslim-owned shops, an act reminiscent of the Nazi-era targeting of Jews in pre-World War II Germany. For decades, right-wing groups in Uttarakhand have mobilised Hindus to create a “Devbhoomi” (or land of the gods) and exclude Muslims. Dehradun-based journalist Trilochan Bhatt told Al Jazeera the continuing tensions in Purola and adjoining areas were a consequence of the anti-Muslim hate politics that has engulfed the state over the last few months. Bhatt blamed leaders of the ruling BJP for giving a free hand to Hindu groups in holding rallies where open calls for violence against Muslims were made. It was in Uttarakhand’s temple town of Haridwar that a controversial Hindu event calling for the genocide of Indian Muslims was held in December 2021. “Uttarakhand was a peaceful state and Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony. But since the BJP government assumed power, things have become difficult for the Muslim minority,” he said. “Every now and then, there are anti-Muslim rallies held somewhere in the state.” The BJP’s national spokesman and senior Uttarakhand leader, Dushyant Kumar Gautam, rejected reports of an exodus of Muslims from Purola, calling them “baseless”. “There was a case of ‘love jihad’. The police are investigating … People are leaving the town on their own because of the possibility of their involvement in the case,” he told Al Jazeera. “The government is monitoring the situation and anybody found involved in vitiating the atmosphere will be dealt with,” he added. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/13/why-muslims-are-fleeing-a-small-town-in-indias-uttarakhand-state

5 Anti- Muslim Cinema, a new trend nurturing under Hindutva Culture by Syed Ali Mujtaba: In recent years Indian cinema is being fed on the growing trend of anti-Muslim hate movies. The Bollywood film industry is churning out the distorted portrayal of Muslims in the last nine years or so and such plots have matured to their real structure after the BJP government came to power under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. Movies made in these years include; The Kashmir Files (2022) Padmavat (2018), Lipstick under My Burkha (2016), Tanhaji (2020), and recently The Kerala Story (2023) Farhana etc. All these movies have an anti-Muslim anti-Islam slant blaming the Indian Muslim community for following a barbaric, oppressive, harsh, uncivilized religion. The goal of such films is to permanently damage the entire social fabric of India. Bollywood has been using the medium of cinema to attack Indian Muslims for a long time. Such films are serving the designs of the RSS and the BJP with the hidden agenda to give a push to create a Hindu Rashtra where Muslims will become third-class citizens, with limited rights and with limited avenues for recourse. Now the latest trend is to make films that promote hatred and division in society and such films are made tax-free. This is an alarming trend in India making use of cinematic art to villainize the Indian Muslims. Another purpose of making such movies is to divert the mind of the people from real issues, like soaring unemployment and economic distress, and other such things. The local media plays a big role in the promotion of such movies and in changing the political discourse of the country. The media instead of debating over the economy or other critical issues choose to talk about the newly released anti-Muslim film and make them busy talking about and forgetting the real issues. During the Karnataka election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi openly promoted the film ‘The Kerala Story’. He told the crowd at a rally in Ballari, Karnataka; “the Kerala Story is based on a terror conspiracy. It shows the ugly truth of terrorism and exposes terrorists' design.” He urged the people to go and watch the “ugly truth.” After Modi openly promoted the scandalous film, several BJP politicians too came out in support of this film. The Kerala Story was released in BJP-ruled states and declared tax-free. As a result, this film earned millions demonstrating the popularity of hate-centric films. The same can be said about The Kashmir Files, which minted huge money propagating hate against the Kashmiri Muslims and successfully polarizing Indian society. In cinema, business formulas are being experimented and the kind of movie that churns much money is presented in different permutations and commutations to make more money. Cinema is a smarter and quicker medium to make money. It’s a medium where with a small investment, a high return is ensured. Examples are Kashmir File and the Kerala story. The problem with the anti-Muslim film is that they cherry-pick incidents and don’t see it from a larger historical perspective. These films serve the purpose of the mental manipulation of the audience’s understanding of history and give a push to the ruling party’s majoritarian political agenda. In the case of Kashmir Files, the film blamed Kashmiri Muslims for it, while they had actually protected the minority Hindus. In the Kerala story, it is told that 32,000 Hindu women were converted to Islam and sent to Iraq and Syria to serve the jihadis fighting there. The alleged allegation is only 3 women were found to be involved in such activity, among them two were Muslims and one Hindu converted to Islam. It looks obvious that the Indian film industry is walking in the footsteps of Nazi Germany to prevaricate, control, and influence a specific group of audiences to achieve political goals. The “big lie” strategy is used to brainwash the Hindu masses to convince them to develop apathy towards the Muslims loathing them for all the ills of the country. Another alarming trend is the roles of the members of the censor board who allow hate Muslim movies to fit enough to get screening certificates. The members of the censor board are hand-picked by the government and are loyal to the ideology of the ruling party. They give certificates of screening to such films ignoring their consequences on society. Earlier, the censor board did not allow such communally charged films to be screened at all. But now under the BJP rule, such kinds of movies are allowed to be screened even though they are promoting enmities against the communities in the country.This is a generational level of destruction that is happening in India through the medium of hate films being churned out by Bollywood. This is polarizing Indian society to the level which is beyond redemption. These movies are very carefully crafted, scene by scene, with the intent that whoever watches will follow the propagator's side of the story. The audience gulps such pulp fiction accepting such ideas as truth and eventually becoming the characters of the movie itself. The kind of hatred, the kind of maliciousness, and the kind of visceral heat generated by these movies are nothing but simply fissures in the country can be called an anti national activity. These films are widening the gap between communal spot lines, creating an atmosphere of hatred in Indian society. Indian citizens are watching this facet of the Indian cinema’s changing colors but no one dares to raise a voice of protest against such a dangerous trend. This is the harsh reality of contemporary India

6 Dargah demolition: June 19 2023: On June 14, the Junagadh municipal corporation sent a notice to the administration of the Majewadi Gate dargah, demanding that they produce ownership papers of property before June 19. However, on June 16, around 10 pm, at least 500 people gathered around the Majewadi Gate dargah to protest the possible demolition of the Islamic shrine as police surrounded the premises. As the number of protesters increased, police presence also escalated in the area, stirring tensions and stone pelting. Videos of Muslim men being publicly flogged right outside the dargah also surfaced on social media. The videos show a few Muslim men made to stand in a line, with a masked man flogging them right outside the dargah. The flogger took intervals to beat them, amidst loud screams from the victims. https://thewire.in/communalism/junagadh-muslims-targeted-flogged-after-protest-over-possible-dargah-demolition

7 Injustice: June 20 2023: A Hindutva gang tied a Muslim labourer to a tree, shaved his head and forced him to raise ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogans in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr. Taking side of the assailants, police sent the Muslim man to jail. As per a TV report, Shakeel, the father of the labourer Sahil, had said that his son was sent to jail after the incident. He also told the media that the police were asking him to strike a compromise with the accused and threatening him. “No one is hearing our pleas. Police picked up our son and sent him to jail. We named those involved in our complaint. Now we are being asked to strike a compromise. We are being threatened that if we don’t, they won’t let us stay here. We want justice,” said an inconsolable Shakeel, fighting back tears.https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/06/19/muslim-man-tied-to-tree-in-up-forced-to-chant-jai-shri-ram.html

8 US legislators boycott Modi: June 21 2023; Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the two Muslim women in Congress, on Tuesday said they would boycott Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming joint address to Congress. Tlaib wrote on Twitter that Modi’s “long history of human rights abuses, anti-democratic actions, targeting Muslims and religious minorities, and censoring journalists is unacceptable.” Hours later, Omar said she would also not attend. “Prime Minister Modi’s government has repressed religious minorities, emboldened violent Hindu nationalist groups, and targeted journalists/human rights advocates with impunity,” she wrote on Twitter. Omar will also host an event at the Capitol following Modi’s address with human rights experts, religious freedom leaders and other members of Congress on Indian policy issues. A group of more than 70 Democrats from both the House and the Senate have asked President Biden to make human rights the focus of his discussion with Modi during his state visit this week. The State Department’s 2022 religious freedom report also highlighted significant human rights issues including credible reports of unlawful and arbitrary killings and extrajudicial killings by the government or its agents. A U.S. panel also recommended that the State Department designate India among others as “countries of particular concern” for violating religious freedoms. https://thehill.com/policy/international/4058718-tlaib-plans-to-boycott-modis-address-to-congress-over-treatment-of-muslims/

9 Muslim persecution in Uttarakhand: In Uttrakhand, there is an “alarming rise of hate speech, vigilantism, and targeted communal violence against the Muslim community. In Uttrakhand local Hindutva groups are openly inciting religious hatred and hostility and violence against Muslims. This is to instigate fear among the Muslims so that they can run away from there. Muslims' homes and shops are marked with an ‘X’, and residents are forced to vacate the place. Many very old-time residents, including BJP and Minority Cell leader Mohammed Zaid, have fled their homes due to the threat of violence. Newspapers have reported that a letter has been sent by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to the Tehri District Magistrate giving an ultimatum to members of the Muslims Community to leave the Jaunpur valley and in particular the towns of Nainbagh, Jakhar, Nag Tibba, Thatyur, Saklana, Damta, Purola, Barkot, and Uttarkashi. If they don’t respond to their ultimatum of leaving the areas themselves, Hindu organizations will go on to forcibly evict the Muslims. The government, the judiciary, and the media is not taking any proactive measures to prevent violent attacks taking place against Muslims in Uttrakhand.

10 Human rights in India: June 24 2023; Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a resolution today to condemn human rights violations and violations of international religious freedom in India, including those targeting Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Dalits, Adivasis, and other religious and cultural minorities. The resolution coincides with her briefing yesterday with journalism advocates, religious freedom activists, and human rights groups on the situation in India. The resolution calls on the Secretary of State to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act, which was recommended by the independent, bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for the past four years. https://omar.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-omar-introduces-resolution-religious-freedom-india

11 Muslim lynched; July 1 2023; A Muslim truck driver was lynched by a Hindutva mob in the Indian state of Bihar. The Muslim truck driver Jaharuddin, 55, was knocked to death by the Hindutva mob when he was on the way to Nagara bone dust factory in the Saran district of the state. The Hindutva mob brutally beat him until he died on the spot. The police present there did not intervene in the matter. The violent mob blamed the truck driver for being a Muslim and doing the business of beef ahead of Eid-ul-Adha. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/06/30/muslim-truck-driver-lynched-in-bihar-by-hindutva-mob.html

Monthly update: 45 May 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. US and India; May 2 2023: A US government panel renewed calls on Monday to blacklist India over religious freedom, saying that the treatment of minorities has continued to worsen under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The annual report pointed in India to violence and destruction of property targeting Muslims and Christians and drew links to comments and social media posts by members of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. “The continued enforcement of discriminatory laws facilitated a culture of impunity for widespread campaigns of threats and violence by mobs and vigilante groups,” it said. It was the fourth straight year that the panel has made the recommendation on India, angering New Delhi which has called the commission biased. https://www.dawn.com/news/1750327

2. Short film voices miseries of Muslim women in Gujarat: May 9 2023: While the Supreme Court is all set to hear a bunch of pleas challenging the remission granted to the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case on May 9, Muslim women in Gujarat, through a short film, voiced that Bilkis Bano’s battle was their own battle now. The 19-minute film titled, ‘Bilkis Bano: Justice overruled’ has images of women protesting the release of the convicts and the Muslim women of the State expressed their distress over setting convicts free. In the movie, made by Bebaak Collective (Voice of Fearless) that works on human rights issues, Seema, a women’s rights activist said in such cases women’s safety and protection is the government’s responsibility. “Following the release of the convicts, the survivor will lose faith in the judicial system,” Seema said. Bilkis was gang-raped when she was five months pregnant and 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, were murdered in the aftermath of the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002. After the convicts were released, they were felicitated with garlands and sweets. Bilkis had released a statement saying she was reliving the trauma of the past 20 years. Yakub Rasul, Bilkis’s husband featured in the film spoke about his struggle and said, “We were thinking of starting our life afresh but our lives are ruined again. We have to keep changing our locations, we are broken emotionally and financially. Bilkis is traumatized. Those who should be in jail are home and those who should be home are on the run.” One of the women in the film said, “I heard that the convicts are given an election ticket, today we have 11 rapists, next we will have 50. They have become bold now, they know they can get away with anything. Sarkar bhi inki, police bhi inki, vakil inka. [The government, police and the lawyers are all theirs].”The film also highlighted the horrors of 2002 and how the police and government turned a blind eye to women’s misery. The women in the film stated that they were asked to go to Pakistan.

3. Cow related deaths: May 2023: Inside the car were three young Muslim men: Waris, Nafiz and Shaukeen. Waris is now dead. Nafiz is in jail. And Shaukeen is yet to come to terms with the horrors of the night. Shaukeen alleges that his friend was beaten to death by a group of Hindu men after they spotted a cow trussed up in the back of the car. The 26-year-old claims the cow belonged to Nafiz, who was taking it back to his home in Haryana from Bhiwadi district in neighbouring Rajasthan state. Shaukeen and Waris were accompanying him when they were chased by a group of cow vigilantes. These are Hindu men - mostly armed with sticks and other weapons - who keep a watch for vehicles transporting cattle to prevent cow slaughter, which is illegal in many Indian states. The police, however, say that there were no visible injury marks on Waris's body. Police arrested Nafiz and Shaukeen on cow smuggling charges because they "found a cow in the car", Mr Singla says. But Shaukeen, who is now out on bail, says that their car hit the van only because they were being chased by a vehicle which belonged to the cow vigilantes. The BBC has accessed CCTV footage of the crash in Tauru. It shows a four-by-four with a siren on its roof approaching the car moments after the accident.Then, according to a video filmed by a local man who was at the spot, a group of men who appeared to be armed with weapons, including guns, pulled out the cow from the car's boot and bundled the three Muslim men into the four-by-four. Shaukeen alleges he and his companions were then beaten up by the gang, who later took them to hospital and that Waris died on the way. "Waris did not die in the accident. There was not a single injury from the crash," he says, adding that it was a "targeted killing" against Muslims. At Waris's home in Nuh, his family is still grappling with the shock of his death. He questions why vigilante groups in the state were "given the right to take the law in their own hands". Shaukeen alleges that a man named Monu Manesar, a well-known cow vigilante who regularly uploaded videos of himself questioning cattle transporters, was the leader of the men who assaulted them. On the day of the incident, Mr Manesar had live-streamed a video of Waris and his friends being "interrogated" by himself and some other men. In the video, which has now been deleted from Mr Manesar's Facebook profile, the Muslim men had visible injuries on their face. "Monu was saying 'beat them' and everyone was hitting us. It was all done at the direction of Monu," Shaukeen alleged. Imran alleged that his brother's death was part of a larger pattern of violent assaults by cow vigilante groups. He connected Waris's death to another high-profile case - the murders of two Muslim men, Junaid and Nasir - that made headlines in India a few weeks later. The charred bodies of Junaid and Nasir were found in a burnt vehicle in Haryana's Bhiwani district in February. Their relatives have alleged they were killed by members of a Hindu hardline group who, according to media reports, accused them of cow smuggling. Five men, including Mr Manesar, were named in the police complaint but police have said that only three suspects have been arrested so far. The BBC visited Junaid and Nasir's family in Bharatpur in Rajasthan. "His body was brought in a bag. It was ashes. There was nothing, just a handful of ashes and a few bones," said Junaid's wife Sajida, wiping away tears.She said she was worried about how she would look after their six children alone. The deaths had sparked protests by Muslims in Bharatpur, who alleged that cow protection laws were being used to target them. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65229522

4. US on India: Mar., 15, 2023: The US State Department released a report on Monday highlighting “continued targeted attacks” on religious minorities in India, including Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindu Dalits, and indigenous communities.The 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom came out a month before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US on June 22. The report also names Russia and China. “The US Holocaust Museum continues to draw considerable attention to the human rights situation in India and lists it as one of its top countries of concern and with – with regards to potential for mass killings there,” the official said. India is ranked eighth among 162 countries for the highest risk of mass killing by the US holocaust museum’s early warning project. A United States panel, for the fourth year in a row, has also recommended the White House to designate India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in or tolerating systematic violations of religious freedom. https://scroll.in/latest/1049163/us-religious-freedom-report-highlights-continued-targeted-attacks-on-minorities-in-india

5. Demolitions’ may 21 2023; As part of bulldozing Muslim worship places in India, the Hindutva government has demolished another century-old mosque along with some dargahs in Gujurat state. The demolitions took place in the Dahod city of Gujarat demolished a century-old mosque along with dargahs in the name of a road widening project. Shortly after the demolition of the mosque, three dargahs were also demolished. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/05/22/hindutva-regime-demolishes-another-historic-mosque-3-dargahs-in-gujarat-india.html

6. Congress and Muslims; May 22 2023; In 1951, Muslims constituted 9.8 per cent of India’s population of 361 million. Put differently, about 35 million Muslims stayed back after rejecting the idea of Pakistan. But was their faith in a non-theocratic India politically or economically fructuous? No, says the historian Pratinav Anil, a lecturer in history at the University of Oxford. In 1951, Muslims constituted 9.8 per cent of India’s population of 361 million. Put differently, about 35 million Muslims stayed back after rejecting the idea of Pakistan. But was their faith in a non-theocratic India politically or economically fructuous? No, says the historian Pratinav Anil, a lecturer in history at the University of Oxford. This disempowerment was brought about by the clever use of a whole gamut of constitutionally unassailable stratagems. One of them was the process of delimitation, through which the boundaries of electoral constituencies were fixed or altered to suit the majority community. This discriminatory process politically weakened Muslims to such an extent that one of the Sachar Committee’s recommendations in 2006 was the establishment of “a more rational procedure for delimitation of constituencies” to improve the chances of Muslims getting elected to Parliament and State Assemblies. Congress also used its dominance in the Constituent Assembly to exclude from the Constitution all political safeguards, including separate electorates, that Muslims had secured with the devolution acts of 1909, 1919, and 1935. Even the reservation of parliamentary seats was denied to them. And, “making a mockery of minority representation and the popular will”, the first-past-the-post electoral system (which Anil contemptuously describes as “the handmaiden of majoritarianism”) was adopted in place of proportional representation. Another shocking revelation in Another India traces the “go to Pakistan” taunt to September 1947 when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel told Mahatma Gandhi that the “vast majority of the Muslims in India were not loyal to India” and as such, it would be better for them “to go to Pakistan”. The fact is that in the Nehruvian period riots were routine, occurring almost every five years. And it was under the Congress’ watch that a staggering 800,000 Muslims—one in 50 Indian Muslims—were forced to go to East Pakistan in 1964 after the “most violent Hindu-Muslim conflagration of postcolonial India” which happened in Bengal following the theft, in December 1963, of the “moi-e-muqaddas” (holy hair of the Prophet) from the Hazratbal shrine in Kashmir. ew Delhi on July 18, 2015. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy His latest book, Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Muslim Minority, 1947–77, is a totalising narrative about “the communal prejudice that lay under the carapace of Congress secularism” during its unbroken 30-year rule from 1947. In this period, declares the book, the state behaved like “an Islamophobic agency”, keeping Muslims out of the bureaucracy and sometimes even removing them en masse from public positions on suspicion of being “Pakistani fifth-columnists”. In 1977, Muslims accounted for 11.4 per cent of the country’s population but constituted only 4.5 per cent of the judiciary, and 4.4 per cent and 6 per cent of the Central and States’ civil services, respectively, apart from being underrepresented in banking and the constabulary. They were, however, overrepresented in prisons and among riot victims, with the result that fewer Muslims made it to Nehruvian legislatures than to any other Parliament before 2014. This disempowerment was brought about by the clever use of a whole gamut of constitutionally unassailable stratagems. One of them was the process of delimitation, through which the boundaries of electoral constituencies were fixed or altered to suit the majority community. This discriminatory process politically weakened Muslims to such an extent that one of the Sachar Committee’s recommendations in 2006 was the establishment of “a more rational procedure for delimitation of constituencies” to improve the chances of Muslims getting elected to Parliament and State Assemblies. The fact is that in the Nehruvian period riots were routine, occurring almost every five years. And it was under the Congress’ watch that a staggering 800,000 Muslims—one in 50 Indian Muslims—were forced to go to East Pakistan in 1964 after the “most violent Hindu-Muslim conflagration of postcolonial India” which happened in Bengal following the theft, in December 1963, of the “moi-e-muqaddas” (holy hair of the Prophet) from the Hazratbal shrine in Kashmir. Anil provides a table titled “Riots in Nehruvian India, 1954-1963” to show that in the “riots galore” during Nehru’s tenure, Muslims made up a staggering 82 per cent of the fatalities and 59 per cent of the injured. The “planned and bloody affairs”, he says, were organised “almost with the precision of a watchmaker” to make political capital out of the resulting religious polarisation. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, the Jana Sangh polled 10 per cent of the votes in 1957, 17 per cent in 1962, and 22 per cent in 1967, not too far behind the Congress’ 32 per cent. Clearly, the Jana Sangh’s prospects brightened at the Congress’ cost. For both parties then, says Anil, “if uniting Hindus meant vilifying Muslims, so be it. So it was that the Congress let riots run their course.” The “illegal immigration” of Muslims from Bangladesh into Assam and beyond was yet another “Islamophobic dog whistle”. The Congress used this bogey to propagandise that Pakistani nationals were infiltrating India to convert local Hindus to Islam. The deportation campaign that followed this disinformation saw the vicious transmogrification of “go to Pakistan” into “sent to Pakistan”, as thousands of genuine Indian Muslims were expelled to the newly created Muslim state. Citing official figures, Anil reveals that in Nehru’s second and third terms, over 35,000 “Pakistani nationals” in Assam were either deported or given notice to leave the country. Likewise, some 23,500 were deported from Tripura and about 40,500 from West Bengal. Before being sent to Pakistan, the Muslims were usually driven out of their homes to makeshift camps on the border “like herds of cattle”, and forced to “sign papers declaring falsely that they were Pakistanis”, when many of them not only had the right papers, but also appeared on Indian electoral registers. “It was their faith that marked them as suspect,” says Anil, tellingly. https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/the-muslims-who-stayed-back-book-review-another-india-the-making-of-the-worlds-largest-muslim-minority-194777-by-pratinav-anil/article66880427.ece

7. The Human Rights Situation in the Indian Sub Continent.by Pon Chandran — 03/05/2023 :I come from a Tamil culture which proclaims to the world யா A ஊேர யாவ¶A ேகளnJ “Yaadhum Oore Yavarum KeLir”, meaning “the world is one and all are my kith and kin”. I also come from a sub continent which is proud of its diversity. Diversity in languages, cultures, nationalities, faiths, regions and religions. Whereas, the present ruling establishment in India has indulged in forceful homogenisation, rather Hinduisation of culture, education and religious faiths. This is against the rights of religious, linguistic and other minorities. The indiscriminate centralisation of the administration has eroded the federal structure of the polity. Further, corporatisation and privatisation of every social domains like education, health, drinking water etc have destroyed the sustenance of the marginalised. Corporatisation has also led to the indiscriminate exploitation of the resources and destruction of Nature and thus threatening the very existence of vulnerable communities like indigenous people, and the socially and economically oppressed. All those who resist corporatization are dubbed as the enemy of the State and literally war is waged against the people who resist, thus entailing in large scale displacement, disappearances, fake encounters, torture, rape, sexual violation, custodial deaths and denial of their livelihood. This is the stark reality in the large part of Central India, North Eastern States and Jammu & Kashmir. The recent report of terror unleashed on the people of Burkapal and Planar, including sexual harassment is disquieting.The North Eastern States and J&K are still reeling under the atrocities and terror perpetrated with immunity by the Armed Forces, emboldened by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The legendary human rights defender Irom Sharmila went on an indefinite fast for fourteen years, to repeal this draconian law, but of no avail. The right to dissent, the core and hall mark of democracy, is obliterated by liquidating the very personalities who express their dissent. You would be wondering whether this is possible in a democracy! Well, while the civil society knows the lineage of the assailants, they go scot free as “unknown assailants”. The recent martyrdom of Gowri Lankesh (55), a renowned woman journalist and a social activist from Karnataka is a case in point. She was a great critique of the right wing hindutva politics and was a valiant defender of human rights. Prof.M.M.Kalburgi, another progressive writer from Karnataka, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, a renowned rationalist and Communist leader Govind Pansare of Maharashtra were similarly gunned down. A BJP MLA from Chickmangalur has gone on record stating that “Had not Gowri criticised BJP, she would have been alive today”. They were assassinated for ventilating their conscience. All the four opposed the undemocratic trait of the ruling Hindutva ideology. The assassination manifest the intolerance and hate campaign harboured by the right wing political groups. It also manifests the crude culture of communal fascism nurtured directly and/or indirectly by the present ruling establishment. Human Rights defenders are being jailed under draconian laws. Dr.G.N.Saibaba, a professor from Delhi University and who is at the mercy of wheelchair for his basic mobility, is branded as a dreadful Maoist and callously incarcerated for life with three other students from JNU for “waging war against the state”. Earlier, Dr. Binayak Sen, a medical doctor and Vice President of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, incarcerated for similar charges, and let free on bail after a protracted legal battle. Mr.President, India is a signatory of ICCPR and CAT. Whereas, the vital covenants of these protocols are observed in breach. Goondas Act, was originally conceived to prevent and punish Bootleggers, drug offenders, immoral tragic offenders, forest offenders, sand offenders, slum grabbers and video pirates and such, habitual economic and social offenders. But this is being wielded against social and political activists and human rights defenders. Goondas Act was clamped against Thirumurugan Gandhi of May 17th Movement and three others for holding Candle light vigil to commemorate civilian victims in the last phase of the Eelam War. Similarly Valarmathi, a student of journalism and social activist was arrested under goondas act. She was the first woman and student activist to be arrested under the draconian law, for distribution of awareness pamphlets among students. She was discharged recently after 58 days of imprisonment. This is a blatant denial of freedom of expression and abuse of draconian law against political activists. Unlawful Assembly Prevention Act, (UAPA) and National Security Act are a couple of other draconian laws used unreasonably against social movements. It may be noted that as per the National Crime Records Prison status for the year 2015, more than 55 percent of the under trials across the country are either Muslims, Dalits or Tribals, who together constitute 39% of the total population. This only reveals how the police and judicial system is skewed against the marginalised. While we are proud of our traditions, we are also ashamed of having inherited social apartheid, which runs into several centuries. While untouchability have been outlawed, and transitional justice has been guaranteed by the founders of the constitution, there are attempts to belittle social justice, under the garb of uniformity and merit through administrative means, which serves only the corporate interest. The proposed New Education Policy and NEET, National Eligibility Entrance Test is one such instance. The system which is inherently unfair is being imposed on all the medical aspirants denying the spirit of federalism and social justice enshrined in the constitution. Ariyalur Anitha, a medical aspirant from the most oppressed community, committed suicide. In fact, the unjust system killed her, despite her excellent performance in the qualifying examination, failed to make it in NEET, as she could not afford to catch up with the expensive coaching required for it. The imposition of NEET is only an intrusion into the governance of the State governments and thus jeopardising the self determination and eventually the social justice. People’s movement against environmentally destructive programmes like Nuclear reactors, extraction of methane and hydrocarbon gases , indiscriminate quarrying of sand, and minerals are put down heavily invoking oppressive laws entailing in indefinite incarceration of large section of protestors, thus denying their liberties and freedom of expression. The independent India has incarcerated its own citizens under the laws of sedition more than what British Raj did during the Indian freedom movement! The continuing farmers suicide, owing to the monsoon failure and lack of adequate support price manifests the rulers’ indifference and neglect of the plight of the farmers. More than 160 farmers committed suicide and died of acute stress, in Tamil Nadu alone, during the last six months, caused because of failure of crops and insurmountable debts. The right of Tamil fisher folks for fishing near international waters are under threat and are being arrested and their fishing boats and nets seized and sometimes the fisher folks are killed by Srilankan Navy. More than 600 Tamil fishermen have been killed by the Srilankan Navy during the last decade without any justice. The plight of the Srilankan Tamil refugees in India is pathetic. When the Tibetan refugees get relatively a favourable treatment, the Tamil refugees are discriminated against denying basic amenities, under the guise that India is not a signatory of UN convention on refugees. Custodial deaths continues unabated. Dinesh Kumar, 20, S/o Nagaraj, Kumbakonam Taluk, Tamil Nadu was arrested by Tirupur north Police station on 22nd Aug, and was admitted in a private hospital on 23rd night reportedly in a critical condition after interrogation, perhaps using third degree methods. He was declared dead on 26th Aug. With the intervention of human rights organisations, inquest by a Judicial Magistrate was ordered. The State Human Rights Commission suo motu took cognisance of the ‘custodial death’ and ordered for a thorough probe. This came to surface owing to the intervention of the human rights bodies, whereas one is constrained to believe that many such custodial deaths are buried silently. The growing vigilante groups not only determine what one should speak, but also dictate what to eat, what to wear and what to see with whom to be and whom to love. Pehlu Khan was lynched to death by Gau Rakshaks when he was transporting Bullocks bought from cattle market. The BJP Chief Minister of Chattisgarh Raman Singh has threatened to “hang anyone who harms a cow”! Consenting to cow slaughter, in India today, is a bigger crime than causing death to humans! The amendment to Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (PCAA) is not only unconstitutional, violating Article 48 of the Constitution, but also un-Hindu and against the cultural and sustainable practices of religious minorities and Dalits. The cliche, justice delayed is justice denied, is still haunting the Srilankan Tamils more than eight years after the end of the genocidal war. Neither the objective of Self Determination for which the Eelam Tamils were constrained to launch their struggle nor justice done against the genocide, war crimes and the crimes against the humanity the Eelam Tamils had to undergo during the last several decades. The continuing structural genocide against the Eelam Tamils is a cause for concern. Sinhalisation, Budhistisation, militarisation of Tamil areas continue unabated. The genocidal war rendered more than 80000 as young war widows, “disappearance” of over 146000 people, orphaning several thousand children several thousands wounded. Despite this, the Sri Lankan Govt has been denying to accept any credible international investigation, under some pretext or the other.

Similarly there are several prisoners, particularly Muslims, who are serving life sentence in Coimbatore prison, without getting the benefit of remission. What is permitted for others is being denied to these prisoners stating that they are imprisoned in the “bomb blast case”! Instead of granting remission to the prisoners based on their behaviour during their tenure in the prison, these prisoners are denied the advantage of remission referring to the crime for which they were lodged in the jail. Thus these prisoners are awarded double punishment, which is unconstitutional and against natural justice. Finally, when one third of the Indian population live below the poverty line, who cannot afford one square meal a day, the Central Government is thrusting on the mass of people, projects, under the guise of ‘Science, modernisation and development’, which are neither nature centric nor human centric. The Bullet train project is one such, which is a drain on the tax payer’s money and which could have been augmented for providing amenities like health and education, which are the basic rights. In conclusion we will have to reiterate that the denial of Environmental justice, social, cultural and economic justice and self determination of various nationalities, as enshrined in the UN Human Rights Charter, have led to the denial of human rights and human dignity. Similarly denial of civil rights by the State tantamount to denial of inalienable human rights. Hence the need for the urgent intervention of the international community invoking the principle of Right to Protect. Thank you Pon Chandran Joint Secretary PUCL, Tamil Nadu. ponniah.chandran@gmail.com

Monthly update: 44 Aprii 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Gang rape condoned: Apr., 3, 2023: A court in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district has acquitted 27 accused of gang rape and murder of over 10 people during the 2002 Gujarat riots due to the lack of evidence. https://thewire.in/law/citing-lack-of-evidence-gujarat-court-acquits-27-accused-of-gang-rape-murder-during-2002-riots

2. OIC: Apr., 6, 2023: “The OIC General Secretariat has followed with deep concern the acts of violence and vandalism targeting Muslim community in several states in India during the Ram Navami processions, including the burning of a madrasa and its library by an extremist Hindu mob in Bihar Sharif on 31 March 2023,” OIC said in a press statement. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/04/05/oic-condemns-violence-against-muslims-in-india-during-hindu-festival.html

3. Hindutva in the US: The Rise of Fascism in India and Its Implications:An interview with Pieter Friedrich by Peace Vigil: APR 6 2023; Shirin: You know, there's a lot that is not right in our world. Why does Hindutva deserve special consideration? Pieter: Hindutva in India, however, deserves special consideration, for one reason, because it’s an issue that the broader world is not generally aware of yet. For instance, the Palestine conflict has been on the radar of people all around the globe for decades. everyone knows about the Ukraine conflict which broke out earlier this year. On the other hand, what's happening in India with Hindutva and the rise of Hindu nationalism, it’s really gone under the radar, almost arguably being brushed under the rug — effectively — by the Hindutva crowd. Brushing it under the rug is precisely what they want to do. And, throughout the rest of the world, most people, by and large, except for, in many cases, some elected officials and people in those kinds of positions of power, are just not aware of it. That lack of awareness: why is it present? There are a lot of reasons one could argue. As I just mentioned, the Hindutva crowd abroad, which has a broad global network, is very dedicated to keeping the focus away from even the existence of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism. But also, within a lot of the countries outside of India, especially within many of the Western countries, there's just this general ignorance of the nature of society and politics in India. Up until the present day, to generalize but by and large, the typical person in the West tends to still view India through that rose-tinted lens of Gandhi, Bollywood, and yoga — and that India consists of nothing more. They're not aware of the intricacies of the society, the diversity of the languages and cultures, the complexities of the politics, and so on. Shirin: Any other reasons you can think of? Pieter: Yes. Well, as far as why it's so imperative to focus on Hindutva, India is the second-largest country in the world by population, neck and neck with China. It's one of the most influential countries in the world, growing more so by the day. It's a massive country with huge influence on the entire South Asian region, which is centered in an area where there are two nuclear-armed powers that are at animosity with each other. In fact, three if you count China — between Pakistan, China, and India. Where India goes, South Asia goes. The direction of South Asia really has a great influence on the whole globe, especially as we become more of a world community. We’re interconnected. India and the US, for instance, are increasingly unconditional partners, even though they are literally on the opposite sides of the globe from each other. What happens in India impacts all around the globe, as well as 1.4 billion people in this world. So, with the growth of Hindutva, we can be concerned about other issues in other countries, legitimately so, and we should be paying attention to them, but most of those other issues impact much smaller populations. As India is heading in this direction, with Hindutva being in complete, iron-clad control of the country, it's on the verge of becoming — if not arguably already has become — the world's largest fascist country. That's very concerning. It’s concerning in a way that is not to minimize what's happening in other places of the world. However, it's very concerning in much different ways from the concern that we might have about what's happening in Israel, Syria, Russia, or so on.Shirin: I do want to understand a little bit more about why people don't know. Do you think the reason for it could be that it was never a dominant philosophy in Indian politics since 1947? The politicians in India took deliberate steps to keep it at bay. Do you think that could be the reason why, internationally, Hindutva fascism is not understood or people don't know about it? Pieter: I think that, yes, that is probably one of the reasons. Hindutva, as a dominant philosophy within India, only really took root after the destruction of the Babri Masjid. I should note that we are recording this on 6 December 2022, which marks the 30th anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid. That destruction was really the point at which the Hindutva movement — with all its entities such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), etc. — began to enter into the public eye and consolidate their power, especially through the propaganda that was propagated alongside that destruction. Subsequently, after the destruction of Babri Masjid, 1000 to 2000 Muslims across northern India were slaughtered. Impunity was offered for their murder as well as for the destruction of the mosque. All that really allowed and empowered the Hindutva crowd and the Hindutva ideologues to see that if they were not going to get tamped down after committing these blatant atrocities, then maybe they were in a position where it was safe for them to begin expanding more overtly. Since 1947 — well, the RSS was founded in 1925 while India was still under the British Empire, still within the British Raj. At that time (as many people familiar with Indian politics know), the RSS actively chose not to involve themselves in the freedom struggle. Instead, they wanted to focus on building up their organization, on networking across the country, and on establishing their ideology — which was this ideology of a “Hindu Rashtra” or a Hindu nation where non-Hindus are not welcome. So from 1925 until 1947, when India got independence, they were under the radar because they weren't doing anything against the British. From 1947 onward, they actively, for the most part, avoided politics and chose to only work within the social arena — except, of course, for that blip in 1948 where the RSS was briefly banned after an RSS member assassinated Gandhi. Up until 1980, when they finally founded the BJP, they stuck to the social arena. They had, of course, a precursor party, but it was mostly under the radar and didn't actually do much up until it was replaced by the BJP in 1980. They weren't involved in politics, they weren't pursuing political office for the most part. They were simply building their networks and propagating their ideology far and wide. It's only really in the past 30 years or so, especially since 1992 when the Babri Masjid was destroyed, that the actions of Hindutva — like the real world, on the ground, physical manifestation of the ideology — have come to prominence in the minds of the public and in the minds of those on an international scale who would have reason to pay attention to these issues. Then it wasn't even until 1998, when the BJP got a coalition government elected for the first time in India, that the world — especially these international governments — had any particular reason to pay attention to that movement. To the outside observer, Hindutva wasn't really terribly strong up until the early to mid-1980s, early-1990s, and then of course, 1998. Shirin: Also, Pieter, just to point out here, that not only did the RSS not support the freedom movement against the colonial rule of the British, but it actually helped the British government to undermine the Indian struggle against them. This is well documented, people can research, and recently, in fact, Mahatma Gandhi's great-grandson, Tushar Gandhi, made public many of the documents. But also, one interesting thing about Gandhi's murder, which you just referred to, is that, in a way, it stopped the RSS from expanding. 1947 was an opportunity for them to expand because, since Pakistan had been created, the whole rhetoric — anti-Muslim rhetoric and sort of that Hindu nationalist rhetoric — was in the air. But Mahatma Gandhi's murder stopped…Pieter: There was fertile ground for that kind of rhetoric at that particular moment. But yes, then once they murdered Gandhi, I think that, because he was so revered in the minds of the Indian public, his assassination probably very arguably kind of nipped the growth of the RSS in the bud. They shot themselves in the foot, actually. Shirin: Yes. I think Gandhi, both in his life and in his death, was able to bring people together, which is really amazing. I don't think he knew that's what was going to happen, but that's what happened. People did come together.Pieter: No, I'm not Indian, not last I checked. I don't have any Indian family. But what prompted me, well, it's a long story with a lot of ups and downs, but it began in 2006. I was about 20 years old. I happened to meet some Sikhs. Actually, Sikhs and Sikhism were my first introduction to anything from the Indian subcontinent. I met them and began talking with them, particularly about issues like the 1984 Sikh Genocide. They were interested — and I was interested when I learned about it — in trying to draw the attention of the West to that atrocity. That really piqued my interest because, although there are a lot of things that I don't appreciate about my upbringing, one of the things I do appreciate is that I grew up — as I think a lot of Westerners, a lot of Americans do — on this steady diet of materials about the Second World War, particularly about Nazi Germany. I grew up reading novels about it, especially a lot of novels written in the 1950s to 1970s. I grew up watching a lot of movies about it, especially some of the movies from the 1940s, 1950s, and some of the later movies from the 1970s. One of my favorites, I think, is Lee Marvin in “Dirty Dozen.” I like some of the newer stuff like “Saving Private Ryan” and all that, but the stuff that I particularly enjoyed and especially consumed growing up was all the older stuff, especially pre-1960s. I grew up reading a lot of history books about it. Watching a lot of documentaries about it. I’d never personally experienced it, of course, and — unlike a lot of Americans — I don't actually have family that fought in the Second World War. But, as I was consuming all of this, I did grow up with just, like, this innate, general hatred of Nazis, I'm like, "Oh, those are really the bad guys.” I grew up watching stuff and reading stuff like, in particular, “The Hiding Place,” which is the story of Corrie Ten Boom from the Netherlands. She was unmarried, in her late 50s, and she and her sister lived with their father, who was a watchmaker. As the Netherlands were occupied by the Nazi Germans, Corrie and her family provided a hiding place within their home for quite a number of Jews who were fleeing persecution. They were ultimately discovered, arrested, and sent to concentration camps. Corrie's sister died in the camp. Her father died in the camp. Corrie survived. After she survived, she wrote books about it and went on speaking tours around the world. That's one of the things that really touched my heart. So, hatred of Nazis, just this passion about what happened with the Holocaust, and this horror at it, and this disbelief that something like that could happen. All of that just really sat in my gut, and kind of sank deep into my heart. So then, all that was with me when I encountered Sikhs and learned about the 1984 genocide. From there, over the next several years, I encountered Dalits and Ambedkarites who introduced me to the anti-caste movement. I began encountering Indian Muslims. I soon learned about 2002 Gujarat. I think that was probably the next major atrocity I learned about. I learned about Odisha 2008 and the pogrom against Christians there. I began to learn about all of this. I started writing about issues like torture by police in India, and I actually had a submission on that topic which was accepted by the United Nations for their Universal Periodic Review — written at the time under a pseudonym because I wasn't sure if I really wanted to commit to using my real name on these issues. So, along the way over several years, I became heavily involved with the Indian diaspora. All of these atrocities really touched my heart, especially in light of my upbringing and my hatred of fascism and Nazism. I got a chance to do things like in 2012, I was invited to help organize a centennial anniversary celebration for the Stockton Sikh Gurdwara, which is the oldest in the United States. In 2013, I got a chance to help organize a centennial celebration of Dr. Ambedkar's arrival at Columbia University, and I got a chance to also speak there at Columbia. I was starting to become very heavily involved with the Sikh diaspora, with the Dalit diaspora, with the Muslim diaspora, and then 2014 hit. Right in 2013 to 2014, I began to get involved with Sikhs and Muslims, in particular, who were trying to get US Congress to pass this House resolution that would have condemned the violence by Hindu nationalists and also would have encouraged the US State Department to continue denying Modi a visa. I got involved in going around to congressional offices and encouraging them to sign on to that. Then Modi got elected. I could go on, but that's kind of what got me started over the first decade or so. it that they want to support? Pieter: I speak with a lot of Indians. I don't mean to over-generalize, but my experience has been that many of the Indians I speak with are very unaware of just how significant the Second World War was, especially for the Western Hemisphere. Many seem unaware of how much it impacted, and to what extent issues like the Holocaust really resonate with, the Western people, even to the present day, and the level of horror that's connected with that even 70 or 80 years later. Shirin: You could see the parallel also in the way the Sikhs were treated in 1984. Many people don't see that because of various reasons, but also because, unfortunately, the Indian government post-1984 riots — or so-called riots, it was really a pogrom — didn't do enough to condemn these atrocities in the history textbooks. Therefore, I don't think the kind of anger that should have developed after 1984 happened, and I think that is very sad, but you were able to see that. So, as a peace educator, I see that what happened in 1984 or later in Gujarat are pretty much the same things. It's just that the victims are different, but it's really the same philosophy that's driving it. All the research that has been done about 1984 shows that there were Hindutva elements at the forefront in that pogrom. Pieter: Yes, I look at 1984. I've met survivors. I look at the impunity that was offered for 1984. The impunity for 1984 set the stage for impunity for 1992 with the Babri Masjid, which set the stage for impunity for 2002 with Gujarat, and then — thank God on a smaller scale — set the stage for impunity for 2008 in Odisha, and so on and so on and so forth. Shirin: So, in fact, if the government had done enough in 1984 to tell people that, "look, this is unacceptable," and if people had gone to jail, I don't think that things would have taken the turn that they did. Pieter: If people had gone to jail. If there'd been an immediate reaction from the government saying, "This is, and this should be, nothing more than an aberration. This can never become a pattern in our country. We're going to move heaven and hell in order to make sure we arrest and try — justly try but with speed — and convict those who are accused, and make sure they get the maximum penalties. Make sure that this is shown, from top to bottom of our country, as totally unacceptable." Then I think that there's a very strong argument to be made that the subsequent atrocities, which were more overtly committed by Hindutva elements — by the RSS and its affiliates — would either never have happened or would have been much more easily nipped in the bud and stopped. Shirin: So, Pieter, now I would like to discuss something which is actually related to this. That is, if we don't pay attention to fascism growing, it can actually become a monster that is just almost impossible to tame. Or even if it is tamed, it takes many generations, perhaps. So, I want to discuss now the growth of Hindutva in the US. And I know that you've been working very hard to stop that growth from happening and bringing awareness to Americans about it. I would like you to please talk about that. Are there specific organizations that are involved or is it only limited to the individual level? Pieter: Oh, there are definitely specific organizations. Of course, I like to preface these things — for people that might be non-Desi, non-Indian, or simply unfamiliar — with the general lay of the situation. In India, of course, you have the Sangh Parivar. That’s the family of Hindu nationalist organizations which is this whole spidery network. At the top, you have the RSS, which is like the Mothership. For any science-fiction fans, you always have a Mothership, and in these sci-fi movies, the Mothership sends out many smaller ships that go do different things on its behalf. So you have the RSS. Then beneath that, the RSS has dozens of subsidiaries that are special interest. You've got them for labor, for judges, for farmers, for attorneys, for students, for anything and everything under the sun. The most important of these are the VHP (the religious wing), the Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the VHP, which is the religious wing of the RSS), and the BJP (the political wing). All these major ones, in particular, have pretty direct corollaries — or parallel organizations — abroad, which are found around the globe in many different countries. In particular, here in the US, the RSS has the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the VHP (the religious wing of the RSS) has the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), the BJP (the political wing of the RSS) has the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP), and so on and so forth. Those are really the main particular organizations that I call, again, the Sangh Parivar. I call them the American Sangh Parivar — the American family of Hindu nationalist organizations — or the American Sangh for short. There are five major ones which I refer to as the “name brand” American Sangh organizations. Those are the HSS, the VHP-America, the Overseas Friends of the BJP, Sewa International (which is like the charitable wing), and Ekal Vidyalya (which is like the educational wing). So, to answer your question, yes, there are definitely particular organizations within the US. However, beyond those — and these are harder to identify — there are a lot of affiliated organizations or, rather, ideologically like-minded organizations. One of those actually just came to prominence in Texas a couple of weeks ago, and that’s the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF).The GHHF is a nonprofit registered in Texas. They caused controversy because they organized a fundraiser on 27 November 2022. They put out a flier advertising it. Two of the major things that they said they wanted to raise money for at this fundraiser were shocking. One was for “Ghar Wapsi,” or “reconversion” ceremonies for people in India. So, raising money in Texas for Ghar Wapsi of Indian citizens in India. By and large, over the years, many or most of these “reconversion” ceremonies involve force or pressure. What happens is that Christians or Muslims or, in some cases, people from other non-Hindu religions, are approached and asked to “reconvert” to Hinduism. The idea is that even if these people and their families have been non-Hindus for generations, they need to return to the faith of their ancestors: Hinduism. And all kinds of pressure and force is used to make them do it. On their flier, they also said that one of their goals for the fundraiser was to raise money for the demolition of churches, particularly in Tirupati and Andhra Pradesh. Now, they specified “illegal” churches, but within the context of what's happening in India today, “illegal” has a very nebulous definition. The goal of the RSS, ideologically since its founding, is to eliminate Christians and Muslims, in particular, from the country. And it's put that goal into actual action many times with physical violence against these communities. So, for instance, when this organization here in America says that they want to raise money to demolish “illegal” churches back in India, the “illegal” can be and should be taken as having a very flexible definition. Shirin: Exactly, especially when the Modi government has denied funds to internationally recognized organizations like Mother Teresa's Foundation and also many of the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) like Amnesty International in India have had to suffer. Pieter: Which, not a rabbit trail too much, but yes, that whole general issue of what the Modi government has done with a whole host of Christian NGOs in particular. Compassion International is one of the really big ones as well. The Modi government has stripped away their right to send funds and fundraise for causes, for charitable causes, for feeding and clothing the poor, for funding hospitals and educational institutions. The Modi government has stripped that away Then we have, of course, all of these — oftentimes committed by RSS affiliates like VHP and Bajrang Dal — mob attacks. Constant mob attacks on churches. But no, what it looks like, what the worst of it looks like is that you, as a Christian, you're holding Sunday service and minding your own business, you're in your church, and you're worshipping. Suddenly a mob of, like, 50 or 100 or 250 or 500 people show up outside of your church. Oftentimes armed, oftentimes accompanied by the police. They burst into the sanctuary. They start smashing up everything in the sanctuary. They start beating the congregants. They drag the congregants and the clergy out into the street. And if the cops aren't there already, then the mob drags the victims down to the police station, turns them into the police station and gets the police to file charges against the victims, not the perpetrators. So I tell the American Christian clergy that, and it's like a light bulb goes off in their head. They're like, "Oh, like the Nazis?” And I'm like, yeah, exactly. So you have the mob attacks. You have the stripping away of these NGOs and their right to send funds in to support the least of these, the impoverished people. And you've got, of course, this fundraiser here in America, which is just one example of raising funds to demolish churches back in India. The Modi government has a desire to put a stranglehold on the Christian community in India, among others. Shirin: In addition to being a human rights issue for the world, specifically with regards to the US, it's also a question of funds being directed from the American soil to a fascist network in India. So that's very concerning. Do you think that it's mostly a question of money for the fascist organizations? You know, the reason why they want to be strong in the US? Because there are a lot of Indians who are doing well, there's also a very large Indian population. What really amazes me is that the HSS was actually founded in Africa in 1947. Yes, in Kenya. And that it's not until the end of 1980, I believe its 1989 or something, that HSS started in the US. Pieter: That's correct, and a point of clarification, but the VHP was actually established first in the US. Some of the historians of this have commented on how this is actually a reversal of the way it's happened in most of these other countries, where Hindutva groups have been established. In most countries, like the UK, for instance, HSS came first, followed by other groups like VHP, etc. In the US, I believe it was sometime in the mid-70s that VHP-America was established. And so that was established first, and then along the way, the people who established that were the ones who ended up establishing HSS in America, which I think yes, was in 1989. Shirin: Okay. But I guess it always intrigues me that when a chunk of the population that fits a certain demographic, like in this case, Hindus, like, let's just loosely do it, because Hindus also come in various shapes and sizes, but let's loosely call this…Pieter: And that is a great point. Hindus, no kidding, come in a lot of shapes and sizes, metaphorically. And that is exactly what the RSS and the HSS really want to strip away and tamp down. The goal of the RSS is to turn Hinduism into something that it is not and never has been: a homogeneous religion, where maybe the head of the RSS is like the Pope of Hinduism. And even today, in 2022, if you look on the RSS's website, in so many words under their “vision” section, they specifically state that their goal is to “engulf” every single aspect of Hindu society. And they list out politics, religion, education, family, and so on and so forth. And that's their specific goal: to turn Hinduism into like the Borg, where it's just centrally controlled and where there is absence of diversity. Shirin: But I think that specifically in terms of caste, it really does divide the Hindu society. And in order to bring all the Hindus together, you do need a point of hate and in this case, it's largely Muslims and, secondly, Christians. Christians are a much smaller number, so Muslims tend to be the bigger target, but Christians are also a huge target. It’s just that they're smaller in numbers. So, Pieter, a couple of things: One is that I find it intriguing that when a community starts to do well, so in this case, Indians and specifically Hindus, the Hindutva organizations are very quick to use that to divert funds back to fascist activities in India. So that's one thing, and I wonder if you have the same understanding of why the Hindutva lobby is so keen on tapping into the Hindu population in the US, because there are Hindus all over the world. But somehow pro-Hindutva Hindus in the US have become the main funders of this hate in India. Pieter: So, Shirin, there’s a lot that I could unpack there, but I'm going to try and draw on a couple of thoughts that are coming to my mind. One of them is that in, I think, the 1960s, that the US immigration really began to open up to the point that Indians could freely travel and emigrate to the US. And from that point in the 1960s, that being the case, those who could afford to emigrate from India tended to be primarily people that were already somewhat moneyed and tended to be also people that were upper cast. So even today, the population of Indian-Americans that we have just tends to be less populated by people who are from the Dalit or Shudra communities. And so that's one aspect as far as what tends to steer the Indian-American or Hindu segment of the Indian-American population just more in the direction of Hindutva ideology. Then from there, well, I would argue, perhaps, that within America, where we have pretty liberal, pretty open laws that allow us freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of publication, and especially things like nonprofits, which really allow great flexibility and a great opportunity to raise large amounts of money tax-free — all that might be different from what you find even in a lot of these other Western countries. That might be one factor that impacts why the US would have more of this pro-Hindutva support flowing to India than you find in some of these other Western countries. But one thing that comes to me also is this. I do believe there is a lot of financial power. Arguably and, I think, pretty conclusively, there’s a lot of money flowing from India or from America back to India from these groups. And that's a huge factor as far as why they're useful to the Hindutva movement back in India. But there's just not the evidence to actually demonstrate it. Tracing that and proving it is very difficult because that has to mostly be done at the level of the state. They have to open up investigations, they have to file subpoenas demanding access to these financial records, and so forth. That’s information not available to the common citizen. What has also been very useful to the Hindutva movement in India, however, which is available information to the common citizen in America, is the people power of American Hindutva groups and their ability — which they can afford to do because they have so much — to send thousands of people back to India, especially during these times of election, to campaign for the election of BJP. They did this very significantly in 2014, they did it again in 2019. They’ve actually been doing for the past 20 plus years, at least. But then the financial aspect also is one where I would draw attention to not just the issue of money being funneled from America to India but the issue of the money power of the American Hindutva groups within — and the way they use it within — America. Because if we look, this is all public record. HSS is a registered non-profit. The Overseas Friends of the BJP was declared a foreign agent in 2020, so they are no longer a non-profit, but prior to that, they were. VHP America is a non-profit. Sewa International and Ekal Vidyalya. They're all non-profits. And because they're non-profits, they're legally required to report how much money they've raised year over year, what their net worth is, what assets they have, how much money they raised this year, etc. Their financial records are available to the common citizen. So if you put all those five together — I've looked at them in the past couple of months, and I don't remember offhand the exact number, but it's something like $15 or $20 million a year between these five groups. And all these five groups are pretty much interconnected. I mean, they're legally separate entities, but their leadership tends to be all overlapping. Like Sewa International, for instance. The chairman of Sewa International is the vice president of HSS-USA. And that's just one example, but there are a lot of examples like that. So basically these five groups all kind of operate in sync, and they have year-over-year assets of probably about $15 million. And as far as I know, most of that is spent in the US. Shirin: What do they do with this money in the US? Pieter: Well, one of the things they certainly do is spread their ideology and propagate it within the diaspora. The HSS, for instance hosts training camps for its volunteers and hosts Sunday schools for youth. They host youth camps. The VHP of America, as well hosts youth camps. Pieter: Exactly. So I'll just focus on HSS as an example. So one of the things that HSS does (and this is what happened in the city of Manteca), is they go around constantly to approach city councils or county boards, in particular. They’ve really expanded this in the past two or three years. I believe in most cases, they're the ones approaching, like doing the solicitation. And they ask the city council, for instance, “Hey, we're a cultural religious organization, you know, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, so would you please pass a resolution or a proclamation from the city that recognizes our work promoting yoga or that recognizes our work doing this charitable thing or that recognizes Hindu Heritage Day? But in recognizing Hindu Heritage Day, make sure to mention HSS by name.” So they do different things like that. And they stack these proclamations up. They stack up dozens, scores, hundreds of them from around the country. And most of these city councils, county boards are populated by people who don't know any better. They have no clue what the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh is; unfortunately, they're stupid enough, or lazy enough, or whatever it is, that they apparently don't even bother — I conjecture — Googling the organization for five seconds. Because if you did that, you would quickly find out about it. And so they just assume, well, it's Hindu. It’s a religious group. Yeah, it sounds good — a yoga proclamation and HSS, well HSS is telling us, “We do all this good work around the country.” Yeah, here's your proclamation. Then HSS goes to the city council meeting. They typically go in their uniforms. They go and they get formally recognized by the city and accept the proclamation. One of the benefits of that for HSS is that it helps them get their foot in the door of the halls of power of the local government. It helps them to get recognized as a legitimate organization. So, if somebody's speaking against HSS, HSS can point and say, like, “What's the problem? We have 500 city councils that have given us proclamations that say we're great!” So this just generally helps to whitewash them in America, so that pushing back against their activity becomes more difficult. Now, what happened in the city of Manteca was that one such proclamation was passed for Yoga Day — but not actually for International Day of Yoga, which is, I think, in June or something like that. Not for that, but just for a yogathon being run by HSS in January. For a yoga event which was an HSS yoga event. So, I and some members of the Indian-American Diaspora went, and some others as well, and we spoke at the city council and informed them, “Hey guys, we understand you probably did this in innocent ignorance, but we want to inform you, like, HSS is the international wing of the RSS, and the RSS is a fascist paramilitary that kills minorities in India. And so we understand you didn't know that, but now that you know that, we're asking you to backtrack and take back that resolution.” The city council put it on their agenda to consider our demand by the next meeting. And the HSS got wind of it — that it was going to be on the agenda. So we went there with our people. We had about 50 to 60 people, mostly Indian-Americans. Then HSS showed up, most of them from out of town because they don't have a stronghold in that particular city. They showed up with about 60 or 70 people. Over deliberations, the city council finally came to a conclusion. At first they said, “Maybe we can just alter the resolution and take out HSS, which is named in the resolution.” And one of the councillors said, “Well, that's not a bad idea, but the problem is deeper than that. The problem is that the resolution was actually given to the HSS.” And so he said, “We should just pass a whole new resolution.” He said, “Nobody has a problem with yoga. What we have a problem with is the HSS and the apparent connection to the RSS. Therefore, how about if — just from the city itself instead of being solicited by an outside group — the city passes a resolution for yoga?” And everybody on the city council said, “That's a great idea. We’re okay with that.” All the people on our side who were opposing the HSS said, “Yeah, we're okay with that. We’re cool with that.” But immediately, as soon as that proposal was floated, the HSS people in the crowd started getting boisterous, and standing, and making it very clear that they found it unacceptable to have a yoga resolution which did not name the HSS. Pieter: I would add not just many Indian-Americans, but many Hindus in America. So this is conjecture, but what I've been pointing out frequently is that the HSS itself says it has about 230 branches around the country. And that is not in every state. So, like, guesstimating from there, if they have 230 branches, arguably, to be generous with the numbers, maybe they have 100 members per branch. What is that? That's about 23,000 people. Now, I'll be even more generous, say maybe 30,000 people. Well, if the HSS has — and that's not including VHP America and some of these other groups, but most of those are all interconnected anyways — let's say maybe like 30,000 members within the HSS in America. Well, the Indian-American population is, I think, about 1.4 million, about half of whom are Hindus, at least. So that's like 700,000. I've seen more official numbers of the actual population of Hindus in America, which I don't recall exactly, but it's like 600,000 to 900,000. Something in that range, I believe. So out of, let's say, 700,000 Hindus in America, we could conjecture — like an educated guess — that there might be about 30,000 members of the HSS, which is a tiny fringe minority of the Hindu population in America, let alone of the Indian-American population. Pieter: Now, in the case of the HSS, why is there that perception of strength? One reason I would argue is this. If the presumption that I have is true, that the RSS is fascist and by association, the HSS is also fascist or fascistic, well, one of the things that fascists have “going for them — one of the “benefits” of fascism — is that they're all about uniformity and conformity. They all walk in lockstep. It's easy to get them all on the same page. They’re all heavily networked. And they end up oftentimes being the most vocal, outspoken, visible — and, because they're uniformed especially visible — segment. So they might be just a few thousand people, but they look like a lot more. That perception of strength, I think, is really because, I would say, the fascist underlying ideology. Pieter, so the thing is that there are many ways to get into power structures to wield power, and you have mentioned how the city councils are often influenced, and the lobbying is done. But what about actual lawmakers? What about members of the Congress, for instance? What happens there? Because from what we understand, Hindutva has tried very hard to put candidates. Pieter: Well, what we've seen is this. In particular, one of the most egregious examples was now former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, who took office in January of 2012. And we have a primary system, general system with primary elections followed by general elections here in America. The Hindutva crowd — all of these major players in the HSS, the VHP America, the OFBJP around the country — latched onto her very early on, before she won her first primary (which is when she gets selected as the candidate for her party and goes on to face the candidate from the other party in the general election). They latched onto her very early. And they found her useful — in particular at the time in 2012 — because these same entities, these same personalities were just then mobilizing to work to get Modi elected in 2014 back in India. Modi, at the time, up until his election, was still banned from America. In fact, he actually is still banned from America. It's only by virtue of being head of state that he has diplomatic immunity to circumvent that ban. So, leading up to Modi’s election (as these Hindutva supporters and financiers of Tulsi Gabbard were backing her) and then after his election (when he was then allowed to come over here but he was still kind of persona non grata because of his ban and his association with the 2002 Gujarat Program), Tulsi Gabbard did a lot of work both before Modi's election in 2014 to try and derail attempts to criticize him in Congress or criticize Hindu nationalism in Congress and things like that and then after 2014 by becoming one of the first and most prominent people to publicly embrace him on American soil and welcome him unconditionally. For a long time, and even until today, she was one of the actually only people in Congress that was an overt person who, I would argue, was basically in the pocket of these people in this Hindutva movement. However, while she was one of the only pro-Hindutva representatives at the time, quickly after she was elected, within weeks of taking office, she became the second-most powerful person within the Democratic Party. The number-two person within the Democratic Party. So while she was pretty much the only person in Congress that was overtly in the pocket, I would argue, of the Hindutva gang, she was in a place of high influence. Then she went on to run for president and so on and so forth, and that was unsuccessful. I think their ambitions were a little bit bigger than the realism of the situation, because running for president, for her at that time, was not a realistic proposition. But what I do think that they hoped and expected was that she might get a nod for a cabinet position or something like that, which nobody that's been a Hindutva sympathizer has ever actually gotten at this point. Now to the present day. Tulsi Gabbard is out of office. Now again, we only have one person in office at the moment in US Congress, at the federal level, which is Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi from Illinois. Again, only one person, but he's become a fairly influential voice within the progressive side of the Democratic Party. He also sits on the US House Intelligence Committee, which means he's one of a very small number of members of Congress who are privy to privileged, confidential, and classified information. He also harbors pretty open ambitions to run for the US Senate, the upper house of the legislature. So if he does that, and if he succeeds, then that would be a stepping stone to get another Hindutva ally into what, at that point, would be the highest elected office that any Hindutva sympathizer has reached. Pieter: I've only gone to one event where he was actually physically there, but since about May 2022, I've spent at least a good six or seven weeks in his district, trying to raise awareness about his connections to HSS, VHP-America, the Hindutva movement in general. I've gone to city councils, participated in protests, and in particular, I got the opportunity to go to a campaign debate where he was at. He was running for re-election. He was debating his challenger, and I got a chance to go in the room and get him on camera for a few seconds, asking him what his opinion is about the RSS. And, this is quite literally, he ran away from me. As soon as I approached him I asked him, “Congressman, what is your opinion of the RSS?” His supporters, who were ringing him around, started shouting at me, and then they put their hands on his shoulders and escorted him out of the room. Pieter: Aruna Miller is kind of new on the scene. Aruna Miller is now the lieutenant governor, or she will be, I think, taking office next month, but the lieutenant governor-elect of Maryland. She’s one of the new on the scene people that is concerning as far as a potential Hindutva sympathizer. Now, I don't know — when I say that, I have to caveat — if she actually personally sympathizes with Hindutva, but she's certainly unscrupulous enough, unprincipled enough that she's willing to rub shoulders with them and take their money even after being repeatedly questioned and challenged about it. She's had a number of particular incidents, but she's taken a fair amount of money — well over $100,000 throughout her political career of the past ten years — from, in particular, leaders in the OFBPJ. She’s attended their events in the past. She has also, if I recall correctly, attended HSS events. And just over this past year or so, she's been repeatedly challenged by both Desi and non-Desi constituents within Maryland about her association with these groups. About her taking money from these groups. Her response has basically been to just turn a blind eye and refuse to offer anything except just flat denial. Basically, she's asked about this, and she kind of comes back with, “Well, but I love Muslims.” Pieter: Yes, that's correct. It was at this OFBJP event — I think it might have been 2014 itself — at which she actually did praise Modi and she called Modi a “rock star.” Pieter: Yes, as they should. And we haven't seen anything overt policy-wise from the federal government, aside from — which is still very deeply concerning — just the general deepening, the continued deepening of ties between the now Biden, Democrat-controlled US and Modi's fascist India. That deepening of ties is very concerning because it's coming faster and faster and it's unconditional. Like, there don't appear to be any actual conditions imposed upon that. I’m a strong supporter of deep friendship with India. I think it's a perfect match for the US, but it should come with conditions. We're not going to do it if, for instance, you’re slaughtering minorities in the streets. Pieter: That’s a good question. I get people talking about this, but honestly, personally, I'm not a big fan of the BDS-style approach. One reason is that I think that can tend to, in my opinion, veer too quickly into actual prejudice, where it becomes just about not buying from Hindus. Which is the exact same thing that's happening in India, is they're making pledges that we will not buy from Muslims. And so it's difficult to do that, especially because it's difficult to discern, like, if I go to a store that's owned by Hindu for instance, I have no idea if they're a supporter of Hindutva or not. And I'm not going to stand there and interrogate them, and indeed, it would be kind of bigoted for me to do so, to stand there and interrogate them and demand that they prove to me that they're not. So I'm not a big fan of that. Pieter: My personal opinion is that I don't support that approach, in particular, but I support more of a targeted approach as far as, for instance on a domestic level, just being aware of some of these major groups like Sewa International, which is one of the big money raisers with huge deep pockets and which is supported by a lot of people. I mean, like last year, Twitter CEO — Jack Dorsey at the time — gave $2.5 million to Sewa International. Just as one example. They get a lot of corporate support in America, and I think really, especially for anybody that works for someplace where their company or their corporation might be giving money to support charities, just making sure groups like Sewa aren’t included, because those ones are really easy ones to prove and to knock off the list. Like, if you want to do BDS, at least do it for a couple of major groups like that. Now, I do support sanctions in one particular way. I don't support sanctions like against Iraq, for instance, like when the US sanctioned Iraq in the 1990s. What I believe, and what a lot of people have argued, is that it didn't impact Saddam Hussein. That impacted the common person on the ground, and they're the ones that suffered as a result of it. You know, the million children estimated to have died because of US sanctions on Iraq. What I do support, an what the US could do, is targeted sanctions against individuals. We have, in America, this US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which is an independent, autonomous entity of the US State Department, which for the past several years — including this year — has recommended to the State Department that India should be listed as a Country of Particular Concern, which the US State Department just refused to do. But if the US State Department did do that, that would allow the US Government to legally impose targeted sanctions on individuals like, say, Amit Shah, or Modi, or Yogi Adityanath and basically ban them from entry to the US, freeze all of their international assets, etc. Do things like that and apply pressure to the specific individuals. Pieter: It's with all these lower-level people, however. I think Modi as the PM is kind of the exception. Like Adityanath, for instance, just like Modi was, he could be denied entry to the US, if I'm not mistaken. All these party leaders, basically anybody except the PM, like any chief minister, all of these people, it's possible to ban them from the US. Pieter: There is this presumption broadly within a lot of Americans that all Indians are Hindu. And I encounter this all the time and the Indian friends that I collaborate with, who are trying to do outreach to non-Indian politicians especially, they encounter this all the time.Pieter: Yeah, that's a good question, and it's something that I think about a lot. When I go to a lot of these city councils, these days — especially to avoid confusion and muddying the waters for this Western audience which is totally unfamiliar with these issues — I typically give speeches in which I don't even use the word “Hindu.” So, like, I used to give speeches where I would talk about how the RSS is a Hindu nationalist paramilitary, which it is. But typically in these short, three-minute speeches, I never say that anymore. I say the RSS is a fascist paramilitary, which it is. Then oftentimes, in most of the city councils where I go, within the following meeting or the meeting after that, HSS will show up to try and tamp things down. After I went, and I was being a troublemaker who was “badmouthing” their organization, they’ll show up. All I have given is a speech like this where I say that RSS is a fascist organization, et cetera, and HSS is its international wing, and not once do I even mention the word “Hindu.” Then HSS will show up as backlash to me and say, “Pieter was there, he was attacking our religion with his Hinduphobic remarks, we feel like, as Hindus, we feel so insulted.” And they just constantly revert to that fallback. All I'm ever doing is naming a organization. I'm talking about an organization, a specific organization, but their constant fallback is, “Oh, my God. Hinduphobia, Hinduphobia, he’s attacking the entire religion.” So within context of diversity and inclusion and that sort of pluralistic approach, that is a rhetoric, a narrative that they employ, which is difficult to counter but which certainly can and should be countered — at least to some extent can be, I think — by just constantly reiterating: One, that HSS does not represent the religion. Like I said, it has maybe 30,000 members across the country out of how many hundreds of thousands of Hindus? And two, that RSS — and HSS, by virtue of being the affiliate of RSS — is implicitly against diversion and inclusivity and pluralism and all of these values of a secular society. Pieter: And then, in my particular case, with the work that I do: I can't do it, I won't do it, I will stop doing it without the support of the Indian-American diaspora and also many citizens of India whom I know living in the country who support what I do. I will stop doing it if I don't have their support. Also, my preference all the time — I can't do this every time, unfortunately, because I do this fulltime, and most of the Indian-Americans here that are willing to collaborate with me have jobs that don't involve fulltime work on the issues of Hindutva, even if they support it — is to do the on the ground work in physical collaboration with members of the Indian diaspora. Because it's their cause that is deep in my heart and that I want to make my cause on their behalf as long as they welcome me to do so. And so as far as the diversity and inclusion thing, especially being a white man in America, that's one of the things that I think is very important, is to have constant collaboration with diverse segments of the Indian American community. Shirin: So, Pieter, we will conclude now, and if you have any last words, especially with regards to why you are continuing to do this work despite the challenges, I'd be happy to hear that. And then we will conclude. Pieter: The “why” is because I'm passionate about it. All of my closest and dearest friends at this point are Indian. I am so deeply involved and entrenched in this work. I've been doing this for about 16 and a half years, At this point, I can't imagine doing anything differently and I don't want to do anything differently because I love what I do. I am especially deeply grateful for the love that I constantly receive back — far more than the hate that I receive, but the love that I receive back from Indians all around the world, who humble me with what they have to say to me as far as in support of the work that I'm doing.

4. Library attacked: Apr., 11, 2023: Glass shards, stones, bricks and liquor bottles are spread all across the compound. The door at the entrance of the main building is missing. The wreckage of burned fans, windows, doors and furniture is lying on the floor, blackened with soot. In one corner, water is dripping from the broken ceiling. This was the scene when Al Jazeera earlier this month visited Madrassa Azizia, a prominent Muslim school in Bihar Sharif town of Nalanda district in eastern India’s Bihar state. The school in the town’s Murarpur neighbourhood, established over a century ago, was attacked by a mob on March 31 during Ram Navami, a Hindu festival that, according to rights groups, saw a large number of processions pass through mainly Muslim neighbourhoods across India, with people carrying weapons, chanting provocative slogans and even attacking shops, homes and religious structures. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/10/india-town-mourns-burning-of-historic-library-at-muslim-school

5. Muslims in Jail; Apr 16 2023; Based on casual conversations with acquaintances and strangers both within and outside the police force and as part of my field work and outside it, I gathered that the general belief in India is that Muslims are more likely to commit crime than other communities .The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data of convicts across 19 states over the period 1998-2015 revealed something striking. In almost all the states of India, the Muslim community consistently comprised a larger proportion of total convicts vis-à-vis their proportion in population, unlike the Hindu community .This relative disproportionality was especially stark in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat. For instance, looking at the maximum percentages that Muslim convicts can take over the studied time period, Muslims comprised approximately 11.9%, 9.2%, 11.54%, 26.35%, 8.83% respectively of the population in each of the aforementioned states, but comprised approximately 22.8%, 19.2%, 31.6%, 52.8%, 28.8% of the convicts in these states. Does this mean that the general belief holds true? On the face of it, perhaps. But on pondering a little further and daring to question some of the nuts and bolts of the criminal justice system itself, I found myself wondering if it is not the statistics that generate the belief, but the belief that generates the statistics. The possibility of the latter seems to be suggested in the Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) of 2019, which categorically mentions that the data its researchers collected found that police personnel seem to hold a significant bias against Muslims. In fact, when I compared the SPIR data on bias with my own calculations from the NCRB data, I found that Uttarakhand and Maharashtra figure among the top states in terms of the belief of police personnel respondents that the minority community is “naturally prone to committing crimes”. Rajasthan and West Bengal are only one percentage point behind Uttarakhand in terms of police personnel who hold such a bias. Since there are many layers in the criminal justice system and police investigation reports are just one aspect of them, these preliminary findings cannot be considered adequate enough to say whether bias on the part of police personnel may indirectly lead to a disproportionately higher percentage of convicts from the minority. The conventional approach when studying determinants of criminal behaviour is to enquire into possible disadvantages in terms of education and employment status. The Sachar Committee report did hint at such disadvantages being suffered by the minority. But then, the Sachar Committee also found a lack of representation of the minority community in the police forces. So to assess which one of these factors (if at all) actually causes the disproportionality among convicts requires much deeper engagement. I ran a simple OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression (an econometrics tool) that assessed the impact of socioeconomic and political factors on the ratio of Muslim to Hindu convicts. These factors included: Muslim poverty relative to Hindu (both urban and rural), data for which was taken from a 2005 study by economists Rijo M. John and Rohit Mutatkar; The Muslim unemployment rate relative to Hindu (both urban and rural), data for which was taken from the National Sample Survey Office report titled Employment and Unemployment Situation among Major Religious Groups in India and published in 2009 and 2011; and iii. Muslim education levels relative to Hindu, specifically in the completion of senior secondary education and in terms of diploma-holders, data for which was taken from the Census of India 2001 and 2011. The control variable in the OLS regression was the Muslim population relative to the Hindu population, data for which I took from the Census of India 2001 and 2011. An important and interesting explanatory variable in such an analysis is the extent of political or judicial power that a particular religion or caste enjoys. While judicial power cannot be quantified due to data unavailability, political power can be gauged from legislative assembly data, specifically the percentage of State Legislative Assembly seats won by Muslims, which is available at the Election Commission of India. All the explanatory variables and the control variable were interpolated in my OLS regression as they were not available for all the years. The preliminary results of the regression test are that the number of Muslim convicts relative to Hindu is adversely affected or increased by the higher relative rural poverty and urban unemployment of the minority, but favourably affected or decreased by the higher relative education indicators of the minority. Furthermore, when a higher percentage of state legislative assembly seats are occupied by the minority community, their relative conviction is lower. These results do not claim causality. But the fact that such disproportionality in conviction exists and that there seems to be some relation to socioeconomic and political disadvantages, and also possibly bias held by law enforcement personnel, cannot and must not be overlooked. What came to mind next was the possibility of a flip side to this question. Muslims are apparently more vulnerable to falling on the wrong side of the law. But given the many disadvantages they face, as seen earlier, are they also more vulnerable to crime – specifically in this case, violence – than Hindus? To study this I obtained data from the India Human Development Survey-II, a nationally-representative household survey conducted by scholars from the University of Maryland, the US National Council of Applied Economic Research, Indiana University, and the University of Michigan. After collating the data to the district level, I based the variable to capture vulnerability to violence on “whether anyone in the household has been threatened or attacked in the last 12 months”.It seems that when Muslims comprise a higher population proportion, their vulnerability increases in urban areas. But this is not the case in rural areas Again, these are only preliminary findings and further analysis could throw more light on the issue. But it should be noted that economists Anirban Mitra and Debraj Ray, in their study ‘Implications of an Economic Theory of Conflict: Hindu-Muslim Violence in India’ published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2014, do point out that in most studies on Hindu-Muslim violence in India, Muslims seem to suffer disproportionately more relative to their population. The possibility of a double whammy for the minority community in terms of higher vulnerability on both the offender and victim sides of violence thus seems apparent. However, a more elaborate analysis is required to ascertain the nature, extent and causes for this, while accounting for state and district-level heterogeneity. https://thewire.in/rights/statistics-show-more-muslim-convicts-than-hindu-but-whats-behind-these-numbers

6. Muslims leaving India; Apr 18 2023; Troubled by the present and anxious about the future, many Indian Muslims are now starting to give up hope in the country they call home. Being Muslim in India was always complicated, he said, but now it was just plain scary. “We all have listened to that odd barb all our lives, but today, violence is implicit in that barb.” Over the last two months, I interviewed more than 15 such young Muslims: all of them between 25-40 years old, holding at least a graduate degree, English-speaking, and from fairly privileged backgrounds. While some had already moved out of India, the others were in the process of figuring out an exit. A few had originally gone abroad for more aspirational reasons, but have now abandoned their once-firm plans of coming back home.https://www.dhakatribune.com/south-asia/2023/04/17/why-many-young-muslims-are-leaving-india

7. Hindus acquitted; Apr 21 20 2023; An Indian court on Thursday acquitted 69 Hindus, including a former minister from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of the murder of 11 Muslims during communal riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002. The killings occurred in Ahmedabad on Feb 28, 2002, a day after a suspected Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, setting off one of independent India's worst outbreaks of religious bloodshed. Kodnani was also an accused in a case in which 97 people were killed in the 2002 riots. She was convicted but later acquitted by a higher court. At least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed across Gujarat in the 2002 riots. Activists put the toll at over twice that number. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2413008/india-court-acquits-69-hindus-of-murder-of-11-muslims-during-2002-riots

Monthly update: 43 Mar 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Ro Khanna and Hindu nationalism; Mar 9, 2023: Khanna said that, having spent much of his career in Northern California's Silicon Valley, he has been immersed in Indian American issues for years. The rising tide of Hindu nationalism is on the forefront of the diaspora’s collective consciousness; from professional spheres to college campuses, reports of Islamophobia and casteism abound in South Asian spaces. Khanna hasn’t shied away from such conversations, and his vocalness has sparked outrage from right-wing Indian Americans. In 2019, 230 Hindu and Indian American entities wrote letter criticizing Khanna for denouncing Hindu nationalism (also known as Hindutva) and for advocating religious equality on the subcontinent. “It’s the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist & Christians,” Khanna tweeted at the time. They also criticized Khanna for joining the Congressional Pakistan Caucus and for speaking out against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s revoking the state of Kashmir’s autonomy

2. The Modi Question Calls for Press Truth Above all Else in India — by Phil Pasquini — 10/03/2023: : Imran Dawood: WASHINGTON – The National Press Club’s Journalism Institute last evening hosted a condensed showing of the controversial BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question. The two-part documentary banned in India tells the story of the 2002 riot that saw Hindu extremists attack the Muslim section of Gujarat killing thousands of Muslim Indians. The riot took place in the aftermath of an earlier attack at Godhra Station when a train coach caught on fire killing 59 Hindus. That attack was said to have been planned and undertaken by Muslims in retaliation for the destruction of a mosque demolished by Hindus. The cause of the blaze, however, has never been determined. Importantly, at the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of the state. In her opening comments, National Press Club President Eileen O’Reilly called out India’s diminishing press freedoms by stating that “India should be proud that it is the largest democracy in the world, but it cannot hold on to that identity if it continues to erode press freedom, persecute journalists, and suppress news that holds a mirror up to its shortcomings. Since Modi came to power, we have watched with frustration and disappointment as his government — time and time again — has suppressed the right of its citizens to a free and independent news media.” After the showing, a panel discussion that included massacre survivor Imran Dawood, his uncle Yusuf Dawood the family spokesman and Dr. Aakashi Bhatt, daughter of Sanjiv Bhatt, a senior police official who has been incarcerated as a whistleblower for testifying before India’s Supreme Court that Modi ordered the police to allow Hindus to kill Muslims. Panelist Imran Dawood who was 18 years old at the time of the attack related how when he and his two uncles were returning from a visit to the Taj Mahal along with their driver, they saw flames as they arrived in Gujarat. As they approached the city, they were stopped at an impromptu roadblock set up by Hindus and after getting out of the car the group pleaded with the crowd that they were peaceful. Imran said to prove he was not a Muslim “I myself was ordered to lower my pants and had my human dignity taken away from me in the same tactic used by Nazi Germany.” Afterward they were stabbed repeatedly and beaten before he saw his family members lynched. He was able escape further violence by feinting to be dead. He summed up his experience that day by saying, “the trauma will always be with me, but I won’t be defined by it.” All three panelists were united in their condemnation of Hindu Nationalist Modi and his BJP party’s desire to divide and subjugate Indians by stirring up religious violence and in their banning of the documentary to keep the truth from airing. The erosion of press freedoms and the right of free speech is now sadly lacking in Indian society as Aakashi Bhatt in referring to the media in present day India described their role as being “used by the regime to do its dirty work.” Going further, she later commented in answer to a question about press responsibility and power about what media has in a free society saying, “You have the power to hold this regime accountable. Silence is a form of condoning what Modi did.” And “I encourage you to report the truth and expose this virus.” While family spokesperson Yusuf Dawood warned “…It is not inconceivable that you yourself may have an Indian-style democracy in terms of democratic credentials being pushed to one side, in terms of the freedom of the press being owned and concentrated, in terms of the truth being suppressed through electronic laws designed for something completely different… Highlight the facts. All you have to do is tell the truth. You don’t have to embellish; it you don’t have to do anything.” All the panelists agreed that India is seen as a profitable marketplace and that billionaires and others including governments are willing to overlook its democratic decline in favor of putting profit over all else. US-India relations can be best understood by considering US foreign policy goals of creating a good economic and working relationship with Modi to balance both China and Russia’s influence in the country. That economic transition has already been taking place as US-China relations continue to deteriorate along with the question of Taiwan’s future. Major corporations, manufacturers and logistics companies are transitioning away from China as a sole source by looking towards India and Southeast Asia in their quest for stability and profitability. India has much to win and much to lose but its freedoms and democracy are irreplaceable.

3. Mosque to be removed; Mar 15, 2023: In what believes to be toeing the line of Hindutva polices of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian Supreme Court has ordered removal of a pre-partition mosque located near the Allahabad High Court premises in Uttar Pradesh within three months. The Supreme Court justified the order by saying that the Masjid building stood on a terminated lease property. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2023/03/14/indian-top-court-orders-removal-of-pre-partition-mosque-in-allahabad-up.html

4. Cow vigilantes: Mar., 17, 2023: On February 16, Junaid, along with another Muslim man Nasir, were allegedly attacked and abducted by a mob that later set them ablaze, alive while they were inside their car. This is said to have happened after accusations of cow smuggling were made against the victims. Their charred bodies were found in a Bolero car in Barwas village, which falls under the Loharu police station area of Haryana’s Bhiwani. The Rajasthan Police have identified eight accused in the case: Rinku Saini, Monu, Vikas, Rajesh, Sandeep, Rajkumar, Sachin and Ankit. Rinku Saini is the only one who has been arrested so far https://thewire.in/rights/junaid-nasir-murder-police

5. Amnesty International on India; Mar., 29, 2023: India “selectively and viciously” repressed religious minorities, especially Muslims, while the Taliban rule in Afghanistan led to a “devastating rollback of the rights of women and girls” in 2022, Amnesty International said in its annual human rights report released Tuesday. The London-based human rights organization said criminal laws were used “disproportionately” against religious minorities in India last year. Muslims were routinely arrested for allegedly promoting enmity between groups and outraging religious feelings by praying in public and consensually marrying Hindu women, among others. “In May, July and August, scores of Muslims were either charged in criminal cases or with administrative penalties for offering namaz (prayers) in public spaces and private homes,” Amnesty said. These communal clashes were followed by the authorities’ unlawful demolition of private property of people suspected of rioting, mostly belonging to economically disadvantaged Muslims, according to the non-profit. Amnesty also highlighted the use of “repressive” laws, including counterterrorism legislation to “intimidate people and silence dissent.” Apart from the documented cases of “unlawful force” used by the police, the organization denounced the cases of arbitrary arrests of voices critical of the government of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. https://www.laprensalatina.com/amnesty-slams-minority-repression-in-india-restrictions-on-afghan-women

6. Time Ticking: New US Ambassador to India Promised Human Rights Focus by Pieter Friedrich: Mar, 31. 2023: Quizzing US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on 6 April 2022, Representative Ilhan Omar asked: “Why has the Biden administration been so reluctant to criticize Modi’s government on human rights?” Representative Omar’s question came a little less than a year before Eric Garcetti was finally confirmed as the US’s ambassador to India, filling a position that had lain vacant since the day Donald Trump departed the presidency in January 2021. Now that President Joe Biden is finally sending an official representative to Delhi, Omar’s enquiry takes on greater relevance. Will the Biden administration, represented by Ambassador Garcetti, finally call Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to task for his regime’s rapidly escalating violations of human rights? In that regard, Garcetti’s past remarks during the confirmation process were promising, if unfortunately rather vague and confined to a single occasion.Responding to questions by Senator Ben Cardin at a 14 December 2021 Senate Foreign Relations hearing about his nomination, Garcetti declared, “The US-India relationship should be underpinned by our common commitment to democracy, to human rights, and to civil society. It’s enshrined in our constitutions — the oldest democracy in the world and the largest democracy in the world. Human rights and defense of democracy is a pillar of our foreign policy.” Thus, he promised, human rights will be a “core part” of his diplomatic agenda in India and he will “actively raise these issues.” It’s an especially pertinent question in context of what has happened in India under the past nine years of Modi. Pressing Deputy Secretary Sherman in 2022, for instance, Congresswoman Omar wondered what it will take for the Biden administration to directly raise human rights concerns with India. As she demanded: “How much does the Modi administration have to criminalize the act of being Muslim in India for us to say something? I ask you again: what will it take for us to outwardly criticize the actions that the Modi administration is taking against its Muslim minorities in India?” Indeed, even as democracy is rapidly declining in India, the US — including under Biden — has intensified its intimacy with the Modi-ruled nation. Since the 1990s, the US-India relationship has been on an almost nonstop upward trajectory, last culminating in 2016 with India being named a Major Defense Partner of the United States. The connection only deepened under Trump, who first joined Modi on stage at a 2019 Houston, TX event where the prime minister declared (in essence) “once more, the Trump regime” to the up for reelection president. The two again joined each other in 2020 for a secondary “dance of love” in Modi’s home state, Gujarat, at the same time that top officials in Modi’s government were instigating an anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi.Nothing has changed under Biden, whose administration continues to romance the Modi regime. Modi and Biden have certainly engaged in far less fawning over each other than did Modi and Trump. Yet, as Timemagazine reported, “India’s relationship with the U.S. significantly improved in 2022: Biden met with Modi twice, strengthening trade ties between the two countries, and reinforcing the regional Quad security dialogue with Japan and Australia.” Furthermore, Biden, for the first time since his election, reportedly intends to host Modi for an official state visit in Summer 2023. Meanwhile, despite nearly 20 Indian-American human rights outfits requesting he vet appointees for ties to American affiliates of radical Hindu nationalist outfits in India, Biden proceeded in 2022 to appoint both of the two named as concerning in addition to a third: Amit Jani, Sonal Shah, and Chandru Acharya. To date, Biden’s administration has shown practically zero signs of prioritizing human rights in the US-India relationship. In fact, quite the opposite. Mostly recently, in February 2023, after leading what Hindustan Times called “the most high-powered United States Congressional delegation to visit India” and meet Modi, US Senator Chuck Schumer — the senior-most senator and Senate Majority Leader — declared: “We need nations such as India, the world’s largest democracy, to work with us to strengthen democracies in Asia and around the globe.” Schumer went on to stress: “Close ties between our two countries would be a crucial counterweight to outcompete China and responding to its authoritarianism.” That doesn’t just mean “cooperating with India on defense and security,” he emphasized, but rather taking “an all out, all-of-the-above approach” which includes “working to strengthen our economic ties, expand our trade, and make it easier to recruit talented workers from abroad to work in our country.” In short, as the top legislator in Biden’s Democratic Party, Schumer is pushing an apparently unconditional, no pre-nuptial agreement required marriage of the US and India. The disastrous aspect of such a relationship is that it’s being pushed at a time when, among other things, the Modi regime is de facto criminalizing the opposition and moving the country in the direction of being a one-party state. On 24 March 2023, the day Garcetti was sworn-in, India’s main opposition leader — Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress — was expelled from Parliament. This followed Gandhi’s sentencing, on 23 March, to two years imprisonment on a “criminal” defamation charge for remarks he made in 2019 where he mocked Modi as a “thief.” This latest development, which comes just a year before India’s next General Election begins, is a culmination of a long series of events that, as Gandhi noted at a 4 March 2023 forum hosted by the Chatham House think tank in London, amount to “an attack on the basic structure of democracy” in India. The motivating force behind this assault on Indian democracy is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the paramilitary parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — and its desire to transform the country into an officially Hindu nation. Since the RSS-BJP took national power in 2014, with Modi as prime minister, its Hindu nationalist (also known as “Hindutva”) agenda has taken root in a wide variety of ways at both the street and the state level. Academics, activists, and attorneys — ranging from Muslim professor of English Dr. Hany Babu to Catholic priest Fr. Stan Swamy to Dalit writer Dr. Anand Teltumbde — have been rounded up and indefinitely imprisoned on far-flung and far-fetched conspiracy charges. Journalists such as Mohammed Zubair or Irfan Mehraj or Siddique Kappan or Asif Sultan, human rights activists such as Khurram Parvez and Safoora Zargar, environmental activists such as Disha Ravi and Nikita Jacob, student activists such as Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, even elected officials like Jignesh Mevani, and countless others have all faced arrest. Activists like Aakar Patel and journalists like Rana Ayyub have been barred from exiting India, while journalists like Aatish Taseer have been banned from entering. For the past five years, India has topped the list of countries with the most internet shutdowns; since 2014, it has shut down the net nearly 700 times, often for months at a time and across entire states. Amnesty International India was shut down. A BBC documentary critical of Modi’s alleged role in a 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom was banned, students who tried screening it were arrested, and the media outlet’s India offices were raided. The BJP has extrajudicially deployed bulldozers to destroy homes and shops of Muslim activists. Multiple states have passed so-called “love jihad” laws (which essentially criminalize interfaith marriage) and “anti-conversion” laws (which essentially criminalize religious freedom). And, of course, the central government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (which basically premises acquisition of citizenship on a religious basis) and intends national implementation of the National Register of Citizens (which requires Indian residents prove their citizenship; after implementation in Assam, nearly two million residents were rendered stateless). Due to all this and more, India — as Cardin noted in his exchange with Garcetti — was downgraded in 2021 from “free” to “partly free” by US-based democracy watchdog Freedom House, which has maintained that ranking into 2023. Also in 2021, the Swedish Varieties of Democracy Institute downgraded India from an “electoral democracy” to an “electoral autocracy” (“autocracy” being a fancy word for a dictatorship); as of 2023, India remains in that category. According to V-Dem’s ranking system, that puts India on the same level as regional neighbors like Bangladesh and Pakistan as well as large nations like Egypt, Turkey, and Russia. V-Dem’s latest report, in crediting the autocratization of India to the rise of an “anti-pluralist” party, explains: “Anti-pluralist parties and their leaders lack commitment to the democratic process, disrespect fundamental minority rights, encourage demonization of political opponents, and accept political violence.” Political violence, indeed. While Indian democracy under the BJP is taking a huge hit at the state level, its decline is most viscerally illustrated at the street level. Beginning in late 2021, Hindu nationalist demagogues and even media tycoons began routinely hosting mass gatherings, of hundreds or even thousands of people, where they often distribute weapons before leading the audience in oaths to socially and economically boycott religious minorities (especially Muslims), to “fight, kill, and die if necessary” to turn India into a Hindu nation, and to attack non-Hindus. BJP leaders and elected officials frequently join these events. In 2020, soon after a BJP cabinet minister issued a call to “shoot the traitors,” Delhi witnessed a pogrom against Muslims. Anti-Muslim violence broke out in Tripura in 2021 and Madhya Pradesh in 2022, to name just two of many significant violent outbreaks. Meanwhile, frequent lynchings of Muslims have continued — including, in February 2023, the burning alive of two Muslim cattle traders by Monu Manesar, a Hindutva activist who has been pictured with politicians as influential as Home Minister Amit Shah. Christians, too, face street violence. Almost every year since 2014, the documented number of attacks on Indian Christians has increased. In 2022, the top Indian-American Christian organization reported “1,198 cases of verified violence against Christians in India, a 157 percent increase from the previous year.” The vast majority of reported incidents appear to be attacks by large armed mobs who typically invade churches during Sunday services. Attacks on Dalits, Sikhs, and other communities have also all massively increased in recent years, many of the violent incidents having either an overtly communal angle linked to Hindutva or being clearly politically-motivated. This is the situation in an India which Senator Schumer — in the face of all factual reality — believes is currently capable of serving as a “counterweight” against “authoritarianism” and helping to “strengthen democracies in Asia and around the globe.” Yet, while Schumer works towards an unconditional partnership with Modi’s India, neither the dire human rights situation there nor the primary instigator of it have escaped the notice of other entities within the US government. In fact, the most recent reports about human rights in India from the US State Department as well from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) are damning. Notably, USCIRF blames much of the present situation on the RSS, explaining: “The BJP-led government and leaders at the national, state, and local level have advocated, instituted, and enforced sectarian policies seeking to establish India as an overtly Hindu state, contrary to India’s secular foundation and at grave danger to India’s religious minorities…. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organization closely affiliated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, aggressively advocates for a pure Hindu state…. The RSS is a paramilitary force that acts in support of the current government’s Hindu-nationalist policies.” Plenty of US officials, both past and present, have recognized the threat posed by the RSS and its supremacist agenda. For instance, in a 14 March 2023 interview with Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, Omar noted that “the political movement [ie, the RSS] that supports and that Modi is part of is also responsible for the assassination or the death of [Mohandas] Gandhi.” Meanwhile, US diplomats who’ve engaged with India have clearly called out how the RSS pulls the strings of the BJP. Writing about his experiences in India in the 1990s, former US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott called the BJP the “political wing” of the RSS. Noting that the RSS backs and often instigates “tearing down mosques and burning churches,” he warned, “The BJP included — and not just on its fringes — sectarian zealots who were implicated in incidents of communal violence.” While serving as the US Ambassador to India in 2007, David Mulford reported back to Washington that the RSS is the BJP’s “muscle power,” writing, “The RSS can survive without the BJP but the BJP cannot exist without the RSS. This inextricably links the BJP to the RSS’s Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) agenda.” These analyses were bipartisan: Talbott was a Clinton appointee and Mulford was a Bush Jr. appointee. As Garcetti heads to India, one question arises: what approach will he take to engaging with the RSS? Engage, unfortunately, he must. After all, as Indian author Arundhati Roy wrote in 2020: “The RSS has stepped up its game. No longer a shadow state or a parallel state, it is the state.” If that’s the case, then avoidance is not the answer, but what typeof engagement the US’s representative in India will pursue with the world’s most powerful paramilitary is definitely the question. It’s a particularly important question concerning the drama with (now former) Ambassador Atul Keshap. Before Garcetti was confirmed, a series of “acting ambassadors” temporarily filled the position he’s now taking. One of those was Keshap. The day before his tenure ended, Keshap did what no other US ambassador has ever done before: visited the RSS headquarters to pose for a photo-op with its supreme leader, Mohan Bhagwat. It was his very last official act in India — and it implicitly endorsed the RSS as a legitimate organization worthy of uncritical, public engagement. In the US, civil backlash to Keshap’s action was swift and harsh. Human Rights Watch’s South Asia Advocacy Director John Sifton went so far as to compare the meeting to if, hypothetically, the US ambassador to Germany in 1933 had attended a Nazi rally at Nuremberg — which did not, of course, happen. In a circumstance where Nazis take over a country, diplomacy probably will require engaging with them, but appropriate engagement never includes photo-ops with them. Keshap, for whatever reason, apparently failed to grasp that. After sustained protest in the US over his RSS visit, Keshap quietly retired from the diplomatic service a few months later. Meanwhile, in contrast to Keshap, the RSS apparently already sees an enemy in Garcetti. Immediately after the Senate voted to confirm him, the RSS’s official media mouthpiece, The Organiser, slammed him as a “Trojan horse” and argued that he’s part of a “blatant anti-Indian ploy” — all because he promised to make human rights a “core part” of his interactions with India. Garcetti will probably chart a very different course from Keshap, at least in the public eye, but exactly what direction will he — and his bosses in Washington — take the US-India relationship? Only time will tell, but time is ticking away for the world’s largest democracy. India can ill afford any further democratic backsliding without slipping into outright tyranny. The expulsion from Parliament and pending imprisonment of the country’s chief opposition leader ought to make that crystal clear. “The nature of the democratic contest has completely changed, and the reason it has changed is because of one organization called the RSS,” warned Rahul Gandhi at Chatham House. “A fundamentalist, fascist organization has basically captured pretty much all of India’s institutions.” The RSS, he said, is using democratic means to come to power so that it can subvert democracy once in power. “Democracy in India is a global, public good,” Gandhi explained. “It impacts way further than our boundaries. If Indian democracy collapses, in my view, democracy on the planet suffers a very serious, possibly fatal blow. So, it’s important for you too. It is not just important for us.” Yet, he lamented, “The surprising thing is that the so-called defenders of democracy, which are the US, European countries, seem to be oblivious that a huge chunk of [the] democratic model has come undone.” What path, then, will Garcetti tread? The path suggested by Schumer, one in which, no matter how bad the human rights situation becomes, India will be treated as an ally to be used — or exploited, one could say — for economic gain and as a “counterweight” in geopolitical jostling with China? Or, rather, will the new ambassador — adhering to his promise to focus on human rights — understand that America’s desire for India to be a strong ally requires that the country be fully free and democratic. As much as India and the US ought to be strong partners, that’s simply not possible while the country remains in the iron grip of a fascist movement which, experts warn, is on the verge of enacting genocide against religious minorities.The best thing the US can do for Indians today is to set aside, for now, talk about issues like economic and security cooperation in favor of talk, first and foremost, about human rights. As Omar said at the April 2022 hearing, “When we remain silent, and the situation gets out of control in the way that it did with the Rohingyas, we all of a sudden show our interest in whatever genocide that’s taking place. But we have an opportunity now to lead and make sure that there is a deterrence in the actions that they [India] are taking as our partners.” Human rights, said Garcetti at the December 2021 hearing, are a “cornerstone” of the US’s “shared values” with India. Yet the time for boilerplate rhetoric about “shared values” between “the world’s oldest and the world’s largest democracies” has ended. The time for putting those values to the test has arrived. The citizens of India — and the world — desperately need Ambassador Garcetti to call out Modi’s dismantling of democracy. The potential consequence of failing to take a stand now before Indian democracy actually collapses is that, in Rahul Gandhi’s words, “democracy on the planet suffers a very serious, possibly fatal blow.”

7. Muslims in India: Mar., 31, 2023: According to recent reports, in the Indian state of Gujarat, hundreds of mosques and shrines have been destroyed with impunity. The demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque, the neglect of the Taj Mahal, and the current demolition of the Shahi Masjid mosque in Uttar Pradesh, all point in a worrisome direction. The Indian government is destroying India’s Muslim legacy via the destruction, neglect, and marginalization of Muslim culture and identity. This erasure has serious ramifications for India’s Muslim minority since it undermines their feeling of belonging and identity. The Babri Masjid mosque is the most notable example of a Muslim historical monument in India that has been targeted for demolition. The Babri Masjid, a mosque built in the 16th century in Ayodhya, was destroyed in 1992 by Hindu nationalists who believed it was built on the site of a Hindu temple. Its destruction ignited communal riots, killing hundreds. In addition to the Babri Masjid, Hindu nationalists have threatened other Muslim cultural sites in India, including the Jama Masjid in Delhi and the Charminar in Hyderabad. Neglect is another significant threat to India’s Muslim history. A classic example of this neglect is the Taj Mahal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The monument is polluted, and the marble is yellowing. Despite being a popular tourist destination, the Indian government has not provided sufficient cash for its repair and maintenance. The most recent occurrence was the demolition of Shahi Masjid, a 16th-century mosque erected during Sher Shah Suri’s reign in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. The mosque was demolished to enlarge a public road. Another important threat to India’s Muslim legacy is the marginalization of Muslim culture. In India, the rise of Hindu nationalism has resulted in the marginalization of Muslim culture in society. Muslims in India are frequently viewed as second-class citizens and face discrimination in a variety of settings, including education and work. The Indian government has also been accused of eliminating Muslim culture from education, including the removal of Muslim historical figures from textbooks. One of the major causes leading to India’s silent genocide against its Muslim heritage is Hindu nationalism. With the growth of Hindu nationalism in India, Muslim culture and history have been marginalized and erased from Indian society. Hindu nationalists believe in Hindu culture’s superiority and desire to obliterate other civilizations, particularly Muslim cultures. Another factor contributing to the silent genocide of India’s Muslim history is the political conflict between India and Pakistan. The two nations have a long history of confrontation, with India accusing Pakistan of aiding terrorism and Pakistan accusing India of violating Muslims’ human rights. This political friction has resulted in the Muslim population in India being marginalized, with many Indians considering Muslims a security concern. Historical hostility towards Muslim governance in India is also contributing to the silent genocide of India’s Muslims. Notwithstanding the Mughal Empire’s contributions to Indian culture and legacy, many Indians regard the Muslim reign in India as an era of tyranny. Because of this attitude, Muslim heritage monuments in India have been neglected and erased. The silent genocide of India’s Muslim legacy is a multifaceted issue that includes the destruction, neglect, and marginalization of Muslim culture and heritage in India. The elimination of this tradition endangers the identity and sense of belonging of India’s Muslim people. The erasure of India’s Muslim roots has serious repercussions for the country’s cultural variety and pluralism promotion.It is critical to understand the importance of India’s Muslim history and endeavor to preserve it. There is a need for greater knowledge and appreciation of Muslim culture and history’s contributions to India. There is also a need to incorporate more Muslim culture and history into Indian schooling. To develop a more inclusive society, the Muslim community in India must be addressed. https://intpolicydigest.org/the-platform/the-silencing-of-india-s-muslim-heritage/

Monthly update: 42 Feb 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Swiss Lawyers' Group Files Criminal Complaint Against UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Over Murder And Torture Killing Of Muslims In India; Feb 4 2023; A specialist group of international ;criminal and human rights lawyers filed a criminal report with the Office of the Swiss Federal Prosecutor against Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath, alleging that he committed crimes against humanity. The complaint was filed before the World Economic Forum meetings took off at Davos in Switzerland. Adityanath, who was reported to be attending the meet, did not eventually go. The group, Guernica 37 Chambers, have filed the complaint against him “for crimes against humanity committed between December 2019 and January 2020 in the state of Uttar Pradesh” – during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The group, in its press release, cited the “principle of universal jurisdiction” in Article 264 of the Swiss Criminal Code. The group has singled out Adityanath and his administration’s treatment of protesters, noting that the suppression of protests could amount to crimes against humanity. Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath is reported to have ordered the false imprisonment, torture and murder of civilians between December 2019 and January 2020 in the state of Uttar Pradesh to suppress protests against the adoption of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in India. As set out in the criminal report, these acts may amount to crimes against humanity as they are alleged to have been committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians, mostly the Muslim population in the country. The group notes that it has “sufficient basis to believe that senior members of the UP State Government, including Chief Minister Adityanath, are responsible for ordering the UP police under their command” and singles out Adityanath’s speeches.“The Chief Minister’s role in the escalation of police violence is particularly apparent in a speech given on 19 December 2019 calling on the police to take “revenge” against protesters. Despite being an Indian State official, the Chief Minister does not enjoy diplomatic immunity for these crimes.” The lawyers also note that following the adoption of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019, “which embodies a wider pattern of discrimination against Muslims in India,” many members of the Muslim community across the country took to the streets to peacefully protest the law. However, it says, UP Police violently cracked down on protesters. “In the course of this crackdown which lasted six months, the UP police reportedly killed 22 protesters, at least 117 were tortured and 307 were arbitrarily detained,” it said. Multiple ground reports by The Wire too had noted how minors and the poorest of people were allegedly beaten by police. The criminal complaint argues that as CM and home minister, Adityanath as the final executive authority in the state of UP over police conduct also failed to investigate and prosecute the alleged crimes. The lawyers alleged that “domestic avenues to address these crimes have remained unsuccessful” alongside international avenues as India has not acceded to the individual complaints mechanisms of the United Nations (UN) human rights treaties nor has it ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The UP authorities, it notes, have so far “ignored calls by victims’ families, human rights groups, domestic courts and the UN mandate holders” to investigate and prosecute these violations. The opening of an investigation by the Swiss authorities will serve as official recognition and acknowledgement of the gravity of the alleged crimes, it says. The Uttar Pradesh government had also threatened to recover alleged losses from property damage from those it had identified as culpable protesters in late 2019. The Supreme Court in 2021 asked the Uttar Pradesh government not to take action on earlier notices sent to protesters. Guernica 37 Chambers had earlier filed a formal submission with the United States government seeking targeted sanctions against Adityanath, for his role in extra judicial killings allegedly committed by the state’s police forces between 2017 and 2021. https://thewire.in/world/adityanath-guernica-37-chambers-swiss

2. Owaisi ; Feb 12 2023;Member of Parliament from Hyderabad and Presi-dent of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi has said Muslims in India are living under constant threat and no month goes by without a threat to their lives. “An MP recently asked people to use knives not only for cutting vegetables but also throats. One more MP asked people to boycott the Muslim community. Gulbarga railway station’s colour was changed from green because it is the colour of Muslims. I want to ask the Narendra Modi regime if it would remove the green colour from its flag as well?” he asked. Owaisi further asked if the Modi government would ban the sale of watermelons because they are green in colour. Owaisi said that Bilkis Bano would have found justice if she wasn’t a Muslim. “Bilkis Bano has been fighting for twenty years…and since her name is Bilkis Bano, you don’t want to do her justice,” he said. https://pakobserver.net/muslims-living-under-constant-threat-in-india-owaisi/

3. The world is now learning about the major threat Hindutva fascism poses today. Riaz Haq ;https://theloop.ecpr.eu/hindutva-fascism-is-threatening-the-worlds-largest-democracy/; In India, fascism is reinventing itself. It has crept through Hindu nationalism – Hindutva – and now poses a serious threat to Indian democracy, writes Amit Singh Frequently framed as populist, nativist and nationalist, ‘Hindutva fascism’ has so farevaded the serious scrutiny of scholars and activists. But, as Luca Manucci has argued convincingly, mislabelling such a phenomenon could jeopardise the struggle against fascism and anti-democratic regimes. Without accurate labelling, we will never develop an effective counterstrategy against fascism. Fascism is manifesting itself in India under the auspices of radical right-wing groups such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Widespread public confusion, along with a silencing of the discussion around Hindutva's ‘fascistic roots’, is assisting the gradual death of Indian democracy. Hindutva is an ethnic form of nationalism. Since 1925, the right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been its most staunch proponent. RSS is radically far-right, hierarchical, authoritarian, and founded on the premise of Hindu supremacy. Hindu nationalism seeks uniformity through the imposition of Hindi language, Hindu religion, Hindu mythology, and unquestioned loyalty to the nation. On different levels, it seeks to repress dissenting views, and to expunge religious pluralism and secularism from political discourse. Current right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an active member of RSS, is notorious for his complicity in the post-Godhra riots. Modi claimed that the fire on the train which killed 59 Hindus in 2002 was an act of Islamist terrorism rather than an outbreak of communal violence. Under Modi, India is fulfilling RSS' Hindutva mission to make India a Hindu nation. Once a secular state, India has become an electoral autocracy, with Hindutva as its unofficial ideology. Veer Savarkar, one of Hindutva's earliest proponents, asserted: India should follow the German example to solve the Muslim problem… Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and Italy to fascism – and events have justified those isms…VEER SAVARKAR, 1938 Hindutva ideologue Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar applauded Hitler’s Germany for exterminating Jews to maintain the purity of the race and its culture. He strongly believed 'foreign races in Hindustan must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race; [they] deserve no privileges… not even citizen's rights.' BS Moonje, a politician close to the RSS, met with Mussolini on 19 March 1931. Moonje played a crucial role in moulding the RSS along Italian (fascist) lines, militarising Hindu youths. Hindutva ideologues consider a homogeneous identity a necessary foundation of nationhood. Thus, nationhood is inherently anti-plural. The RSS shaped Hindutva ideology similarly to the way the Nazis and Italian fascists shaped fascist ideology in the 1930s. Hindutva rejects the liberal democratic conception of nation and citizenship. It is anti-democratic, and inherently Islamophobic. The cult of tradition and male chauvinism dominates Hindutva fascist policies. Under Modi, Hindutva fascism has crystallised. Fascist politics aims to separate a population into 'us' and 'them'. In India, pre-existing communal divisions between Hindus and Muslims have been exacerbated by Hindutva forces such as the RSS and its political wing, the BJP. Since Modi came to power in 2014, his administration has fed Islamophobic propaganda to the Hindu masses. This has led to the public demonisation of Muslims, and even normalised violence against them. Hindutva is obsessed with Hindus' inherent superiority. The Indian Ministry of Culture is even establishing a genetic database to 'trace the purity of races in India' Muslims have even been prosecuted for offering prayer in their own homes. A move to pass a Citizenship Amendment Bill, along with a proposed National Register of Citizens, are Modi's underhand attempts to exclude Muslims from Indian citizenship. The Nazis were obsessed with 'racial purity', striving for a pure 'Aryan' German race. Hindutva, too, is consumed by the idea of Hindu superiority. In 1966, Golwalkar published a book alleging the 'purity' of Hindu blood. Today, the Indian Ministry of Culture is establishing a state-of-the-art genetic database to 'trace the purity of races in India'. In Modi's India, dissent at any level meets with ruthless punishment. This is a clear symptom of a fascist regime. Modi is a ‘predator of press freedom’. Under his government, freedom of the media and academic freedom have sunk to new lows. In many cases, parliamentary debate has been shut down, and laws passed without debate. The cult of Modi in India has parallels with Hitler’s leadership style. Images of the ‘Dear Leader’ are everywhere. Sensationalist, biased Godi media has replaced state media. This media never tires of demonstrating how hard Modi works. Instead, what they should be doing is criticising his disastrous mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, which has resulted in the deaths of millions of Indians. Godi media is normalising illiberalism and promoting hate speech, not only against Muslims, but against anyonewho opposes Modi. Fascism rewrites history. It promotes anti-intellectualism by attacking universities and educational systems that might challenge its ideas. Under Modi, chapters on protest and social movement have been excised from textbooks. Replacing them are IslamophobicHindutva ideologies, and stories of Hindus' past glories. Academics and scholars are fired or attacked for criticising Hindutva or the Modi government. Government institutions, especially security and financial agencies, intimidate and harass opposition parties and anyone who dares to voice dissent. Current resistance against Hindutva is sporadic and disorganised. However, open resistance against Hindutva is apparent in various forms, and at differentlevels. Farmers, students, intellectuals, religious minorities, India's mainopposition party, and members of civil society, are rising up to protest Modi’s Hindutva government policies. ‘Invisible defiance’ against Hindutva fascism is also taking shape in private discussion, even among Hindutva supporters. Hindutva may be hegemonic, but its gradual decline has already begun. In 2005, the US banned Modi from entry because he had failed to act against anti-Muslim riots in India. However, when Modi became prime minister in 2014, Western leaders gave him the red-carpet treatment, possibly to nurture business interests. Once Hindutva gained respectability in the West, it boosted the morale of its proponents, and discouraged resistance. If Western nations really want to save liberal democracy, they must isolate authoritarian leaders like Modi, and condemn their illiberal policies. Doing so is the only way to save a dying democracy like India.

4. New York Times; Feb 13 2023; New York Times have also criticized the Modi government and the extremism under its patronage. A column in the American newspaper New York Times exposed Modi’s plan to make India a Hindu country, and the column pointed out that religious extremism and anti-minorities in India under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rule. The trends have increased. The New York Times report says Nehru’s secular India has fallen victim to Hindu extremism, there is no practice of punishment for crimes against Muslims in India, Modi’s government deliberately enacted anti-Muslim laws. The report also cites changes in citizenship laws and the illegal annexation of Kashmir, noting that Modi is a staunch member of the Hindu extremist organization RSS, and that his government has systematically suppressed free speech, according to Lydia Polgreen. , critical voices have been stifled by terrorism laws, and emergency powers have been used to control the media. https://proiqra.com/the-us-newspaper-also-revealed-modis-plan-to-make-india-a-hindu-country-pakistan-pro-iqra-news/

5. Muslim men lynched ;Feb 17 2023; In what is being described as yet another case of cow vigilantism leading to the loss of life, merely 100 kilometers from the national capital, two Muslim men from the Rajasthan-Haryana border were allegedly attacked and abducted by a mob that later set them ablaze, alive while they were inside their car. This is said to have happened after accusations of cow smuggling were made against the victims. The dead have been identified as Junaid and Nasir, both residents of Ghatmeeka village in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district. https://thewire.in/communalism/haryana-two-muslim-men-found-charred-to-death-in-alleged-case-of-cow-vigilantism

6. UAPA ; Mar 1 2023; But Khan continues to languish in jail as he has not been able to secure bail in a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), a controversial anti-terror law that has been used against Khan and several other Muslims accused of allegedly “pre-planning” the riots UAPA, termed by critics and rights groups as a draconian legislation, was amended in 2019 by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to allow authorities to declare an individual a “terrorist” and detain them without trial for months, sometimes years. Previously, the “terrorist” tag was reserved only for groups or organisations.The government last year informed the parliament that nearly 4,700 people were arrested under the law between 2018 and 2020, but only 149 were found guilty – a conviction rate of nearly 3 percent.Police booked at least 18 Muslims, including student leaders and activists such as Khalid Saifi, Umar Khalid and Miran Haider, under the UAPA, alleging a “larger conspiracy” to create religious tensions – a claim rubbished by legal and rights experts. “The reason why these people are still in jail in spite of charges being dismissed on so many grounds is that they have been booked under a draconian law like UAPA which calls itself an anti-terror law but has always been used to suppress dissent,” rights activist Kavita Krishnan told Al Jazeera.“Under this law, it is difficult to get bail so the police just need to charge people under UAPA and delay the trial by saying that they are investigating and so you are likely to remain in prison for many years,” she said. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/28/india-terror-law-haunts-muslims-jailed-since-2020-for-delhi-riots

7. Ro Khanna and Hindu nationalism; Mar 9, 2023: Khanna said that, having spent much of his career in Northern California's Silicon Valley, he has been immersed in Indian American issues for years. The rising tide of Hindu nationalism is on the forefront of the diaspora’s collective consciousness; from professional spheres to college campuses, reports of Islamophobia and casteism abound in South Asian spaces. Khanna hasn’t shied away from such conversations, and his vocalness has sparked outrage from right-wing Indian Americans. In 2019, 230 Hindu and Indian American entities wrote letter criticizing Khanna for denouncing Hindu nationalism (also known as Hindutva) and for advocating religious equality on the subcontinent. “It’s the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist & Christians,” Khanna tweeted at the time. They also criticized Khanna for joining the Congressional Pakistan Caucus and for speaking out against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s revoking the state of Kashmir’s autonomy

Monthly update: 41 Jan 2023 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Homes demolitions ;January 4, 2023; The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a US-based organisation of the Indian Muslim diaspora, “dedicated to social justice, peace, and pluralism”, has strongly condemned the planned demolition of over 4,000 Muslim homes and dwellings in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, a state ruled by Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Last month, the Uttarakhand High Court allowed these demolitions while hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Ravi Shankar Joshi in 2013. Joshi is an individual known for his partisan views in political and public life, besides being reportedly a close sympathiser with the ultra supremacist, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Uttarakhand high court, while passing an order on Joshi’s PIL, claimed that the families were “unauthorized occupants” living on “encroached” land belonging to the Indian Railways. However, reportds from the ground reveal that residents have been able to prove this claim as blatantly false through sale deeds and copies of leases, which would suggest that they are, in fact, rightful owners of their properties. Controversially, the court ordered the demolition drive despite pending appeals against the false encroachment claims by several residents. Local authorities have announced that bulldozers will “pounce on encroachers” while overseen by 7,000 police officers and 15 paramilitary groups. Therefore, says the IAMC statement, these forces will likely use violent tactics to brutalise Muslims who attempt to defend their homes.Thousands of Muslims from across Haldwani city are presently out on tje streets, holding protests, sit-ins, and candlelight vigils, demanding that the demolition of their homes be stopped. https://sabrangindia.in/article/stop-demolition-over-4000-muslim-owned-homes-uttarakhand-indian-americans-muslim-diaspora

2. Islam phobias in India; JAN 08, 2023; Between the 17th and 19th of December last month, a large collection of major religious leaders, right-wing activists, fundamentalist militants and Hindutva organisations came together at Haridwar. The event they held, called ‘Dharma Sansad’or ‘religious parliament’, witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of hate speech calling for a genocide of the Muslims of India. But despite the violent exhortations hurled over the course of three days, authorities in India did not make a single arrest. Under the regime of Narendra Modi, right-wing hate and violence against India’s Muslims has acquired a sense of normalisation. But while they, along with India’s Dalit community, make the usual targets, it was only a matter of time till the hate spread on to other minority groups as well. On January 2, a mob in Chhattisgarh vandalised a church after right-wing leaders accused the Christian community of carrying out ‘forcible conversions’. While the global community has been slow to react to India’s slide towards Hindu nationalism, observers in Western capitals too are beginning to notice. As the year 2022 came to an end, outgoing Democratic Congressman Andy Levin warned: “I have been a vocal advocate for human rights in places like India, which is in danger of becoming a Hindu nationalist State rather than a secular democracy, the world's largest democracy.” In an exclusive interview with The Express Tribune, renowned Indian-American anthropologist and professor at the New York University Arjun Appadurai unpacked the historical ingredients that enabled an environment widespread right-wing Hindu nationalist sentiment in India. In conjunction with a global erosion of democratic ideals and yearning for quick results, he explained how India has found itself in a perfect storm of Hindu majoritarianism: I am among the very large number of people who are trying to tackle this big question of a kind of a worldwide trend, which is very apparent, although the differences among the locations where this is happening cannot be ignored. It's difficult to see this in the way that one might, for example, see the Coronavirus where you can actually see it moving. The thing about the shift to autocratic authoritarian governments is you cannot see an obvious sort of circulation path although many of the leaders in these cases are aware of each other. But it's not easy to say that they're sort of mimicking or learning something, and we are forced to look for deeper trends.My main view is that though there are huge differences in the electorates and the populations in these different countries, a common element might be that many of these populations whether in Turkey or Hungary or the US, or India, have lost patience with the slowness of liberal democracy, to deliver whatever it is they want. There's a loss of patience and consequently, they are more ready than ever to vote for leaders who promise quick, essentially overnight results. The cost of writing that cheque is that we will have to get rid of this and that procedural hurdle. But other ideological attachments to these leaders then creep in and in many cases, that lubricant which lets people accept the promise that results will be delivered overnight is some form of majoritarian racism – a sense that some majority, however defined, has been poorly treated, and now their moment has come to restore their place.I used the word democracy fatigue in an essay I wrote about four years ago soon after Trump was brought into office, saying that people are exiting democracy by democratic means that is through elections and so on. In some other places, of course, even elections are dispensed with, but the disturbing phenomenon is places that have ostensibly democratic institutions, democracy itself is being dispensed with. The conventional storyline is not at all wrong, which is that for some reason, institutions – the democratic ones, the courts, the media, the press, the legislature and indeed the executive – in India by all accounts were quite healthy, vibrant and strong in the decades up to let's say, the early 2000s, when we begin to see the rise of the BJP culminating now in the in the very troubling situation under Modi. But in that long story, we must recall, of course, that even under Indira Gandhi's rule, we had the emergency, which was only a year but still showed a certain readiness on the part of even the liberal Congress to crack down hard on dissent. Likewise, the 1984 opprobrium on Sikhs or the whole Kashmir position of the Indian state starting with the birth of the two nations has been a very hardline position. I think it had some potentially flexible moments in Nehru’s early years, but quite quickly became the rigid view that we see today. There is a mystery about why this descent into right wing religious fundamentalism and majoritarian autocracy could happen relatively fast. You could make a longer history from Babri Masjid to today or you could make a shorter history from Modi's period as chief minister in Gujarat to today. But in any case, you can say it was obvious from 1947 that India was doomed to become a right-wing majoritarian state. It's hard to fully spell out what has happened, but its consequences are clearly massive and it has clearly led to the rise of very militant Hinduism, which has historical precedent. And it's a history that is now closely tied to a very powerful centralised state – it's not just regional rules, or doing little wars and business here and there, it's got a kind of elevator straight to Delhi. India is a land only of minorities. Not also of minorities, but only of minorities. There is nobody who has a big writ. Even if you take these big categories like Hindu, Muslim, and so on, they have slowly crystallised over time, especially during the colonial period. It is very difficult to see a macro idea of Muslims and Hindus and so on as big identities. If you look even closely at riots in places like Lucknow in the 16th, 17th or 18th century, it's Shias vs Sunni. Nobody is holding up the flag of you know, the Ummah or some massive global Hinduism. It's all highly fragmented and this relates to caste as well, but not only to it. No one was not a minority in India over a massive part of its history. The big question is how does a majority get produced in this place? In a place like Serbia or Japan, there are of course minorities, but you can also see there is some objective basis for a certain group of people to say we are the majority. We look and talk the same, and eat the same and these ‘untouchables’ in Japan or Okinawans, or Kosovars in Serbia, are different. Now, in all cases, it is my belief that the majority has to be built, whether it's Serbia, Germany or here. It is not off the shelf. But in a place like India it is a huge task because of the minoritisation or the fact that you're in small cells, which have this quality that is so hardwired. I don't think we have fully plumbed the dynamics of the way a credible majoritarian identity has been not only created but also installed, you might say in digital terms, into the population. I think the big force, which I don't understand well enough personally, is the RSS and its affiliates. They have clearly done a huge job in installing this majoritarian software on a place-to-place basis. And of course, Modi was a lifelong RSS person, a fact we sometimes forget. Each of these answers raises more questions. Still, I would say a preliminary shot at it would be that the BJP did the wise thing to keep the RSS relationship very alive. Otherwise, it would be like every party going up and down with electoral fortunes. So, whether you go slightly up in Punjab or down in Rajasthan or down in Bengal, there is a steady force keeping your political apparatus in place as a national affair and it's not the BJP alone, because the BJP alone, you know its leadership has a very particular configuration of essentially Gujarat, UP, and a couple of other states and the key actors. But RSS is in all those places. So somewhere there may be an answer to your question. I think he deserves to be taken very seriously. For one thing, he's the only person I would say at the national level who has genuine large-scale appeal and charisma. If you made a charisma index, he's close to 100 and everybody else is below 50, and most people are below 20. No one can take away from it. He's an incredible speaker. He knows how to make his appeals; he's also mastered how to make the cocktail of visibility and invisibility. He’s there all the time in front of you, but never at press conferences. You'd never see him with his hair out of place or him laughing. He's a purely hologrammed brand and you can't escape him. Modi has mastered what in the US in the 50s was called image politics. I admire that skill. He's also been extremely shrewd, considering that he's not a scientist – to put it mildly, not highly educated. He's been extremely smart on the IT front. These BJP IT cells are amazing to me. The IT game has totally been lost. He also has made a considerable effort, though this I think has largely been a failure, to bring the military in which is the big X Factor. The military is the 800-pound gorilla slightly off scene. General Bipin Rawat was the first exception, the line crosser, who lined up with the regime and said, hey, you know, this is the way to go and I'm at the service of this regime and its vision. But it's not clear how far down you see that interest in getting into the frontline of politics is in the Indian armed forces. But there are many other things in which Modi has been very shrewd, one of which is the question I still ask myself: how could this man in especially Europe and the US have a very benign reputation to this day? Erdogan has not achieved this. Nobody else has achieved this. Orban has not achieved this, Trump has not achieved this. Boris Johnson has not achieved this. But Modi is still seen as a wise and strong leader in developing countries. So he also gets credit there. I don't know whether credit is at the sending end in how he manages his image and statements or the receiving end that there is some, which has been my theory, that the receiving end has India locked in a kind of 1970s image, struggling democracy, developing country, and they just don't understand that a new chapter, a new drama has been going on for 10 to 15 years. There's a kind of arrest on the reception side. That's my private theory or my personal theory. But there too, we have to go because he's not allowed his image to correspond more to the reality of his policies. Gandhi represents the exact opposite of what Modi represents in terms of tolerance, abhorrence of violence and so on and so forth, commitment to truth. All these really put him in the opposite place. Conceptually, he's still the main alternative because Nehru was too much involved in day-to-day politics. Gandhi still has a certain special status, which sometimes is used to also distance him and say who cares, he's somewhere up in some other realm. But still, he is a kind of conscience for India. There is however, another side which is more tricky for where Gandhi feeds into the hardwiring of Indian politics and society in a way that is not totally separate from the world of Modi or others and that has to do with these ideas about Hindu and Muslim. Even if he had a different idea how they should connect, the idea became, I think, quite important him. Several people also have complained about Gandhi over the decades that while he was extremely humane, especially at partition towards the Muslim population of the Subcontinent, he never really understood Islam much in the way that he understood, say Christianity. There was a kind of imagination limitation – not a genocidal impulse but something soft, a lacking. Gandhi also had a certain social conservatism on caste on the order of things. You can attempt to reinterpret his writings but the landscape is there, such as the idea of Harijan, a term the Dalits hate. Although someone like Modi is not a subtle intellectual or historian, I think at a gut level he knows that Gandhi had a conservative Hindu side. Gandhi made it as humanistic and universal as possible, but the DNA was there. Modi just took that social conservatism and put it on steroids. Having said that, Gandhi was not genocidal or believed in majoritarianism – that's a Modi copyright. Gandhi would have been horrified and would literally be turning in his grave seeing this. I'm a firm believer that Mahatma Gandhi would have not supported what is happening in India. No doubt. I was recently stimulated by a colleague with whom I was in one-on-one correspondence to look at the election results for Modi over the last two elections. The numbers are not staggering – 40% or fully 45%. I mean, Nehru sometimes had 70 or 80% vote. So, the question is who's in that 40 or 45, and who's in the 60 or 65? Modi has managed to get a large part of the population to overcome their parochial or localised sectional interests to go for this big message that is true. No one has succeeded in mobilising the other side in the same way, which is made up of bits and pieces. Modi’s side have been successful aggregators. The numbers are not overwhelming but it's a number enough to dominate the parliament. He has leveraged that number in a brilliant way. I think one thing has to be kept in mind and it holds not only for Modi, but all his predecessors Manmohan Singh, Narsimha Rao, basically the Indian Congress leadership, which is the topic of corruption. What do we mean by it? How do we measure it? Is it getting worse or better? No one would deny the flow of black money and other dubious money into Indian elections is one of the scandals of all democracies today. If you take the amount of rupees flowing in from black accounts, unknown people both used to manipulate elections and to launder that money in elections. That is a very large amount of money so we need to be cautious about fetishising elections, because this is not just a Modi issue. Modi has been very smart about how to capture elections, because elections without cash in India are a thing of the past. Modi has captured the national pot so that means he also captured the election machinery. The place where we can see his brilliance as far as elections are concerned is in Gujarat. He showed himself as the master of Indian electoral politics in terms of speeches, rhetoric, and mobilisation, and also how you control the money flow. This is definitely true about that aspect of the whole Indian electoral system that responds to national and international issues. Of course, a lot is going on, which is totally local. When those things are subordinated to issues of a bigger scale, I think what you say is absolutely true. The observation I would add to that is it is the same coin, which has two sides. One is creating a uniform commitment to Modi and to the BJP among people who have a lot of sectional interest but getting them to transit, in other words, producing a majority of some kind. The other side of the coin is that somebody has to be denigrated. So polarisation always means one side is becoming solid and the other side has to be liquefied, conceptually speaking. For me that is the most basic kind of anthropological sociological human issue I've been struggling with more or less my entire career. What is the ‘we’ they think, to produce a strong and aggressive ‘we’? Why is there always a need for ‘they’? Why can't I just say we are all Hindus and we are good people, let's all be together. No, until you say that those other people are responsible for all our troubles - they are spies or Pakistani agents, this or that. In a slightly different way, it applies to Christians and in a murky way to Dalits as well, who are both ‘us’ and ‘not us’ – ‘us’ as long they remain quiet and obedient, but not as soon as they talk back. But Muslims are in a permanent default state of ‘otherness’. The deep question that very few social scientists have been able to answer and I certainly cannot answer is why is a ‘they’ required in order to produce a ‘we’, both perennially in human history and in the era of modern nation states. The ‘they’ involved can be a religious idiom or an ethnic one. It can be a migrant idiom. But no one can say they promote a vigorous nationalism without any sense of some dark spectral figure that needs to be managed in prison or eventually removed. In India, this genocidal impulse exists because the numbers are so large. It’s not like there are a handful of Muslims. And the minute you think about Muslims this way, you ask, “what about Dalits, are they on our side?” People have pointed out to me that BJP has succeeded in co-opting a significant number of Dalits. But I still think that number is not large and those in the Dalit community who think radically against the BJP are many, and very vocal. However, it's obvious that BJP has not co-opted Muslims and the Muslims are quiet because they are afraid in India. The ‘we/they’ problem [in this region] is a historical question. Why has Modi succeeded in mobilising or intensifying that feeling which clearly has a longer history? There was always some deeper issue, at least as far back as Jinnah and Nehru. Modi did not manufacture the ‘us vs them’ problem but he has leveraged the hell out of it. I think the elected government has made inroads into the other independent branches of government massively. That's why I think, just as in Pakistan, you can talk about the establishment, we can talk about the BJP regime because there's more than just the prime minister's office doing its job with the court keeping an eye and the legislature doing its own work. It's become all too close and too tight. That's my reason for using the word. It is too deeply involved in the others for it to be a healthy democratic condition. Separation of powers is at the very heart of the idea of democracy. When all of these are very closely aligned with the current ruling party you have to find some word for that. My fears are that we are approaching something resembling a tipping point, which will go in one of two ways. One of them is where the BJP and Modi consolidate this regime and dissent is more or less eliminated. While the talk we have been noticing from some quarters is technically genocidal, that project is impossible in India with its 200 million people. Rather, it’s about producing fear and compliance on a large scale. Will that happen? Or will Dalits, farmers, urban intellectuals, Marxists, women, Sikhs, etc. find a way to make common cause and push this government out. I think that would require a new order of leadership – either one person or a few, who can rise to Modi levels of credibility. But the tipping point could go that way as well. It's a very troublesome and troubling question. I haven't really thought about that. Calling for genocide is one thing and carrying it out is another thing in the current year. The numbers are too big to make it possible. I think all these tactics are ways to produce fear. They are threats and statements of impunity about the vision, not the execution. Anybody in their right mind knows it cannot be done and is an extremely risky path to embark on. You can trigger many things, including overseas intervention. Do Modi and his allies want to run those kinds of risks? I think that the pragmatic, utilitarian part of this current government, which is also deeply concerned with facilitating massive corporate profit making, sets limitations to the actual execution of a genocidal vision. I take great comfort in that. But I still think the ability to say these things is alarming. And we have to ask, what is that agenda about? And secondly, how can we nip that in the bud – through legal means, public opinion means, elections or whatever else is possible? https://tribune.com.pk/story/2394796/the-makings-of-a-hindu-nationalist-state

3. Copyright of Hitler’s agenda, infringed upon by Narendra Modi; in India — by Sumanta Banerjee; I am raising a serious issue that touches upon a person’s legal right of exclusive possession of his/her personal creation – whether a scientific formula, or a literary piece, or even a political programme. This is known as copyright, or patent in relation with certain products. If anyone uses that material without the permission of its original author, or fails to acknowledge credit to its producer, he will be liable for prosecution. Now, may be I am being the devil’s advocate, as I am raising a hypothetical question. Suppose if Hitler were alive today (thank God, he isn’t !), under the prevailing copyright and patent laws, wouldn’t he have been entitled to sue Narendra Modi for infringement of copyright of the Nazi model which Hitler alone designed in Germany in the 1930s ? After all, it’s Hitler’s ideas and tactics that Modi has plagiarized from the Nazi text book. Modi’s speeches, like those of Hitler’s are filled with misinformation, religious majoritarian and nationalist chauvinist sentiments, and aggressively promote his personal image to the mindless cheer of the mob. His lieutenants in the BJP, in their public utterances and lectures, spread vitriol against Muslims, and political opponents who are branded as urban Naxalites – in the style of the same hate -filled anti-Jewish and anti-Communist propaganda that was spewed by Goebbels and other Nazi leaders . Similar to Germany in the 1930s, we witness today in India, armed marauders and murderous gangs of the Sangh Parivar, the Vishva Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and other outfits going on a killing spree, in the footsteps of the Nazi Storm Troopers, shouting `Jai Shri Ram,’ almost sounding like `Heil Hitler !’ Even India’s official snooping department, the NIA (National Investigative Agency), has taken a leaf out of the book of the Gestapo (`Geheime Staatspolizei’ – the Nazi secret police). Like the Gestapo which hounded, imprisoned and killed Hitler’s political opponents and other intellectual dissidents, the NIA in India today is hauling up social activists, students and youth participants in civil liberties movement, independent journalists who expose cases of the violation of human rights both by state agencies and the ruling BJP leaders. They are arrested and put behind bars for years, without trial. (I have dealt in detail with the neo-Nazi functioning of the NIA in my article: India’s `Gestapo’ – National Investigative Agency in Countercurrents, 26/12/21). If we turn to another institution – the jails in India – where these social activists and political dissenters are imprisoned, we again find that the Modi government is stealing the patent of `concentration camps’ that Hitler invented. He created the camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and other places, and established a strict model whereby the prisoners were to be exterminated through different methods – gas chamber, torture, starvation, denial of medical treatment among other means. Narendra Modi has adopted some of these methods from the jail manual that Hitler fashioned for his concentration camps. Instead of spending money on setting up separate gas chambers, Modi has modified Hitler’s model by turning the Indian jails into mini-gas chambers. Thanks to the suffocating toxic environs within their premises, polluted drinking water and food, and denial of medical treatment, the number of deaths in these jails increased by seven percent from 2019 to 2020 – according to the officially released Prison Statistics India, 2020 report. Among the victims of these mini-gas chambers in Indian jails, there are prominent social activists and political dissidents. To mention two recent cases – the octogenarian Father Stan Swamy who was imprisoned for organizing the tribal poor to assert their rights, died in Taloja Jail in Maharashtra on July 5, 2021, after having been denied medical treatment by the jail authorities. On August 25, 2021, in Nagpur Central Jail, a political activist Pandu Narote died – again following similar denial of necessary medical care. Pandu Narote was a co-accused with G. N. Saibaba, a professor of Delhi University, who remains confined in the same Nagpur central jail, on the charge of association with Maoists. Wheelchair-bound Saibaba is 90% disabled, and is confined in isolation within a narrow cell which is shaped as an oblong . Known as `anda cells’ (egg-shaped cells), similar cells have been set up in other jails too for the solitary confinement of political prisoners and social activists. In fact, the Modi government has improved upon the Nazi model of concentration camps by inventing the `anda cell.’ In the Nazi concentration camps, while the prisoners could at least share each other’s company and ordeals (and often put up collective resistance), in the `anda cells’, the individual prisoner is left alone to protest against acts of injustice, and wrestle within his own mind to protect himself from sinking into mental depression. Narendra Modi’s obligation to Hitler Judging by the record of the style of governance by Narendra Modi, as described above, Modi should acknowledge his debt to Hitler – along with his `gurus’ in the Sangh Parivar – from whom he derived inspiration. He should not have any qualms in including a foreigner among his political teachers, or even placing him on a higher pedestal, in his altar of devotion. To recall the past, Narendra Modi’s Hindu guru M.S. Golwalkar way back in 1939, paid tribute to Hitler by praising him for exterminating the Jews, and advised Indians to imbibe that model by destroying their Semitic counterparts in India, the Muslims. Following is Golwalkar’s infamous statement: “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic races and the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here…. a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.” (We or Our Nationhood. 1939).

4. Demolishment of Muslim Homes; Jan 4 2023;The normalisation of various state governments’ drive to demolish homes of Indian Muslims and low-income groups came under the scanner in the latest Human Rights Watch report released on Thursday, January 12. The US-based global human rights observer in its annual report detailing human rights abuses and concerns in around 100 countries took notice of how different provincial governments of India in 2022 increasingly used home demolitions against low-income groups, especially Muslims, as a measure of extra-judicial punishment. https://thewire.in/rights/collective-punishment-for-muslims-human-rights-watch-slams-demolition-drives-in-bjp-ruled-states

5. Clamor in the US to exclude India from global religious freedom offenders; by Syed Ali Mujtaba; Jan 14 2023; The US State Department’s decision to exclude India from its gallery of global religious freedom offenders has sparked a huge protest in America. Several human rights organizations have openly lambasted the Biden administration for failing to formally designate India as oneof the world’s worst religious freedom offenders. All these organizations were equivocal in saying that India has an appalling record of violations against religious minorities and are dismayed at the US government’s attitude of ‘ignoring’ the persecution of religious minorities in India. David Curry, President of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), said the US decision to exclude India from global religious freedom offenders was a “bald-faced political maneuver” and a “shameful” act. Speaking during a Congressional Briefing on Capitol Hill, Curry said, I see a “double standard” apparent in the State Department’s willingness to list other US allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as CPCs while India is consistently being left off the list. “The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the US State Department “did not honor the law” in its refusal to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern” Curry added. Moderating the briefing was Nadine Maenza, who served as USCIRF’s Vice Chair from 2018-2020 and Chair from 2020-2022, said, the State Department’s decision to not include India on its list of CPCs for this year, “is disappointing, and frankly unacceptable, on many counts.” Dr. Gregory Stanton, the founder of the global watchdog organization Genocide Watch, called on the US government to be vocal in condemning the actions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “We need to make very clear to Modi that he’s not going to get away with this kind of persecution of Muslims,” he said. Speaking specifically on the “authoritarian crackdown” on Muslim-majority Kashmir, Dr. Ather Zia, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado, stated that “widespread xenophobia and Islamophobia, fueled by Hindu supremacy and ethnonationalism,” are at the heart of human rights abuses in Kashmir. “Kashmiris exist in a state of siege, caught amidst a dense web of Indian soldiers, checkpoints, barbed wires, bunkers, military convoys, trucks, drones, armored vehicles, garrisons, secret prisons, jails, and military bases,” said Zia. Sunita Viswanath, Co-Founder of Hindus for Human Rights, demanded, “The US State Department must designate Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has committed religious freedom violation as an individual of particular concern and added that all such individuals be effectively banned from entering or conducting business in the United States.”

6. Amartya Sen ; Jan 15 2023; Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who was conferred the Bharat Ratna in 1999 by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, has said: “The Modi government is one of the most appalling in the world.”Professor Sen explained that he has come to this view because “it [the government] treats its own people in such a nasty way,” adding that “the Indian government’s record has been really rather terrible.” He also said the Modi government’s treatment of Muslims, and the fact that it has no Muslim MP in either House of the parliament, is “unacceptably barbaric”. https://thewire.in/rights/interview-modi-govt-is-one-of-the-most-appalling-in-the-world-says-amartya-sen

7. Mosque demolished; Jan 17 2023; A historical mosque located in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh was reportedly demolished on Sunday in order to "widen the road". Ashok Swain and others) shared a video of the mosque being bulldozed on his official Twitter handle https://tribune.com.pk/story/2396107/watch-historical-mosque-demolished-in-india-to-widen-road

8. BBC Documentary on Modi and Gujarat ;by RANA AYYUB; JAN 19 2023; A new documentary on BBC two has yet again brought the focus to Narendra Modi’s past, his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, and the state-enabled attack on the 220 million Muslim minorities in India. For many journalists like me who have reported extensively on the 2002 pogrom and the spate of extra-judicial murder of Muslims in the home state of Narendra Modi came as no surprise. I have been undercover for eight months in the state of Gujarat and my investigation sent Mr.Modi’s second in command and his Home Minister, Amit Shah behind bars in 2010. For me and many other observers of Mr.Modi’s politics, none of this was a revelation. What it does indeed is remind India and the world about the injustice of 2002 and the Modi years, a story that needs to be re-told in the age of amnesia. It needs to be re-told at a time when the mainstream media will have you believe that the 2002 pogrom was a foreign conspiracy to defame Modi. It needs to be re-told at a time when Bilkis Bano, the face of the 2002 pogrom finds the killers of her child, the men who gang-raped her released on the 75th year of Indian independence. The Gujarat horror needs to be revisited because the exercise of humiliation and silencing Muslims in Gujarat is now being practiced on a national level with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India. The Gujarat story needs to be shared because the Supreme Court in an open court once called the Modi government ‘Modern Day Neroes’ who looked the other way as innocent women and children where being killed.For me personally, the only revelational and most important part of the documentary is the damaging interview with former UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw who has given access to the internal report made by his officials in India in 2002. The report accuses Modi of looking the other way through the communal carnage, it speaks about the inflammatory speeches made by VHP leaders that triggered the carnage of Muslims, it speaks about Narendra Modi’s inaction against the Hindu nationalist rioters. It will be interesting to see if and how the foreign office in India reacts to the damaging claims. Will it lead to debates on prime time in India ? Will the Indian opposition that has often shied away from speaking on ‘Muslim issues’ to counter the Modi brand of politics speak up ?

9. BBC - Riots a stain on Narendra Modi, says former British foreign secretary Jack Straw – Telegraph India ;https://www.telegraphindia.com/world/riots-a-stain-on-narendra-modi-says-former-british-foreign-secretary-jack-straw/cid/1910953;The Gujarat riots of 2002 are a “stain” on Narendra Modi, former British foreign secretary Jack Straw has told a two-part documentary, India: The Modi Question, that is being shown on BBC2. The first part was transmitted on Tuesday, January 17, and the second part will go out next Tuesday, January 24. Introducing the programme, the BBC told viewers: “The programme contains scenes you may find upsetting.” It summed up: “This series tells the story of Narendra Modi’s troubled relationship with India’s Muslims.” During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Imran Hussain, the Labour MP for Bradford East, confronted Rishi Sunak: “Last night, the BBC revealed that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office knew the extent of Narendra Modi’s involvement in the Gujarat massacre that paved the way for the persecution of Muslims and other minorities that we see in India today.” Hussain went on: “Senior diplomats reported that the massacre could not have taken place without the ‘climate of impunity’ created by Modi and that he was, in the FCDO’s words, ‘directly responsible’ for the violence. Given that hundreds were brutally killed and that families across India and the world, including here in the UK, are still without justice, does the Prime Minister agree with his Foreign Office diplomats that Modi was directly responsible? What more does the Foreign Office know about Modi’s involvement in that grave act of ethnic cleansing?” Rishi brushed the question away: “The UK government’s position on that is clear and longstanding, and it has not changed. Of course, we do not tolerate persecution anywhere, but I am not sure that I agree at all with the characterisation that the Hon. Gentleman has put forward.” Straw, who was the British foreign secretary under Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2001 to 2006, was asked about the riots by the programme and replied: “I was very worried about it. I was taking a great deal of personal interest, because India is a really important country with whom we have relations. We had to handle it very carefully.” Straw was the Labour MP from 1979 to 2015 for Blackburn, which has a large Pakistani-origin population. He said: “What we did was to establish an inquiry and have a team go to Gujarat and find out for themselves what had happened. And they produced a very thorough report.” Straw added: “It was very shocking. These were very serious claims that chief minister Modi had played a pretty active part in pulling back the police and in tacitly encouraging the Hindu extremists. “That was a particularly egregious example of political involvement, really to prevent the police from doing their job, which was to protect both communities, the Hindu and the Muslims. The options open to us were fairly limited. We were never going to break diplomatic relations with India. But it is obviously a stain on his reputation. There’s no way out of that.” The BBC said: “The report, sent as a diplomatic cable and marked ‘restricted’, has never been published before.” The programme highlighted lines from the report: “Extent of violence much greater than reported… widespread and systematic rape of Muslim women…. Violence, politically motivated.... Aim was to purge Muslims from Hindu areas. The systematic campaign of violence has all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing.” The BBC said: “The report contained an extraordinary claim.” This was: “Reliable contacts have told us Narendra Modi met senior police officers on the 27th of February and ordered them not to intervene in the rioting. Police contacts deny this meeting happened. “There were pretty credible reports he had specifically instructed the police not to intervene. The police contact who we talked to consistently denied that. So we did have conflicting reports on what his direct role had been. But we did feel it was clear there was a culture of impunity that created the environment for the violence to take place. That undoubtedly came from Modi.” The BBC then interviewed a former senior British diplomat who was “one of the investigators. He is speaking publicly for the first time about what the British inquiry found. He’s asked to remain anonymous.” He told the programme: “At least 2,000 people were murdered during the violence, the vast majority were Muslim. We described it as a pogrom, a deliberate and politically driven effort targeted at the Muslim community. The violence was widely reported to have been organised by an extremist Hindu nationalist group, the VHP, who have a relationship with the RSS. “The VHP and its allies could not have inflicted so much damage without the climate of impunity created by the state government. Narendra Modi is directly responsible.” Modi has been given a clean chit by the Supreme Court of India. The Telegraph asked the UK foreign office to see the full report. Its existence was not denied but in response, the foreign office sent this newspaper a statement: “The violence in Gujarat in 2002 was tragic. It is a reminder of the need to continually work for respect and harmony between religious communities. It is right that we remember the victims of the violence in Gujarat in 2002, and their families, and that we reaffirm our commitment to do all we can to foster inter-communal understanding and respect around the world. “Where events involve British nationals, we naturally have an interest both in the provision of consular assistance and in trying to ascertain what happened through police and diplomacy.” Three British nationals from Yorkshire — Imran and Shakil Dawood, and Mohammed Aswat — were killed by rioters when they crossed into Gujarat from a trip to the Taj. A survivor, who was 18 at the time, was interviewed for the programme. The BBC set out what was covered in part one: “Narendra Modi is the leader of the world’s largest democracy, a man who has been elected twice as India’s Prime Minister and is widely seen as the most powerful politician of his generation. Seen by the West as an important bulwark against Chinese domination of Asia, he has been courted as a key ally by both the US and the UK. “Yet Narendra Modi’s premiership has been dogged by persistent allegations about the attitude of his government towards India’s Muslim population. This series investigates the truth behind these allegations and examines Modi’s backstory to explore other questions about his politics when it comes to India’s largest religious minority. “This episode tracks Narendra Modi’s first steps into politics, including and his association with the Right-wing Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, his rise through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and his appointment as chief minister of the state of Gujarat, where his response to a series of riots in 2002 remains a source of controversy.” It said of the sequel: “The second episode examines the track record of Narendra Modi’s government following his re-election in 2019. “A series of controversial policies — the removal of Kashmir’s special status guaranteed under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and a citizenship law that many said treated Muslims unfairly — has been accompanied by reports of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindus. “Modi and his government reject any suggestion that their policies reflect any prejudice towards Muslims, but these policies have been repeatedly criticised by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International. “That organisation has now closed its offices in Delhi following the freezing of its bank accounts in connection with an investigation into financial irregularities, according to the Indian government, a charge rejected by Amnesty. “It was into this simmering discontent that Modi decided in the summer of 2003 that he would immerse himself with a visit to the UK at the invitation of the Gujarati Hindu diaspora.” One man who did defend Modi is the columnist and Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta who told the BBC: “Agenda was to destroy Narendra Modi politically — the agenda was explicitly political.” He also pointed out — as did the programme — that Modi was cleared by the Supreme Court: “The Supreme Court gave a judgment (which) actually brought the whole matter to a closure — the closure was necessary.” The programme included a brief excerpt from an old interview Modi gave to Jill McGivering in which he dismissed the allegations against him: “I’m not agree(ing) with your analysis, I’m not agreeing with your information. This (is) absolutely misguided information to you, from where you have pick(ed) up this type of garbage I do not know.” He told her: “Don’t please try to preach us the human rights. We know what the human rights are. You Britishers should not preach us human rights.”

10. OpIndia is among the largest purveyors of hate speech and fake news. And yet, as of June 2020, about two dozen companies have withdrawn advertisements from OpIndia, citing “insidious content” and “hateful views”, as part of a campaign by Stop Funding Hate, an advocacy group based in the United Kingdom. Moreover, despite its complaints about dishonesty and distortion in the India media, OpIndia has never disclosed that the director of the company which owns it, and its holding company, has had ties to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. In a 2014 interview with Swarajya, Rahul Raj, one of the three founders of OpIndia, explained the website’s raison d'être in greater detail. “These days when I look into posts by the media, I can clearly see that they are manipulating people. They are working as propaganda machines,” Raj said, adding that he wanted to “decode” why news consumers had to rely on media that was out to manipulate them. OpIndia, in his words, was started to explore the gap between “what is being reported and what the facts are”. Six years down the line, OpIndia has morphed from a “media commentary” blog tilting towards the governing BJP into a website promoting and defending Hindu supremacy and chauvinism, and a vibrant source of misinformation targeting Muslims, liberals, leftists, “the establishment”, and critics and political opponents of the BJP. A dataset prepared by Newslaundry shows that in the last two years alone, fact-checkers and news outlets have reported at least 25 instances of false news and no less than 14 instances of misreporting on OpIndia. In 2019, Rahul Raj, no longer associated with the website, tweeted that he had “distanced” himself from the website because it became a “blind mouthpiece of BJP”. In May, the website was booked by the Bihar police for introducing a fabricated communal angle to the death of a 15-year-old boy in Gopalganj district. OpIndia had done a series of reports alleging that the minor had been killed in a “human sacrifice” ritual, supposedly to make a local mosque more powerful. The police clarified that the village did not have a mosque. In response, Rahul Roushan, OpIndia’s CEO, sulked that the website was facing “harassment” and “a coordinated attack from the usual suspects” and that the “only mistake” the website’s editors made “was that they were standing on the wrong side of the ideological divide”.

11.

Monthly update : 40 Dec 2022 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. India supports terrorism; Dec 4 2022; Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Tuesday that there was “clear evidence” of India carrying out terrorist activities in Pakistan, adding that the government has decided to present the matter before the international community. “Today, the matter that we are putting before you […] we have evidence of India’s involvement in it,” Sanaullah said, referring to the Johar Town blast in Lahore last year. In June 2021, a powerful blast near the residence of Jamaatud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed in Johar Town had killed three people and injured 24 others, including a police constable. Six-year-old Abdul Haq, his father Abdul Malik, 50, and a young passerby died in the explosion that left a four-foot-deep and eight-foot-wide crater on the road and damaged several houses and shops nearby. Days after the incident, the then information minister Fawad Chaudhry and national security Adviser Dr Moeed Yusuf told a press conference that the mastermind of the attack was “an Indian citizen and he is associated with [Indian intelligence agency] RAW”.Earlier this year, Dawn reported that the Punjab CTD had claimed to have arrested the mastermind as well as the facilitator of the Johar Town bomb blast from Balochistan. They were identified as Samiul Haq and Uzair Akbar. In the press conference today, IG Mehmood briefed on the investigation of the blast and revealed that the authorities had reached the culprits. The official recalled that the police had traced the suspect within 16 hours of the incident. “And within 24 hours we arrested three terrorists. “The first character was Peter Paul David who was caught through [the details] of his vehicle. Sajjad Hussain, who was arrested alongside, was David’s assistant,” he said. Ziaullah, Mehmood continued, was arrested on Peter’s identification and “we found out that he was the main culprit behind the attack”. “Eid Gul and his wife were arrested after 5-6 days. Gul was the person who David gave the car to and he outfitted it with ammunition and bombs,” he said, adding that the video of the blast showed Gul coming out of the vehicle. After Gul’s interrogation, the CTD was finally able to arrest Sami ul Haq, who Mehmood claimed was the main handler of the RAW-sponsored terror activities in Pakistan. “Subsequently, we got Haq’s red warrants issued through Interpol. After that, purely on an intelligence and investigation basis, we were informed this person was entering Pakistan and we arrested him on April 22 along with his brother-in-law.” The police official further revealed that Haq’s brother-in-law, identified as Uzair Akbar, assisted him in terror activities. “We also found out about Naveed Akhtar, who did the surveillance and selected the target. “Naveed was a labourer in the Middle East and was in jail because he could not pay his fine. A RAW agent approached him and told him that he would pay his fine, but then, Naveed would have to engage in terror activities against Pakistan,” Mehmood said in the press conference. He added that as soon as Naveed was arrested, several terror activities were thwarted. “When we arrested Sami ul Haq, Naveed was unaware of his arrest. Sami ul Haq told us that he was about to meet Naveed on May 10. We were then able to apprehend Naveed as well.” As the investigation continued, Mehmood said, more RAW agents were uncovered. “We also found out that close to a million dollars of terror financing was done through India to spread terrorism in Pakistan through different channels,” he revealed, adding that all the arrested persons have been sentenced to death three times by the court. Mehmood also said that the CTD had clear evidence “which is undeniable about India and RAW’s involvement”. Meanwhile, Sanaullah said that the Foreign Office would, henceforth, raise this matter before the world. “India will be exposed because there is clear evidence that it is directly involved.” He pointed out the Johar Town blast case was “complete” in which culprits were caught and substantial evidence was found. “Thus, we have decided to put it before the international community as it will have its own weight and impact.” The minister added that the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP) had support from the RAW for terrorist activities in Pakistan. https://www.dawn.com/news/1726154/clear-evidence-of-india-carrying-out-terrorist-activities-in-pakistan-rana-sanaullah

2. India; Dec 17 2022; US legislator, Andy Levin, has said that India is facing the danger of becoming a Hindu nationalist State. Democratic Congressman, Andy Levin, said this in his last speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives. “I have been a vocal advocate for human rights in places like India, which is in the danger of becoming a Hindu nationalist State rather than a secular democracy,” said Andy Levin https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/12/16/us-legislator-says-india-is-at-risk-of-becoming-a-hindu-nationalist-state.html

3. Genocide in India; Dec 21 2022; A new report, “Genocide Convention & Persecution of Muslims in India”, released by United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) commissioner David Curry at a Congressional Briefing on the Capitol Hill in Washington DC, has apprehended that if the international community does not urgently intervene, the Government of India will not only “continue to commit and allow acts of genocidal violence against Muslims”, but things may reach such a point which will inevitably led to “transition into a full-blown genocide.” The report, citing a large number instances of alleged violence against minorities, especially Muslims, especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over in May 2014, says, “More and more Indian Muslims will fall victim” of the attacks against the minority community “unless western governments, notably the United States, intervene and attempt to stop what is perceived the world’s largest democracy from exterminating Indian Muslims.” https://www.counterview.net/2022/12/uscirf-backed-report-asks-west-to-halt.html

Monthly update 38 and 39 ; Oct & Nov, 2022 Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Demolitions: Oct 29, 2022; A fact finding team on Thursday said that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) along with large number of police force demolished over two dozen houses without any prior notice in south west Delhi’s Kharak Riwara Satbari area, a predominantly Muslim locality on Friday (21 October) when Muslims went to offer namaz. On Thursday, a group of activists visited the area which falls in Chhatarpur’s Fatehpur Beri and learnt that the DDA carried out the demolition drive by using brutal force against the residents. “All women were saying that when they asked for taking out their household appliances, they were not allowed to do so. When the residents asked for any demolition order or notice, they were shown any such thing. Demolitions were carried out after beating up the residents…the police force was deployed in massive numbers,” said Anupradha. The police demolished the houses during the time of Friday prayers. They even told the residents that they would face the kind of bulldozing that Muslims of Uttar Pradesh are having to deal with, under the Yogi government. https://maktoobmedia.com/2022/10/28/25-houses-demolished-in-delhis-muslim-locality-muslim-women-allege-police-brutality/

2. New Jersey Marks Ground Zero For Growing US Resistance to Hindutva by Pieter Friedrich: Modi regime's American support base suffers multiple defeats in Summer of 2022: After the Old Paramus Reformed Church in Ridgewood, New Jersey cancelled a 10 September 2022 speech by infamous Hindu nationalist demagogue Sadhvi Ritambhara, it sent shockwaves felt on the other side of the Atlantic. Throughout the Summer of 2022, from New Jersey to California, organized resistance against the influence of Hindutva (that is, Hindu nationalist) politics in the US resulted in multiple victories. The most recent victory started in the small village of Ridgewood, but it soon took on international dimensions. Ritambhara’s multi-state US tour was shrouded in protest from the outset. Beginning in Atlanta, Georgia on 30 August, she faced protest by an interfaith crowd of over 100. “She has openly called for the massacre of Muslims and Christians in India,” warned protestor Rahim Shah Akhunkhail. “We reject it. America rejects it. We call people of all faiths to reject and denounce such people.” Ritambhara — who is the founder of Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which is the religious wing of India’s fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary — next went to New Jersey. There she faced her first defeat. Over two days, the Ridgewood church reported receiving over 100 calls and 1,000 emails requesting it de-platform her. On the eve of the event, the church’s pastor finally revoked permission.The protest continued clouding Ritambhara’s US tour as she travelled to Los Angeles, where a large multi-faith crowd again rallied outside the venue hosting her. “She does not represent the Hinduism of inclusion, justice, and service to humanity,” declared protestor Tahil Sharma. “She is focused on a narrative that is trying to hurt those that are minorities in India. Her focus is on hatred rather than uniting people.” Ritambhara soon faced total defeat. After completing her US tour in mid-September, she was scheduled for a multi-city tour of the UK. It didn’t go as planned. She was still in America when British Members of Parliament launched demands to deny her entry to the UK. In letters to the Home Minister, MPs denounced her “xenophobic” and “Islamophobic” rhetoric, warning that it could stoke communal tensions in their constituencies. Within days, her entire UK tour was scrapped. “Just prior to her planned visit to the UK, she was disinvited from speaking in a church in the US, thanks to the campaigning by progressive groups in America,” noted British journalist Amrit Wilson. “She obviously did not wish to face a similarly humiliating situation in the UK.” Some sources suggest Ritambhara’s cancellation was not voluntary but rather the result of Britain’s Home Office, responding to the “coordinated action of concerned citizens and civil society group” demanding it, actually revoking her visa. Whatever the case may be, shifting focus back to New Jersey, the Ritambhara drama was not the end of the anti-Hindutva resistance’s recent successes in that state. “America, especially New Jersey, is a stronghold for Hindu nationalist groups who provide financial support and ideological guidance for the larger global movement,” explains Dr Audrey Truschke. Many anti-Hindutva activists ruefully refer to the state — in reference to the Indian city where the RSS is headquartered — as the “Nagpur of America.” Yet, surprisingly, New Jersey is ground zero for most of the latest victories against the movement. Since 2014, Hindutva ideologues have dominated India through Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime. Through his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which serves as the political wing of the RSS, Modi and his devotees are unleashing an authoritarian nightmare upon a country once celebrated as the world’s largest democracy. Although mainstream America has been slow to realize it, the RSS-BJP’s rise to power in India was aided and abetted by an immense US support base. The collection of affiliated Hindutva groups in India — which includes the RSS, VHP, and BJP — is commonly known as the “Sangh Parivar” (Family of Organizations). All three outfits have American affiliates, namely: Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA (HSS-USA), Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), and Overseas Friends of the BJP USA (OFBJP-USA). Although all three are legally distinct entities, their leadership and membership — just as it is in India — is heavily cross-pollinated. Notably, the HSS-USA is registered as a nonprofit in New Jersey. Up until at least 2019, after which it was compelled to register as a Foreign Agent, so also was the OFBJP-USA. While this American Sangh Parivar has supported the Hindutva agenda in India in many ways, one of the most notable was their mass mobilization efforts to get Modi elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2019. During both election cycles and in coordination with leaders from both HSS-USA and VHPA, the OFBJP-USA reportedly deployed thousands of volunteers to India to campaign for the BJP. Striking back against the American Sangh, therefore, has great potential to undermine the agenda of the regime in India. The current series of struggles in New Jersey began after a 14 August parade hosted in the city of Edison to celebrate India’s Independence Day, an event in which many city and state elected officials enthusiastically participated. Organized by the India Business Association (IBA), the event was overtly partisan from the start as organizers invited BJP Spokesperson Sambit Patra to serve as the event’s grand marshal. Other participants in the event reportedly included the HSS-USA and VHPA. The parade’s centerpiece was a bulldozer bedecked with photos of Modi as well as the BJP Chief Minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath. Leading the way for the bulldozer, their banner proudly stretched out for all to see, was a contingent of the OFBJP-USA. The symbolism was beyond inflammatory. “To those who understood its symbolism, it was a blunt and sinister taunt later likened to a noose or a burning cross at a Ku Klux Klan rally,” reported The New York Times. It represented an open endorsement of one of the BJP’s most egregious current anti-Muslim tactics.The bulldozer, in short, was a symbol of hate. A foundational ideological aspect of the RSS-BJP is its devotion to transforming India into an exclusively Hindu nation where all minorities — particularly Christians and Muslims — are either subjugated or eliminated. The bulldozer has increasingly come to symbolize that goal. Under the chief minister’s regime, the machine is being used to routinely and extrajudicially demolish the homes, businesses, and religious sites of Muslims, particularly those known for dissenting against him. The New York Times reports that bulldozers have become “a symbol of oppression” while France24 explains that “bulldozer justice” is now perceived as an example of “an unlawful exercise in collective punishment.” The RSS-BJP wants to crush the spirit of Indian minorities, especially the vocal Muslim population, and the physical manifestation of that is currently the bulldozer. In Spring 2022, Adityanath embraced the symbolism in his campaign for reelection, welcoming slogans hailing him as “Baba Bulldozer” (Daddy Bulldozer) — a slogan displayed alongside his photo on the bulldozer in Edison. The message at the New Jersey parade was clear: Indian minorities are as unwelcome there as they are under RSS-BJP rule in India. Rather than be intimidated, however, locals pushed back hard — and won. Resistance was swift and successful. Throughout Edison Township Council meetings on 22 and 24 August, dozens turned out to register their protest in the public comments session. The backlash soon sparked reactions by elected officials ranging from Edison Township all the way to the US Senate. “This was a tipping point for us,” one woman in hijab told the council. Tasim Ansari warned that the bulldozer is being “used to dehumanize people,” explaining that anyone who saw it in the parade would be disgusted. “India Day Parade is supposed to be for all the Indians who are living in the US, not for only 30-35 per cent of Hindutva ideology, those who are growing, spreading hate in India, and now sending it overseas in America,” said Nasir Ahmed. “Modi, the current prime minister of India, came from RSS. They’re the ones who acquired ideology from Hitler.” Taj Shaikh claimed the bulldozer represented “fascism and the BJP,” noting, “Hindutva is not Hinduism. It is a murderous, socially and culturally backwards, bigoted ideology.” “This is clearly giving a message of intimidation to American Indian Muslims and other minorities that ‘hey, we are here, we are in control, you can’t do anything, even in America’,” explained Dylan Terpstra of CAIR-NJ. Comparing what a bulldozer symbolizes for Indian Muslims to what a noose symbolizes for African-Americans, he continued: “It needs to be understood what this bulldozer really means. Homes, mosques, businesses, and churches, are being demolished in India because people speak up and out against Baba Bulldozer and other Hindutva leaders.” As Bishop Nikolaos Brown concluded: “This act of hatred and injustice not only has repercussions here in Edison but across the state, across the country, and across the world.” In response, all but one of the township’s nine councillors — many of whom actually attended the parade — vehemently condemned the incident. “I would not have participated in the parade had I known [about the bulldozer],” said Council President Joseph Coyle. “I would have walked right off the street.” Council Vice-President Joyce Ship-Freeman was even more emphatic, declaring, “Had it been the noose, would we all have been walking behind it and following it? No. This is not the Edison we should accept. We should all stand out against it because if it’s on one group today, it will be on another group tomorrow.” Councillor Margot Harris called the incident “absolutely hideous and unacceptable.” Councillor John Poyner stated, “We do not want that type of divisiveness and that type of hatred, quite honestly, spread about the township.” Councillor Nishith Patel — noting that he’s a Hindu of Indian origin — denounced the bulldozer as representing “intolerance of culture, division, hatred.” Simultaneously, the controversy spilled over into the neighbouring township of Woodbridge, some of whose officials had also attended the parade. It didn’t end at the borders of the townships, however, but soon reverberated across the entire state. On 25 August, a day after the final showdown at Edison Township Council, five members of the New Jersey State Legislature — four assemblymembers and one senator — issued a joint statement condemning the inclusion of the bulldozer in the parade, describing it as “a symbol of division and hate.” The following day, US Congresswoman Bonnie Coleman, declaring that “hate has no place in New Jersey” and warning that Modi’s regime is targeting Muslim properties with bulldozers, stated, “The inclusion of a bulldozer with a picture of Modi at the India Day parade in Edison was a display of bigotry.” Finally, in early September, the state’s two US senators issued a joint statement. Noting that many local South Asian Americans were “angered and deeply hurt” by the incident, Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez declared, “The bulldozer has come to be a symbol of intimidation against Muslims and other religious minorities in India, and its inclusion in this event was wrong.” Inexplicably, two politicians who participated in the event have maintained their silence. Neither New Jersey Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin nor US Congressman Frank Pallone (founder of the powerful Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans) have offered any comment. Initially, the IBA stubbornly refused to apologize, insisting that “it had not done anything wrong” and calling complaints about the bulldozer “prejudiced.” Yet it took less than a week for them to reverse course and, in the face of mass pressure, offer their “sincere apologies” for having “offended the Indian American minority groups, especially Muslims.” Ultimately, the IBA probably deserves a heartfelt thank you from the US’s anti-Hindutva resistance for — unintentionally — creating a golden opportunity to direct the attention of American elected officials not only to the growing human rights crisis in Modi’s India but also to how his authoritarian regime is backed by radical elements from abroad. Shifting focus from the East to the West Coast, a similar — though smaller-scale — victory occurred after HSS-USA activity in the small city of Manteca, California also offered an opportunity to educate local officials about the realities and dangers of the global Hindutva movement. On 3 August, the Manteca City Council unanimously rescinded and apologized for a proclamation they had passed earlier in the year to honour the US wing of the RSS. The HSS-USA routinely solicits such proclamations from city councils around the country. Taking advantage of the general American ignorance of even the existence — let alone the nature — of the Sangh Parivar, it stacks up dozens, scores, and hundreds of these official recognitions, then publicizes them through its networks to build up its veneer of legitimacy. After all, the outfit seems to think, if it can show that it has been praised and platformed by local governments all around America, people will be far less likely to heed concerns about how the HSS-USA’s leadership and membership systematically work to help prop up the RSS-BJP back in India. Pushback in Manteca began on 19 July when approximately 50 people gathered during a city council meeting to raise placards and speak in protest during the public comments session. Their appeals were heard. By the following council meeting, a resolution to rescind the HSS-USA proclamation was on the agenda. During a nearly four-hour meeting, dozens from both opposing sides commented. Eventually, the council — while noting that the HSS did, by all appearances, seem to be linked to the RSS — voted to rescind the proclamation. It was the first time ever that an American city has overturned one of their recognitions of the HSS-USA, and it has great potential to set a precedent as other neighbouring cities are now considering doing the same. Just as in Edison, NJ, the incident offered the anti-Hindutva resistance a chance to turn the eyes of American officials to the situation in India. In New Jersey, the Edison incident and the Ritambhara drama are now helping to escalate broader regional action against Hindutva. On 12 September, 40 miles north of Edison, the Democratic Party unit in the township of Teaneck passed a resolution condemning Hindu nationalist groups which operate in the US with “direct and indirect ties” to the RSS. The resolution urged members of US Congress to request the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency to investigate “foreign hate groups that have domestic branches with tax-exempt status” and called for changes to the visa process to prevent speakers like Ritambhara from entering the country. With any luck, and according to feedback from talking to activists on the ground, this may be just the first of many such resolutions to come. Indeed, since May 2022, we have seen anti-Hindutva activism expand from the confines of the South Asian American community as it is taken up by progressive groups in both Illinois and Maryland. However, while these kinds of efforts are needed nationwide, there are few places in the country where such pushback is of greater urgency than in the Hindutva hub of New Jersey. The risk of allowing Hindutva-aligned entities to operate in the US without oversight is that they may not stop short of bigoted displays of intimidation — such as with the bulldozer — but stoop deeper to commit actual atrocities. This was most vividly illustrated in 2021 in Robbinsville, a small town less than 40 miles south of Edison. The religious group Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), while building a giant temple in the town, was raided by the FBI in May 2021. BAPS was accused, essentially, of using slave labour for construction. For years, they had allegedly lured mostly low-caste men from India, reportedly confiscating their passports upon arrival, housing them in guarded complexes, and forcing them to work up to 13 hours a day for less than $500 a month. BAPS reportedly has “strong ties” with Modi (who has called its founder his mentor) and has been described as holding both a “close link” with the BJP as well as being “widely suspected of having some connection” with a 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the Indian state of Gujarat, which is both Modi’s home state as well as the site of the sect’s founding. The FBI raid coincided with the filing of a federal lawsuit on behalf of the allegedly exploited labourers. By November 2021, the lawsuit expanded to include BAPS properties in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles — all cities which, alongside New Jersey, serve as major hubs for the Hindutva movement in the US. Even more recently, peaceful American protests against Hindutva have faced outright violence. On the same day that the bulldozer rolled through Edison, protestors in Anaheim, CA were assaulted by participants in an India Independence Day Mela. As the group of mostly young South Asian American protestors, holding placards calmly walked through the event at Anaheim’s La Palma Park, a mob formed and screamed at them to leave. “Open your hearts,” said one sign. Another asked: “Where is your empathy?” Yet another stated: “Protect India’s Muslim Lives.” Even as the protestors exited the public event, the enraged mob continued to pursue them, shoving them, swinging at them, and stealing and destroying their signs. Frightened protestors cried out, “Don’t touch me. Get away from me.” In response, at least one of their assailants shouted, “Stupid Muslim, get out!” The greatest concern prompted by the Hindutva violence in California — although it is already perhaps the most egregious witnessed in the US during the Modi regime’s reign — is that unchecked, it could escalate to the higher levels already occurring in other countries where the movement has gained strong footholds. In October 2021, for instance, Australian resident Vishal Jood was deported to India after being arrested and jailed for multiple armed assaults on Sikhs who had protested Modi’s policies. Upon returning to India, he received a “hero’s welcome,” complete with a street parade in his honour. In September 2022, far more organized violence broke out in the streets of Leicester, UK. The city, which is reportedly home to the largest population of British Indians outside of London, has seen brewing tension between Hindu and Muslim communities for several months. One of the flashpoints allegedly occurred in May, when a gang of 30 apparently Hindu youth savagely beat a young Muslim man with baseball bats, breaking his arm while demanding to know if he is Muslim. As conflict successively escalated, it came to a head on 17 September when a mob of approximately 200 masked and hooded men — many of whom appeared armed with metal rods or pipes — marched through the city chanting, “Jai Shri Ram.” As British criminologist Chris Allen notes, the phrase has become “synonymous with Hindu nationalist violence”; or, to quote British journalist Faisal Hanif, it is “a Hindu chant that became ‘a murder cry’ in India.” As the mob marched through the streets, scuffles broke out that bled over into the next day. Nearly 50 people were ultimately arrested, with authorities reporting that a large number of them hailed from outside the region. Should US authorities continue to ignore the spread of Hindutva influence in the country, the risk that the same sort of street violence witnessed in Australia and the UK will spread to the US grows. The bulldozer incident — an example of hateful intimidation — was handled peacefully through proper civic channels. Yet the incident in Anaheim is an entirely different story. In fact, when I spoke with organizers of the peaceful protest in Anaheim (who chose to remain anonymous), they expressed fears about even registering a case with the local police, even though their attackers, their violent actions, and their faces were all clearly caught on camera and even personally witnessed by a Los Angeles Times journalist. So extensive is the network and influence of the American Sangh Parivar, it seems, that when its apparent sympathizers begin enacting physical violence, their victims don’t feel safe to even file a police report. If that’s the case now, imagine what the situation — left unchecked — will look like over the ensuing years, particularly considering that the RSS-BJP appears likely to remain in power in India (probably thanks, in part, to continued backing from its overseas support base) for quite some time to come. As Indian academic Pratap Bhanu Mehta notes, Hindutva has become “a global ideology of hate and asserting cultural dominance.” Thus, he warns, “It is bizarre to think you can have this much dissemination of hate without it having violent political consequences. Now that inhibitions have been broken, brace for more conflict.” It is well past time that the American public — especially the nation’s elected officials, from city to state to federal level — wake up not only to the threat that the Hindutva movement poses to the citizens of India but even to those living abroad who would dare to oppose it. Successful resistance like that seen in New Jersey with Ritambhara, the bulldozer, and one small political party chapter rising up must be applauded and replicated throughout the US — as must be the victory over the HSS-USA witnessed in California. can New Jersey remain the ground zero for such resistance? For the sake of saving lives, action is urgently needed. International experts are sounding the alarm, warning that India is edging closer and closer — day by day — to the brink of genocide. Let it not be said that we live abroad stood silently by while that impending atrocity unfolded. Let it certainly not be said that we allowed violence in India to be supported by elements within our own countries — let alone bleed over to touch and harm anyone within our own nations. Dr Truschke — who herself is a professor at New Jersey’s Rutgers University — says that Hindu nationalists in the US are contributing to the “alarming trend” of anti-Asian hate crimes in the country. “If we are to confront and begin to counter such hateful assaults, we must recognize Hindutva’s deep roots and long-standing harms in New Jersey,” she writes. “A hard truth is that while many New Jerseyans are only now learning the basics of Hindu nationalism, many of our state’s minority communities — especially South Asian Muslims — have lived for decades with the spectre of fear and intimidation imposed by purveyors of this intolerant ideology. It is time for that era to end, and for us to say together — Hindutva hate has no home in New Jersey.”With any hope, New Jersey — that “Nagpur of America — will shine forth as one of the most gloriously victorious battlegrounds against the fascism of Hindutva.

3. Democracy and India; Nov. , 3 2022;India's democratic backsliding began with the rise to power of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 elections. Five years later, the party won an even bigger parliamentary majority. The BJP now runs not only the central government, but also all but ten of the 28 states, whether on its own or allied with other parties. Though India has not regressed democratically by the criteria of electoral contestation and participation, it has failed to ensure that the rights of Muslims and other minorities are respected. It has also impaired freedom of expression and freedom of association. Electoral democracy is thus coming into conflict with the broader notion of democracy, electoral as well as nonelectoral, that India's 1950 Constitution enshrines. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/866645

4. Justice delayed and denied; No 8 2022; On Friday, November 4, when the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on one of the petitions filed in the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, the petitioner, Shakil Ahmed, was unaware of the outcome. A senior journalist in Mumbai made a phone call to Ahmed to inform him that his over-two-decade-long struggle for justice had abruptly ended.In 2001, after waiting for three years for the Maharashtra state government to implement the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission report, Ahmed approached the Supreme Court. His primary prayers included action against over 30 policemen, whom the commission had recommended disciplinary action against for ordering or directly opening fire, leading to many deaths and causing injuries to innumerable men belonging to the Muslim community. Ahmed’s petition had also sought compensation for families of 168 persons who went “missing” after the riot. The apex court after 21 years directed the state government to pay Rs 2 lakh with an additional 9% interest per annum since January 1999, when the state had passed the government resolution. The court has directed the state to form a committee to trace the families of missing persons who have been “deprived of compensation” and “complete the procedural formalities”. https://thewire.in/communalism/bombay-riots-supreme-court-shakil-ahmed

5. India and human rights; Nov 15 2022;India’s human rights record was examined as part of the Universal Period Review (process), a peer-based evaluation mechanism under the UN Human Rights Council. This is the fourth time India has gone through this evaluation process, the last time being in 2017.With concerns about the status of human rights activists to the foreign funding of NGOs, suggestions called for an urgent review of anti-terror laws to strengthen freedom of expression.The United States representative lamented that “despite legal protections, discrimination and violence based on gender and religious affiliation persist”. She recommended the “broad applications” of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and similar laws against human rights activists, journalists, and religious minorities. “The application of anti-terror legislation has led to prolonged detentions of human rights defenders and activists, often in a pre-trial status,” said the US diplomat in Geneva. Canada also agreed that India needed to ensure legislation, especially the UAPA, was compliant with international human rights laws to strengthen media freedom.The US also called for “transparency of license adjudications related to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and create easier pathways for NGOs to appeal adverse government decisions on FCRA licenses”. Similarly, Estonia said India should review the FCRA and UAPA to “ensure freedom of expression, assembly and association and the protection of civil society organisations and human rights defenders”. Similar recommendations were made by other European countries, including Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. Luxembourg urged for the release of “all detained human rights defenders”. The Italian side conveyed that India should “ensure a safe and enabling environment for civil society, as well as freedom of expression and media freedom and ensure accountability for violations”. Finland had explicitly called for bolstering the implementation of the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2014 and providing universal protection to all whistleblowers. The Irish representative expressed concern “about the application of the FCRA, under which over 6,000 NGOs have had their operating licences revoked”. Among Latin American countries, Mexico and Uruguay both proposed effective legal and legislative frameworks to protect human rights defenders. https://thewire.in/world/india-human-rights-record-un-upr-process-breakdown

6. Human rights in India; Dec 4 2022; The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has said the US State Department has turned a blind eye by not including India in the list of “countries of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act. “There is no justification for the State Department’s failure to recognise Nigeria or India as egregious violators of religious freedom, as they each clearly meet the legal standards for designation as CPCs https://thewire.in/rights/religious-freedom-uscirf-slams-omission-of-india-in-us-state-depts-particular-concern-list

7. Muslim man jailed; Dec 11 2022; A Muslim man Manzar Imam has been languishing in an India jail for the last nine years over allegations of terrorism. But the matter is yet to cross the first stage of the trial, which is framing of charges against him The second stage of the trial, which is the examination of the witnesses, would commence only after the court decides on framing the charges. Imam, who hails from Ranchi, the capital of the Indian state of Jharkhand, was arrested by India’s dreaded National Investigation Agency (NIA) in August 2013 during the Congress-led UPA government and booked under various sections of the draconian anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and the Indian Penal Code (IPC). A gold medalist in Urdu, Imam was 24-year-old when he was arrested. He is now 33-year-old. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/12/10/muslim-terror-accused-incarcerated-for-nine-years-sans-trial.html

Monthly update 37; Sep 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. USCIRF seek sanctions on Shah: Sep., 1, 2022: A federal US commission on international religious freedom has sought sanctions against Home Minister Amit Shah and other principal Indian leadership if the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill with the "religious criterion" is passed by Indian Parliament, evoking a sharp reaction from India which said the American body has “no locus standi” on the issue. In a statement issued on Monday, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) alleged that the CAB enshrines a pathway to citizenship for immigrants that specifically excludes Muslims, setting a legal criterion for citizenship based on religion. "The CAB is a dangerous turn in the wrong direction; it runs counter to India's rich history of secular pluralism and the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law regardless of faith," it said. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill or CAB was passed in the Lok Sabha with 311 members favouring it and 80 voting against it a little past midnight on Monday. It will now be tabled in the Rajya Sabha for its nod. According to the proposed legislation, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities, who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, till December 31, 2014 facing religious persecution there, will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship."If the CAB passes in both houses of Parliament, the US government should consider sanctions against Home Minister Amit Shah and other principal leadership," the commission said. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/international/cab-us-commission-seeks-sanctions-against-amit-shah-india-says-statement-unwarranted

2. The Hinduization of India Is Nearly Complete: MAY 27, 2022:: Narendra Modi’s ethnonationalist rule is unraveling the country’s constitutional commitment to its Muslim and Christian minorities By Yasmeen Serhan : When the british withdrew from the Indian subcontinent in 1947, paving the way for the independence of the newly partitioned nations of India and Pakistan, the Muslims of the region had a choice. They could resettle in Pakistan, where they would be among a Muslim majority, or remain in India, where they would live as a minority in a majority-Hindu but constitutionally secular state. For Shah Alam Khan, whose great-grandparents were among the roughly 35 million Muslims who opted to live on the Indian side of the Radcliffe Line in the aftermath of Partition, his family’s decision was in many ways a political gamble. “They didn’t want to go to a theocratic state,” Khan told me from his home in Delhi. Indeed, when Pakistan finally adopted a constitution, nine years after Partition, it enshrined Islam as the state religion. For his family, the promise of a pluralist India, as envisaged by the country’s founders, trumped the warnings of the pro-Partition Muslim League (which went on to become the party of Pakistan’s founders) that a Muslim minority would inevitably be subordinate to the Hindu majority. Seventy-five years later, those warnings have gained a new prescience. Nominally, India remains a secular state and a multifaith democracy. Religious minorities account for roughly 20 percent of the country’s 1.4 billion people, who include about 200 million Muslims and 28 million Christians. But beneath the country’s ostensible inclusivity runs an undercurrent of Hindu nationalism that has gained strength during the eight-year rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The concern shared by many among the country’s religious minorities, as well as by more secular-minded liberals within the Hindu majority, is that the country’s secular and inclusive ethos is already beyond repair. Muslims and Christians alike have faced a surge in communal violence in recent years. A raft of new laws has reached into their daily lives to interfere with the religious garments they wear, the food they eat, where and how they worship, and even whom they marry. Many of the Indian journalists, lawyers, activists, and religious leaders I’ve spoken with for this article say that the institutions on which the country once relied to keep this kind of ethnic supremacism in check—the courts, opposition parties, and independent media—have buckled. To Khan, it feels as though the India he has inherited is gradually becoming another version of the theocratic state his family turned away from all those years ago. “They were promised a secular nation,” he said. For them, and for the country’s religious minorities today, “the unmaking of secular India is a betrayal.” This ideal of a pluralist, secular India is popular not only among its religious minorities. A 2021 study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that by a wide margin, Indians of all faiths consider religious tolerance an essential part of what it means to be “truly Indian.” This civic value is as old as the country itself: Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, rejected any concept of the nation as Hinduism’s answer to Pakistan. His India would not be “formally entitled to any religion as a nation,” he said, but a place where all faiths could coexist and be celebrated equally.That founding ideology, however, has long been disputed by Hindu nationalists. “To be a Hindu means a person who sees this land, from the Indus River to the sea, as his country but also as his Holy Land,” wrote the politician and activist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1923 book, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (Hindutva, meaning “Hindu-ness,” has become shorthand for Hindu nationalism itself.) In Savarkar’s view, only those who regard India as both their country and their sacred Hindu homeland could be truly Indian. While Christians and Muslims could fulfill the first requirement, of patriotism, they would never be able to achieve the second. “Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine,” Savarkar wrote. “Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided.” Modi’s own Hindutva credentials run deep. Before he went into mainstream politics with the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, he cut his teeth as a member of its allied paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. After his landslide reelection victory in May 2019, one of the first things he did with his new mandate, in August of that year, was to fulfill a long-standing demand of the RSS by revoking the special autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s sole Muslim-majority territory (over which Pakistan also claims sovereignty). That same month, the northeastern BJP-led state of Assam published a national registry that left nearly 2 million people, many of them Muslim, off the list, casting their Indian citizenship into doubt. Perhaps the most contentious decision came at the end of the year, when Modi’s government pressed through a new law granting non-Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan the right to seek fast-tracked citizenship in India. Critics likened the move to a religious test for citizenship, and warned that it would open the door to additional forms of legal discrimination against Muslims. These events loom large in Indian politics, but when I spoke with members of India’s Muslim and Christian communities about how life in India has changed under Modi’s rule, they rarely came up. People attested instead to the smaller, often more insidious ways in which the experience of India’s religious minorities has been altered. To belong to a religious minority in India today is to feel “there is no future,” an Indian Muslim from Kashmir, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation, told me. That sentiment is echoed by Ajit Sahi, a former journalist who left India for the United States days after Modi’s reelection. “I have friends who are desperate to get out,” Sahi, a secular-inclined Hindu who now serves as the advocacy director of the Indian American Muslim Council in Washington, D.C., told me. “There is no future for somebody like me back in India.” Nandita Suneja, who moved from her native Delhi to Australia in 2019, told me that the communal tensions made her Hindu family’s decision to leave much easier. She didn’t want to raise her daughter in an “atmosphere of stifling freedom and hate.” For Indian Muslims, in particular, the situation is dire. During the recently passed holy month of Ramadan, they saw their houses and shops bulldozed, their businesses boycotted, and their religious gatherings heckled by Hindu-nationalist mobs. Open calls for genocide against Muslims have become commonplace, as have violent clashes and lynchings. Although the authorities generally avoid the appearance of explicitly endorsing these kinds of actions, they rarely go out of their way to condemn them. A recent open letter signed by more than 100 former civil servants accused the Indian government of being “fully complicit” in the subordination of the country’s religious minorities as well as in the undermining of the country’s constitution. Shah Alam Khan, who teaches orthopedic medicine at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, considers himself relatively privileged compared with most Indian Muslims, who tend to be among the country’s poorer and more marginalized citizens. But even for him, he says, the country’s majoritarian turn has forced a change in his quotidian habits. He thinks twice before using the greeting Assalamualaikum, or using any other obviously Islamic phrase, in a crowded public space. Asked for his name, he typically offers only Shah, because it’s more common and less identifiably Muslim than his surname. This type of self-surveillance has affected other members of his family. “Whenever I used to go meet my mom, she used to give me food,” Khan said. “But ever since [Modi] came to power, she stopped giving me that food, because a large part of that food used to be meat.” Cows are considered sacred to the Hindu faith, and their slaughter has been proscribed in most states—a rule often enforced by vigilante mobs. If Khan were stopped by a hostile crowd on suspicion of carrying beef, his mother feared, he could be arrested, even lynched. Akif—who asked to be identified by only his first name for fear of persecution—grew up in what he describes as comfortable circumstances in Aligarh, southwest of Delhi. But that comfort has slipped in recent years. He won’t leave home wearing traditional Islamic attire if he is going to an unfamiliar neighborhood. His wife, who works in academia, has been asked by colleagues about why she wears a hijab, the Muslim headscarf, and why she doesn’t work at an Islamic institution. Some of the most incendiary comments, Akif says, have come from people he considered friends. These restrictions, compounded by public debates at the local, state, and even national levels over whether Muslim students should be allowed to wear headscarves in school or how loudly mosques should broadcast the call to prayer (known as the azaan), have left many Indian Muslims feeling unwelcome in their own country. “Initially, they came for our dietary habits, now the azaan,” Rana Ayyub, an Indian Muslim journalist and author, told me. “Every day you wake up and it’s like, ‘Okay, what part of our identity are you going to attack today?’” Indian Christians face similar hostility. Attacks on Christians have been rising steadily since 2014, and 2021 was the most violent year on record for the community: The United Christian Forum, an ecumenical organization based in Delhi, reported a tally of more than 500 violent incidents—an 80 percent increase over the previous year. A human-rights lawyer who works on minority-rights and religious-freedom cases, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about their work, told me that most of these incidents originate with Hindu-nationalist mobs, which descend on religious gatherings at churches and in homes to accuse those involved of forcing Christianity upon unsuspecting Hindus, in violation of the country’s anti-conversion laws. In the violence that ensues, pastors have been beaten, churches vandalized, and religious schools attacked. In many cases, rather than intervene to maintain public order, police officers join the mobs, ready to arrest the suspected Christian proselytizers. In one incident, on April 14, dozens of worshippers were gathered at a church in the state of Uttar Pradesh to observe Maundy Thursday when a mob showed up with police. “Everyone was arrested,” the lawyer told me. “‘Who are you converting? Everyone is detained.’ It was a little bizarre.” That case is still pending. Hindu-nationalist groups and BJP lawmakers claim that forced conversions are rampant in the country. But there is little evidence for this. None of the arrests have yet resulted in a single conviction, A. C. Michael, a former member of the Delhi Minorities Commission and the national coordinator of the United Christian Forum, told me. But if the real purpose of the harassment is to intimidate members of a religious minority, it has already had its desired effect. “Earlier, we were very proud to display our faith, like wearing a cross or, if we were traveling, we would say our prayers aloud,” Michael said. “All that has now stopped.” This is so far from the India that Nehru’s vision promised that Muslims and Christians now have little expectation that the state will protect not just their rights but their very lives. “The year I left India, in 2015, there were several attacks on churches in Delhi,” Dominic Emmanuel, a former spokesperson of the Delhi Catholic Church who is now based in Vienna, Austria, told me. When he and his fellow congregants staged a protest against attacks within their church compound, they were arrested. Modi’s ruling bjp has no incentive to change course. In March, the party won a resounding victory when it held on to power in Uttar Pradesh, where the government is now led by Yogi Adityanath, a hard-line nationalist and former monk widely seen as Modi’s likely successor. The main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, was once the standard-bearer of secularism in India, but it has failed to mount a strong defense of the country’s religious minorities. Analysts I spoke with attribute part of that failure to the opposition’s fears of alienating a Hindu majority that has been swayed by Hindutva ideology. If the political system is no longer a check on majoritarian rule, neither is the legal system. Just as the authorities fail to protect minorities from communal violence—or even participate in the violence themselves—the legal system fails to hold officials to account. Worse, a series of draconian and discriminatory laws have recruited both police and courts to efforts to silence government critics and advocates for India’s religious minorities. At grave personal risk, several Indian journalists have shed unflattering light on Modi’s majoritarian rule. Some have been jailed for their reporting. One is Siddique Kappan, who was charged with sedition and conspiracy to incite violence for trying to report on the gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit woman. (Dalits, pejoratively known as the “untouchables,” are at the bottom of India’s caste system.) Others, like Ayyub, have been hit with spurious fraud and money-laundering charges; their cases are laborious and expensive to defend. The BJP-controlled state does not need to worry about time or money, so the process is the punishment. “There is no one left,” Ayyub said, noting that as the country’s high-profile figures in politics, law, and the media have been largely silenced, so, too, have celebrities in India’s entertainment industry. The most prominent example is Shah Rukh Khan, one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, as well as one of the country’s most influential Muslim figures, whose films portray India’s pluralism at its best. Last year, the actor’s son was embroiled in allegations of drug use a charge seen by some as part of a broader effort by the government to crack down on its critics in the film industry, as well as an attempt to discredit Khan personally. Khan not only embodies that anathema to the BJP of being a Muslim married to a Hindu, but he has also spoken out against religious intolerance in the country. By attacking a personality like Khan, Ayyub said, the government’s message was clear: “If it can happen to Shah Rukh Khan, the biggest superstar,” she said, “imagine what happens to a regular Muslim without the access.” That Modi feels emboldened enough to take on a movie star like Khan is telling. Modi “is popular because of the fact that he’s a bigot,” Aakar Patel, the chair of Amnesty International’s India Board and the author of The Price of the Modi Years, told me. “He is seen as somebody who has put Muslims in their place.” Despite rising inflation and high unemployment, as well as the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and democratic backsliding, the prime minister still enjoys widespread popularity with his own BJP-supporting constituency. For most Indians, he is an Indian success story. “Modi has been a real son of the soil for young Indians and they see themselves in him,” Vivan Marwaha, a researcher in emerging markets and the author of What Millennials Want, told me. If the son of a tea seller can become prime minister and command an international stage, the logic goes, so could they. “His appeal is in his personality,” Marwaha added. “Foreign leaders have to listen to him speaking in Hindi. He sells out stadiums in New York, London, and Sydney.” Many Hindu Indians also appear comfortable with Modi’s ethnonationalist aims, despite the outbreaks of communal violence. “The whole religious agenda is not seen as something radical because, at the end of the day, something like 80 percent of India’s population is Hindu,” Marwaha said. “People just believe, ‘Well, why can’t they just live with our rules? Why can’t they not eat beef? Why does the azaan need to be played in public places?’ Things like that.” If no check to the Hinduization of state and society comes from within India, then what about from without? So far, India’s international allies have shown little inclination to call Delhi out over the treatment of its religious minorities, largely because they see India as too important a partner to alienate. This is especially true of the Biden administration, which counts its relationship with India as a strategic asset in its Indo-Pacific strategy. When Washington has voiced concern about the treatment of religious minorities in India, it has done so in private. That could be starting to change. In April, at a joint press conference with the Indian foreign and defense ministers, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that the United States is monitoring the rise of human-rights abuses in the country. That same month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal body created by Congress in 1998, designated India as a country of “particular concern” for the third year in a row in its annual religious-freedom report, placing India alongside countries such as Afghanistan, China, Iran, Russia, and Pakistan. In India’s case, the commission recommended imposing targeted sanctions against those responsible for severe religious-freedom violations. Although the commission has no power to enforce such measures, its condemnations may have some cumulative effect. “When your own agency is recommending a policy move for three years in a row, it becomes harder to ignore with each passing year,” Pranay Somayajula, an advocacy and outreach coordinator at Hindus for Human Rights, a group based in Washington, D.C., told me. As menacing as the persecution of religious minorities has become, for most Indians, emigrating is not an option. Only about 5 percent of citizens have a passport, and those who leave the country tend to be among the wealthiest. “If we decide to abandon the ship, what will happen to people who do not have the resources to go out? That is a very big concern,” Akif told me. As the last of his siblings still living in India, he can’t bring himself to leave his parents behind. For Shah Alam Khan, remaining is a point of principle too. Because he spent several years working as a doctor for the National Health Service in Britain, he could emigrate there. But doing so would hand the nationalists who don’t see him as a true Indian a win. “It’s like running away. I won’t do that,” he said. “This is my country at the end of the day

3. Hijab ban: Sep 13, 2022: The hijab ban issued by the Karnataka government, later upheld by the high court, is creating and widening the social divide among student communities which could potentially lead to ghettoisation of education, a study published by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) said. The ban has forced some hijab-clad students to seek a transfer to Muslim-managed institutions, thereby limiting their interactions with students of other communities, said the interim study for which the PUCL spoke to students who were impacted by the ban. This has also led to a deep sense of isolation and depression among these students, the study revealed. The Karnataka high court had declared that “wearing of hijab (headscarf) by Muslim women does not form a part of essential religious practices in Islamic faith and it is not protected under the right to freedom of religion guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution of India. Even the Supreme Court earlier this month had asked, while hearing a batch of petitions challenging the hijab ban, if the right to dress would also include the “right to undressing.” In another hearing, Justice Hemant Gupta had asked the advocate, representing the petitioner, not to compare the ban on hijab with the practices in Sikhism [wearing of turban] as these practices are well-established in the culture of the country. The PUCL report said that the high court’s verdict has denied women their right to wear the hijab as a matter of choice and agency for themselves. It’s important to note here that there are many women, irrespective of their religion, who like to cover their heads because it makes them feel safe. Hijab is a personal choice for several Muslim women, however, as The Wire had reported earlier, the headscarf has led to workplace discrimination for many in India. Many experts had pointed to the high court’s failure to address the right to privacy, freedom of expression and the principle of ‘non-discrimination’ as per Article 15 of the Constitution. Many have argued that the high court had failed to protect the fundamental right to education to be guaranteed by the state without any discrimination. After the verdict, a sizeable number of women were unable to appear for their examinations. In one such case, two of the petitioners in the hijab case were not allowed to sit for their board exams of second pre-university college – the equivalent to class 12 exams for wearing a hijab. The report said that for most of the hijab-wearing students who missed writing their exams this year, after the interim order was passed, the high court judgment came as a rude interruption to their studies and further plans. (Note here that as per the 2011 Census data, Muslim women’s literacy rate in India, especially in rural areas, is the lowest among other religious communities.) Additionally, given the communal targeting of the Muslim students both within the campus and outside, they are facing constant harassment, insult, and humiliation in and outside the classroom. There is increasing hostility from the college administration as well, in matters such as withholding the issuance of certificates and other important documents like practical exam records. They are also experiencing safety issues in and outside the classroom (including social boycotts and even threats of rape) but the college administrations are refusing to take cognisance of the matter, the report said, citing students The team visited a village in rural Hassan district, Mangalore city, Ullal, Hoode, Udupi town, and Raichur town and met women students who spoke about their experiences and concerns after the hijab ban. The hijab ban in educational institutions –which has compelled many Muslim women to to choose between their attire and education has taken a toll many students. A student, who was pursuing B.Ed, was expected, as part of her course, to teach class 10 students in government schools. The college had told her that she could go ahead and that a lecturer would accompany her to evaluate her performance. However, after the high court judgment, her lecturers said that a headscarf was not allowed as it affects the students in the class. As a result, she could not take the classes. Other students in Raichur told PUCL that the “carefully cultivated hostility in educational institutions by right-wing forces” has deeply affected them, and Muslim women in particular. They said they are now scared to go to college, as the authorities offer little protection to them. The students said they call each other before going to college and enter in groups alone as it is ‘very frightening’ to enter campus alone. “I don’t feel confident going to college, and I take my brothers along. Outside the college, I face harassment from other boys, who are not from our college. Earlier, I was the class representative, and I would go to the principal about issues facing the students. Nowadays, I’ve fallen silent, and don’t interact with other students. I want to change this college where I don’t feel free,” a student explained the emotional toll the harassment has taken on her. She added that her scores went down, along with her attendance, due to a lack of confidence because of the hostile environment in college. Another student, Hassan, said, “Our main fear was that our attendance would get affected. The principal started telling Muslim girls who wore the hijab to go home and give up on their studies. They spoke in threatening tones, ‘Wait and watch what will happen if you don’t remove the hijab.’ Facing this hostility day-in and day-out has made many students consider other options, but for many students, the choice is very limited [due to family income, affordability, etc.]”“I am repeating my second year because I will not give up. Transferring is not an option for me because I am not changing my stream. And private and minority institutions are so costly that families like ours cannot consider such options,” another student from the same village told PUCL. Speaking about issues outside campus, some law students in Dakshina Kannada, a district in Karnataka, told PUCL that they were not allowed into the court premises with their hijab on. They were asked to come back with a written permission from the university. For Muslim women, the verdict has led to a setback to their advancement. “Government colleges have free education, but in my new college, I have huge travel expenses. I wanted to do my M.Sc., but now I can’t. I feel shattered. I do not want to think about my shattered dreams,” another student from Udupi told PUCL. Expressing concerns over safety in college premises, some students in Dakshina Kannada had asked girls to carry weapons, so they wouldn’t be unsafe. In fact, the girl students had reported to the principal that a few male students had started to pick fights with them on the campus. However, the principal refused to even accept their plea seeking intervention on the matter. And, when the students approached the head of the department (HOD), the principal asked the HOD not to entertain such pleas, and asked the security guards to push the girls off the campus. With respect to the attire, some girl students started coming to college wearing hoodies. However, the teachers in an extremely rude tone told them, “Show chal raha hai kya (is a show going on?)” upon seeing them in hoodies. In fact, lecturers reportedly told the students, ‘Tum soch badlogi toh zamaana badlega’ (If you change your thinking, then the world will change), ‘Zamaane ke saath chalo’ (go with the times), ‘Tum bold bano’ (Be bold) and other such variations, suggesting that wearing a hijab is a regressive choice.In another incident, a lecturer told the class that they would not deliver the lecture if the hijab-clad woman continued to sit in the class and that all students would be affected by it. What’s worse, when the student recorded this incident in a letter, the teachers refused to sign it. In Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, when students, parents and Muslim organisations approached the public officials on this matter, they were directed to speak with the college development councils, or CDCs. Therefore, the PUCL in its report has asked the Karnataka government to take adequate measures to strengthen a secular and non-discriminatory learning environment within colleges, where students are allowed to express their faith and identity fully. It further asked the government to ensure that such shocking violations do not recur, and that the students be allowed into the classrooms immediately. It has also asked the human rights and minority commission to register suo moto complaints against the principals of respective colleges for violating the fundamental rights of the concerned students and initiate actions at the earliest. https://thewire.in/rights/very-frightening-to-enter-campus-alone-muslim-students-recount-hijab-bans-impact

4. RSS attacks Muslims in UK: Sep., 20,2022:A peaceful protest demonstration was held in Leicester, the United Kingdom, on Sunday against the growing attacks by Hindu fanatics on innocent Muslims with a renowned Arab journalist taking to the twitter to warn that thousands of Hindus inspired by RSS ideology may bring the tension to the host Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The Muslims from all regions including those belonging to Pakistani and Kashmiri community participated in the demonstration organized by the Muslim members of the city at Belgrave Road. Earlier, hundreds of Hindus assaulted the Muslims on the city streets after Asia Cup India-Pakistan cricket match in Dubai on August 28. The armed Hindus attacked Muslims and their residences in the vicinity. The anti-Muslim violence forced the community to hold a protest demonstration in the city against the Hindu assaults on Sunday. A renowned Arab journalist, Abdullah Al Imadi wrote on twitter: “Hindu-Muslim tension in Leicester might happen in any city they live together. Can it be considered as an early warning for GCC countries, which host hundreds of thousands of Hindu workers, as there may be thousands of them influenced by RSS thoughts?” https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/09/19/rss-inspired-hindus-may-bring-leicester-tension-to-gcc-countries-warns-arab-journalist.html

5. Forced evictions: Sep., 23, 2022: The latest report of the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) on forced evictions in India has pointed to the new disturbing trend of “demolitions as a punitive measure” by various state governments and noted that these “arbitrary acts” of demolishing of homes and structures of minority communities have compounded the vulnerabilities of women, children, older persons, and persons with disabilities. The report has also highlighted the vulnerabilities of the marginalised sections to forced evictions. It has stated that while “a total of 158 incidents of forced eviction/home demolition have been documented” in 2021, about 15 million people across rural and urban areas continue to face the threat of eviction from their habitats. The report also pointed out how around 25 shops, vending carts, and houses primarily belonging to Muslims in Jahangirpuri, Delhi was removed after being termed “encroachments” following the clashes during the Hanuman Jayanti procession on April 20, 2022.https://thewire.in/rights/demolition-livelihood-wreck-punitive-measure-hlrn-report

6. Muslim Lynched; Sep 30 2022: A Muslim vegetable seller was beaten to death by a group of Hindutva goons accusing him of stealing a battery in Hapur district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, but the allegation of theft appears to be a ruse. Local police have filed an FIR against the four culprits for killing Nadeem on a complaint by the family of the deceased, a resident of Garh town in Hapur. Meanwhile, a video surfaced on social media showing the distraught family members of the deceased wailing inconsolably while his body bearing marks of beating lying in front of them. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/09/28/muslim-vegetable-seller-lynched-in-up.html

Monthly update 36; Aug 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Muslim Women and jobs; Aug 5 2022; Muslims make up nearly 14 percent of India’s 1.35 billion population but do not have the same representation in government or private sector jobs. Multiple government-appointed commissions have found the community is at the bottom among India’s social groups in terms of education and employment. One of those commissions, headed by now retired Justice Rajinder Sachar, found in 2006 that India’s Muslims were disadvantaged in social, economic and educational terms. Less than 8 percent of them were employed in the formal sector compared with the national average of 21 percent, the commission said in its report According to the 2011 census, the last conducted by the government since the 2021 exercise was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, the participation of Muslim women in jobs was less than 15 percent, whereas it was more than 27 percent for Hindu women. The corresponding figures for Buddhist and Christian women were 33 percent and 31 percent, respectively. The situation has worsened since 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power, with the government pursuing policies targeting the Muslim minority and their economic and religious rights. In a deeply-polarised society, Muslim women are doubly marginalised. Experts say they stand at the intersection of gender and religious differences which significantly increases their likelihood of suffering prejudice by potential employers.“The bias was always there but with the dominance of the BJP and RSS, people have been now calling for the exclusion of Muslims from all the economic areas,” Apoorvanand, an academic and activist based in capital New Delhi, told Al Jazeera. A study published in June by LedBy Foundation, a leadership incubator that focuses on the professional development of Muslims, has also revealed discrimination and bias against Muslim women in the hiring process for entry-level jobs in various sectors. The “Hiring Bias” study highlights excessive hiring bias against Muslim women even in instances where they were equally qualified for the job. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/3/muslim-women-in-india-allege-bias-in-hiring-for-jobs

2. music and hate; Aug 9 2022; Sandeep Chaturvedi, 26, is readying to record his new song in a makeshift studio in the city of Ayodhya in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The song is about a mosque that has became a subject of controversy after Hindus claimed the right to worship there. It is riddled with innuendos against Muslims Chaturvedi's songs are part of a growing trend of music on YouTube and other social media platforms where supporters of the Hindu right-wing spew venom at Muslims. The lyrics are abusive or threatening. They are usually based on the premise that Hindus have suffered for centuries at the hands of Muslims and now it's payback time. "This is a war-cry. It's as if music is being used to win a war. This is a misuse of music and this has been happening for years." Chaturvedi started his career as a singer of devotional songs about a decade ago, but he changed tack a few years later when he decided to compose songs about "Hinduism and nationalism". The idea, he says, was to get an image makeover. He hit a jackpot of sorts when a music video he produced in 2016 became an overnight sensation amongst the right-wing Hindu nationalist ecosystem. The lyrics of are too incendiary to be reproduced here. But the tone of the song was straightforward: a warning to the Muslim community about what will happen the day Hindu nationalism rises. Chaturvedi has since created a new channel on YouTube. But the number of views on some of the content he uploaded has not been encouraging. He is hoping to change that with his latest song. Often accused of targeting Muslims through his music, Chaturvedi is unapologetic. "If I plead with folded hands to get what is mine, will you agree? You won't. So we have to be provocative, don't we?" Upendra Rana is another creator making similar music in Dadri near Delhi. His mission is to "correct" history and his songs are paeans to Hindu warriors where Muslim rulers are portrayed as villains. "Many things that are true have been hidden while falsehoods have been imposed on us," he claims while talking about the history taught in schools. Updendra Rana has hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers Mr Mukhopadhyay says the trend of weaponising music against minorities is reminiscent of events that have occurred in the past. He recalls the controversial foundation stone-laying programme in Ayodhya in 1989 organised by the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) which culminated in the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992. "Just before that, an industry of audio tapes had sprung up. They contained religious songs and so-called provocative slogans related to the Ram Janmabhoomi issue and these tapes used to be played in processions to mobilise people." Three decades on, the tone has become shriller. Compositions proclaiming "if you want to live in India, learn to say Vande Mataram ("I praise you, Mother")… and learn to live within your limits", or "thinking of Hindus as weak is the enemy's mistake" make no effort to hide who they are targeting. These songs have also helped right-wing organisations "mobilise" their cadres. These "nationalistic" songs are viewed by many youngsters "Youngsters like these songs as they raise their enthusiasm and morale," says Pinky Chaudhary, who heads the right-wing Hindu Raksha Dal group. He argues that such songs help create awareness among the youth. The "sudden rush of energy" Mr Yadav talks about was believed to be on display this April when violent clashes were reported from several states during Hindu festivals During these incidents, offensive music blared through loudspeakers when Hindus took out religious processions and moved close to Muslim-dominated areas.In some of these clashes, incendiary and provocative songs - including Chaturvedi's composition from 2016 - were allegedly instrumental in triggering the violence. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62432309?fbclid=IwAR3MjuuTmrC9YsOtBeHXcEXSWbeC0JbOAVoTK1yYZ3sxvH5kJUrpzdAzhn4

3. Modi and Muslims: Aug., 15, 2022: In August 1947, as their nations were born amid flames, mass rape and some of the 20th century’s bloodiest ethnic massacres . Indians should recall why exactly Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah was so determined to carve a Muslim-majority homeland out of the former British India: He predicted the rights of Muslims would be at risk in a country dominated by Hindus. Seventy-five years later, India is in danger of proving him right. Under a right-wing, Hindu nationalist government since 2014, led by charismatic Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country has grown distinctly hostile toward its Muslim population the world’s third largest. Indian Muslims have been targeted by politicians, the media and vigilante mobs. Their rights have been eroded and their place in society diminished. The country that fought so bitterly against partition now appears intent on confirming its central logic. At the time, of course, fear of discrimination wasn’t the only factor motivating Pakistan’s proponents. Muslim landowners saw an opportunity to usurp rich farmlands. Preachers envisioned a society run according to Islamic principles. Peasants were told they’d finally be free of the yoke of Hindu moneylenders. Even the lawyerly Jinnah was not above occasional demagoguery, darkly intoning that Hindus and Muslims were too different ever to live together in peace. Still, Jinnah’s main fear was how little power Muslims would wield in a united India. That’s what drove the initial break with his former allies in the Indian National Congress party including Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister a decade before independence. And it’s why Jinnah retracted his support for a last-minute compromise brokered by the British in 1946, after Nehru intimated that the Congress would not honor the agreement once the British were gone. Partition very nearly proved Jinnah’s case. Somewhere between 200,000 and two million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were killed within a few short weeks of independence; 14 million were uprooted from their homes. The biggest massacres arguably began with attacks on Muslim villages on the Indian side of the new border. India’s founding fathers, however, risked their lives to undercut Jinnah’s argument. When riots spread to the Indian capital Delhi and police and petty government officials joined in pogroms targeting Muslims, Nehru took to the streets, remonstrating with mobs and giving public speeches promoting communal harmony while only lightly guarded. He insisted the government machinery exert itself to protect Muslims as well as Hindus. With even members of his cabinet convinced that India would be better off without tens of millions of citizens suspected of split loyalties, Nehru barely prevailed. The pressure to expel Muslims only really subsided months later after a Hindu fanatic assassinated the revered Gandhi, shocking the cabinet into unity and prompting public revulsion against Hindu bigotry. That consensus and the rights enshrined in India’s secular constitution largely preserved religious harmony in India for more than seven decades. Al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups made few inroads among Indian Muslims, even as jihadists flourished in nearby countries. While sectarian riots have repeatedly broken out, especially after provocations such as the 1992 demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya to make way for a Hindu temple, tensions have for the most part remained local and limited. And even if Indian Muslims faced discrimination and were on average poorer and less well-educated than Hindus, few doubted that they were full citizens especially when their votes were needed at election time. What makes the changes that have proliferated under Modi so dispiriting and dangerous is their corrosive impact on those feelings of belonging. The problem isn’t even so much the most horrific cases of bigotry, including dozens of lynchings of Muslims around the country. Those at least still draw outrage in some quarters, as well as international attention. What’s worse is the steady and widely accepted marginalization of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims. An overheated and jingoistic media portrays them as potential fifth columnists, who should “go back” to a Pakistan most have never visited if they don’t like the new India. (Pakistani sponsorship of extremist groups that have carried out brutal attacks in India has exacerbated fears of an internal threat.) There’s widespread acceptance of hate speech, including open calls to exterminate Muslims. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has pursued laws that threaten to disenfranchise millions of them. Indeed, an Indian state once convinced of its duty to protect minorities now seems unremittingly hostile. Prejudice has seeped into the courts and the police, as well as all levels of government. Laws have accepted at face value ludicrous conspiracy theories such as “love jihad” the idea that Muslim men are romancing Hindu women in order to convert them. Modi’s decision to strip Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, of its constitutionally guaranteed autonomy has made clear that even enshrined protections are vulnerable. Meanwhile, at the federal level, Muslims’ share of political power is dwindling. Though they make up more than 14% of the population, they account for less than 4% of members of the lower house of parliament. Among the BJP’s 395 members of parliament there isn’t a single Muslim. True, India remains a democracy not an authoritarian state, with powerful regional politicians and some brave and independent activists and journalists. In states where Muslims make up a larger share of the voting population, they have been better able to defend their rights. Nor is India the only country where politicians and media figures are fanning ethno-nationalism for partisan gain. Yet the trend lines are ominous. India’s political opposition is weak and divided. The mainstream media has caricatured Muslims to a degree that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The northern Hindi belt is bursting with millions of undereducated, underemployed and angry young men. Politicians there and elsewhere know it is far easier to direct those frustrations at defenseless scapegoats than it is to fix schools and create jobs. Modi likes to call India the “mother of democracy.” But the central test of a democracy is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens whether their rights are protected and their views heard. Nehru and India’s other founding fathers saw it as their most basic duty to prove Jinnah wrong, forging a pluralistic India that would thrive because of its diversity not despite it. Three quarters of a century later, Indians should ask themselves whether they, not their former brethren across the border, are the ones now making a mistake. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/modis-india-is-becoming-a-reflection-of-jinnahs-fears/2022/08/14/b0751396-1c25-11ed-9ce6-68253bd31864_story.html

4. Muslim youth wish to leave India; Aug., 16, 2022:Aamir isn’t the only one wanting to go away. Troubled by the present and anxious about the future, many Indian Muslims are now starting to give up hope in the country they call home. The insecurity stems from what critics of the government call an institutionalised persecution of Muslims since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014 from a steady onslaught of violence by vigilante groups backed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to the legal hounding of Muslim voices critical of the regime. Endorsed by top leaders, there has been an explosion of anti-Muslim prejudice in everyday life. Earlier this year, Gregory Stanton, an expert on genocidal violence, said the situation was so alarming that “genocide could very well happen in India”. There are over 200 million Muslims in India, the highest in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. Only a minuscule number can afford to leave – years of deprivation has meant the community’s socio-economic indicators are among the worst in the country. But among those who can, many are actively seeking to build lives elsewhere. https://scroll.in/article/1030444/why-many-young-muslims-are-leaving-india

5. Murder and Rape Pardoned: Aug., 17, 2022: The husband of Bilkis Bano on August 16 said they were surprised after coming to know from the media about the release of all 11 convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for her gang rape and murder of seven members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The 11 convicts on August 15 walked out of the Godhra sub-jail after the Gujarat Government allowed their release under its remission policy. A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Mumbai on January 21, 2008, sentenced the 11 accused to life imprisonment on the charge of gang rape and murder of seven members of Bilkis Bano’s family. Their conviction was later upheld by the Bombay High Court.

6. Rapist and killers pardoned: Aug., 29, 2022: BJP MLA from Godhra in Gujarat CK Raulji has said that those convicted for the rape of Bilkis Bano and released after 15 years in jail are Brahmins. Along with this, he has said that he has ‘good values’. Raulji has supported those culprits. If you are Brahmin, you can rape and murder but you don’t need to be in prison. The justification of the ruling regime legislator who was on the panel to recommend the release of 11 Hindus who had gang raped a Muslim woman& had killed her 7 family members. Two days back, all the 11 life imprisonment convicts in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gang rape have come out of jail as per the exemption policy of the Gujarat government. He was garlanded and fed sweets after his release. When Bilkis Bano was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, she was 21 years old and five months pregnant. Seven members of his family were murdered. Among them was his three-year-old daughter. His head was crushed with stones. Seven other relatives were declared missing. https://freshgooglenews.com/bjp-mla-says-brahmins-have-good-sanskar-in-bilkis-bano-rape-case-fgn-news/

7. FIR against offering Namaz: Aug., 31, 2022: A police case has been registered against a group of Muslims in India's Uttar Pradesh for a "mass gathering" to offer prayers at their house "without prior permission". Dulhepur village, where the incident occurred, does not have a mosque which is why a group of Muslims gathered to offer prayers. Some villagers have reservations against gatherings for namaz even if Muslims do it privately. The FIR was registered on the basis of "objections from neighbours" and stated that the gatherings for namaz were spreading hatred among people. A total of 26 people were arrested under the Indian Penal Code's Section 505-2, which is supposed to be for hostile statements made in a religious gathering. All Muslims were reported to be locals, out of which 16 have been named. Photos and videos of people praying in the village have gone viral on social media, to which internet users have reacted with rage and disappointment. Many have pointed out the bias of the villagers and their lack of rationality. "This is what criminalisation of an entire religion looks like," said journalist Kaushik Raj. https://www.geo.tv/latest/436920-indian-police-registers-case-against-26-muslims-for-offering-namaz-at-home?fbclid=IwAR0so0pMOOGJeSLdJWg35F-k-OoPz6el8WiHS2-kt2uVMqcQ8l_gXfZjLKc

Monthly update 35; July 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. BJP and Udaipur killing; July 3 2022; Amid heightened tensions in India over the recent brutal killing of a Hindu tailor in Udaipur, fresh details about the incident from the neighbouring country on Saturday revealed that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders had links with one of the killers for many years, hinting at a pre-planned scheme. Ashok Swain, a professor of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, questioned whether the Udaipur incident could be "another Pulwama", which many believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had planned to consolidate his grip on the country in February 2019. "Is Udaipur another Pulwama? The Killer, who killed a Hindu in the name of Islam, is with the leader of the Hindu Right-Wing ruling party," wrote Swain while sharing a photo on his official Twitter handle In another tweet, he said that the Muslim man who had brutally killed a Hindu in Udaipur was being accused as an Islamic radical with a Pakistani connection. "Still, they are searching for that evidence, but it is for sure that he was actively working for India's ruling Hindu right-wing party, BJP," he added. He said that despite Indian Supreme Court's statement, police are yet to arrest BJP spokeswoman Nupur Sharma over her blasphemous remarks against the Prophet (PBUH). "Nupur Sharma insulted the Prophet [PBUH], and there was an international uproar and domestic unrest; Supreme Court found her responsible for all these, but the police say they do not find her to arrest through police is providing her security cover. And, this is no joke." Swain suggested that Sharma is just an "instrument", urging the top court to take courage to name the "Supreme Lord". He also criticised the arrest of Indian journalist Mohammad Zubair, who had allegedly "insulted religious beliefs" in India on Twitter years ago. "They have arrested Mohammed Zubair since Monday but don't know who had complained against him or even the complaint. And, this is not a joke," he added. The Modi regime's decision to transfer the Udaipur incident to the country's National Investigation Agency (NIA) has drawn questions from the Congress, the country's main opposition party. Congressman Pawan Khera, in reference to various media reports that suggested a relationship existed between the accused Riyaz Attari and a BJP official, said: "We did our research on those claims and found old Facebook posts of Rajasthan BJP leaders where Riyaz Attari was mentioned as 'BJP karyakarta'." One of the murderers of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal, whose beheading was captured on camera and made public online, is Mohammad Riyaz Attari. The murder was committed, according to Riyaz Attari and Ghous Muhammad, to avenge the blasphemous remarks after social media posts by Kanhaiya in favour of Nupur Sharma had been made. "What could be more evident than this? Riyaz Attari was present at events of BJP leaders. BJP leaders referred to him as 'bhai'. What is happening in this country?" Pawan Khera said. "When the Centre ordered the NIA probe, we welcomed it. Our chief minister (Ashok Gehlot) assured assistance to the NIA. But now we are raising this question: Did the Centre order the NIA probe hurriedly to hide this information about Riyaz Kattari," Pawan Khera said. Also, the way the video of Kanhaiya Lal's killing went viral on social media and the response that followed points to the said scheme. Analysts believe there could not be an attempt more foolish than this to turn the tide. Kanhaiya Lal, the victim, was first arrested over posting inappropriate content on the social media but he was released soon after. The arrest made him known among the locals. He wasn't provided police protection despite his requests to the authorities concerned. The scheme was aimed to project Muslims, who were known as a suppressed minority, as terrorists. It is the Modi administration's history to cross all limits to create distraction. Pulwama incident took place when there was a need to deflect attention from the Rafale jet scandal and when votes from the lower caste Hindus were needed. Then own people attacked the Kabul temple to shed a bad light on the Sikh community. Experts say that the Modi administration must stop this heinous game and the Udaipur incident must be probed by an independent authority. Simultaneously, the campaign against Islam and Indian Muslims must be seized, as well as checks should be made on the identity of the two men who committed the crime and made it viral on social media. The BJP government turning a blind eye to the campaign and encouraging hate can lead to further such occurrences.The entire Muslim world is concerned at the rising tide of Islamophobia in India, which is an extremely dangerous trend not for the country but the region and the world. Muslims living about 3 kilometres from the tailor's shop where the victim was killed said they felt nervous and feared a social and economic boycott by powerful Hindus residing in Udaipur."I know what has been done is barbaric but the community should not be held responsible for the deed of two people," said Mohammad Farukh, a medical representative living in a Muslim-dominated area of the city.However, despite all the explanations from the Muslim community in India, the incident has sparked a furious response on social media, including calls for reprisal attacks against the country's Muslim minority which seem to be part of a grand plan by the fascist Modi regime to further divide the country. India has a long history of communal violence and authorities have shut down internet connections and imposed a curfew in the city where the attack took place to prevent unrest. But social media platforms have been consumed by angry reactions to the killing, with some users demanding "violent retribution" against both the accused murderers and other Muslims. Members of public Telegram groups dedicated to promoting and defending Hinduism called on each other to pick up weapons and attack Muslims or discussed the virtues of storming a police station to attack the two accused men. The far-right Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) used social media to issue a nationwide protest call against Islamist terrorism and complain that Muslims had routinely upset the religious sentiments of India's majority religion."You should be afraid of the day when Hindus too start giving reply to the insult," senior VHP figure Surendra Kumar Jain said in a video posted online, and watched nearly 75,000 times across Twitter and Facebook. A day after his murder, Lal's name had been mentioned more than 200,000 times on Twitter, along with a grab bag of hashtags condemning the attack. The hashtag "Hindu lives matter" was being posted more than 2,000 times an hour on Thursday. Since coming to power nationally in 2014, Modi's party has been accused by rights groups and foreign governments of championing discriminatory policies towards India's 200-million strong Muslim minority. Amnesty this month said authorities had waged a "vicious" crackdown on Muslims who took to the streets to protest Sharma's remarks, including by demolishing homes with bulldozers. Since the attack on Lal, party members have taken to social media to criticise Muslim nations that had complained about Sharma's comments for remaining silent on the killing. Several also took aim at Indian journalist Mohammed Zubair, who had helped draw attention to the remarks by Sharma that eventually saw her suspended from the BJP. In one tweet, Kapil Mishra, a BJP politician, accused Zubair and his supporters of being "responsible" for the tailor's death. Zubair, who has drawn frequent attention to hate speech by Hindu fringe groups, was arrested on Monday. He remains in custody, with police citing a four-year-old tweet about a Hindu god they said had been the subject of complaints by Hindu groups. Police opened an investigation into Sharma this month after a complaint by a member of the public about her remarks, but she has not been arrested and her current whereabouts are unknown. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2364344/another-pulwama-udaipur-killers-links-with-bjp-point-to-another-pre-planned-scheme

2. Right wing India; July 4 2022; Right-wing fascists are trying hard to convert India into a Totalitarian State. What they don’t seem to realise is that, a diverse nation of 1.4 billion with strong democratic ethos cannot be ruled by force. One need to look no further than Kashmir to comprehend the futility of the so-called “Muscular Approach”. Peace is still elusive in the valley, even after the deployment of seven hundred thousand strong military force. Primary reason for this is the alienation of Kashmiri Muslims. Imagine what will happen if a substantial section of India’s 200 million Muslims get alienated? The threat that China – Pakistan bonhomie poses to India cannot be overstated. Only last week General Charles A Flynn, Commanding General of the United States Army Pacific, warned us about the infrastructure build up by China in the border areas. The fact that large swathes of Indian land, all across the Northern border from Arunachal Pradesh to Kashmir is under Chinese occupation is also an open secret. What hostile actions against India will originate from this front in future is anybody’s guess but to wish away the problem will be suicidal. Nearly 40 billion dollars come to India annually from Middle East as remittances. Around 7.6 million Indian citizens work in Gulf countries. BJP , India’s ruling party, swiftly suspended two of their office bearers as soon as governments of gulf countries objected to their insult of Prophet Muhammad. Importance India accords to this region can be gauged from this action of the right-wing party. Danger is , there is no guarantee of such incidents not happening again. Government or party have little control over the communally polarised masses. In case of such an event, even if the government is able to diplomatically handle governments of these countries no one can predict how ordinary citizens of these countries will react. If employers decide to reduce Indian work force and boycott Indian businesses and products, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Consequences of such an action will be unpredictable and very detrimental to India. Ever since Modi government has come to power, foreign governments , International organisations and human rights agencies have been criticising India on lack of religious freedom , human rights abuses and suppression of dissent. Recently, the scale of criticism has gone up as can be seen from the following examples “…in India, the world’s largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, we’ve seen rising attacks on people and places of worship,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a press conference recently . He was speaking at the release of US State department’s “2021 Report on International Religious freedom”. In the backdrop of Insult of Prophet controversy, OIC had called on the Indian authorities to decisively address these incidents of defamation and all forms of insult to the noble Prophet and Islam and to bring those who incite and perpetrate violence against Muslims to justice and hold those behind them accountable. Amnesty international India released a statement on June 14th that said , “The state’s response to current protests is not only deplorable but also marks the latest escalation in the suppression of dissent. The Indian authorities must carry out a prompt, thorough, effective, impartial and independent investigation into all the human rights violations allegedly committed by law enforcement officials and other public officials against protesters and human rights defenders”. These criticisms have severely dented the image of India among the nations of the world. In most parts of the country, India resembles a divided house today. In states where BJP is in power , the party has succeeded in communally polarising the people along religious lines. The situation is especially grave in the Hindi heartland. Muslims are not the only minorities who feel antagonised. Recently there have been an increase in the attacks by the right-wing on Christians. Recently slogans supporting Khalistan was raised in Punjab which is seen as sign of agitation among the Sikhs. Divisions are not along the religious lines alone. In Bengal there is an ongoing civil strife between BJP supporters and TMC supporters. Most non Hindi States are up in arms against Centre’s Hindi imposition. Almost all the non bjp governments are in conflict with the centre over a variety of issues. Chief Ministers like Stalin , Pinarayi Vijayan , KCR and Mamta Banerjee have been vociferously protesting against the centre’s actions that are weakening the federal structure of the country. Their complaints about Centre usurping the powers of the States are not without valid reasons. Governors appointed by the BJP are notorious for their overreach. Most non BJP Chief Ministers have a very hostile relationship with their respective Governors. Many State governments have passed laws curtailing their respective Governor’s powers. In short, the relationship of States to the Centre is one of mistrust and antagonism. Ever since the Modi government came to power there has been one agitation after another by different groups. Muslims against CAA , Farmers against Farm laws, Opposition parties against Land Acquisition reforms, Occupy UGC Movement by Students, Kashmiris against abrogation of Article 370 and now the youth against Agneepath Scheme. These are the major protests that brought the country to a standstill during the Modi regime. There were many more smaller protests during the same period. Anger against the government is simmering among all these groups, how and when this anger will boil over is unpredictable. As if all these problems aren’t enough , India has an economy that’s in shambles. Ill-conceived demonetisation, faulty implementation of GST , Covid pandemic, mismanaged lockdown and a number of poor policy decisions have destroyed the economy that was growing quite well before Modi came to power. GDP is down, rupee is sinking, Wholesale Price Index is headed north, unemployment is at an all time high, businesses are down, MSMEs are going bust on an alarming rate and the investor confidence is at an all time low. In short, the economy is in a very bad shape and it’s the ordinary citizens who are bearing the brunt of the situation. This is the precarious situation that the country is in today. In such a situation , can India afford to alienate its largest minority community? If BJP doesn’t make a course correction now , such an eventuality cannot be ruled out. Consequences of such a scenario will be very difficult to predict. Civil war , balkanization of the country, nothing can be ruled out. We can only hope that good sense will prevail : by Shakeel Mohammed is a social activist based in Kochi. He is a Trustee of Manav Migrant Welfare Foundation.

3. Economic boycott; July 5 2022; Abdullah Ahmed Safar Ibil told IQNA in an interview that countries need economic growth, which is very important to governments. Unless India ends discriminating against Muslims and allowing desecration of Islamic sanctities, Muslim countries should impose sanctions on New Delhi, he said. We have seen many videos of how Indian police brutally attack Muslim protesters, which is a sign of oppression of Muslim in the country. In order to confront this, we should take economic moves. Many times such acts of desecration are aimed at seeing how Muslims react. If there is a strong reaction, they won’t get bolder (to do more desecrations). Actually, Muslim countries have important ties with India and some 15 percent of India’s trade is with the Persian Gulf countries. There are also around ten million Indian nationals working in the Persian Gulf littoral states. If Muslim and Arab countries take a strong stance, it would make India reconsider its behavior. When a country oppresses Muslims, like what happened in Myanmar, that country should be boycotted so that it is forced to change its behavior. Economic boycott can be among the most powerful tools to make countries stop their oppression of defenseless Muslims. https://iqna.ir/en/news/3479558/economic-boycott-would-make-india-regret-insulting-islam-kuwaiti-scholar-says

4. Muslims in India; July 9 2022: Violence against Muslims and other non-Hindu groups has become an almost daily occurrence in India. Radical Hindus have harassed, beaten, or killed hundreds of non-Hindus, especially Muslims, with few consequences. They have been shielded by a government that has consistently made life difficult for India's Muslims, which make up around 15 percent of the country's 1.3 billion people.These acts are perpetrated by followers of a Hindu nationalist ideology born in the mid-1900s and heavily influenced by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, claiming everyone who lives in India other than Hindus - especially Muslims and Christians - to be outsiders. Hindu nationalism is the dominant worldview of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and his government has presided over waves of violence against minorities in India since it was elected in 2014. “The sustenance of the Hindu nationalist project rests largely on 'othering' Muslims and other minorities in terms of their origins, dress, food habits, language, [and] patriotism,” said Niranjan Sahoo, a governance and public policy expert at the Observer Research Foundation. Hindu nationalism is not to be confused with the Hindu faith. The former is an ideology, while the latter is a religion with around a billion adherents, and, like most religions, is not inherently political."Hindu nationalism is a majoritarian project which is based on Hindu supremacist ideology," said Niranjan Sahoo. "It attacks the very idea of India which is diverse and multicultural." Its roots lie in India's encounter with colonial rule. Leaning on British conceptions of a single monolithic religion, its early thinkers sought to draw boundaries between Hindus and Muslims and Christians, who are considered outsiders. Many of these thinkers were leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) - a paramilitary volunteer organisation that seeks to forge Hindus into a single political entity and alienate Muslims from power. "Hindu nationalism is a majoritarian project which is based on Hindu supremacist ideology" The RSS is a paramilitary volunteer organisation widely viewed as responsible for the rise of Hindu nationalism in India - it is the power behind Narendra Modi's BJP. Niranjan Sahoo says their ideology is based on the "exclusionary idea of Hindutva or 'Hinduness'; that Hindus have first right over everything on Indian nationhood".Founded in 1925 when India was still under British rule, its early leaders such as KB Hedgewar and VD Savarkar who are nationalist icons today were inspired by Adolf Hitler, and believed minorities in India should be treated as the Jews were in 1940s Germany. Complete with an armed wing, uniforms, and a unique salute, the RSS constantly targets the Congress party, which has ruled India for much of its independent history. It blames the 'Congress leaders' policy of appeasement of Muslims for the "erosion of the nation's integrity in the name of secularism".The organisation's most infamous member was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist who assassinated MK Gandhi the main icon of India's freedom struggle. Several lawmakers from the ruling BJP have been accused of 'worshipping' Godse.“The RSS has been continuously working on remanding India's secular democratic character,” said Ashok Swain, a professor of peace and conflict research at Sweden's Uppsala University. "They have infiltrated all institutions - from the military to the judiciary, to the bureaucracy, to politics." The right-wing nationalist organisation RSS was founded in September 1925. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the ideological parent of the ruling BJP. They depict 'Hinduism' as constantly under threat from the external forces of Islam, Christianity, and 'secularism', and justify violence against these groups as a form of 'self-defence'. They say Muslim 'invaders' destroyed 'thousands' of temples in the past and built Islamic monuments on some of those sites, such as the Taj Mahal or the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya - which was violently destroyed by a Hindu mob led by senior BJP figures in 1992. There is barely any evidence for 80 such destroyed temples. "Modi has been accused of subverting all of the country's institutions by placing RSS members in prominent positions" History Any structure built by Muslim rulers during India's 800 years of Muslim rule is now suspect. Symbols People with Muslim names, beards, skullcaps, and face coverings have become targets for violence. In 2020, a man name Akhlaq had his arm chopped off for sporting a '786' tattoo, a sacred number for Muslims.Food - People accused of eating beef, or even transporting cows a sacred animal in Hinduism have repeatedly been assaulted by Hindu extremists. According to a Reuters report, 24 Muslims were killed in 63 attacks by 'cow vigilantes' between 2010 and 2017, nearly all of which took place after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.Institutions - Modi has been accused of subverting all of the country's institutions by placing RSS members in prominent positions. Media - Many news agencies, especially Hindi outlets, appear to have become mouthpieces for Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda. Reporters like Suresh Chavhanke and Sudhir Chaudhary who repeatedly peddle misinformation and hatred are becoming increasingly popular. Those journalists who challenge the government's narrative have been viciously attacked, and sometimes killed. Hindutva pop: The rise of India’s hate music scene Over the past months, right-wing groups have attempted to stop Muslim prayers at historic mosques such as the Gyanvapi masjid in Varanasi, PM Modi's constituency claiming Hindu relics that were captured by Muslim rulers are hidden there. In May, right-wing groups set fire to a mosque in Madhya Pradesh, and conducted an arms training workshop at an educational institute in Karnataka, home to India's 'Silicon Valley'. Last December, Al Jazeera reported 42 instances of attacks against Christians in the state of Karnataka in 2021. In February 2020, violent Hindu mobs rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods in Delhi after being encouraged by a BJP lawmaker. 53 people 38 Muslim victims and 15 Hindus were killed. Over the last few years, Hindu activists, including some regional governments, spreading the dangerous love-jihad conspiracy theory have attacked Muslim men, falsely claiming that Muslims attempt to marry Hindu women in order to convert them to Islam. "The RSS is a paramilitary volunteer organisation widely viewed as responsible for the rise of Hindu nationalism in India - it is the power behind Narendra Modi's BJP" In April this year, lawmakers in several states called for the banning the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer.The same month, authorities in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and New Delhi bulldozed Muslim homes and properties hours after they were targeted by sword-wielding mobs. Earlier this year, the Karnataka government banned women and girls from wearing the hijab to school. In August 2019, Narendra Modi's government revoked the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir – India's only Muslim majority state. Later that year, the government pushed through the Citizenship Amendment Bill which specifically prevents Muslim refugees from obtaining Indian citizenship, fuelling fears that Muslims who fled Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar to India would be placed in detention camps or asked to leave. This led to widespread protests across the country. In January, Gregory Stanton the founder of Genocide Watch warned that India was on the brink of an anti-Muslim genocide. https://english.alaraby.co.uk/analysis/explainer-dangers-indias-hindu-nationalism

5. Bulldozer tactics; July. 22, 2022: A recent full front page of the advertisement by a Bhartiya Janata Party government declares, ‘House is not just a word. It is a place where power to dream comes and aspirations are fulfilled. Home is much about dignity and security than it is about shelter.’ It further goes on to quote Narendra Modi, ‘It is my dream that every Indian has a pucca house by 2022.’ The occasion was dedication of houses built by a private builder Balaji to the poor. Having witnessed over the past few days the now iconic picture of a bulldozer running down the Prayagraj house of parents of female Muslim student and activist Afreen Fatima, who participated in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens protests, one is almost tempted to look for a fine print at the bottom of the page to the effect that the promise of house is subject to the condition that one doesn’t participate in any anti-government protest otherwise there is a danger of bulldozers coming over. A house built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana by Hasina Fakhroo was demolished by administration following clashes during a Ram Navami procession in Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh in April earlier this year. Riot police and paramilitary forces are deployed by all governments to control mob violence. These forces use all kinds of weapons and deterrents to enforce law and order. The hauling up and arrest of culprits inciting violence or leading mobs to challenge the authority of the state is a follow up action which ends in trials and sentencing of the guilty. The state of Uttar Pradesh has found a new weapon to deal with the violators who pose a challenge to the authority of the state namely, the Bulldozer! Yogi Adityanath alone knows from whose book of criminal jurisprudence this leaf has been taken out. At least it is difficult to find an example anywhere in the world barring the sole exception of Israel where the government is in constant conflict with the Palestinian population. The Palestinian land is forcibly taken over to build Jewish settlements and Palestinians are subjected to brutal repression when they resist. The law in India is not based on the whims and impulses of any leader. It is a strictly codified framework with inflexible procedures and defined limits to its application. Rule of law is not the writ or diktat of a ruler but it is based on the Constitution and the laws that are framed by the legislature are within the structure of the Constitution. Even the most archaic laws like the Sharia have definite punishment for every particular crime. Chopping of hands and beheading may appear to be repulsive and uncivilised to us but they are based on some penal code. Even the Taliban Government would not go beyond the scope of Sharia to punish the guilty by boiling them in water or chopping them piece by piece or sawing them vertically! Here in India, in full view of the whole nation including the Supreme Court and High Courts, a Chief Minister is setting an example of how to be a law unto himself! We are shocked by the absence of any reaction to this outrageous and audacious act by the media, intellectuals and activists who are perhaps keeping quiet out of fear of the same bulldozers knocking on their doors. It is further appalling that the spineless judges, who sit on the benches of constitutional courts flaunting their unlimited powers and authority in front of a common citizen litigant, lose their hammer and tongue at a ghastly manifestation of mockery of justice in full public view. Where is the civil society in this country? Is there any? Is there any civilised society at all? What kind of people can watch this naked dance of sham democracy which is more of an oppressive dictatorship rather than anything else? India is not Israel and Muslims living here are not Palestinians (though there is no justification even for the Israeli government’s inhuman actions). Muslims are our own countrymen living under the same Constitution which treats every person (not merely citizens) equal before law. If a Muslim has built a house illegally it does not mean that it can be demolished without due legal process while the Hindus constructing multi-storied buildings and colonies, in violation of the law, will enjoy immunity. It is not that bulldozers were not used earlier to demolish houses or kiosks of street vendors. In fact, quite frequently administrations of governments all over the country have demolished settlements of poor, mostly migrants from rural areas or other states, who come to cities in search of livelihood and set up their jhuggis or kiosks on some government land. Recently hundreds of families have been uprooted in Ahmedabad city who were living for more than a couple of decades next to Railway tracks. In these instances as well the Constitution and Court directives are violated but the governments justify it on some grounds. What is new is selective political targeting now, especially by the BJP governments. The government of Uttar Pradesh is writing a novel book on crime and punishment. But even this book will not be the final code because once we go on this path of degeneration. Every other ruler who comes to rule will enjoy the privilege of acting upon his own whims and fancies. Yogi Adityanath should just remember the day when he had wept in the Parliament feeling his life under threat merely because the then district administration of Gorakhpur had arrested him for a brief period. He is doing worse things to people. The U.P. Government has promulgated a law ‘Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damages to Public and Private Property Act, 2020’ which aims to recover the damages to any property during any agitation from the accused persons. A Claims Tribunal will determine the recovery amount and its decision cannot be challenged in any court. Moreover, the burden of proof lies on the accused to prove himself/herself innocent. This is another example of high handed manner in which the Yogi government has been treating dissenters. A question that we would like to pose is if demolishing anybody’s house is proved to be illegal by a court later, shouldn’t the officials who ordered the demolition in first place not be subjected to a law similar to the abovementioned one. If citizens can be held accountable for damage to property, why should not the officials be? By Naveen Tewari (entrepreneur-activist) and Sandeep Pandey ( General Secretary of Socialist Party India), e-mail: nct.lko@gmail.com, ashaashram@yahoo.com

6. FDI India; July 22 2022;The RBI remittances survey 2020-21 has revealed that the remittances from the Gulf countries to India have sharply declined. The cumulative inward remittances to India have plumed from 50 percent in 2016-17 to 30 percent in 2020-21. According to the RBI remittances survey 2020-21, the remittances to southern states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka have almost halved in 2020-21 when compared to what these states used to receive in 2016-17. India mostly receives remittances from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, etc. The UAE, which was the top source of remittances for Indians, is now in the second spot with the US taking the lead. It is being inferred that the job avenues for Indians are drying up in the gulf region. The southern states that have strong dominance in gulf countries and use to receive a significant share of the total remittances received by the entire country are most affected by the loss of jobs in the Gulf region.Kerala which used to be the top recipient of remittances from the Gulf region no longer holds the number one position. Currently, Maharashtra is on the top of the list of states that receive remittances. It is followed by Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, and Bihar. One of the reasons for the decline of remittances from the Gulf countries to the Southern states could be the migration of semi-skilled workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, and West Bengal. They are being hired in the Gulf countries on much lesser salaries than the people from the Southern states. The US, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia have emerged as important sources of remittances for India. Among them the US tops the list whereas; the UAE is in the second spot. The cumulative remittances account for 36 percent of total India’s remittances. However, in overall terms, Indian remittances have gone down from 50 percent to 36 percent. The decline is due to the drying up of job opportunities for the Indians in the Gulf region. There are various reasons given for the loss of job opportunities for the Indians in the Gulf region. One of them that is prominently doing rounds is speculated to be the domestic policy of the BJP government which is loaded against the Muslim minority community of India. Soon after the breakout of the Pandemics in 2020, an Indian Muslim religious group Tablighi Jammat was hounded by the government and the people for spreading coronavirus in the country. This had led many countries in the Gulf region to raise their voice of concern against the persecution of Muslims going on in India. Many private organizations in the Gulf region had sent back Indians who were active on social media spreading hatred against Muslims while eking out their living from Muslim organizations in the Gulf region. Nupur Sharma’s intemperate remarks have further added salt to the injuries to the Muslims globally, and also to the countries in the Gulf region. The persistent support for her by many in India in the name of freedom of expression while putting in jail many human rights activists exposes the forces at work in India against the Muslim community. This is widely believed to be the reason why employers in the Gulf countries are reducing the size of employees from India. And this is reflected in the sharp decline in the remittances coming to India. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/07/21/inward-remittances-to-india-from-gulf-countries-on-a-sharp-decline.html

7. RSS's International Wing Protested at City of Manteca City in Central California will reconsider HSS proclamation; Pieter Friedrich; July 23 2022: Over 50 locals attended the 19 July 2022 city council meeting of Manteca, CA, USA to protest a city proclamation passed in January which commended the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international wing of India’s fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary. During the meeting’s public comment period, Fateh Singh asked, “When the City of Manteca chose to platform and praise the HSS in January, did you know that the HSS is the international wing of the RSS, a quite literally Nazi-inspired paramilitary in India?” Safiullah, speaking as a representative of the Islamic Center of Manteca, reiterated the HSS-RSS link and pointed out that the HSS “doesn’t like to advertise it to city officials when seeking a pat on the back from you.” In total, six speakers rose in opposition to the commendation of HSS while dozens of supporters packed the council chambers, raising placards reading: “Resist the HSS-RSS.”“Most of the city council probably doesn’t know that the HSS is the international wing of the RSS, although a few seconds of basic research would quickly not only reveal that but also reveal that the RSS is a violent, xenophobic outfit with a long track record of extreme anti-minority violence,” I said. “It’s disappointing that the city didn’t bother doing its due diligence to investigate the HSS before applauding it.” Noting that the RSS has “systematically slaughtered Indian Christians and Muslims on many occasions” and “furthermore wants to wipe out Sikhs, Buddhists, and, indeed, all religious minorities in India,” I explained that the HSS “serves as a propaganda mouthpiece for the RSS, promoting its agenda internationally.” “The HSS is a partisan Indian political outfit,” Brian Wright told the council. “It is the international wing of the RSS, which is the world’s oldest, largest, and fastest-growing fascist movement. The HSS-RSS have no place in this world, let alone on our free American soil. You should be ashamed of supporting the HSS when the RSS is on the verge of committing genocide in India.” Two other speakers joined the chorus against HSS-RSS, including a young Sikh woman, who asked, “The question is: what will you guys do about this whole situation?” Afterwards, the various speakers and supporters rallied outside the city hall to chant: “RSS Out Of America. RSS Out Of India.” Discussing the issue at the end of their meeting, the city council conceded that they may have made a mistake and needed to establish a better protocol for vetting the groups to which they provide proclamations. “We got a little mud on our face on this one,” commented Vice-Mayor Charlie Halford. “Appropriately so, honestly. I mean, we kind of proclaimed and awarded a group we probably didn’t want to. Without a doubt, we shouldn’t have done it.” Adding that it took him about “two-tenths of a second” to look up the RSS online, he concluded, “We probably ought to take a look at how we determine who gets the proclamation.” Councillor Gary Singh, meanwhile, remarked, “If we have council consensus, I’d love to see if we can maybe rescind or recede that proclamation, or whatever we did, just looking at it in light of all the information that was given tonight.”The council ultimately agreed to formally reconsider the proclamation.

8. Youth killed: July, 24, 2022: A 19-year-old Muslim man succumbed to his injuries in Karnataka’s Mangaluru on Thursday, July 21, two days after he was allegedly assaulted by members of a rightwing Hindutva outfit. Masud, a painter by profession, and originally from Kerala had been staying at his grandmother’s house in Kelanje village of Karnataka for the last month. He has four siblings in Kerala. His father is no more. All eight attackers were indeed members of the rightwing outfit. The two organisations, VHP and Bajrang Dal, are understood to function as a single composite unit in the area. A week before Eid, Masud had purchased a three-month-old calf, said 24-year-old Shanif, Masud’s friend since childhood. Upon having been tipped off, police visited their house to inquire into whether Masud intended to slaughter it. Masud, in fact, wanted to rear the cow, says his friend. On July 19, Sudhir and Masud had a heated argument, in the course of which they both physically assaulted each other. Hours later, Sudhir lured Masud to a secluded spot in the village and severely beat him up along with seven others “I convinced Masud’s mother that we will resolve this once and for all and brought Masud to the spot where they were waiting for us. When we reached the place, the group attacked us ruthlessly with stones and bottles. I tried to protect Masud but I was also hit and injured,” says Shanif Shanif and his friends started looking for Masud but were unable to find him for more than two hours. They found him lying down near a well, unconscious. It was around 2 pm then. They took him to a local hospital, which declared him serious and he was shifted to Mangaluru, around 50 kilometres away, for better https://thewire.in/communalism/karnataka-vhp-bajrang-dal-muslim-injuries

9. US on Human Rights in India; July 25 2022; US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of the Asian nation’s rights record. “We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights) and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials,” Blinken said on Monday in a joint press briefing with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh. Blinken’s remarks came days after US Representative Ilhan Omar questioned the alleged reluctance of the US government to criticize Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on human rights.“What does Modi need to do to India’s Muslim population before we will stop considering them a partner in peace?” Omar, who belongs to President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party, said last week https://www.arabnews.com/node/2061416/world

10. Lynching; July 25 2022; A district-level Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and three associates have been arrested after they beat a Muslim cab driver, Aqueel Ahmad, to death on a crowded fairground in Lakhimpur Kheri but the police have invoked charges of causing death by negligence rather than murder. Relatives and neighbours of Aqueel, 28, staged a dharna, castigating the police for invoking lesser charges carrying a maximum punishment of two years and questioning the force’s account of a brawl resulting in death. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/07/24/bjp-leader-arrested-after-cab-driver-lynching-in-lakhimpur-kheri.html

11. Israel is an Apartheid State bySyed Ehtisham; July 31 2022; Over the last three years, IPSN has consistently been involved in creating awareness about the conditions of the Palestinian people and drawing people together in acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people. IPSN has also advocated with the Government of India against its close military ties with Israel arguing that by purchasing military hardware from Israel, it supports a brutal military-industrial-complex in Israel which enables it to oppress and subjugate the Palestinian people. A recent investigative report by The New York Times revealed that NSO Groups’ Pegasus was part of a $2 billion defence deal signed by the Prime Minister during his 2017 official visit to Israel. Israeli spyware technology is developed by being systematically used against Palestinians. Spyware trade is per se designed for repression, and Israel is at the centre of it because its colonial and apartheid regime deploys it against a subjugated people. In defence of the civil rights of Indian human rights activists, and in solidarity with the resisting Palestinian people, we demand that our public resources are not spent on surveillance technology bought from an apartheid regime. IPSN notes that the Israeli government has adopted and practices a policy of separation the over the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. IPSN follows the call of the UN independent human rights expert who has noted that “apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory”. IPSN agrees with the contention of other human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and others who have analyzed the 55-year occupation of the Palestinian Territory. In different ways they have each underlined how, in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, there exists a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system, that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This was the assertion of the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory. His report points to the absence of the “rights of people living in the same vicinity, but separated by walls, checkpoints and roads”. Moreover, the Special Rapporteur has observed that “there are more than three million Palestinians living under an oppressive rule of institutional discrimination and without a path to a genuine Palestinian state that the world has long promised, which is their right”. This is also true of Gaza where two million Palestinians live in Gaza, described in what is referred to as an ‘open-air prison’, without adequate access to power, water or health, with a collapsing economy and with no ability to freely travel to the rest of Palestine or the outside world. We affirm the internationally-understood legal definition of apartheid – a system of institutionalized racial segregation. Israel falls within the scope of this definition as a “political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another, within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s racial-national-ethnic identity”. This is nothing short of a Crime against Humanity. The 1998 Rome Statute of the Icc is a forward-looking legal instrument which prohibits apartheid as a crime against humanity today and into the future, wherever it may exist. In opposition to this definition Israel seeks to demographically foist a permanent, and illegal, Israeli sovereign claim over occupied territory, while confining Palestinians in smaller and more confined reserves of disconnected land, just as there were the Bantustans in South Africa under the apartheid regime there. IPSN regards the multiple barbaric acts, arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, torture, the denial of fundamental rights, an abysmal child mortality rate, collective punishment, an abusive military court system, and home demolitions as signs of a cruel regime which holds human rights in disregard. Israel’s annexation of occupied territory is unlawful, its construction of hundreds of Jewish settlements is illegal, and its denial of Palestinian self-determination breaches international law. Sadly, the international community has failed in its duty to create a united rejection of Israel’s apartheid. IPSN commits itself to joining hands with other networks in India to oppose Israel’s apartheid policies and practices through several measures: Join the BDS-India Movement, INCACBI which is also a Platform for Indian solidarity with the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to be actively engaged in fighting against economic-academic-cultural collaboration with Israel.; Bring Israeli apartheid to the notice of the Indian Human Rights community by engaging in comparative studies of discriminatory laws and practices in Israel which the Indian Government has duplicated. (The practices of the Indian government against Muslim and Christian minorities are virtually a copy-cat version of the way Israel discriminates and brutalizes Palestinians); Campaign against Indian collaboration with Israel’s military-industrial complex, noting especially that Israel is influencing the Indian government in its subjugation of the Kashmiri people by applying near-identical policies as Israel does on the Palestinian people. ;IPSN will continue its work with inter-faith platforms including Muslim collectives, Dalit and Adivasi groups and the Hindus for Human Rights through which it is able to highlight the Question of Palestine.; To seek a working dialogue with the NCCI and Catholic institutions for a Christian response against apartheid in Israel.

12. Bail rejected: July 3, 2022: A sessions court in Ahmedabad on Saturday denied bail to activist Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat police officer R.B. Sreekumar, who were arrested by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for allegedly fabricating documents to frame innocent people in the 2002 Gujarat riots cases. Additional principal judge D.D. Thakkar said that both the orders are rejected. “On perusing statement of witnesses, it appears that both these applicants and others were actively involved in the conspiracy against against the then C.M. and Ministers, police officers as well as Bureaucrat etc (sic),” the court order read. https://thewire.in/government/teesta-setalvad-rb-sreekumar-bail-applications-rejected-gujarat-riots-conspiracy-case

Monthly update 34; Jone 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. US Report; Jun 4, 2022: Some officials in India are ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship in the country, a United States official said late on Thursday after the release of a report on religious freedom globally in 2021. The report said attacks on members of religious minority communities, including killings, assaults, and intimidation, had occurred throughout last year in India. These included cow vigilantism assaults on non-Hindus for allegedly slaughtering cows or trading in beef. Many states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party have enacted laws or toughened old ones against slaughtering cows. “For example, in India, the world's largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, we've seen rising attacks on people and places of worship,” Blinken said. Rashad Hussain, who leads the US State Department's efforts to monitor religious freedom around the world, said some Indian officials were “ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship”. India's foreign ministry said the country values religious freedom and human rights, and that it had noted the “ill-informed comments by senior US officials”.“It is unfortunate that vote bank politics is being practiced in international relations,” ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a statement. He also said Indian officials have regularly highlighted “racially and ethnically motivated attacks, hate crimes and gun violence” in the United States. Disputes between religious communities in India over places of worship have flared ever since the country won independence from British rule in 1947, but they have become more common in recent years. Muslims make up around 13pc of India's population. https://www.dawn.com/news/1692927/us-says-some-indian-officials-ignoring-or-supporting-attacks-on-minorities

2. Boycott Indian goods: Jun 5, 2022: after hash tags calling for the boycott of Indian products began trending on Twitter in Arab countries over alleged inflammatory remarks against Prophet Mohammed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar Jindal, the party cracked a whip against them. The Grand Mufti of Oman along with Twitter handles with a large following have called for the boycott. The tweets also included a scathing attack against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Grand Mufti of Oman Sheikh Al-Khalili tweeted. Sharma’s and Jindal’s remarks have drawn protests from Muslim groups. .” Soon after she was served with the suspension notice, Sharma took to Twitter and said it was never her intention to hurt anyone’s religious feelings. She said her remarks made on TV were only in response to “continuous insult and disrespect to our Mahadev” and that it was “mockingly being said it is not Shivling but a fountain.” The Shivling referred to the ongoing controversy concerning the Gyanvapi mosque places of worship” in India. However, the Indian embassy in Oman did re-post tweets of the BJP’s statement through its official Twitter account. While the Indian embassies highlighted the Indian PM’s tweet, it was not enough to stop the social media momentum with a number of prominent Arab social media personalities focussing on the remarks by several BJP members, actions by authorities which had an alleged anti-Muslim bias, as well as, social media posts of Gulf-based Indians. There were also calls for the boycott of Indian businesses in the Gulf. https://thewire.in/communalism/after-boycott-india-tweets-in-arab-world-bjp-clarifies-on-insulting-remarks-against-islam

3. Boycott Indian Goods: June, 6, 2022: An international diplomatic storm has engulfed India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, following the sanctioning of two party spokespersons over insulting remarks the pair are reported to have made towards Prophet Muhammad. BJP national spokeswoman Nupur Sharma was suspended from the party’s primary membership on Sunday for comments made in a recent television debate, while the BJP’s Delhi media operation head Naveen Kumar Jindal was also expelled, according to BJP documents and media reports. Sharma is reported to have insulted the prophet and his wife Aisha in a TV debate last week. Following an outcry over the comments made during the debate, Sharma’s colleague Jindal is reported to have posted a now-deleted tweet about the prophet that also angered many. The remarks have been blamed for clashes in an Indian state and have also prompted demands for the spokeswoman’s arrest in India. India’s ambassadors to Kuwait and Qatar were summoned on Sunday to receive official notes of protest over the comments, and Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs issued a statement condemning the “highly derogatory remarks” and the BJP’s response. “These totally unacceptable remarks have not only deeply hurt the sentiments of the people of Pakistan but of billions of Muslims around the world,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “BJP’s attempted clarification and belated and perfunctory disciplinary action against these individuals cannot assuage the pain and anguish they have caused to the Muslim world,” the ministry said. Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Indian ambassador to present an official note “expressing the disappointment of the State of Qatar and its total rejection and condemnation to the controversial remarks”, the QNA state news agency reported. While welcoming the BJP statement and suspension of staff, Qatar is expecting a public apology and condemnation of the remarks by the government of India. “The State of Qatar calls on the Indian government to immediately condemn these remarks and publicly apologise to all Muslims around the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Mohammed Al Ansari said. Kuwait also summoned the Indian ambassador and said it had handed the ambassador a protest note in which Kuwait rejected and denounced the statements made by the BJP official, Reuters reported. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation– the second-largest intergovernmental organisation in the world after the United Nations, with a collective population reaching over 1.8 billion also added its voice to the condemnation.“The General Secretariat of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the recent insults issued by an official in the ruling party in India towards the Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him,” the 57-member state organisation said in a statement. Saudi Arabia condemned the remarks, describing the spokesperson’s comments as “insulting” and calling for “respect for beliefs and religions”, according to a foreign ministry statement .The controversy has raised the ire of social media users in Arab countries who have called for a boycott of Indian products, denounced the escalation of hatred against Islam and Muslims, and accused India of following in the footsteps of France and China in promoting Islamophobia. In its statement, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said it was “also deeply concerned at the alarming rise in communal violence and hatred directed against the Muslims in India”. Qatar’s Assistant Foreign Minister Lolwah al-Khater also said that “Islamophobic discourse” has reached “dangerous levels” in India – a country well known for its “diversity and coexistence”. Hate speech against Muslims in India needs to be officially confronted, al-Khater said. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/5/bjp-suspends-spokespersons-who-insulted-prophet-muhammad

4. Muslim States react: Jun 7, 2022: The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan and Maldives became the latest Muslim countries to condemn the derogatory remarks made against Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) by leaders of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In a statement issued on Monday, the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation condemned the remarks and affirmed its firm rejection of "all practices and behaviors that contradict moral and human values and principles". It underscored the need to respect religious symbols and not violate them, as well as confront hate speech and violence. "The ministry also noted the importance of strengthening the shared international responsibility to spread the values of tolerance and human coexistence while preventing any practices that would inflame the sentiment of followers of different religions," the statement said. Jordan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also issued a similar condemnation on Twitter. Meanwhile, a statement by the government of Maldives said it unreservedly condemned "all and any action that purports to pervert the true nature and teachings of Islam and attempts to demean" Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). It went on to say that it was "deeply concerned" by the derogatory remarks by some BJP officials but also welcomed the Indian government's response. Muslim countries are unanimous in condemning remarks. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Iran and Pakistan had issued similar condemnations earlier. Qatar, Kuwait and Iran had summoned India's envoy to register their protest on Sunday, while Pakistan issued a strong demarche to the Indian charge d'affaires on Monday. Qatar has also sought a public apology from India for allowing such "Islamophobic" views without retribution. The grand mufti of Oman, Sheikh Ahmad bin Hamad Al-Khalil, had tweeted that the "obscene" comments of the spokesperson of India's ruling party amounted to a "war against every Muslim". https://www.dawn.com/news/1693454/more-muslim-countries-take-exception-to-bjp-leaders-derogatory-remarks-about-holy-prophet

5. Arab reaction: Jun , 7, 2022: Superstores in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain remove Indian products after insulting remarks against Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), reports said. "Superstores in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain remove Indian products after insulting remarks against Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) by Indian PM Modi's close aide", South Asia Index tweeted a little while ago. reports coming from few Middle Eastern countries also said some Arab employers have asked Indian workers to leave their job.“Arabs have started removing Indian (Hindu) workers after the insult to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) by BJP leaders in India”, South Asian Journal wrote in a tweet. Along with its tweet, the Journal also tagged a Twitter post by an Arab citizen that said: “An Indian (carpenter), whose religion is Modi’s, is working under my sponsorship. He is on vacation. I told him that I do not want him to return because of the abuse of our Messenger (may peace be upon him) (sic). The Journal also shared a video that showed storekeepers covering the Indian products kept on racks. In a related development, Qatar summoned the Indian ambassador and handed over a protest note against insulting remarks by the BJP leaders."The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned, today, H.E. Dr. Deepak Mittal, the Ambassador of the Republic of India to the country, and handed him an official note, expressing the disappointment of the State of Qatar and its total rejection and condemnation to the controversial remarks made by an official in the ruling party in India against Prophet Mohammed (may blessings and peace be upon him", Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Hash tags calling boycott of Indian products and denouncing BJP and PM Modi are among the top trends in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and other Arab states since Saturday. According to a recent data, about 3.5 million in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 1.54 million Indians live in Saudi Arabia and close to 1 million in Kuwait for jobs in different capacities. These expatriates could be in trouble if the widespread hate against Muslims and Islam that has become rampant in India under PM Modi is not checked immediately, analysts warn. https://ummid.com/news/2022/june/05.06.2022/superstores-in-arab-states-remove-indian-products-sack-hindu-workers.html

6. Muslim protest continue: Jun 11, 2022:Muslims took to the streets in huge protests around Asia after Friday prayers, sparked by remarks about the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by an Indian ruling party official that embroiled the country in a diplomatic storm. Anger has engulfed the Islamic world since last week, when a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party made a disrespectful comment on the Holy Prophet on a TV debate show. Around 20 countries have since called in their Indian ambassadors and the party has gone into damage control, suspending the official from its ranks and insisting it respected all religions. Friday saw the biggest street rallies yet in response to the furore, with police estimating more than 100,000 people mobilised across Bangladesh after midday prayers. “We gather here today to protest the insult of our Prophet by Indian government officials,” said Amanullah Aman, a protester in the capital Dhaka. “We want death penalties for them. Crowds in the city chanted slogans denouncing Modi and warning enemies of the Muslim faith to “be careful”. In Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) held a march in its stronghold of Lahore after Friday prayers. Around 5,000 supporters of the TLP a previously banned group gathered to protest in the city centre calling on the government to take stronger action against India over the comments. Members of India's 200 million-strong Muslim minority community staged demonstrations in several cities, with a large crowd gathered on the steps of the 17th-century Jama Masjid mosque in New Delhi. Elsewhere in the capital, social media footage showed students of the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia university burning an effigy of Nupur Sharma the Bharatiya Janata Party spokeswoman whose comments set off the furore. Authorities in Indian-occupied Kashmir cut the restive territory's internet connections, restricted prayer congregations at mosques and imposed a curfew on Friday. A spontaneous shutdown saw businesses close across Srinagar, the region's major city, with protesters calling for retribution against “disrespect” to the Prophet. In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, about 50 protesters staged a rally in front of the Indian embassy in Jakarta. “The Indian government must apologise to Muslims and they must take strict action against the politicians who made the remarks,” protest coordinator Ali Hasan told AFP. https://www.dawn.com/news/1694102/huge-protests-in-asia-over-indian-politicians-remarks-against-holy-prophet

7. House demolished; Jun , 13, 2022: Civic authorities in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj started demolishing the house of Welfare Party of India activist Javed Mohammed on Sunday afternoon, claiming that it was an illegal construction . Earlier on Sunday, the Prayagraj Development Authority had asked Mohammed’s family to vacate the house by 11 am. The authority claimed that it had given a show cause notice to Mohammed, on May 10, asking him to appear for a hearing before it on May 24. However, he did not comply. Somaiya Fatima, the younger daughter of Mohammad, told Scroll.in that the family had not been served any notice about the alleged illegality of their house. Mohammad’s lawyer also questioned the legality of the demolition claiming that it belonged to his wife, but the order did not mention her name. On Saturday, the police had arrested Mohammad for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to carry out violent protests against the disparaging remarks made by two Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons about Prophet Muhammad. Somaiya Fatima told Scroll.in that she and her mother had also been detained late on Saturday. They were released on Sunday morning. While there are no provisions under Indian law to demolish the home of anyone accused of a crime, this pattern has been regularly observed across Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states. ‘No notice was served earlier’. Somaiya Fatima told Scroll.in that the authorities had not issued any notice earlier about the house being illegal. “This is the first notice that we got last night (Saturday),” she said. “No one has even spoken to us about this before a day ago. If our property was truly illegal, then why did they not come and give us these notices early. This is an incredibly hard time for us.” Somaiya Fatima said that she and her mother, 50-year-old Parveen Fatima, were detained by the Prayagraj Police around 12.30 am on Sunday and taken to the city’s Civil Lines female police station. “They only told us that they wanted to speak to us about something and then they will let us go,” “They started with asking us strange questions like what are the kind of conversations we have at home and what are the kind of posts we share. They were trying to get something controversial out of us, but none of that is even true. We only speak the truth.” Somaiya Fatima said that while women police officers tried to get them to talk, a male officer abused her mother and said that force should be used to make them “spill the truth”. The police also asked Somaiya and Parveen Fatima to call home and ask the family members to vacate the house. After their released around 8 am on Sunday, Somaiya and Parveen Fatima were taken to their relatives’ homes instead of their own home. “They [The police] videographed us, our relatives, their home and asked us to not leave this place,” Somaiya Fatima said. She added that the family still does not know about the whereabouts of her father. Kamal Krishna Roy Roy, a lawyer of the Mohammad family, told Scroll.in that a petition has been filed in the Allahabad High Court challenging the demolition. In a letter to the chief justice, Roy and other lawyers have argued that the house was registered under the name of Parveen Fatima, the wife of Javed Mohammed. Documents from the Prayagraj civic authorities showed Fatima’s name on them. “The house was a gift from her [Fatima] father,”“Under Muslim Personal Law when a woman gets a property.It does not automatically belong to her husband. “The notice that the government has issued is against Javed Mohammad, but the property does not belong to him.” “Any attempt by the District and Police Administration and the Development Authority to demolish that house will be against the basic principle of law and a grave injustice to the wife and children of Javed Mohammad,” the letter to the chief justice stated. The letter added that the Mohammad family had received no show cause notice as has been mentioned in the demolition orders. Mohammad was arrested on Saturday. The Uttar Pradesh Police arrested Mohammed on Saturday after some protestors in Prayagraj’s Atala area threw stones at the police after Friday prayers.

8. Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar alleged that Mohammed had also consulted his daughter, student activist Afreen Fatima, about the protests. Fatima said in a video that the police came to her house without a warrant and took her father into custody. She also said that the police detained her mother and sister and that she does not know their whereabouts. “My younger sister is just 19 years old and my mother is a diabetic patient,” she added. Fatima also claimed that the police attempted to detain her and her sister-in-law. State BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh supported the calls for demolition of the homes of persons accused of violence. “Those whose homes are in the shadow of bulldozers do not throw stones at others,” he said on Twitter. On Saturday, the Kanpur Development Authority demolished a four-storey high-rise building owned by a close aide of the main accused in the violence that broke out in the city last week. On June 3, at least 40 persons were injured in Kanpur after violence had erupted over the BJP spokerspersons’ comments on the Prophet Muhammed. https://www.dawn.com/news/1694439/indian-muslim-activists-house-razed-after-police-arrest-him-for-protests-over-prophet-remarks

9. Vicious crackdown; Jun, 16, 2022: A top human rights group says India must immediately end a “vicious” crackdown on Muslims who took to the streets to protest against the ruling party official’s remarks about Prophet Muhammad and his wife Aisha. Authorities were “selectively and viciously cracking down on Muslims who dare to speak up … against the discrimination faced by them,” Amnesty International’s Aakar Patel said in a statement on Tuesday. “Cracking down on protesters with excessive use of force, arbitrary detention and punitive house demolitions is in complete violation of India’s commitments under international human rights law.” Thousands of Muslims have taken to the streets across India to protest against anti-Islamic comments made by two members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Two Muslim teenagers were killed and hundreds of others arrested last week in nationwide protests over the comments, which embroiled India in a diplomatic furor and caused widespread outrage in the Muslim world. Amnesty demanded an “immediate and unconditional release” of the jailed protesters. Also on Tuesday, in a letter to the chief justice of India’s Supreme Court, six prominent former judges and six senior lawyers said the government in Uttar Pradesh state had acted illegally by demolishing the house of a Muslim activist following the protests. State chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed BJP hardliner, ordered the weekend demolition of any illegal buildings of people accused of involvement in violence last week, including the home of activist Mohammad Javed on Sunday. Adityanath, one of India’s most prominent Hindu nationalist politicians, is known for his sectarian rhetoric against India’s 200-million strong Muslim minority. He has repeatedly called on authorities to demolish the homes of people accused of crimes, an exhortation critics say violates constitutional and human rights laws that ban collective punishment. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/15/muslims-in-india-continue-protests-over-prophet-remarks

10. Ilhan Omar ; June, 23, 2022: Last week, the US State Department spokesperson Ned Price had said Washington had condemned the remarks when asked a question on “hate crimes’’ India. On June 2, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussein had commented on the state of religious freedom in India. In late April, a report by the USCIRF had recommended that India be blacklisted on human rights concerns. Moved by Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar , the US Congress resolution says “Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, Adivasis, and other religious and cultural minorities’’ are being targeted in India. Its co-sponsors are Rashida Tlaib, James McGovern and Juan Vargas. Omar and Tlaib are among the three Muslims in the US Congress. McGovern is the Co-Chair of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission which will hold the hearing on global islamophobia on June 30. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/ilhan-omar-moves-us-congress-resolution-condemning-human-rights-in-india-406051

11. Activist arrested; June 26 2022: Less than a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition appealing a lower court’s refusal to file a case against Narendra Modi for his role in Gujarat’s anti-Muslim violence of 2002, the state’s police have arrested one of the petitioners activist Teesta Setalvad for what they claimed was a conspiracy to send innocent persons to jail Sreekumar has also been arrested, according to reports. The former police officer was arrested from his residence in Gandhinagar on Saturday afternoon and taken to the crime branch’s headquarters. The three are accused of conspiring to mislead the Special Investigation Team tasked with probing the Gujarat riots and the role, if any, Modi played as chief minister in the unfolding of violence which took the lives of more than 1,200 people, most of them Muslim. The SIT was set up by the Supreme Court following complaints that the Gujarat Police under Modi was not serious about investigating the anti-Muslim violence. The court itself, in 2004, had referred to Modi as “a modern day Nero” who was “looking elsewhere when innocent children and women were burning, and probably deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be protected.” But in 2012, the SIT concluded no case was made out against Modi and its findings were accepted by the trial court and upheld by the Gujarat high court in 2017. It was this matter which was then brought before the Supreme Court in 2018. Significantly, the police’s FIR cites a portion of the Supreme Court’s judgment dismissing Zakia Jafri’s plea challenging the SIT’s rejection of a larger conspiracy behind the mass violence. The top court had observed: “At the end of the day, it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledge … Intriguingly, the present proceedings have been pursued for last 16 years (from submission of complaint dated 8.6.2006 running into 67 pages and then by filing protest petition dated 15.4.2013 running into 514 pages) including with the audacity to question the integrity of every functionary involved in the process of exposing the devious stratagem adopted (to borrow the submission of learned counsel for the SIT), to keep the pot boiling, obviously, for ulterior design. As a matter of fact, all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law.” This observation, a former judge of the Supreme Court told The Wire on condition of anonymity, is “shocking” and legally unprecedented. “At the very least”, he said, “Setalvad should have been served notice about the court coming to this conclusion and she should have been given a chance to respond. That is what proper procedure. Setalvad’s organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace, has canvassed and litigated cases stemming from the 2002 anti-Muslim massacres in Gujarat, especially the Gulberg Society and Naroda Patiya killings. The latter case led to the conviction of prominent BJP leader and former minister Maya Kodnani. Meanwhile, Sanjiv Bhatt who was the deputy inspector general of police at the time of the 2002 riots filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court accusing Modi of complicity in the violence. He was arrested in 2018 in a custodial death case that was more than two decades old. His family has labelled his arrest as state persecution for the affidavit. Sreekumar told the Nanavati Commission that he was informed by the DGP of Gujarat police in 2002 that Modi had asked the police to “allow the Hindus” to “vent their anger” against the alleged planned killing of 59 kar sevaks in the Godhra train fire. Sreekumar was in line to become the DGP but was superseded. https://thewire.in/government/gujarat-police-arrest-teesta-setalvad-activist-who-pursued-2002-riots-case-against-modi

Monthly update 33; May 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Indian deported; May 77 2022; Indian Hindu fired, jailed and deported from Qatar on his hate speech against Muslims & Arabs while he was working & living on Muslim Arab soil https://twitter.com/LadyVelvet_HFQ/status/1522601415310462976 @LadyVelvet_HFQ

2. Muslims should be set ablaze ; may 9 2022; Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Haribhushan Thakur Bachaul has said that Muslims should be set ablaze just as Hindus burn Ravana effigies during the festival of Dussehra. “We need a Hanuman ji so that our youth could be strong, the people of our country could be strong. Just like Ravana’s Lanka was burnt by Hanuman ji, the demon-like Ravanas, who are hovering over Bihar and the country, should also be burnt,” he told reporters “Demon-like Ravanas” is seen by many as a reference to religious and other minorities in the country, especially Muslims. When asked where are the ‘Ravanas’ in Bihar, Bachaul said, “You go and see what is happening in Kashmir…Kishanganj, what’s happening in Purnia In February 2022, the BJP MLA had also said that Muslims living in India should be stripped of voting rights and treated as second class citizens He is the same BJP MLA who had said that “those who are feeling scared in India should go to Afghanistan…petrol and diesel are cheaper, Once there, they will understand the value of India.” https://thewire.in/communalism/muslims-should-be-set-ablaze-just-as-hindus-burn-ravana-effigies-on-dussehra-bjp-mla

3. Prayers banned; May 16, 2022; A court on Monday banned large Muslim prayer gatherings in one of north India's highest-profile mosques, after a survey team found relics of the Hindu god Shiva and other Hindu symbols there, a lawyer involved in the case said. The judge at the court in Varanasi the site of the historic Gyanvapi mosque ruled that Muslim gatherings there should be limited to 20 people, lawyer H. S. Jain said. The court ordered the survey of the mosque after five women represented by Jain sought permission to perform Hindu rituals in one part of it, saying a Hindu temple once stood on the site. The Gyanvapi mosque, located in the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is one of several mosques in northern Uttar Pradesh that Hindu hardliners believe in common with some other religious sites was built on top of demolished Hindu temples. Police said the court order would help maintain law and order at a time when hardline Hindu groups tied to Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had stepped up demands to excavate inside some mosques and to permit searches in the Taj Mahal mausoleum. Leaders of India's 200 million Muslims view such moves as attempts to undermine their rights to free worship and religious expression, with the BJP's tacit agreement. In 2019, the Supreme Court allowed Hindus to build a temple at the site of the disputed 16th century Babri mosque that was demolished by Hindu crowds in 1992 who believed it was built where Hindu Lord Ram was born. The incident led to religious riots that killed nearly 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, across India. https://www.dawn.com/news/1689984/indian-court-limits-muslim-gatherings-at-mosque-after-hindu-relics-found-says-lawyer

Monthly update 32; April 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Indian restaurant shut down: Apr., 4 2022: Authorities in the Bahraini capital, Manama, have shut down an Indian restaurant after it allegedly denied entry to a woman wearing the hijab On Friday, in a widely-shared video the friend of the woman in question explained what happened. "The restaurant, "Lanterns" is telling her you cannot enter because you are wearing a hijab. Can you imagine?" the woman said. "The restaurants should not be making these types of decisions, because we are in a Muslim country." According to Bahraini newspaper, the Daily Tribune, the Bahrain Tourism and Exhibition Authority (BTEA) has since launched an investigation into the matter. The Lantern restaurant's duty manager has also been taken into custody; the restaurant also confirmed that he was suspended. On Saturday .The incident comes amid an Indian court's decision, earlier this month, to uphold a controversial ban on the hijab inside educational institutions in the southern state of Karnataka, which is governed by the Hindu hardliner BJP party. The ban sparked angry protests from Muslim women and girls. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220328-bahrain-indian-restaurant-shut-down-over-banning-entry-to-woman-wearing-hijab/?mc_cid=70cfcbe0e0&mc_eid=f50a97be6b

2. Burning of Muslim Hoses: April 2022: Pakistan on Tuesday strongly condemned the "senseless" vandalisation and burning of more than 40 houses of Muslims in the Karauli area of Rajasthan, India by radical Hindu zealots belonging to the BJP-RSS dispensation with the connivance of local security authorities. According to Indian publication The Wire, clashes broke out in a Muslim-dominated area in Rajasthan on Monday (April 4) when Hindu right-wing organisations were taking out a procession. Reportedly, it said, communal slurs were hurled resulting in violence, which included stone-pelting, people coming to blows and vandalism. Several people have been injured. Police arrested over 40 people after imposing strict prohibitory orders.The violence-hit areas are currently under curfew, until Thursday, April 7, and the internet has also been suspended to restore normality. The Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement that equally alarming is the apathy of state machinery which wantonly looked the other way and failed in its basic duty of protecting the lives and properties of its citizens. He said regretfully, the minorities in India, especially the Muslims, continue to live under fear and intimidation. The BJP-RSS combine has enabled the perpetration of senseless violence against minorities as part of its “Hindutva” agenda marked by hate and majoritarianism, he added. "Deafening silence of the BJP leadership and absence of discernible action against 'Hindutva' proponents must ring alarm bells across the international community," he remarked. Recently, on April 3, Yati Narsinghan, the infamous Haridwar priest, once again brazenly called upon the Hindus to take up arms against the Muslims. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2351150/pakistan-slams-burning-of-muslims-homes-in-india-riots

3. Communal clashes in India: Apr 12 2021: Clashes between Hindus and Muslims during a religious festival prompted police in India to impose a curfew in one town and ban gatherings of more than four people in affected parts of Gujarat and two other states on Monday. A day earlier, at least one person was killed and ten, including nine police, were injured when a Hindu procession was allegedly pelted with stones in a town in the western state of Gujarat. In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, more than 35 people were injured during similar clashes, while the eastern state of Jharkand also suffered communal violence. "We have detained seven people after the clashes and tight security arrangements have been put in place to prevent further tension," said M J Chaudhari, a police official based in Khambat town of Gujarat's Anand district, where one incident took place. Authorities in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, also imposed a curfew in parts of Himmatnagar town. The festival on Sunday marked the birth of the Hindu Lord Ram. Last week, police imposed a curfew in the desert state of Rajasthan after a similar attack on a religious procession. https://www.dawn.com/news/1684506/communal-violence-in-india-prompts-police-to-ban-gatherings-in-affected-areas

4. US Must Stop "Monitoring" Human Rights Crisis in India, Start Acting Response to Secretary Blinken's remarks on human rights in India by Pieter Friedrich; April 12 2022; On the 11th of April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a press conference in Washington, DC with the US Secretary of Defense and their Indian counterparts. At the press conference, Blinken stated: “We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights) and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials Indian Muslims are facing an impending genocide. Eliminating Muslims from the land in their relentless quest to turn India into a Hindu nation is a primary goal of the RSS, the Nazi-inspired paramilitary that controls the country’s ruling party, the BJP. Under the Modi regime, we’ve seen lynchings, the CAA/NRC, the Delhi Pogrom, concentration camps constructed in Assam, interfaith marriages criminalized, Muslims banned from wearing hijab in schools, calls for economic boycott of Muslims, Muslim merchants attacked, homes burned, mosques burned, calls for raping Muslim women, repeated calls for the mass slaughter of Muslims, governments razing Muslim neighborhoods, parade after parade after parade of gangs of hundreds of armed Hindu nationalists brandishing swords and dancing themselves into a frenzy of hate in front of mosques, and…. And…. And…. But this is the best that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken can manage: “We are monitoring a rise in human rights abuses.” Blinken just wants to shut people like you and me up so he can get on with business as usual. But, as one of those critics, let me remind him: my own ask has never been for the US government to “monitor” what is happening in India, but rather to stop passively watching and start taking real action before it’s too damn late. Both President Biden and Vice-President Harris gave speeches alongside him. Harris gave a speech in which she, briefly, emphasized the importance of defending democracy (while suggesting that such a vision may not yet have been fully achieved). Biden gave a speech in which he highlighted, briefly, the present-day urgency of Gandhi’s “message of non-violence, respect, [and] tolerance.”Desperately hungry for the US to say something about the growing human rights crisis in Modi’s India, many commentators jumped on that as an example of how Biden and Harris were both expressing concern. They were “gently” pressing Modi on human rights, we were told, and “subtly” conveying criticism. Yeah, right. It was so subtle and so gentle that this is where we are today: just six months closer to the impending Muslim genocide breaking out in full force. Six months from now, Blinken’s “rare” remark that the US is “monitoring” a rise in human rights abuses in India will be as forgotten as the “subtle” and “gentle” hint, hinting by Biden and Harris. Six months from now, the situation in India will have become radically worse than it is today. Will Blinken still be “monitoring” the situation then or will he be openly criticizing the Modi regime for sanctioning the mass murder of its Muslim citizens? Here’s my call to you if you are a US citizen who cares about this issue. Don’t be afraid to call out Blinken’s remarks for the useless, toothless comments that they are. Tell the US Congress and the Biden administration that we want real action. We need remarks with real teeth. They must be unvarnished, honest remarks which call the situation what it is: one of impending genocide. They must be remarks which actually recognize, criticize, and denounce. Because lives hang in the balance, it’s imperative that we refuse to settle, and demand something real. Demand that the US quit “monitoring” and start acting.

5. Muslims attacked: Apr 13 2022 ; On April 10, several processions were taken out across India to celebrate Ram Navami. However, many of these processions and rallies made deliberate attempts to disrupt peace and communal harmony in neighbourhoods dominated by Muslims. At 1 pm on Sunday, in Himmatnagar town of Sabarkantha district, north Gujarat, roughly 90 km away from Ahmedabad, some Hindus reportedly celebrated Ram Navami while yielding swords as a part of the procession. As the procession began to enter Ashraf Nagar, a Muslim-dominated area between two Hindu localities, Shakti Nagar and Mahavir Nagar, locals claimed that Hindu men allegedly engaged aggressively with local Muslims. When Muslims watched the passing procession from their terraces, they told The Wire, slurs were reportedly exchanged and the Hindus accused the Muslims of mocking their festivities. This snowballed into a violent face-off, triggering further destruction in other parts of Himmatnagar. Violence was also reported from another town, Anand district’s Khambat. To mitigate and combat the violence and vandalism, three companies of State Reserve Police (SRP) and local police forces from Ahmedabad, Aravalli, Anand and Mehsana were rushed to Himmatnagar on orders from Ashish Bhatia, the Director General of Police, Gujarat (DGP). In the evening, locals say and videos show stones being pelted and fire crackers thrown on police personnel, injuring at least three police personnel in Himmatnagar.When they saw that people in the procession were carrying swords, local Muslims reportedly sounded an alert within the community. Seeing the marching men, many like Ahmed locked their doors and windows, so their houses would look empty. Others, however, refused to hide and decided to retaliate against the perceived provocation. Fareed, 19, was among those out on the road during the procession. He paid a price for this; he suffered a blow on the back of his head during the violence, and is currently admitted in Ahmedabad Civil Hospital. Fareed’s uncle, Saleem Sheikh said, “Fareed was out for barely five minutes, he did not indulge in any violence and yet he was hit by a stone, he has suffered internal bleeding and is not conscious even as of today”.Later in the evening, locals saw at least 25 Muslim men being taken away by the ‘A division’ Police. Ghaffar, a resident of Mali Ki Chaparia, told The Wire, “They had a plan, they burnt Muslim shops, mosques and even set not one but many dargahs on fire. I saw a man with a saffron scarf yelling ‘Jai Shri Ram’ while he was hurling stones at the mosque I go to; he wore an orange scarf with ‘Om’ written on it.” Locals who did not wish to be named shared a few observations about the incident. They pointed towards the nature, intensity and spread of the violence. Across India, during Navratri, demands emerged for various bans on activities that hold relevance in Islam or are connected to Muslims. In Gujarat, they believe, this extended to a planned attempt to exert dominance over Muslims on Ram Navami. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal circulated social media content to invite Hindus to such processions. One such poster that The Wire had access to said, “Jai Hindurashtra” and “Aao Mil kar kare Ram Rajya ka Nirmaan” in Gujarati, with a photo of the deity Ram at the centre. Such posters and the cadre of these organisations mobilised large masses of Hindus to join in what they called the ‘Ram Navami Shobha Yatra’. Hozefa Ujjaini, a social activist, said that the violence on Sunday in Himmatnagar and Khambat were based on the pattern shown in Rajasthan’s Karauli, where Muslim houses were set ablaze. He recalled how on Holi, Muslims in Sandheli, a village 100 km away from Himmatnagar, saw harassment, violence and anti-Muslim slogans. Ujjaini, under the aegis of the Nagrik Adhikar Manch Gujarat (NAMG), an Ahmedabad-based rights organisation, wrote to the Gujarat director general police urging them to heighten security and initiate action against the culprits. However, the DGP is yet to respond to the letter, The Wire has learnt. The letter by NAMG calls for action against rioters who in the garb of religious processions attempt to fan communal enmity in Gujarat. It also calls for a region-wide check of CCTVs so that those caught carrying weapons without permission can be booked and arrested In and around Himmatnagar, locals told The Wire that vicinities such as Ashraf Nagar, Bagicha Vistar, Chaparia, Shaktinagar, Motipura Vistar, Hassan Nagar and Mali Ki Chaparia saw Muslim houses, shops and places of worship like dargahs and mosques being drizzled with kerosene, looted and desecrated as Ramzan completed nine days. In these areas, two houses, the Dargah of Zorawar Baba, the Dargah of Gebanshah Peer and its adjoining mosque, a dozen cars, Muslim-owned tyre, grocery, and mobile shops, bike showrooms, the Dargah of Gulab Shah Peer, the Hassan Fareed dargah and 13 dargahs near Himmatnagar’s Hathmati river were allegedly burnt, vandalised and desecrated, all in a matter of eight hours The proximity of the incident to Ram Navami, Ramzan and the Vidhan Sabha polls, which are only seven months away, points towards the politics of polarisation, as religion-based mobilisation take centre-stage in Gujarat yet again. https://thewire.in/communalism/gujarat-himmatnagar-ram-navami-violence-muslims

6. "Hindu Raj" Single Greatest Roadblock to Progress of Dr. Ambedkar's Caravan; by Pieter Friedrich:Commemorating Ambedkar's 131st birthday during dark days in India: Apr 15 2022; Speech originally presented at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Jayanti Celebration hosted by Dr. Ambedkar Mission Society Europe (Germany) on 14 April 2022. Jai Bhim! The middle of April marks some of the most monumental events in the struggle against caste, that insidious and poisonous, invisibilized but most potent form of oppression which has tormented so many throughout South Asia for so long. We start with the 11th of April, which marked the 195th birthday of Jyotirao Phule. Along with his wife Savitribai, Phule founded some of the Indian subcontinent’s first modern schools for children especially girls from Shudra and Ati-Shudra backgrounds. Shudras being those from the lowest caste and Ati-Shudras being outcastes or those traditionally treated as “Untouchables,” these people had, historically, been actually banned from acquiring an education. History cannot forget Phule’s passion for the downtrodden and his fury at how ignorance was imposed upon them in a devious attempt to lock them in mental slavery. Pondering on the results of that denial of education, he wrote, “Without education, wisdom was lost; without wisdom, morals were lost; without morals, development was lost; without development, wealth was lost; without wealth, the Shudras were ruined. So much has happened through lack of education.” Notably, it was Phule who is credited with introducing the term “Dalit” for Ati-Shudras a name, meaning “broken,” which both offered a sense of dignity for as well as a communal expression of the ancient pain of the people who adopted it. While many in the anti-caste movement fondly commemorated Phule just three days ago, on this 14th of April many are also celebrating another birthday. I speak of the 323rd anniversary of the birth of the Khalsa, that institution of the Sikhs established by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699. When the Guru called for volunteers to give up their lives for this institution, the first five who joined were from multiple different caste backgrounds, including three who were from so-called “low castes.” But the Guru stripped them of their old identities, baptized them all equally as “Singh” (meaning lion), and declared, “You have become casteless.” “In your new order, the lowest will rank with the highest and each will be to the other a brother,” he said. They were to be united, he told them, in a common calling to “serve the poor without distinction of caste, color, country, or creed.” Tying turbans on all their heads, he gave each one the symbolic headdress previously reserved only for royalty. “Recognize the whole human race as one,” he announced as he called all to sit and eat together, having abandoned every odious and nefarious restriction previously imposed upon them by their supposed castes. Just under 200 years later, Bhim Rao Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891. Today, we remember Dr. Ambedkar as the foremost champion of civil rights that the Indian subcontinent has seen certainly, at least, in this modern age and, perhaps, in many other ages. “Caste is a state of mind,” Ambedkar prophesied. “It is a disease of the mind.” And so he set about to change minds, above all through education. Never one to suggest to others what he would not do himself, he began to first acquire knowledge for himself, becoming eventually one of the most highly-educated people of his time. Applying that education, he emerged also as one of the world’s great renaissance men: a jurist, an economist, a politician and, above all, a social reformer. Dr. Ambedkar set out to achieve the seemingly impossible: the annihilation of caste. Rising from birth into a Dalit family to become the leader and liberator of his people and, eventually, to chair the drafting committee for the constitution of independent India, he saw, as one of the chief fruits of his work, a Republic of India in which untouchability was constitutionally banned. Even at the end of his life, however, he knew that there was much work yet to be done. Untouchability was outlawed by the constitution, but its practice still continued. Caste discrimination was also banned by the constitution, but the caste system itself remained intact. The struggle was unfinished. So, in his last message to the people, Dr. Ambedkar declared: “Whatever I have done, I have been able to do after passing through crushing miseries and endless struggle all my life and fighting with my opponents. With great difficulty, I have brought this caravan where it is seen today. Let the caravan march on despite the hurdles that may come in its way. If my lieutenants are not able to take the caravan ahead, they should leave it there, but in no circumstances should they allow the caravan to go back. This is the message to my people.” Today, that caravan has stalled. It is no longer marching on. It is stuck in the mud. It is so deeply mired in the mud that its wheels threaten to break off. The situation today is so dire that not only is the caravan at risk of going back, but the oppression against which Ambedkar’s people struggled so valiantly has now expanded and engulfed other communities in India. Speaking prophetically in the late 1940s, Dr. Ambedkar warned that, because of the caste system, “Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially un-democratic.” His fear was, he said, that “it is quite possible for this newborn democracy to retain its form but give place to dictatorship in fact.” And what would that “dictatorship in fact” look like? Most probably a “Hindu Rashtra” or nation — that is, a “Hindu Raj” or kingdom. “If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country,” warned Ambedkar. “Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost.” Unfortunately, it was not prevented. In 2019, Dr. Anand Teltumbde, the grandson-in-law of Dr. Ambedkar, warned, “We find the country on the verge of a comprehensive collapse of whatever little it had of democracy, in the process of formally becoming a Hindu Rashtra, which Babasaheb Ambedkar so prophetically warned against.” Three years after his warning, the Republic of India, under the RSS-BJP regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has essentially become both a dictatorship in fact as well as a de facto Hindu Raj. The dawn of a dictatorial Hindu Raj in modern India has brought dark days which are turning life for hundreds of millions of Christian and Muslim minorities into the same nightmare that Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis (that is, tribals) had been forced to live in for many ages past. That Hindu Raj is also serving as the single greatest roadblock to the forward movement of Ambedkar’s caravan that the anti-caste struggle has ever witnessed. As this de facto Hindu Rashtra threatens to undo all that India has achieved in 75 years of independence, the Sangh Parivar that web of Hindu nationalist outfits springing from the RSS paramilitary rightly understands that Dr. Ambedkar and his legacy serves as one of its supreme enemies. They must either reject Ambedkar or else co-opt him. And they must either win over the Dalit movement or else destroy it. “Dalits constitute an important part of the Sangh Parivar’s game plan,” warns Teltumbde. He explains that the Sangh’s “strategic apple cart meant to polarize the Indian population into Hindus versus others: Muslims, Christians and communists (i.e. those who do not agree with it) could be toppled by the Dalits.” After all, as he notes, “It cannot be taken for granted that Dalits would identify themselves as Hindus anymore. With their historical, social, ideological and cultural profile, they have the potential to play spoiler for the BJP’s agenda for the nation.” Because the Sangh’s “formula turns on the deliberate alienation of religious minorities who, along with Dalits, constitute up to 30 per cent of the electorate not having the Dalits on their side would seriously impede their plans for a Hindu rashtra.” Consequently, according to Teltumbde, “wooing Dalits” is a “crucial component of the strategy of the proponents of Hindu Rashtra.” Thus, he explains, the Sangh has despite the fact that Ambedkar stands diametrically opposed to everything it represents developed a “new-found love” for him which “stems from this political expediency.” Ambedkar has assumed “critical importance in the Sangh Parivar’s strategy” and yet, Teltumbde adds, “unless Ambedkar were adequately saffronized, the rejection of Hinduism by the Dalit masses under his leadership would continue to plague its efforts.” Because Ambedkar cannot actually be saffronized, as the RSS-BJP continues to desperately attempt to entice Dalits to make the suicidal choice to join the Sangh’s cause, it is simultaneously doing everything it can to break the back of the Dalit movement. We have witnessed this in the launch of the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case in 2018. That case ensnared 16 prominent intellectuals and activists from around the country, the majority of whom were known for two things: their steadfast opposition to the RSS-BJP and their dedication to the struggles of the Adivasi, Dalit, and Shudra communities. Thus, as we commemorate Dr. Ambedkar’s 131st birthday today, we must also remember another anniversary. Two years ago today, the Modi regime struck one of its greatest blows against the modern Dalit movement. On 14 April 2020, Dr. Anand Teltumbde was arrested on his grandfather-in-law’s birthday. He has been held behind bars ever since on trumped up charges. Writing on the day of his arrest, Indian politician Jignesh Mevani and Indian poet Meena Kandasamy jointly explained: “Teltumbde belongs to that league of Ambedkarites who stands like a progressive intellectual wall against the neoliberal Hindutva [that is, Hindu nationalist ideology] of the RSS-BJP. It is important for the anti-people, RSS-guided Central government to breach this progressive intellectual wall for their forward march towards an unequal, regressive society of Hindutva ridden with caste discrimination, class inequality and patriarchal domination. They want to accelerate this time machine which will take us into the dark ages.” Those dark ages are already upon us. But there is hope. There is hope in the rising generation of young Dalit scholars who are walking Dr. Ambedkar’s path of education, agitation, and organization. Many of them have found that their greatest potential to survive, succeed, and thrive is through international studies and, thanks to Dalit and other communities pooling resources, some brilliant stars have been able to take advantage of opportunities to join the Dalit diaspora. Especially as they pursue social sciences and strive to become the best and brightest Indians in the fields of politics, media, and history, they may yet be able to set the story straight as they steer the narrative in the direction of truth. And, as we all know, the truth sets us free. Moreover, there are emergent movements throughout the Indian diaspora in which people from all backgrounds are coming together and unifying to take a stand against the Hindutva monster. Indian Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and others are, more and more frequently, joining hands with the Dalit movement to struggle together. Without this unity, the Sangh’s monstrous agenda can never be defeated; and yet with this unity, perhaps one day sooner rather than later the far more ancient monster of caste can also finally be annihilated. Although the path to paradise may first lead us through hell, we shall, no doubt, eventually see the caravan march on to its final, glorious destination. As we remember Phule, celebrate the Khalsa, and commemorate Dr. Ambedkar, let the good doctor’s last message be an inspiration for us all to never give up. Perhaps, in our own little way, we too can hope to someday echo his words: “Whatever I have done, I have been able to do after passing through crushing miseries and endless struggle all my life and fighting with my opponents.” May you find strength for the fight, endurance through the struggles, and joy to overcome the misery. Jai Bhim.

7. Shops bulldozed; April 21 2022; Several Muslim residents of Delhi’s Jahangirpuri area on Wednesday called the “anti-encroachment” drive in which 20 shops were bulldozed as a political move to target the minority community, saying their sources of livelihood have been destroyed. The North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) issued late-night orders on Tuesday to conduct an “anti-encroachment drive” in the violence-hit Jahangirpuri in North West Delhi on the demands of the BJP’s Delhi president Adesh Gupta. The drive, which lasted slightly over three hours, led to the destruction of 20 shops, all situated in the same street as a mosque and a temple complex. This was the same mosque where communal violence broke out on Hanuman Jayanti on April 16. As the drive started proceeding towards the mosque and making its way ahead, one could hear women screaming and begging for the bulldozers to stop. Lanes were barricaded and residents kept behind them, unable to save their sources of livelihood. “Everything is lost. Those who actually instigated the violence are scot-free, while people who work hard and earn their daily bread are the ones suffering. Do I look like a rioter? To us, this is all political. We understand what is going on. We are being targeted.” “Why this (oppression) on us, that too during Ramzan? We are being harassed deliberately. This is wrong on every level!” As Sultana* watched, the bulldozers crushed several tin sheds. “Have you seen anything as vile and disgusting play out? When my sons are fasting in our holy month of prayer. They want to ensure that we starve, that we fail to earn our food, that we fail to earn our water,” she said. Shop owners said they had no idea that an anti-encroachment demolition drive was being conducted. Arif*, whose brother’s shop was demolished, said, “He just got four new fridges. He was planning to sell them and make some profit. We are now at a loss of over Rs 1 lakh. Who will pay for that? No one thought about how we would eat. How easily they called us rioters and destroyed our shops!” The region has been rife with tensions since April 16, when a Hanuman Jayanti procession allegedly came under attack. However, the Muslims claimed that the clash began after some Hindutva workers also tried to enter the mosque. Kashif* said, “Why are we single-handedly being targeted if they are cracking down on encroachments? Why are they not cracking down on Hindus and singling us out? The demolition started next to the masjid and stopped where the temple is. This is all pre-planned.” As bulldozers reached the area in the morning, lawyer Dushyant Dave urgently mentioned the matter before the Supreme Court. The top court issued a stay order, but the drive continued for over an hour. Municipal authorities claimed they did not receive the order immediately. The pattern of processions during Hindu festivals leading to communal clashes, followed by bulldozing of properties belonging to Muslims has been repeated across several north Indian states. In Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone, the government moved to demolish several properties that belonged to Muslims, accusing them of pelting stones at a Ram Navami procession on April 10. In Gujarat too, ‘bulldozer justice’ was handed out advocate M.R. Shamshad said, “A politician or the state cannot decide which structure is illegal. The fact that the demolition drive destroyed the only source of livelihood of many families is a matter of concern. There is no sense of justice.” https://thewire.in/rights/jahangirpuri-demolition-driver-muslims-target-residents

8. Arabs react: Apr., 2, 2022: Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Middle Eastern countries:Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman is under the process of meetings conferences against the Cruelty of BJP Govt which has passed NRC, NPR, CAA bill against Muslim citizens of India and Indian Constitution, if these NRC, CAA are not Cancelled and withdrawn, then Saudi Arabia is Planning to put a BAN on 83% of Crude Oil Supplies to India, Later Iran may also ban Oil supplies to India. Turkey has urged UNO and Human Rights Commission to Act wisely in the situation of India, if UNO do not take legal action then TURKEY is ready to form a new UNO. If situations of India is not normalised then Jeddah SAUDI ARABIA may also call and urge the Emergency meeting with all 57 Countries of (OIC) Organisation of Islamic Cooperation & may start Deporting all Hindu Expatriates back to India. MUSLIM UMMAH ECONOMIC BOYCOTT AGENDA FOR INDIA ALL OF US HAVE JOINED THE FREEDOM FIGHT FOR MUSLIMS OF KASHMIR, JUST AS INDIA HAS CAUSED WAR & DEVASTATION ON THE PEOPLE OF KASHMIR PLEASE BE A Economic soldier FOR KASHMIR AND WAGE AN ECONOMIC WAR AGAINST MODI AND HIS ETHNIC RELIGIOUS CLEANSING. THIS IS FIFTH GENERATION WAR! INDIA IS IN AN ECONOMIC CRISES;BOYCOTT EVERY THING INDIAN, Indian: Channels;Movies. Employment; New hires;restaurants;Rice; Spice; Atta/flour;Fruits;Clothes;Oils;Daals;Vegetables;Travel. Airspace restricted for indian airlines and jets. Indian Tyres & Tube’s to be banned ;Indian Computers to be banned. Indian biscuits & sweets to e banned Hit India in the pocket! When ever you buy anything, check, is it Indian? If it is, don't buy it in solidarity with Kashmir. The best way to defeat an unlawful military oppression/aggression is through economic boycott. You can make a difference. Every drop counts.

9. Arundhati Roy ; Apr 3 2022; this is the text of the Sissy Farenthold lecture delivered by author-activist Arundhati Roy at the Lydnon B Johsonon Auditorium, United States. The event was organised by the Rapoport Centre for Human Rights and Justice;Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to deliver the Sissy Farenthold lecture. And now, I turn to India. I dedicate this talk to the increasing numbers of prisoners of conscience in India. I ask us to remember Professor G. N. Saibaba, the scholars, activists, singers, and lawyers who are known as the Bhima Koregaon 16, the activists jailed for protesting against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), and Khurram Parvez, who was arrested five months ago in Kashmir. Khurram is one of the most remarkable people that I know. He and the organisation he works for, the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), have for years meticulously documented the saga of torture, enforced disappearances, and death visited upon the people of Kashmir. So, what I say today is dedicated to all of them. All dissent has been criminalised in India. Until recently, dissenters were called anti-national. Now we are openly labelled intellectual terrorists. The dreaded Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, under which people are being held for years without trial, has been amended to accommodate the current regime’s obsession with intellectual terrorism. We have all been branded Maoists the colloquial term for us is Urban-Naxals‚ or jehadis, and have had targets drawn on our backs, making us fair game for mobs or legal harassment. It has only been a few days since I left New Delhi. In these few days alone, the momentum of the events unfolding there makes it clear that we have crossed some kind of threshold. We cannot return to the shores we once recognised as our own. In March 2022, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented second term to govern India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. The UP elections are usually read as the “semi-finals” for the general election expected in May 2024. The election campaign was marked by saffron-robed godmen openly calling for mass killing and a social and economic boycott of the Muslim community. While the BJP’s victory in the elections appeared to be robust, on the ground the contest was closer than the number of seats they won suggest. The result seems to have generated in BJP workers and leaders a peculiar, untenable mix of anxiety and over-confidence. Very soon after the election results were announced, Hindus celebrated the festival of Ram Navami, which coincided with Ramzan this year. To mark Ram Navami, violent Hindu mobs armed with swords and staffs rampaged through as many as eleven cities. Led by swamis and BJP activists, they entered Muslim settlements, dog-whistling outside mosques, chanting obscene insults, openly calling for the rape and impregnation of Muslim women and the narsinghar genocide of Muslim men. Any response by Muslims has led to the bulldozing of their property by the government or burning by mobs. Those arrested, almost all Muslims, are accused of conspiracy and rioting, and will likely spend years in jail. One of those charged was in jail on a different charge long before Ram Navami. Another, Wasim Sheikh, accused of pelting stones at the Hindu procession, is a double amputee and has no forearms. Their homes and shops were bulldozed by the government. In some cities crazed TV anchors rode inside the bulldozers. Meanwhile, BJP leaders who openly provoked Hindu rioters in the run up to the 2020 Delhi massacre were recently acquitted by the Delhi high court, which held that there is no criminality when provocative things are said with a smile. Some of them are back on the streets of other cities, stoking similar violence. Yet the young Muslim scholar Umar Khalid is in prison. His speech about brotherhood, love and nonviolence upholding the Indian Constitution and delivered during the anti-CAA protests, is, according to a police charge-sheet, a smokescreen for a conspiracy that led to the 2020 Delhi massacre. Apparently, Muslims conspired to riot and kill themselves during Donald Trump’s state visit in order to besmirch India’s good name. Through all of this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose own political career was jump-started by the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat when he was chief minister, remains an inspirational figure. Often silent, but more often leading the dog-whistling, he is the messiah of these mobs and their holy men who, fed on a steady drip of spurious history delivered by WhatsApp, portray themselves as victims of historic oppression and genocide perpetrated by Muslims, which must be avenged here and now. We are currently in that dangerous place where there is no set of facts or histories that we can agree upon, or even argue with. The narratives do not overlap or even intersect with each other. It’s myth versus history. The myth is backed by state machinery, corporate money, and countless 24/7 television news channels. Its reach and power is unmatchable. The world has been here before, and we know by now that when debate and argument end, a war of attrition begins. Imagine what it must be like to be marked for death or incarceration. As a community, Muslims are already being ghettoised, ostracised, and socially and economically boycotted. Muslims are routinely accused of ‘love jihad’ (conspiring to make Hindu women fall in love with them in order to increase the Muslim population), ‘Corona jihad’ (conspiring to deliberately spread COVID, a replay of how the Nazis accused the Jews of deliberately spreading typhus), ‘job jihad’ (conspiring to get jobs in the civil services and rule over the Hindu population) to say nothing of ‘food jihad’, ‘dress jihad’, ‘thought jihad’, ‘laughter jihad’. (Munawar Faruqui, a young Muslim comedian, spent months in jail for a joke he never made but was accused of planning to make.) Any argument, any tiny misstep can get a Muslim lynched and the lynchers garlanded, rewarded, and assured of a bright political future. Even the most hard-bitten and cynical among us find ourselves whispering to each other, Are they still posturing, or has it begun? Is it organised or out of control? Will it happen at scale? India as a country, as a modern nation-state, exists only and solely as a social compact between a multitude of religions, languages, castes, ethnicities, and sub-nationalities legally bound together by a constitution. Every Indian citizen belongs, in one way or another, to a minority. Our country is a social compact between its minorities. In the process of trying to create a political majority, that social compact is being undone by an artificially constructed “aggrieved Hindu majority” that is being tutored to believe that they are the only deserving citizens, the First People, of the putative Hindu Nation, a majority that defines itself against the “anti-national other.” India is being undone. Few of us who make up this nation of minorities can put forward a neat, unblemished history of ourselves in which we are blameless victims of aggression. Our histories intersect, interlock, and aggregate. Together they make us who we are. Other than the over-arching hierarchy of caste, class, religion, gender, and ethnicity, our society is hierarchical at a molecular level. There is micro-colonialism, micro-exploitation, micro-interdependence. Every thread of this tapestry is an epic that calls for scholarship, study, argument, debate, reflection. But to isolate a single thread from this weave and use it to call for mass rape? For genocide? Is that something to be countenanced? When the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and hundreds of independent princely kingdoms were assimilated, some of them forcibly, into either India or Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of people Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh turned on each other. A million people were killed. Tens of millions displaced. Any single story of individual or community catastrophe and misfortune, however true it may be, is false when it is told in ways that erase the other stories. A dangerous lie. To flatten a messy history, to rob it of nuance, to weaponise it, will have dire consequences. All of us in the subcontinent have the choice of either working toward a shared notion of justice, toward exorcising the pain and hate that gnaws away at our collective memory, or enhancing it. The Indian prime minister, the political party which he heads, and its mothership, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) the fascist organisation of which he is a member have chosen to enhance it. They are calling up something deeply wicked from the bowels of our blood-soaked earth. The fire they have lit will not burn along a designated path. It may well burn the country down. The blaze has begun. Alongside the Muslims of India and Kashmir, Christians, too, are on the frontline of their assault. In this last year alone, there have been hundreds of attacks on churches, statues of Christ have been desecrated, priests and nuns physically assaulted. We’re on our own. No help will come. It didn’t come to Yemen, to Sri Lanka, to Rwanda. Why should we hope otherwise in India? In international politics, only profit, power, race, class, and geopolitics determine morality. Everything else is merely a posture, a shadow dance. India is ruled by men who have ridden to power on the daylight mass murder of thousands of Muslims… and hysteria manufactured by phantom assassination plots. Certainly, there is opposition to this hatefulness from ordinary people of every caste and creed, from those who rose against the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act, from the historic farmers’ movement last year, and from regional political parties in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Maharashtra that have gone toe-to-toe with the BJP and defeated it. It would be fair to say that the majority of Indians do not approve of what is happening. But their disapproval is manifested for the most part by distaste, by a karmic shrug and a turning away that is entirely ineffectual before the burning ideological fervor of a well-paid fascist cadre. The Indian National Congress, the sole national opposition party, only offers us weakness and the inability to take a moral position to even say the word Muslim in public speeches. Modi’s rallying call for a “Congress mukt Bharat” an India free of the Congress Party, is really a call for a government without an opposition. Whatever else we may wish to call this, democracy is not the word that comes to mind. While India exhibits all the trappings of an electoral democracy a constitution that calls us a secular, socialist republic, free and fair elections, a parliament run by a democratically elected ruling party and opposition, an independent judiciary and a free media in truth this state machinery (including to an increasing extent, the judiciary, the civil services, the security forces, the intelligence services, the police, and the election apparatus) is being, if not outright taken over, then deeply influenced and often overwhelmed by the most powerful organisation in India, the overtly fascist, Hindu nationalist RSS. The RSS, founded in 1925, has long campaigned to have the constitution set aside and for India to be declared a Hindu Rashtra a Hindu Nation. RSS ideologues have openly admired Hitler and equated the Muslims of India with the Jews of Germany. Aryan supremacy, the idea that some humans are divine and godlike, while others are sub-human, polluted, and untouchable, is, after all, the very basis of Brahminism, the Hindu caste system, which is the organising principle of Hindu society even today. Tragically, many among even the most oppressed have rallied to the cause of the RSS, swept up by the tsunami of propaganda that has left them voting for their own subjugation. In 2025, the RSS will mark its hundredth year. One hundred years of evangelical dedication has made it a nation within a nation. Historically the RSS has been tightly controlled by a coterie of west coast Brahmins. Today it has fifteen million members, among them Modi, several of his cabinet ministers, chief ministers, and governors. It is a parallel universe now, with tens of thousands of primary schools, its own farmer, worker, and student organisations, its own publishing wing, an evangelical wing that works among forest-dwelling tribes to “purify” them and “return” them to Hinduism, a range of women’s organisations, a several-million-strong armed militia inspired by Mussolini’s black shirts, and a plethora of unimaginably violent Hindu nationalist organisations that perform the role of shell companies and provide what is known as plausible deniability. As India haemorrhages jobs and devolves into economic chaos, the BJP has grown steadily wealthier and is now the richest political party in the world, underwritten by a recently introduced system of anonymous electoral bonds that enable an opaque system of corporate funding. It is supported by the several hundred corporate-funded TV news channels in virtually every Indian language that are mass marketed by an army of social media trolls who specialise in disinformation. For all this, the BJP still remains merely the front office of the RSS. Now the nation within the nation is preparing to move out of the shadows and take its place on the world’s stage. Already foreign diplomats have begun to troop to the RSS headquarters to submit their credentials and pay their respects. University campuses in the United States are the new battleground in this desperate quest for legitimacy. The danger is that those leading the charge believe that what cannot be fairly won can perhaps be purchased in an unfettered capitalist economy. The 2025 RSS centenary celebration will be an important marker in India’s history. The year before, we will have a general election. This perhaps explains the sudden acceleration of violent activity. Our hopes have been cauterised, our imaginations infected. If the RSS wins this battle, its victory will be pyrrhic. Because India will cease to exist. Elections will not reverse the tide. It’s too late for that. This battle will have to be waged by every single one of us. The blaze is at our door. Thank you. https://thewire.in/rights/arundhati-roy-india-democracy-communalism

10. USCIRF on India; Apr 26 2022; For the third consecutive year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has recommended to the US State Department to designate India as a “Country of Particular Concern”. The USCIRF Annual Report 2022, released on Monday, April 25, states that the 15 countries are designated as such “because their governments engage in or tolerate systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations”. On India particularly, the report states, “In 2021, religious freedom conditions in India significantly worsened. During the year, the Indian government escalated its promotion and enforcement of policies including those promoting a Hindu-nationalist agenda that negatively affect Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and other religious The latest report, in a section devoted to India, has accused the Narendra Modi government of muzzling dissenting voices, misusing UAPA and sedition laws, allowing illegal arrests of rights’ activists, carrying out violent attacks against Muslims and Christians and creating “hurdles” for NGOs to receive funds from abroad for charity work. It has also prominently discussed the arrest and custodial death of Father Stan Swamy. “Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest and longtime human rights defender of Adivasis, Dalits, and other marginalised communities, was arrested on dubious UAPA charges in October 2020 and never tried. He died in custody in July 2021 despite repeated concerns raised about his health,” the report notes. Coming down heavily on the Modi government, the report states, “The BJP-led government, leaders at the national, state, and local levels, and increasingly emboldened Hindu-nationalist groups have advocated, instituted, and enforced sectarian policies seeking to establish India as an overtly Hindu state, contrary to India’s secular foundation and at grave danger to India’s religious minorities.” In a slew of recommendations to the US government on India, the USCIRF has called for “[imposition of] targeted sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ or entities’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States”. The USCIRF has also appealed to the US Congress to “raise religious freedom issues in the US-India bilateral relationship and highlight concerns through hearings, briefings, letters, and congressional delegations”. https://thewire.in/communalism/religious-freedom-worsened-us-body-names-india-as-country-of-particular-concern

11. Mahesh Mishra; May 1 2022; Mahesh Mishra is the prime accused in the recent incident in Ayodhya, where a group of persons threw pieces of pork, letters abusing Muslims and torn pages of an Islamic text at some mosques and shrines in the town in an apparent attempt to instigate communal violence. An investigation by The Wire into his social media profiles has revealed that Mishra is a habitual offender. Infamous in Ayodhya for inciting violence in the past, Mishra, on multiple occasions, has vowed to “kill” Muslims, called for the economic boycott of Muslims, and claimed to have prepared a “hit-list of anti-nationals” whom he wants to be killed. More often than not, his rabble-rousing speeches and bigoted views have attracted no criminal charges and punishment. According to the Uttar Pradesh Police, a Hindu fundamentalist outfit ‘Hindu Yodha Sangathan’ headed by Mishra was responsible for the the attempts to instigate communal violence in Ayodhya. It was thwarted by the police. Mishra, a “history-sheeter”, has four criminal cases registered against him. In 2016, Mishra was briefly jailed for allegedly organising an arms training camp for children, where they were trained to attack and kill men dressed as Muslims. He was charged for vitiating communal harmony and promoting hatred. Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Champat Rai who is now the caretaker of the Ram temple trust had supported Mishra and his arms training camps. He had called the arrest “unlawful”. On December 6, 2017, as the chief of the local unit of Bajrang Dal, Mishra led a rally in Ayodhya to celebrate “Shaurya Diwas” which marked the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The police had reportedly denied permission to the event and imposed Section 144 in the area. In the last two years, Mishra has been relentlessly spearheading a campaign to ban meat in parts of Ayodhya. He has also appeared as a panellist in polarising “Hindu versus Muslim” debates on News Nation. His social media is also replete with messages to kill the “anti-nationals”. Sample this video which he tweeted in September 2021 issuing a “warning to anti-nationals”. In the video, a livid Mishra claims that he has a “hit-list of anti-nationals”. He says, “Listen carefully you anti-nationals, we are preparing your hitlist now. Each one of you will be pulled out of your home and killed…Hindus are now awake. Each one of you will be chased and killed” In another video, he issued a call for the economic boycott of all Muslims, whom he describes as “funders of terrorism”. “[Let’s take a vow] that we will not have any economic ties with Muslims. These Muslims receive money from us [Hindus] and give a part of it to mosques and madrasas from where this money goes to terrorists. A bullet that kills our soldiers and Hindus is funded by Hindus indirectly. We should not have any money-related relationship with Muslims ” it. Imran Hashmi, a local student leader, said that Mishra had previously filmed himself urinating on a poster of B.R. Ambedkar. In another audio recording, Hashmi alleged, Mishra can be heard hurling communal slurs and targeting a local dargah. “There is a pattern associated with Mishra. However, he has not faced any repercussions. These elements are attempting to provoke riots in our city, and we are demanding that stringent action must be taken against these men,” Hashmi appealed to authorities. https://thewire.in/communalism/ayodhya-mosques-riots-mahesh-mishra-history-muslim-baiting

12.

Monthly update 31; March 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Now, a woman in India wants to kill 60,000 Muslims; March 1, 2022; A woman, reportedly associated with Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarth Parishad (ABVP), has expressed her desire to kill 60,000 people who support hijab in India while giving a call for genocide. Pooja delivered a provocative speech at an event organised to protest the murder of a Bajrang Dal member in Vijaypura, Karnataka. The video of her open call for the massacre of Muslims went viral on social media. “If you ask for water, Indians will give you juice. If you ask for milk, we’ll give you curd. But, if you want hijab all over India, we will chop you all with Shivaji’s sword,” she declared drawing cheers and applause from the crowd. She didn’t bat an eyelid while expressing her desire to kill 60,000 people, presumably Muslims. “Saffron is India, Pooja asserted. “We are happy with all the arrests that have been made, but it’s not enough…if you (government) cannot do it…give us 24 hours…let the government give us just one hour…not just these six girls in hijab, we’ll cut 60,000 in hijab into pieces,” she announced from. Days ago, a Bajrang Dal activist Harsha, who was facing many criminal cases, was killed by unknown people in Shivamogga district of the state. Soon after the killing, Hindutva mobs went on a rampage setting properties belonging to Muslims afire as Hindutva leaders attributed the murder to the deceased’s opposition to the hijab. A Hindutva leader is reported to have said that unless a (Hindu) head (killing) is avenged by taking 10 heads; Hindu samaj (community) won’t rest. He, however, didn’t elaborate as to why he thinks would anyone kill anyone. Meanwhile, another video of a Hindutva leader threatening to repeat the post Godhra Gujarat pogrom surfaced on the social media. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/03/01/now-a-woman-in-india-wants-to-kill-60000-muslims.html

2. Californian Clergy Coalition Prays and Speaks for Persecuted Indian Christians by Pieter Friedrich; March 3, 2022; Despite escalating persecution, clergy warn issue gets little attention in America “The great moral evil that will be remembered in the year 2022 is the persecution of the millions of Christians in India,”

3. Delhi riots; Mar 02 2022: To marks two years of the communal carnage that shook several localities of Northeast Delhi in February 2020, a group of concerned citizens and organisations released a jury report. The report released by what they called ‘People’s Tribunal’ indicated the complicity of all state actors in the killing of innocents and framing the victims in cases. It said despite having all intelligence the Delhi Police failed to take adequate measures to prevent the spreading of the riots. Widespread instances of police misconduct have been noted including misusing of technology to frame people, to biased and unjust charge sheets, the police have been even more complicit in the violence. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/03/02/state-actors-were-complicit-during-and-after-delhi-riots-says-peoples-tribunal.html

4. Indian court upholds Hijab ban; Mar 16 2022; In the court case, lawyers for Karnataka state argued that the Quran does not clearly establish wearing the hijab as an essential spiritual practice, so banning it does not violate religious freedom. Many Muslims reject that interpretation. On a recent Friday, Rasheed Ahmad, the head imam of Udupi’s grand mosque, delivered a sermon before hundreds of worshippers. His voice thundering through loudspeakers mounted on the minarets, he railed against the bans as an attack on Islam.“Hijab is not just our right,” he said later in an interview, “but an order from God”. https://www.dawn.com/news/1680110/hijab-bans-deepen-hindu-muslim-fault-lines-in-indias-karnataka-state

5. The Erasure: California Panel Claims Indian Muslims Face Impending Genocide; India's Hindu nationalist movement poses an existential threat to minorities and could impact the United States, warn panelists in San Diego; by Pieter Friedrich; Mar 17 2022; “India is subsumed in a momentous political crisis, the most daunting since 1950,” warned Dr. Angana Chatterji of University of California, Berkeley on 12 March 2022. “The practice of illiberal democracy today is accompanied by the call to fascism and the extermination of Muslims.” Chatterji (who joined via Zoom) was speaking at a San Diego, CA panel on impending Indian Muslim genocide and global Islamophobia. Approximately 200 people joined the event to hear six panelists, including myself, converse about the threat facing Muslims as well as other minorities under India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The threat impacts the US, speakers agreed, not only because the country is home to over four million Indian-Americans but also because the BJP and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary, have a major support base in America.“I sort of felt that I was the embodiment of what India was,” said Dr. Samina Salim of University of Houston. “Pay attention: I said what India was. I am not proud of what India is today, sadly, because how can I represent an India where Muslim girls and Muslim women are stripped of their head covering, which is part of their clothing, in the middle of the streets, before they step into their schools and colleges? How can I represent an India where Muslim women are sold on an app and on other online platforms? I do not represent this India where Muslim women are raped, killed, and burned alive. I am not proud of that India.” “The moment Modi became prime minister, and the BJP came to power, vigilante Hindu extremist groups took it as kind of a pass to engage in routine violence, humiliation, and lynching of Muslims,” noted Dr. Rohit Chopra of Santa Clara University. “What I’ve seen happen since then is, the hallmark of being a good Hindu was you don’t speak up against such violence. I want to say this is 2014 to 2018. If you speak up against the lynching, you’re not a good Hindu and therefore you’re not a good Indian, because only a Hindu can really be an Indian. From there, we have now moved to a position where the hallmark of being a good Hindu and being a good Indian is actually endorsing this violence.” According to Dr. Chatterji, “The political blueprint of Hindu nationalists signals an illiberal turn and absolute nationalism that, unchecked, may enkindle the would-be erasure of Muslims in India.” Speakers highlighted the recent ban on Muslim students wearing hijab at educational institutions in Karnataka (which was upheld by the state’s High Court on 15 March) as emblematic of structural Islamophobia in India. “This hijab ban is just another sequel to this genocidal language,” explained Dr. Salim. “Anti-Muslim hysteria with hijab ban has reached a whole new level now.” Dr. Khaled Beydoun of Wayne State University noted, “Gendered Islamophobia is distinct in the sense that the State engages in the policing of women’s bodies. That becomes the principle way in which the State engages in gendered Islamophobia by saying how a woman can dress and cannot dress. India is parading around the world claiming to be the largest democracy in the world, and we know that the cornerstone of any democracy is what? The ability to practice your religion as you see fit or to not profess a religion. Why is this cardinal right, that is attached to any democracy, being denied to Muslim women? And the way it’s being manifested is through the erosion and the encroachment of the ability of Muslim women to express their religiosity in ways that align with their spirituality.”“When Taliban prevented women and girls from going to schools, and colleges, and universities, there was an uproar from the Western world,” said Dr. Salim. “Where are the feminists now? Where is the Western media? Why this silence when this is going on in India with Muslim women?” “It’s really salient that we center white supremacy as a system that intersects and interacts with Islamophobia, Hindu supremacy, and other forms of bigotry that we’re seeing unravel on a global stage,” said Dr. Beydoun. The similarities to white supremacist ideology were also echoed by Dr. Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley. Invoking the idea of “replacement theory” (which is also known in the West as the “white genocide” conspiracy theory), Dr. Bazian said, “Hindu nationalists are using the same type of argument. Replacement theory is the idea that the Muslims who are coming to Europe, or the minorities who are coming to Europe, or the Mexicans that are coming to the United States are attempting to replace the white race. In a similar way, within the Hindu nationalists, it is that the Muslim population that are there are attempting to replace Hinduism.” “India has become a hard incubator of conspiracy theories,” said Dr. Salim. “History tells us of the dangers of these theories. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion led to the extermination of six million Jews. That was a result of conspiracy theories. It was Radio Rwanda that propagated conspiracies against Tutsis, killing almost a million Tutsis. The same type of ludicrous and dangerous conspiracy theories are flourishing in India now for quite some time. These theories and false propaganda are being pushed by the Indian media, funded by the elite within the Indian political system and business class, endorsed in one way or the other by the State — sometimes by overlooking the propaganda and, at times, by supporting it.” Dr. Chopra warned that not only has social media played a pivotal role in fostering these conspiracy theories, but that the major corporations are doing little to stop it.“It’s really important to raise this issue, to bring it to awareness in the global community, and particularly to talk about the role of social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp in fomenting anti-Muslim violence and anti-Muslim sentiment,” said Dr. Chopra. “Facebook has admitted its role in genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar, they’ve admitted their role in anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka. In the Indian context, they’ve hired people who are from the Hindu Right, and when the government has pushed back, they’ve sort of fallen in line. It’s the same with Twitter…. In the Indian context, because of the pressure of the government, again, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp are completely compromised. Facebook and Twitter both have blood on their hands.” Meanwhile, I asserted that not only is the Indian Government controlled by the RSS, but that the paramilitary’s affiliates in the United States have provided a great deal of assistance to the regime in India. “The RSS is the world’s oldest, largest, and fastest growing fascist movement,” I explained, noting that the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the RSS’s religious wing), and the Bajrang Dal (the VHP’s youth wing) have a combined total of perhaps 15 million militant members. “The RSS today is essentially, you could say a shadow government, or you could say that it is the government because the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP is, actually, the political wing of the RSS. It was founded by the RSS in 1980. And the RSS basically controls and pulls the strings of the BJP. So the RSS today is basically the government of India.”“RSS is here [in America],” warned Dr. Salim. “The problem is hate this hateful agenda, this bigotry, this misogyny which is here amongst us in the form of RSS and its friends. And that is why, I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to get more involved.” Expanding on the presence of RSS in America, I noted: “The RSS-BJP regime in India is heavily dependent on and owes a great debt of gratitude to its affiliates here in America, especially tracing back to 2014. To a great extent, Modi’s election in 2014 is due, in part, to the actions of the RSS-BJP affiliates here in the United States, specifically the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP) as well as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), which is the name for the RSS equivalent here in America.” “From America, they organized phone banks of hundreds of people Indian-Americans, not people with Indian citizenship to call back to India to tell Indian voters to vote for the BJP,” I explained. “In addition, they mobilized thousands of people the public numbers are at least about 3,000 people to travel from America to India to serve as boots on the ground to canvass, knock on doors, run polling stations. I like to flip this and say, can you imagine the outrage here in America if we had a lot of Americans that emigrated to Russia, gave up their American citizenship, settled in Russia, became Russian citizens but didn’t give up their love for the Republican Party. So, every election cycle, they would mobilize with their Overseas Friends of the Republican Party based in Moscow. They would set up phone banks in Moscow, call American voters, and say, ‘Vote for the Republican Party.’ And they would go a step further. They would send thousands of now Russian citizens who used to be Americans back to America to campaign, canvass, come knock on your door, and maybe even staff your local polling booth. Would Americans be upset about that? One thing that I still fail to understand is why Indians are, in India, not more outraged over this blatant interference in their sovereign, sacred elections that has occurred.” What’s happening in India impacts the United States, I added, not only “because those groups are using American free soil to organize those efforts, but they’re also using American soil to do things like with the HSS, and OFBJP, and other Hindu nationalist affiliates to serve as a propaganda mouthpiece in America to whitewash and legitimize the RSS-BJP regime in India.” Dr. Beydoun, however, suggested that the threat facing Indian Muslims is also linked to America because US foreign policy has helped enable it. “The American Global War on Terror did a couple things,” he said. “It legitimized this demonization of Muslims as categorically ‘terrorists’ and then it accelerated, it intensified pre-existing and indigenous campaigns across the world, of which Hindu supremacy is one of them It’s critical to really highlight the fact that the United States Government and four administrations since, even liberal and democratic administrations like the Obama Administration, had a mighty hand in emboldening and accelerating these anti-Muslim campaigns happening on a global scale, of which India, I believe, is one of the most ominous and nefarious.” The situation in India is so ominous that it is now one of looming genocide, claimed speakers. “The term ‘genocide’ can be used when it can be proved that a State or non-State actors engage in actions or they have a very specific intent targeted at one particular community to commit violence or to exterminate them,” noted Dr. Chopra. “Incitement to genocide is also a crime…. You don’t actually have to commit genocide to be guilty of a crime under international humanitarian law.” As Dr. Bazian pointed out, “Often, when we use the term ‘genocide,’ we think that we’re just going to the graveyard after the genocide had been committed. That’s not what the Convention on Genocide actually speaks about. Any aspect of taking steps that would facilitate genocide could be subject for bringing a case.” Yet speakers sugged that the world seems to be taking little notice of the situation. “It’s impossible not to juxtapose what’s taking place in places like India with what’s unfolding in real time right now in Ukraine,” said Dr. Beydoun. “In addition to Islamophobia, in addition to Hindu supremacy, we have another issue that is expanding on a global stage, which is white supremacy. There’s a reason why Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees resonate so strongly when we see them on television. However, when we see brown and black individuals who are fleeing places, fleeing war-torn countries, they don’t get a sliver of coverage, they don’t get a scintilla of the attention that Ukrainians have received in two weeks.” “We’ve got to take more interest,” urged Dr. Salim. “We’ve got to speak up. It’s the silence that emboldens these people, by virtue of which we become accomplices in that violence.” The panel was sponsored by the San Diego Coalition for Human Rights, which included the Council on American-Islamic Relations (San Diego), Indian American Muslim Council, Jewish Voices for Peace, Muslim American Society (San Diego), Muslim Leadership Council of San Diego, Pillars of the Community, and others.

6. Kashmir Files ; Mar 17 2022 ;An Indian film focusing on the exodus of thousands of Hindus from Indian-administered Kashmir that won accolades from Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fanning anti-Muslim sentiments in the country. The Kashmir Files, a 170-minute Hindi-language movie released last week, tells the fictional story of a student who discovers his Kashmiri Hindu parents were killed by rebels and not in an accident as his grandfather told him Hundreds of thousands were forced out of Kashmir, losing homes and many lives, when a revolt erupted against Indian rule in 1989. Many were Hindus, known as “Kashmiri Pandits”, and later ended up living in camps across northern India. A small number of the community, however, continues to live in the Muslim-majority valley. howed the truth and that vested interests were running a campaign to discredit it. “They are shocked, that the truth that was hidden for so many years is out and is backed by facts,” Modi said, without clarifying to whom he was referring to. A state leader from the BJP gave government employees a half-day off to see the movie, while supporters of Modi and the BJP endorsed the movie on social media. However, critics say it is loose with the facts and targets Indian Muslims even outside Indian-administered Kashmir. Many see the film as evidence of the growing religious polarisation Modi’s critics say he has fostered since coming to power in 2014. Multiple videos were published online showing people in theatres cheering, shouting hate slogans, and calling for violence against Muslims. “The state machinery propping up the film and the reaction to it is disappointing,” said Hussain Haidry, a screenwriter who works in Bollywood. “As a Muslim, you feel a sense of despair that movies like The Kashmir Files are encouraging and adding to Muslim-hate in the population.” Many critics decried the virulent hate speeches against Muslims in theatres and asked why the government was not acting against the perpetrators. “Calls for genocide of Muslims in theatres following the screening of #KashmirFiles. Will the film’s makers, actors, admirers including the PM appeal against such calls? You know the answer,” tweeted politician and feminist Kavita Krishnan. Columnist Asim Ali was also critical of the film in a piece on news website Newslaundry. “The message an ordinary Hindu is expected to take from the movie (as attested by many viral videos coming out of theatres) is another kind of ‘never again’ never again to trust the Muslim, the secularist or the leftist,” he wrote. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/17/kashmir-files-film-modi-anti-muslim-hate-speech

7. Muslim shopkeepers; Mar 21 2022; Under pressure from Hindutva groups, the organisers of an historic festival in Karnataka have banned Muslim shopkeepers from doing business during it. The organising committee of the Kote Marikamba Jatra in Shivamogga has buckled to demands by Bharatiya Janata Party, Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, that no Muslim be allowed to ply his trade during the festival The organising committee of the Kote Marikamba Jatra in Shivamogga has buckled to demands by Bharatiya Janata Party, Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, that no Muslim be allowed to ply his trade during the festival . https://thewire.in/communalism/under-pressure-from-hindutva-groups-karnataka-festival-bans-muslim-traders

8. Why I'm Crashing Screenings of "Kashmir Files" in California ;by Pieter Friedrich; Propaganda film's sole purpose is to incite anti-Muslim hatred and violence in India ; Mar 22 2022;“Kashmir Files” purports to tell the story of the 1990 Kashmiri Pandit Exodus. In 1990, as a separatist uprising began in Muslim-majority Kashmir, a Hindu community known as “Pandits” fled the region en masse. Many of them were killed at the time as well as over the next 10 to 15 years. The specifics of the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits demand attention and have already been faithfully recounted by various historians and journalists in both the past and the present. They certainly suffered. Perhaps a hundred thousand or more (out of a population of 140,000) fled the region. According to figures recently released by Kashmir Police, at least 89 were killed; at the high end, according to figures collected by a Kashmiri Pandit organization, up to 650 were killed between 1990 and 2011. As a notable aside, it’s questionable whether all of those Pandits who were targeted were killed for their religion or rather for political reasons due to the positions many held as government officials; while their murders, either way, are condemnable, the latter reason casts the affair in a far different light than the purely communal lens through which Agnihotri insists it must be viewed. Moreover, the tragic killings of Pandits by militant separatists should also be contextualized alongside the thousands of Kashmiri Muslims who were also killed by militants as well as the tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims a great many of them innocent civilians who were murdered by Indian security forces during their brutal suppression of the separatist movement. Regardless, the story of the Kashmiri Pandits deserves to be told (as does that of every persecuted community), but instead of telling it honestly, Agnihotri has seized on it as a political tool to spread anti-Muslim propaganda at a time when, 30 years after the fact, Pandits face no persecution whatsoever while Muslims throughout India according to many, many sources are at risk of an impending genocide at the hands of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and other affiliated elements. In Agnihotri’s mythologized telling, at least 4,000 Kashmiri Pandits were murdered. His film explicitly terms it a “genocide” and supportive viewers are widely comparing it to the systematic location, deportation, and elimination of six million Jews by the Nazis. Agnihotri portrays the exodus of the Pandits as an untold even deliberately covered up story which he alone had the courage to reveal. Some courage it took, too, considering that Indian Prime Minister Modi and many of his top cabinet members have openly endorsed it while most BJP states are not only allowing it be shown tax-free but giving state employees a paid half-day (and free tickets) to go view it. The general American public is clueless about the messaging behind “Kashmir Files,” but it’s not lost on audiences in India. Videos filmed at multiple different Indian cinemas show audiences, as the end credits scroll, rising to raise their own slogans. “India will be a Hindu nation,” shouts one crowd. “No Muslim will be allowed.” Another crowd shouts, “Long live BJP. When Muslims are slaughtered, then they will chant the name of Ram.” Yet another crowd cheers as a man declares: “If every Hindu boy under 25 starts marrying a Muslim girl, then their population will be less than half within three generations. Marry their women, make children with them.” Such a reaction is to be expected. After all, as Indian journalist Siddharth Bhatia notes, “The film is exploitative in the extreme, made to rouse emotions and build up a particular mood against Indian Muslims.” Countless others have reached the same conclusion. “At every possible opportunity, the filmmaker underscores the terrorists’ religion,” writes Indian film critic Tanul Thakur. “Another piece of dog-whistling: all Kashmiri Muslims are terrorists (this isn’t even an implication; the film is almost explicit about it, more than once) Given the blatant communal climate in the country for the last many years, these implications are unmistakable: that terrorists = Muslims or, more accurately, Muslims = terrorist.” “There isn’t a single Muslim character in the film who is empathetic,” says Indian screenwriter Darab Farooqui. “Every single Muslim character is either deceitful or evil…. It’s a propaganda piece that only shows one version of events. Yes, the events are bitter, unpleasant and ugly facts. They are, nevertheless, deceptive, dishonest and incomplete. The Kashmir Files serves a purpose, and the purpose is propaganda.” Indian journalist Naomi Barton warns that “Agnihotri has built a great canal of hatred,” explaining, “In broad strokes, the Muslims of The Kashmir Files are unequivocally shown as barbaric, or servile to a barbaric cause.” Barton adds, “The lie is that all Muslims must be collectively punished for this, and any violence visited upon them is justly deserved.” Indeed, the entire point of the film inescapably seems to be to convey the message that the killing of some Hindus in Kashmir by some Kashmiri Muslim separatists 30 years ago justifies, today, mass violence against Muslims throughout the entirety of India.That’s obvious from the bloodthirsty slogans of audiences in India. It’s also the message that one anonymous YouTuber took away from the film. In a viral video, a man wearing a saffron mask the color of the Hindu nationalist movement urges, “If you are a Hindu and want to avenge (the deaths) of Kashmiri pandits, if you know a Muslim, trouble them.” He demands the killing of Indian Muslims “everyone from the oldest to the youngest” and calls for the rape of their mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, and others. “Trouble them so much that they cry, leave them tormented,” he says. “Create an atmosphere that forces them to leave the country. We won’t let them leave nor will we let them live in the country.” That’s the intent of the Hindu nationalist movement figure-headed by the RSS-BJP: to not let Muslims live in India or leave India. Ideologically, in their eyes, Muslims (as well as Christians) are “traitors” to the nation because, as they believe, only Hindus can truly be considered “Indian.” According to the RSS-BJP, these minority communities must therefore be purged from the country. Eliminated. Killed. This was the goal underlying the fascist oath taken by a genocidal conclave of Hindu nationalists held just a few months ago. “We all take an oath, give our word, and make a resolution that, until our last breath, we will make India a Hindu nation and keep it a Hindu only nation,” they pledged “We will fight, and die, and, if required, we will kill as well.” Simultaneously, in the city of Haridwar, Uttarakhand, another conclave was urged to take up weapons to wipe out Indian Muslims. Such events are one of many reasons that organizations like Genocide Watch, a US-based nonprofit, are incessantly warning about the looming risk of a genocide of Indian Muslims. “India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made Islamophobia a state-manufactured ideology, increasingly putting the Muslim and Dalit [those formerly known as “Untouchables”] communities under state-sponsored attack,” says the group. As founder Dr. Gregory Stanton explains, “We believe there is a real risk of massacres. What is, of course, extremely troubling here is that the Modi government has stood back, said nothing, and will be very happy to just watch it happen. That is exactly what Modi did in Gujarat in 2002. It is what he will do again. So, this massacre this genocide will likely not be even carried out by the Indian State. It will likely be carried out by mobs.” “Kashmir Files” is pouring fuel on the Islamophobic fire as it incites theater-going audiences to form those violent mobs. As Stanton notes, massacres of Muslims by mobs in India have happened before under Modi. While Agnihotri exaggerates and sensationalizes a tragic event from 30 years to manipulate emotions and fan anti-Muslim hatred, Modi (who endorses “Kashmir Files”) presided over another atrocity of far greater proportions which came to a bloody close 20 years ago this month. Over a three-day period, from 27 February to 1 March 2002, mobs fielded and led by the RSS-BJP flooded the streets of Gujarat, India (at a time when Modi was Chief Minister of the state) to systematically slaughter approximately 2,000 Muslims. The massacre earned Modi the nickname, “The Butcher of Gujarat,” but it also served to massively popularize him within India’s Hindu nationalist movement. Today, with Modi helming the entire nation and with an administration marked by a wave of anti-Muslim attacks, lynchings, and smaller-scale pogroms there are very legitimate fears that the situation may soon turn into one of out-and-out genocide. Riefenstahl, as Bhatia explains, was “Hitler’s favorite director and a great propagandist of the Third Reich.” He notes: “In Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, the BJP may have found its own Riefenstahl, even if he falls far short of her filmmaking standards.” While Agnihotri may be no Riefenstahl in terms of skill, his “Kashmir Files” certainly threatens to accomplish the same lethal ends. It must be opposed

9. Banerjee ; March 29 2022; Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has urged non-BJP chief minsters and opposition leaders to come together in fight against the Hindutva party. The West Bengal chief minister writes to non-BJP chief ministers and opposition leaders that the saffron party is misusing Indian agencies.Virtually attending a meeting of opposition parties convened by Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, the Trinamool Congress chief asked the opposition leaders to keep aside differences and put up a united fight against the BJP saffron party. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/03/29/mamata-asks-non-bjp-cms-to-unite-against-hindutva-party.html

Monthly update 30; February 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Islam o phobia in India; Feb 12 2022; Islam o phobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority”, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned scholar, author and activist, has said. “The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — It is taking its most lethal form in India,” Chomsky, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a video message to a webinar organised by Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) on Thursday, a Washington-based advocacy organisation. Apart from Chomsky, several other academics and activists took part in the webinar on “Worsening Hate Speech and Violence in India.” Chomsky also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist regime has sharply escalated the “crimes” in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). “The crimes in Kashmir have a long history,” he said, adding that the state is now a “brutally occupied territory and its military control in some ways is similar to occupied Palestine.” The situation in South Asia, Chomsky said, is painful in particular not because of what is happening but because of what is not happening. There is, however, hope and opportunities to solve South Asian torment but not for long, he added. Annapurna Menon, an Indian author and lecturer at the University of Westminster, urged the international community to focus on the status of press freedom in India as under the BJP government, the situation has become a cause of concern. “The situation on the ground is extremely alarming as 4 journalists have already been killed in 2022, simply for doing their job,” Menon said, adding that journalists – especially women – have been exposed to all kinds of reprisals including harassment, illegal detention, police violence and sedition charges. “The situation in IIOJK is even dire, where the journalists routinely face police questioning, ban on reporting, suspension of internet services and financial constraints in line with BJP’s recent ‘media policy’. The family of award-winning Srinagar-based photojournalist Masrat Zahra, was subjected to harassment and intimidation by the Indian Police as crackdown on the press in Indian-occupied Kashmir continues to escalate. Fahad Shah, a renowned Kashmiri journalist who is the founder and editor of ‘‘The Kashmir Walla’’, was arrested recently by the police in Pulwama under terrorism and sedition laws, Menon pointed out. Similarly, Sajjad Gul, another journalist of ‘‘The Kashmir Walla’’, was also arrested in the beginning of February 2022. John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the greatest threat to the Indian constitution Is the promotion of majority religion by the Indian government at the expense of minorities. “The BJP and its affiliates are making hateful remarks against Muslims to gain Hindu vote around elections,” he said. The BJP government has adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against religious minorities and other groups and it also stigmatises its critics, the HRW official said. The government enacted the ‘Citizenship Act’ to target minorities, particularly Indian Muslims. Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok, Sifton said, had failed to control hatred spread through their platforms. The US Congress, he said, must weigh on the Indian government to convey their concerns vis-a-vis the violation of human and minority rights in India. Angana Chatterji, Indian Anthropologist and Scholar at Berkeley University, California, said prejudices embedded in the government of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP have infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass and attack religious minorities with impunity. “Hindu spiritual leaders are involved in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims,” she said, adding that BJP leaders and affiliated groups have long portrayed minority communities, especially Muslims, as a threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life. They had raised the bogey of “love jihad” claiming that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam, labelled Muslim immigrants as extremists and accused them of hurting Hindu sentiment over cow slaughter. Since Yogi Adityanath became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 2017, Chatterji said the culture of violence and impunity has taken root, pointing out that UP police have carried out hundreds of extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals belonging to minorities, particularly Muslims. By the time protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill spilled out on the streets of UP in December 2019, the police manhandled protestors, behaved in a vulgar manner with women, arrested whomsoever it wanted and framed prominent activists in criminal cases, she said. As hundreds of thousands of farmers of various faiths began protesting against the government’s new farm laws in November 2020, senior BJP leaders, their supporters on social media, and pro-government media blamed the Sikhs as ‘Khalistani terrorists’, Chatterji said. February 23, 2022 marks the two year anniversary of the communal violence in Delhi that killed 53 people, 40 of them Muslim. Harsh Mander, a former Indian civil servant and human rights activist, said that while Mahatma Gandhi upheld the principles of non-violence, the Hindu supremacist ideology is being currently being propagated by Indian leaders. “Hate crimes have increased by a thousandfold during the BJP regime,” he said. The BJP stigmatises and openly incites crimes against minorities; even Mother Teresa has been vilified. Muslims, Mander said were falsely projected as bigots, unpatriotic, Jihadis and oppressors, adding that even PM Modi follows some of the hate mongers and he refuses to denounce them. IIOJK, he said, is the most militarised region of the world. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2343096/india-has-turned-muslims-into-persecuted-minority-chomsky

2. Hijab row; Feb 12 2022; Muslim girls who started the resistance against ban on hijab in their college in Udupi district of Karnataka have alleged that college authorities have leaked their addresses and mobile numbers making them vulnerable to harassment and attacks. According to a report in Indian media, 17-year-old Aliya Assadi, one the girls who protested against the hijab ban, said phone numbers, parents’ names, and home address were shared in WhatsApp groups. “I am not comfortable showing my face anymore. Already everyone knows how I look and where my home is. What if someone targets me,” Aliya asked. She has started wearing a burqa covering her face too after her details surfaced on the social media. Another student, Hazara Shifa, said her parents are receiving calls from unknown numbers. The group has demanded answers from the college authorities as to how their private details came out in public. The girls have accused Udupi BJP MLA Raghupathi Bhat, who happens to be the chairman of the College’s Development Committee (CDC), of instigating students against the girls for wearing hijab. “He has now made, not just the college, but also our homes unsafe,” Assadi lamented. Tensions are soaring in the state since last week when Hindu students at several colleges wore saffron shawls in opposition to the hijab. On Tuesday, they took out marches against the hijab leading to clashes between the two student groups at a number of places. The government issued order banning clothing that “disturbs law and order”.Meanwhile a hearing by a larger bench of Karnataka high court is underway. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/02/11/hijab-row-udupi-college-plumbs-a-new-low-leaks-contact-details-of-protesting-girls.html

3. Arundhati Roy ;February 13 2022: The Booker-winning author says the present situation in India is “extremely depressing” but she believes there are signs that the Indian people are climbing out of the hole they’ve fallen into. In an interview to renowned Indian journalist, Karan Thapar, Arundhati Roy said, ‘Amidst the confusion, chaos and cacophony of Indian politics, what sort of country are we becoming?’ Arundhati Roy says Hindu nationalism could break India into little pieces, as has happened earlier with Yugoslavia and Russia, but adds that ultimately the Indian people will resist what she calls Narendra Modi and the BJP’s fascism. She raised two sets of critical questions. First, she asked: “What have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens…when it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous?” The second set of questions is to do with the sort of country we’ve become. “Over the last five years, India has distinguished itself as a lynching nation. Muslims and Dalits have been publicly flogged and beaten to death by vigilante Hindu mobs in broad-daylight, and the ‘lynch videos’ then gleefully uploaded to YouTube.” Even more importantly she says, “The infrastructure of fascism is staring us in the face…and yet we hesitate to call it by its name”. In the interview, Roy also spoke about Kashmir. She explains what she meant when in her recent Jonathan Schell Memorial Lecture she says of the Kashmiri people: “Why should they want to be a part of India? For what earthly reason? If freedom is what they want, freedom is what they should have.” Roy also explains the way she sees the relationship between Kashmir and the rest of India when she says: “Kashmir may not defeat India, but it will consume India”. This opinion is also echoed by one of the characters in her book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Musa Yeswi, who says something very similar. “One day Kashmir will make India self-destruct in the same way…You’re not destroying us, you are constructing us. It’s yourselves that you are destroying.” When asked if her point is that the bell that tolls in Kashmir is actually tolling for India, Arundhati Roy clearly agreed and explains why. She says the way India’s values, principles, constitutional commitments are being undermined by its behaviour in Kashmir will eventually corrode and consume India itself. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2022/02/13/the-way-india-treating-kashmir-will-eventually-corrode-and-consume-itself-arundhati-roy.html

4. American Critics of Hindu Nationalism Risk Sustained Attacks ;From politicians to academics, Americans who speak against Hindutva face harsh backlash, protests, and violent threats; Feb 5 2022; When US Senator and then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders criticized then President Donald Trump’s “failure of leadership on human rights” for having dismissed the issue of the February 2020 anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi as “up to India,” it was not long before a senior leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) openly threatened interference. “How much ever neutral we wish to be you compel us to play a role in Presidential elections,” responded BJP National Secretary BL Santhosh to Sanders on Twitter. Santhosh deleted his Tweet within hours, but the message was clear: any international criticism of affairs in an India ruled by the Hindu nationalist BJP would prompt a harsh backlash. The incentive for such backlash was equally clear considering top BJP officials were implicated in instigating the 2020 violence. Threats against Sanders, however, are far from the first time that critics of Hindu nationalism — and the movement’s actions have faced such backlash. As American awareness and, consequently, criticism of Hindu nationalism (or “Hindutva”) spreads, attacks on critics correspondingly escalate. Politicians, academics, journalists such as myself, and even prominent interfaith bodies have endured pressure, censure, and protest for years. One of the most recent and sustained onslaughts occurred in September 2021, when faculty from over 50 mostly US-based universities organized an online conference called Dismantling Global Hindutva (DGH). In reprisal, they faced everything from denunciations to death threats. Ram Madhav a BJP General Secretary and former spokesperson of the party’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary denounced DGH as “nothing but a front to attack Hindu religion and culture.” Leading up to the conference, branches of RSS’s international wing, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), were among its most vocal opponents. HSS-UK “vehemently” condemned the conference as “anti-Hindu/anti-India,” while HSS-USA claimed that discussion of the religious-nationalist ideology of Hindutva would “amplify Hinduphobia, encourage Hindu hate, and incite violence against the minority Hindu population.” Yet the only violence or threat of it occurred against conference organizers and speakers. Death and rape threats forced many to withdraw from the event. One shocking email even warned organizers: “If this event will take place then I will become Osama bin Laden and will kill all the speakers.” “More than 1m emails were sent to the presidents, provosts and officials at universities involved in the conference pressuring them to withdraw and dismiss staff who were participating, pointing to an organised campaign by groups in India and the US,” reported The Guardian. “At Drew University in New Jersey, more than 30,000 emails were received in just a few minutes, causing the university server to crash.” “The backlash was a concerted, somewhat coordinated effort among the many arms of the global Hindu Right,” Dr. Rohit Chopra, an organizer and professor at Santa Clara University, told me. “When a million emails are sent to universities in protest, so much so that one university’s server crashed in a few minutes, there has to be a coordinated effort and one engineered by an entity with significant resources. Whether that was the RSS, the BJP IT cell, a Hindu Right organization in the US, or some combination thereof we don’t know. But just as politicians in India claim riots are spontaneous when we know they are engineered for political gains, there was nothing spontaneous about this backlash.” In fact, the backlash against those who speak against Hindu nationalism or, in one case, simply disassociate from Hindu nationalist outfits has a long history. One of the earliest waves of pushback against Hindutva’s American critics began in 2013 just as the BJP mobilized its election machinery in India to make Narendra Modi Prime Minister. In September 2013, the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) withdrew from a Chicago event organized by Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA). One reason was VHPA’s association with India’s VHP, which is the religious wing of the RSS. Another was co-sponsorship of the event by Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP), the BJP’s international front which, in 2020, registered as a foreign agent in America. Yet another was the involvement of BJP speakers at a time when the party’s candidate for Prime Minister, Modi, was still banned from entering the US. CPWR’s disassociation provoked an outcry. In a coalition letter issued by American Hindus Against Defamation (a project of VHPA), signatories accused the interfaith body of “lack of understanding and respect” which “jeopardized the reputation and credibility of CPWR.” Insisting it was now necessary to “heal relations with the Hindu and Indian community,” they demanded a public apology. The few national signatories to the letter included HSS-USA and Hindu American Foundation (HAF). In December 2013, HAF “launched a major campaign” to block US House Resolution 417, which was not only perhaps the most significant congressional attempt to warn against the “violent agenda” advanced by “strands of the Hindu nationalist movement” but also affirmed Modi’s ban on entry to the US. Every congressional representative who backed the resolution received a visit from HAF, revealing a staffer in one such office. He added that HAF was “definitely trying to undermine anyone in Washington who is critical of Modi.” Incidentally, HAF had only three board members at the time, including Rishi Bhutada. He joined HAF’s board in 2012, the same year that he became Vice-President of Finance for a large industrial corporation founded by his father, Ramesh, who is vice-president of HSS-USA. The same month that HAF, with Rishi as one of its top leaders, began working to block a congressional resolution critical of Modi, Ramesh spoke at an OFBJP rally in Houston, TX. “We are not only for BJP, but for a strong India, and we consider Narendra Modi and BJP to be strong vehicles for the same,” said Ramesh at the rally. In early 2014, while HAF was still campaigning against H. Res. 417, the senior Bhutada was organizing US-based call-centres to urge Indian voters to support the BJP and even “inspired and encouraged” a team to travel to India to campaign directly for Modi. Modi was elected and the resolution failed, but HAF did not forget one of its initial sponsors: then-Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to US Congress. In 2016, as Ellison was being considered for chair of the Democratic National Committee, HAF voiced “concerns,” saying they were “disturbed” by his “legislative activism against India,” citing H. Res. 417 in particular. Their complaints compelled him to join a conference call with them (as well as, among others, HSS-USA and VHPA); remarkably, he caved on his concerns about Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat Pogrom, calling it a “closed issue.” The only other congressional representative reported as on the call was then Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who later made Indian headlines in 2018 after publicly withdrawing from the World Hindu Congress (WHC) in Chicago, an event hosted by VHPA. To protest the choice of RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat as WHC’s keynote speaker, several young South Asian activists mostly women infiltrated the conference to raise a banner and chant anti-RSS slogans. They were swiftly assaulted, spat upon, and even choked by attendees. A year later, VHPA filed a lawsuit against them seeking $500,000 in “damages.” Meanwhile, Gabbard had long faced allegations of close ties to Hindu nationalist outfits like HSS-USA, VHPA, and OFBJP. In a January 2019 op-ed, she denounced such allegations as “religious bigotry and attempts to foment fear of Hindus.” In March 2019, as she ran for the presidency, she repeated that tactic when I questioned her at a campaign rally about her direct interactions with the RSS itself. Dodging the question, she said, “It is this kind of attacks that are rooted in religious bigotry that we must stand together and condemn.” Yet Hindu-American Congressman Ro Khanna seemed to disagree. In August 2019, after I published a comprehensive investigation of Gabbard’s Hindutva links, Khanna affirmed the article on Twitter as “important,” adding, “It’s the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist[s] & Christians.” Khanna’s simple statement soon made him yet another Hindutva critic to face targeted backlash. In September 2019, HAF hand-delivered a coalition letter — including signatures by HSS-USA and VHPA — to his office, demanding he retract the Tweet. In October, 25-30 alleged members of HSS protested him (as well as myself) outside one of his constituent town halls. By month’s end, local businessman Ritesh Tandon announced he would challenge Khanna. Boasting that his father was “a strong RSS person,” Tandon admitted he was largely motivated to run by the congressman’s anti-Hindutva position. In contrast to that position, Tandon spent his first month on the campaign trail in frequent company with former OFBJP President Chandru Bhambhra, attending a VHPA event, and even meeting with BJP Spokesperson Sambit Patra. Although Khanna refused to reverse his statement, Congressman Tom Suozzi succumbed to pressure when he faced backlash in August 2019 for a letter expressing concerns about Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370, including that “the Modi government’s move could embolden Hindu nationalists to engage in acts of violence and discrimination against India’s minority religious groups.” The outcry was led by Jagdish Sewhani, who pressured Suozzi to attend a community meeting where Sewhani lectured the congressman about his “tone and tenor,” claimed it “hurt” Indian-Americans, and demanded he withdraws it. Yet not all local Indian-Americans shared the outrage. As one local community leader noted, “A group of people with vested interests attacked him for his letter.” Perhaps he meant Sewhani, who has reportedly served as a coordinator for HSS as well as on the National Executive Committee of OFBJP, of which he is reportedly a founding member. Allegedly an intimate associate of Modi, he not only organized US-based efforts to support Modi’s election but personally reports travelling to India in 2014 to serve as “part of Modi-Ji’s campaign team” and participate in “brainstorming sessions.” Despite the vested interests — that is, the crystal clear pro-BJP bias of those pressuring him, Suozzi issued a public apology. Other members of Congress who have dared to speak up about the Kashmir issue have also faced backlash. In 2019, after Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal herself an Indian-American introduced a resolution on Kashmir, she was accused of having “betrayed” her community, HAF denounced it as an “anti-Hindu, anti-India resolution,” and India’s External Affairs Minister refused to attend a congressional meeting because she would be there. In 2020, after Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib introduced a similar resolution, the Bhutada family sent her challenger a surge of campaign donations. Attacks on critics of Hindutva, however, have, in some instances today, passed beyond peaceful pressure and protests.One of the most ominous incidents was in late 2020. Dr Vinayak Chaturvedi — a noted scholar on Hindutva who is writing an upcoming book about VD Savarkar, who popularized the term — was on the phone with his octogenarian parents when they told him armed police were outside their home. Police reported they had received an anonymous tip that Chaturvedi’s mother had, in a Zoom call, been witnessed shooting a person. The elderly couple, it turned out, were victims of swatting: a malicious tactic to weaponize police against innocent people by falsely reporting a violent crime. Considering his parents had previously been harassed due to their son’s work on Hindutva, Chaturvedi concluded that the swatting incident “has all the traces of the invisible hand of the Right that is no longer interested in intellectual debate.”“Scholars who conduct research on India are also aware that they are being monitored on their campuses here in the United States,” Chaturvedi later noted. “American organizations that propagate Hindutva and are sympathetic to Modi, the BJP, and the Sangh Parivar have trained their scrutiny on the American academy.” Dr Audrey Truschke of Rutgers University is among the most prominent and regularly outspoken American academics to criticize both the Modi government and Hindu nationalist ideology. The outcome has been a nonstop onslaught of death threats. “For more than five years, I have received hate mail from Hindu nationalists or Hindu supremacists nearly every single day,” she said in 2021. “I have been the target of so many death and rape threats that I have lost count.” Even her young children are routinely threatened. As a journalist focused on Hindutva, I can identify at least a little bit. I’ve been physically assaulted while protesting Modi’s 2015 visit to America, roughly manhandled by Gabbard staff while protesting her, repeatedly attacked in print by HAF, protested (as mentioned) by HSS, regularly threatened with violence on social media, and faced attempts to dox not only myself but my family. “India has no doubt become quite dangerous for visible critics of Hindutva since 2014,” Dr. Chopra told me. “I should emphasize that it is people on the ground in India combating the vile ideology of Hindutva who deserve the bulk of praise and support. They are on the frontlines.” He adds, “The backlash will also continue in the US, unfortunately, but it is also heartening that academics, journalists, and critics of the Hindu Right here are standing firm and pushing back.”Yet the sentiments of the Hindu Right says Chopra, “do not trump constitutional rights, democratic principles, the principle of free inquiry.” Although critics of Hindutva in America may continue to face escalating attacks, they can stand strong and take courage in the protection offered by the rule of law something which Hindutva critics in India (who are often also its victims) cannot, unfortunately, currently rely upon. Indeed, as the violence of Hindutva continues to grow unabated in India, its critics in America — particularly considering they are both legally and physically in a far more secure position have a duty to continue to expose and oppose the Hindu nationalist movement despite the backlash. ; By Pieter Friedrich

5. OIC on India; Feb 16 2022; The General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has expressed deep concern over recent public calls for the genocide of Muslims in Haridwar in India’s Uttarakhand state. It also condemned reported incidents of harassment of Muslim women on social media, as well as the banning of female Muslim students wearing the hijab in Karnataka. OIC called upon the international community, especially the UN and Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, to take necessary measures in this regard https://www.arabnews.com/node/2024791/world

6. Muslims in Indian Punjab; Feb 17 2022; Since the region witnessed the worst ever communal riots and large-scale migration in 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence, the Muslim population was drastically reduced from 33% to 0.5%. As per the 2011 Census, Muslims now account for 1.93%, with the majority of them inhabiting Malerkotla district the only Muslim-dominated district in India's Sikh-majority state. Dressed in a black suit, Hassan Mohammad, a lawyer and an independent candidate, is campaigning door-to-door across different villages in the state's Malerkotla district, which has a 70% Muslim population. "When I go to meet people in the villages, I see how bad their condition is. The previous governments have not done much for them," says Mohammad, adding that everyone in Punjab is now yearning for change. In the present elections, 15 candidates, mostly Muslims, are contesting for the assembly segment. The population, however, feels ignored despite the area sending a representative to the state's assembly every year. As the candidates campaign, Mohammed Ashraf, a resident, told Anadolu Agency that health facilities in the town are abysmal."Usually, there are no specialized doctors available. There is only one big government hospital which caters to a population of more than 130,000," he said, adding that the patients have to bigger towns if the problem is "severe." Ramzaan Sayeed, another local, said the Muslim town lacks professional colleges and good educational institutions."It is a matter of professional courses these days. We have to send our children to different places for a good education," he said. It is a triangular fight, this time in Malerkotla. Usually, people have been voting either for the Shiromani Akali Dal, a Sikh-centric political party in the state, or secular centrist Congress. This time, however, the Aam Aadmi Party's presence in the constituency has added a new dimension to the contest. Not only these day-to-day issues, but some national issues related to Muslims also find a place here. Liyaqat Ahmad in the main town says he would not vote for the Aam Admi Party because of its indifference towards the Muslim community in the Indian capital Delhi, where it is the ruling party. He mentions that in the worst-hit communal riots in the city in 2020, this party did not help Muslims. In the worst-hit riots in decades, which started on the day when US President Donald Trump was in Delhi, over 50 people were killed and hundreds injured in February 2020. "Some of my acquaintances are there, they say the government didn't do anything for them. So how could we trust them?" he asked, adding that the unemployment issue is also a major problem in the town. As one walks towards the main market of the town, the broken roads give a tough time to the commuters. "There are basic problems like sewerage and safe drinking water. We want the new government to look at all these issues," said Jafar Ali, a shopkeeper. The incumbent Congress government had announced setting up a medical college and last year inaugurated a new flyover. "As far as a medical college, there is not much progress. And the heavy traffic on the flyover had to stop because it developed some problems... such is the condition here," said Ali, adding that in the previous governments, the legislators from the segment were made ministers in the government, but there was no major developmental change in the town. Malerkotla was a Muslim princely state during the colonial era and the only place in Punjab where no communal violence took place during the Partition of British India in 1947 into two sovereign states of India and Pakistan. That bond of communal harmony lasts even today. While over the years, it is only Muslim candidates who win from the seats, the votes also come from people of other religions. Across the town, Sikhs are these days participating in the campaigning for the Muslim candidates who are contesting the elections. "For us, the welfare of the people is important and not the religion of the candidate," said Karnail Singh, one of the supporters of the Aam Aadmi Party contesting candidate in Malerkotla. Singh said that this time, the town which has maintained communal harmony for decades, is looking for a change. "We want this to become the number one district in the state. Earlier, the local legislators became the ministers in the government, but nothing changed for people here," he said. The roots of communal harmony in the area date back to 1705, when Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's forces were pitted against Sikh spiritual leader Guru Gobind Singh. Historical records suggest that ruler of Malerkotla Sher Mohammed Khan had protested at the killing of Singh's sons, who were captured by the Mughal army. In recognition of this act, Sikhs respected the Malerkotla and did not violate its integrity, even when they ruled a large swathe of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir in the 19th century. Predominantly agricultural, Malerkotla is also known as the vegetable capital of Punjab. It also supplies vegetables to other parts of the country. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2343849/in-indian-punjabs-muslim-island-voters-vying-for-change

7. Hijab; Feb 19 2022; A group of powerful Kuwaiti parliamentarians have demanded the govt. of Kuwait to put an immediate ban on the entry of any member of the ruling BJP of India into Kuwait. We can’t sit back and watch muslim girls being publicly persecuted they said. Time for the Ummah to unite.

8. Hijab ; Feb 2022’Kuwaiti Member of Parliament Dr. Saleh TH Al-Mutairi has submitted a letter to the Kuwaiti Parliament urging his country to ban entry to any member of the ruling BJP of India into Kuwait amidst the Hijab row in Karnataka. The letter that is signed by several Kuwaiti parliamentarians has demanded the government to impose an immediate ban on the entry of any member of the ruling BJP into Kuwait, blaming the saffron party for oppressing Muslims in India. The letter adds that the Government of Kuwait should take strict note of the happening in India and should ban members of BJP into Kuwait unless the oppression of Muslims in India ends. Mejbel Alshrika, the Director of the Center for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at the Kuwait Lawyers Association, and a Member of the Training Committee of the Kuwait Institute for Protection and Legal Studies, shared the letter on micro-blogging site Twitter. https://english.varthabharati.in/gulf/hijab-row-kuwaiti-mps-write-to-kuwait-parliament-demanding-ban-on-bjp-members-entry-into-emirate

9. Beef export ban; Feb 18 2022; Kuwaiti businessmen have reportedly demanded a ban on meat exports to India, which is proving to be too big a financial hit for India. According to reports, Arab figures who have raised their voices against the Indian atrocities against minorities in India, especially Muslims and Kashmiris in Indian Occupied Kashmir, have made another big demand, creating a huge problem for India Remember, this demand has come from influential people who have been constantly raising their voices against the atrocities in India for the last several months. These are the Kuwaiti influential figures who have raised their voices, not only because of their concerns and reservations about business, but also because they have informed the Arab world about India, who have a lot of influence in Arab society. https://en.baaghitv.com/big-blow-to-indian-economy-ban-on-beef-exports/

10. US Silence Towards Muslim Persecution in India is Deeply Concerning ;Opinion; by CJ Werleman; Feb 20, 2022; As human rights activists and scholars warn of a looming Muslim genocide in India, the Biden administration remains tight-lipped, revealing US hypocrisy towards human rights and democracy. During a US congressional briefing last month, Dr. Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, warned that Muslims in India face the threat of imminent genocide, likening the situation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi to those experienced on the eve of genocide in Rwanda and Myanmar. Despite Stanton’s reputation as the world’s most esteemed scholar of genocide having accurately predicted the Rwandan genocide in 1994 the Biden administration remains silent towards the persecution of Muslims in India, as it has since the 46th President of the United States was sworn in more than a year ago. President Biden conspicuously rejected recommendations by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to include India on the list of the world’s worst offenders of religious freedom. Neither Biden, nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, mentioned the Indian government’s human rights violations against Muslims and other religious minorities during their recent respective visits to India, and instead, all praised the Asian country for its “pluralistic society and history of harmony.” there’s not a single human rights organization on the planet that would praise Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist government for promoting pluralism and communal harmony. The Hindutva ideology, which provides Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with its ideological DNA, draws its inspiration from Germany’s Nazi Party and other European fascist movements, which is why Dr. Stanton has been warning of genocide in India for years. Dr. Stanton reminded US lawmakers that Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002 when riots and massacres killed more than 2,000 Muslims. “At the time…Modi did nothing. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence he actually encouraged those massacres,” Dr. Stanton said, adding that as Prime Minister, Modi has weaponized “anti-Muslim, Islamophobic rhetoric” to build and mobilize his political base. For these reasons, India has recorded a year-on-year upward surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes since Modi came to power in 2014, culminating with the 2020 Delhi Riots, which resulted in the murder of 51 Muslims at the hands of Hindu extremists. Today, Hindu nationalist leaders openly and routinely urge genocide and campaigns of mass rape against Muslims without fear of consequence or condemnation from the Indian government. Understandably, Hindu extremists have interpreted this silence as tactical approval, which is why Muslims are being lynched, beaten, raped, murdered, and discriminated against across the country. Almost every day – but certainly every week brings new revelations of a country spiraling ever further into the moral abyss, and further away from the democratic ideals espoused by India’s post-colonial founders, who rejected majoritarian rule and religious supremacism while embracing secularism, pluralism, tolerance, and inclusiveness. Hindu vigilante groups, lynch mobs, and “purity” police hunt in packs for their next Muslim victim to harass, threaten, assault, and worse. No level of Indian society has escaped the pernicious influence of the Hindutva ideology. Last month, India drifted further away from its constitutionally protected norms when a government-funded pre-university college in Karnataka’s Udupi district moved to ban the wearing of Islamic head coverings on the school’s campus, despite the right to do so enshrined within the Indian Constitution and permitted by the school itself, as stated in its student handbook. But on February 3, the school became the subject of international scorn and condemnation when disturbing video footage showed school administrators blocking hijab-wearing students from entering the schools’ grounds, just weeks before their scheduled end-of-semester-exams. Their cries and pleas were heard around the world, including the United States, with CNN, the Washington Post, and New York Times reporting what human rights activists have accurately described as “religious apartheid.” “Singling out [the] hijab for criticism is unfair and discriminatory. Those opposing it are on record decrying secularism and for openly espousing majoritarianism,” said Zakia Soman, founder of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, in a recent interview. But when female Muslim students organized a protest against the school’s anti-democratic ruling, their Hindutva radicalized male classmates mobilized a counter-protest, in which they not only wore saffron-colored scarfs while chanting Hindu nationalist slogans and war cries but also threw rocks towards the Muslim girls. Silence from the Modi government has sent a clear signal to other government-funded schools across the country, including Madhya Pradesh, where the state’s education minister said the hijab would be banned, too. In other parts of the country, Hindutva radicalized college professors have ordered Muslim students to stop greeting one another using Islamic terms of peace (Salam) and quit speaking in the Urdu language (the Muslim Indians language), as noted by Shabana Mir, an associate professor and Director of the Undergraduate Education at the American Islamic College, Chicago. This latest episode in the rise of anti-Muslim hate in India comes only months after Hindu nationalist groups and individuals established online mock auction websites to target prominent female Muslim lawyers, activists, and journalists, including Washington Post contributor Rana Ayub, with sexualized violence. But not a word of condemnation from President Biden. And not a single statement or tweet from the State Department telling the Modi government to knock it off, therefore revealing the United States’ hypocritical and feigned concern for the welfare of persecuted Muslim minorities. The US strongly condemns its adversaries’ human rights violations, such as China’s abusive treatment of ethnic Uyghurs, while turning a blind eye to the behavior of its allies, such as India, which the US views as a crucial partner in its contestation with China in Indo Pacific. This is a sure demonstration of duplicity and insincerity. The United States’ blatant double standard undermines international action and solidarity for persecuted Muslim populations in both India and China, as it not only provides cover for the Indian government to continue its march towards genocide but also gives fuel to those who incorrectly accuse the US of manufacturing false allegations of genocide against China to advance US strategic interests. https://insidearabia.com/us-silence-towards-muslim-persecution-in-india-is-deeply-con

11. Hate crimes against Muslims ; Feb 22 2022; "He used to carry a thin towel on his shoulder. They stuffed that in his mouth as they killed him," said Kamrun Ali, wiping away her tears. Her husband, Anwar Ali, was allegedly killed by a Hindu mob in March 2019 when he tried to prevent them from destroying an Islamic religious structure near his house in Sonbhadra district. Police arrested 18 people all local Hindus, including some minors - over his death but they were granted bail within a few months. Ms Ali said her family is still waiting for justice. Lynchings and hate speech targeting Muslims have regularly made headlines since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power. Critics say the accused are often supporters of the party - and that anti-Muslim rhetoric by BJP leaders has emboldened them its leaders rarely condemn such incidents. Mr Modi himself was fiercely criticised for remaining silent for weeks after a 52-year-old Muslim man was lynched in 2015 in UP for allegedly storing beef in his home.The 2015 killing sent shock waves around the world but in the years since there have been several such attacks on Muslims. Some of the worst incidents have happened in UP, where the BJP's Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed Hindu priest who has often made inflammatory speeches, became chief minister in 2017. In the four cases examined by the BBC, victims' families alleged police apathy and said they were dissatisfied with the cases' progress. The accused are out on bail in three of the cases, while no one has been arrested yet in the fourth, more than seven months later . Mohammed Asad Hayat, a criminal lawyer who represents victims of hate crimes, alleged that the police's reluctance to anger powerful people has weakened such investigations. "Lynchings happen under a political agenda," he said.Meanwhile victims' families say they are living in fear, and some have even fled their homes. Anwar Ali's eldest son, Ain ul Haq, alleges that the arrival of local school teacher Ravindra Kharwar sparked communal tensions in their village, Parsoi. "He encouraged young Hindu men to assemble and raise slogans against the Imam Chowk (where a religious structure stood)," he says.

12. Mr Haq says the group damaged it twice, but both times police intervened and negotiated its rebuilding. But on 20 March 2019, according to the case registered by police, Ali caught a group destroying it a third time, and they turned on him. His son says they killed him.

13. Ali's post-mortem report says he died of wounds caused by a "sharp-edged weapon". Kamrun Ali, Anwar Ali's wife, says they are still waiting for justice he police investigation notes name Mr Kharwar as the main suspect. They raided his house but couldn't find him - he was marked as "absconding". Mr Kharwar denied allegations of his involvement.

14. When police filed charges, his name was missing. "We did not find any evidence against Ravindra Kharwar," the district's police superintendent Amarendra Singh said. Mr Kharwar, a member of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) the ideological parent of the BJP - was transferred to a school in another village after Ali's death. One of the main accused, Rajesh Kharwar, told the BBC that the school teacher used to tell them that Muslims are a threat to majority Hindus."We are in a deep mess and facing charges but he was saved," Rajesh, who is not related to the teacher, says. Nearly three years on, Mr Haq said he is disappointed that all 18 accused are out on bail. It's unclear when the trial will begin. The frustration is shared by Shahrukh Khan whose father, Sher Khan, was shot dead in June 2021 in Mathura district. Seven months later, there have been no arrests.

15. Mathura police superintendent Shrish Chandra said he was "not authorised" to explain why. Police say the 50-year-old Khan was killed during a scuffle with "unknown" villagers while transporting cattle. But his son alleges that the killer was Chandrashekhar Baba, a religious guru who runs a cow shelter Mr Chandrasekhar has denied this.

16. Shahrukh told the BBC he fainted when shrapnel from a bullet hit him during the fight. He says he woke up the next day at the police station, where he learnt of his father's death. Shahrukh also alleges that he tried several times to add Mr Chandrashekhar's name to a police complaint but was dissuaded by police - an allegation Mr Chandra denies. Sher Khan was shot dead while transporting cattle

17. Mr Chandrasekhar says he intervened in a fight between Khan and some villagers and sent injured people to hospital. It's unclear what sparked the fight but buffalo meat sellers and cattle traders have been assaulted by Hindu vigilante groups who accuse them of transporting beef. While cow slaughter is illegal in several Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, buffalos are exempt from the ban.Police however arrested Shahrukh and five others for cattle smuggling on a complaint filed by Mr Chandrasekhar. "I couldn't even attend my father's funeral because I was in jail," Shahrukh says."If they [the accused] believed that my husband was a cattle smuggler, then they should have handed him over to the police. Why did they open fire at him?" asks Sitara, Khan's wife. When the BBC visited the house of the victim, Shakir Qureshi, his mother started crying out of fear. She eventually allowed her son to speak. Mr Qureshi, whose family has been selling meat for decades, says he was taking buffalo meat to a customer on his scooter when a group of men blocked his way and accused him of carrying beef.

18. "I wept and pleaded with them that I wasn't carrying beef, but they kept thrashing me.'' Shakir Qureshi was assaulted while taking buffalo meat to a customer He says he was too scared to report the assault to the police - he only did so after the video went viral. Police arrested six people, including Manoj Thakur, who was associated with a cow vigilante group. Mr Thakur spent two months in prison before he got bail. Mr Thakur admitted his role in the assault to the BBC he said he wouldn't have been arrested if the video hadn't gone viral.

19. After the assault, Mr Qureshi stopped selling meat - he now works as a daily-wage labourer. Fear and resignation are not uncommon among victims' families who feel they have no other option. In May 2017, 60-year-old Ghulam Ahmed was found dead in a mango orchard he was guarding in his village in Bulandshahr district - the post-mortem report says he died of "severe internal injuries". Police arrested nine men linked to a right-wing group - Hindu Yuva Vahini formed by Mr Adityanath in 2002. They are all out on bail and deny the charges.

20. Police say he was killed in retaliation against his Muslim neighbour eloping with a Hindu woman days before. Inter-faith relationships have long been fraught in India, but in recent years, Hindu-Muslim couples have faced also the wrath of vigilantes who accuse Muslim men of luring Hindu woman to convert their faith. Ghulam Ahmed was killed days after his Muslim neighbour eloped with a Hindu woman

21. Ahmed's family was among the few Muslims in a village dominated by upper-caste Hindus. The key witness, Ahmed's brother, Pappu, said he had seen men masked by saffron cloths leading Ahmed away. But he later refused to testify. Ahmed's son, Vakil Ahmed, says he understands. He says the fact that the accused are from the powerful farm-owning community, while the Muslims mostly work as daily wage labourers, makes it harder for them. He adds that the main accused, Gavinder, was "welcomed back with garlands" when he was released from jail. Gavinder has denied committing the crime.The family has since moved away. "How can we continue to live in this village?" Vakil asks. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60225543

22. BJP and Muslims” Feb 22-2022; the question is relevant because of the centrality that Muslims as a group occupy in the ideology and propaganda of the BJP and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. At election time, this focus is almost obsessive. The campaign speeches made in Uttar Pradesh especially by Modi, Shah, UP chief minister Adityanath and other party functionaries are full of hostile references to Muslims, either explicit or implied. By marvellous happenstance, the verdict and sentencing in a case that dates back to 2008 has come in the middle of election. That is why it should be obvious that in the cartoon put out by the BJP, the Muslims are the message.The reason their cartoon has evoked horror is because we have seen this sort of singular obsession with a targeted religious minority before and know where it leads. “… [T]he Jew,” — Jeffrey Herf, a leading historian of Nazi propaganda, quotes Viktor Klemperer as observing is in every respect the centre of the language of the Third Reich,” indeed of its whole view of the epoch.” Klemperer was a scholar who lived in Germany throughout the Nazi era and kept a diary full of observations about the Nazis and their impact. Anti-Semitism for him, says Herf, “was not only a set of prejudices and hatreds but also an explanatory framework for historical events.” Turning next to a landmark 1969 essay by E.H. Gombrich, Herf notes how he wrote that “Nazi propaganda had created a mythic world by ‘transforming the political universe into a conflict of persons and personifications’ in which a virtuous young Germany fought manfully against evil schemers, above all the Jews. The Jews were the cement for this myth, first in the political battles within Germany and then on the international plane. It was ‘this gigantic persecution mania, this paranoiac myth that [held] the various strands of German propaganda together. Gombrich concluded that what characterized Nazi propaganda was ‘less the lie than the imposition of a paranoiac pattern on world events’.” For the RSS and BJP, the imposition of a paranoiac pattern on all events is a central facet of their political propaganda. For every threat, real and imaginary, the villain is the Muslim, the victim is Hindu. Non-Muslim opponents are assailed for the sin of ‘appeasing’ this villain. The bicycle used by the Ahmedabad bombers was turned by Modi into an accusation against the Samajwadi Party, whose election symbol is the bicycle. Why did they choose this symbol, he asked, suggesting that the support of Muslim voters which the SP counts on is contaminated by terror. In 2019, Modi had famously declared that no Hindu can ever be a terrorist so we can be sure that there will never be a cartoon depicting BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya and her associates swinging from a noose. The crime they are charged with committing involved the use of a motorcycle rather than a bicycle and happened around the same time as the Ahmedabad blast. In fact, her trial has not even begun. But given that terrorism, in the BJP’s imagination, is purely the handiwork of Muslims, this is not seen as a problem. Since terrorism has waned in recent years, the ‘paranoiac pattern’ is imposed elsewhere. In 2020, BJP leaders gave free rein to the vicious ‘Corona Jihad’ propaganda, which blamed Muslims for the pandemic. Then there is spit jihad, land jihad, love jihad, mafia, encroachers, rioters, infiltrators, termites. Once the line is set from the top, the Hindutva ecosystem is quick to produce and circulate the necessary visuals. . C.J. Werleman and others have noted the parallels between the ‘corona jihad’ campaign and Nazi propaganda blaming Jews for typhus, but when we look at visual depictions, including the caricature of the Jew and the Muslim, the resemblance is even more striking and chilling. What do these Hindutva propaganda visuals tell us, and why should we take urgent note instead of dismissing them as ‘fringe’? Because, as Herf tells us in his paraphrasing of the historian of fascism George L. Mosse, “the racism of bodily stereotypes and countertypes ‘was the catalyst which pushed German nationalism over the edge, from discrimination to mass extermination’.” Of course, the Nazis had a much more developed notion of the ideal body and of the reviled countertype than the RSS-BJP does Hindutva fascism draws on different historical and cultural streams than its European counterparts. Nevertheless, the somatic preoccupation with Muslims their facial hair, their clothes, their diet, their modes of worship marks them out as a group that should be reviled, feared and ultimately put in their place. To borrow a line from the racist lynching postcard from the United States,‘The Muslim now, by eternal grace, Must learn to stay in the Muslim’s place’ You can recognise them from their clothes, Modi had said of the people opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The BJP in Gujarat a state Modi ruled for 13 years now wants us to recognise them dangling at the end of a rope. https://thewire.in/communalism/for-the-bjp-the-muslim-is-not-just-the-message-but-the-only-message

23. Uttar Pradesh police murders young man; Feb 25 2022; According to police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it was suicide. The young Muslim man they had brought into their custody had, out of despair, killed himself in the police station toilets. But, as photos of the scene emerged, so too did suspicions.The 22-year-old man, Altaf, was 165cm (5ft 5in) tall and weighed 60kg (9.5 stone), but the toilet tap he had supposedly hanged himself from was just 76cm off the ground and made of flimsy plastic. And why, as the police later claimed in court, was the CCTV in the police station mysteriously not working that day? Family and friends tell a very different story: that Altaf, a Muslim man living in the town of Kasganj, was in love with and planned to marry a Hindu girl. That powerful local Hindu vigilante groups opposed to interfaith unions found out and reported him to the police. And that on 9 November 2021, Altaf was arrested and tortured to death in police custody and his family pressured to keep quiet. “The police murdered my son and then gave me money to say he was depressed and took his own life,” says Altaf’s father, Chand Miya, an illiterate mason who has taken the case to the state high court. “But I will not stay quiet, I want justice.” Last Friday, the courts ordered Altaf’s body to be exhumed and a new postmortem examination to be carried out. In six cases examined by the Guardian of deaths in custody and police shootings of suspects, allegedly in self defence, from 2018 onwards, those accused of carrying out and covering up killings are the same: the Uttar Pradesh police, under the rule of the state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government. In the past five years, according to the government, there have been more than 8,700 shootings by police in the state, including more than 3,000 incidents when allegedly escaping suspects were shot, often in the knees, and more than 150 deaths. There are rarely any eyewitnesses to these encounters, according to human rights organisations that have examined many of the cases. Not a single officer who fatally shot someone in Uttar Pradesh in the past five years has faced disciplinary action. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/feb/22/uttar-pradesh-elections-hindu-nationalist-yogi-adityanath-police-accused-unlawful-deaths-muslims-dalits

24. Looming Genocide in Modi’s India Threatens Both Muslims & Christians by Pieter Friedrich ; Mar 1 2022; On 24 February 2022, a state legislator from Bihar demanded, in so many words, that the government of India withdraw voting rights from Indian Muslims and “make them second class citizens.” The politician, unsurprisingly, hails from India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Such overtly anti-minority statements probably would have been considered shocking enough to make national headlines eight years ago, before the BJP came to power, but since 2014 they have become so par for the course that it seems Indian journalists can barely be bothered to bat an eyelash over such an unvarnished demand by an elected official to disenfranchise hundreds of millions of Indian citizens. After all, the sociopolitical landscape in India has become so desensitized to the mainstreaming of hate that it took over a month for Swami Yati Narsinghanand to be arrested after organizing a conference in December 2021 where he and other speakers openly called for launching a genocide against Indian Muslims and he was barely behind bars for a month before getting bail. Over the past several years of the Modi regime, beatings and lynchings of Muslims have occurred with such increasing frequency that it’s become almost impossible for even the most attentive observer to track or recall all the incidents. Muslims are murdered for allegedly possessing beef. Muslims are stopped in the streets and ordered to chant Hindu religious slogans at the risk of violence and then beaten even when they cooperate. Muslim men are attacked for being in the company of Hindu women. Muslims are physically assaulted on public transportation in Delhi, the capital of the country itself, for accidentally bumping into someone. And on, and on, and on. Random violence against Muslims, to the extent of lynching, has been normalized as a daily occurrence in the Modi regime. The only change that we’ve seen at the outset of 2022 is that the “New Normal” has now expanded to include incessant, explicit calls for genocide from various prominent Hindu nationalist figures, often made in the presence of BJP officials. Calls which are made so frequently that, just like the lynchings of the past eight years, it’s growing difficult to keep up with them all.While Muslims have born the brunt of violence since 2014, over the past couple of years (and particularly in 2021), the Hindu nationalist forces not only began expanding the overtness of their rhetoric but also the targets of their violence. Indian Christians are, increasingly, falling victim to the rising tide of hatred. Documented attacks on Christians have slowly risen, with almost every year since 2014 bringing higher numbers than the previous one. Last year was exceptionally horrific, however, with the total number of incidents being almost twice that of 2020. Violence against Christians absolutely sky-rocketed, thus it’s no surprise that leading Indian Christian groups and figures described 2021 as a “year of fear.” Just as Islamophobic hatred has become a commonplace feature in the sociopolitical landscape of Modi’s “New India,” so too is bloodthirsty prejudice against Christians passing from the realm of the extraordinary into the ordinary of the everyday. One need look no further than the October 2021 call issued by a swami at a rally in Chhattisgarh that was hosted two months before the now infamous Haridwar Hate Conference. Flanked by BJP officials, the swami denounced conversion to Christianity and urged his followers to “behead” anyone who tries to proselytize them. But they shouldn’t just stop at murdering those who encourage their conversion they should, said the swami, proactively target already existing Christians with a strategy of “stop, warn, and kill.” It was only a matter of time before Christians were destined to join Muslims as top targets of the Hindu nationalist movement. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh serves, of course, as the fountainhead of that movement, and the RSS’s “Guru” in detailing his ideology specifically identified both communities as “foreign elements,” “internal threats,” and, in so many words, as “traitors” guilty of joining “the camp of the enemy” merely by virtue of daring to be non-Hindus living in India. All non-Hindus are under threat by the RSS and its Hindu nationalist agenda. In the case of Buddhists, Sikhs, and others, however, the RSS seeks to assimilate them. In the case of both Muslims and Christians, the RSS seeks to eliminate them entirely. Indian Christians have, of course, suffered some truly horrific atrocities at the hands of the RSS-BJP in the past 20 plus years, most notably during the Kandhamal Pogrom in Odisha in 2008. One major difference from today, however, is that while Kandhamal which saw perhaps 100 Christians fall victim to the trishul produced a far higher body count than that we have seen suffered under the Modi regime, that pogrom, like most of the other atrocities against Christians during the past few decades, was a regionally-confined atrocity. Attacks on Christians today, in contrast, are spread across large swathes of the country and are even extending into southern India, where the community has historically lived, by and large, safe and sound. Perhaps the most notable aspect of these nationwide attacks on Christians is that the vast majority of them are perpetrated by mobs. Mobs, oftentimes, of hundreds of people. These attacks are also, very frequently, on church services where congregations of 20, 50, 100 or more are gathering to meet. Thus, it’s important in contextualizing the level of violence to remember that, while there were 505 violent incidents recorded in 2021, each incident might be directly victimizing, at any given time, dozens of Christians or more. Considering that so many of these are mob attacks and that the violence is no longer regionally-confined, what Dr. John Dayal, one of India’s preeminent Indian Christian activists, told me sounds quite rational. As he said: “I will not say that Christians are being massacred seven days a week. But they can be at a moment’s notice.” While many in the global community are ignorant — willfully or otherwise of the persecution of Indian Christians, the growing persecution has not escaped notice of international Christian human rights organizations. Nor has the source of the persecution. Last year, International Christian Concern, a DC-based watchdog, jointly awarded India, and Modi, and the RSS’s family of organizations its ignominious “Persecutor of the Year” award. As the organization reported, anti-Christian violence is “inspired by the notion of establishing India as a Hindu nation.” Voice of the Martyrs, a renowned nonprofit dedicated to defending the human rights of persecuted Christians, labels the environment for Indian Christians as “hostile” and blames the violence on “well-organized Hindu extremist groups” who, they explain, “view Christian converts as traitors to the Hindu homeland.” Open Doors USA, a nonprofit which focuses on monitoring global persecution of Christians, explains that the “driving force” behind persecution in India is “an ideology that disregards Indian Christians and other religious minorities as true Indians because they have allegiances that lie outside India, and asserts the country should be purified of their presence.” Open Doors also issues annual rankings of countries according to the level of persecution faced by Christians. In 2013, a year before the BJP came to power, Open Doors ranked India 31st among the top 50 countries in the world where persecution of Christians is most severe. This year and for the past four years India has ranked as the 10th most dangerous country in the world in which to be a Christian. That’s higher than, for instance, China or even Saudi Arabia.Notably, while there are nine other countries where persecution of Christians does rank higher, India has three distinguishing factors from them all: first, it is the only legitimate, officially secular democracy on the list; second, as the second-most populated country in the world, its population is more than twice that of all the other nine combined; third, it is the only country which is an ally of the United States. “The attacks on [the] Christian community continue in the year 2022 as nothing is being done by the people in power to control it,” warned AC Michael of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights in late January. That’s hardly shocking considering that, in most cases, those instigating the attacks are documented as leaders or members of RSS-affiliated outfits. If the trend since 2014 is anything to go by, Indian Christians, in 2022, will suffer more and ever more violent attacks than they did in each of the previous eight years. Modi’s regime is silently tolerating a looming genocide by forces which seek to swallow up not just Muslims but also Christians. As it has been said, silence is consent, and considering that Modi’s public life began within the RSS, it’s reasonable to conclude that his government’s silence stems from ideological alignment with the forces of hate who are pushing Indian Christians and Muslims into an existential crisis. The global community religious or not must wake up to this threat before it becomes the bloodbath on the brink of which India is now teetering..

Monthly update 29; January 2022 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. From Muslims to Christians: Impunity Drives Expanding Hindu Nationalist Violence by Pieter Friedrich; Jan 8 2022; Day 3 of 7-day hunger-strike for persecuted Indian Christians Pieter Friedrich Today is the third day of my seven-day hunger-strike for the persecuted Christians of India. It has now been over 60 hours since I ate anything. One thing that makes the situation of persecuted Indian Christians particularly unique is that they live in the only democracy in the world — in fact, aside from China, possibly the only country in the world — where both Muslims and Christians are simultaneously facing persecution for the same reasons and by the same source: militant Hindu nationalism. As I’ve reported, Hindu nationalists believe that in order to be truly Indian, you must be a Hindu. They seek to either eliminate or assimilate all non-Hindus. In the case of Muslims and Christians, they seek elimination. In the case of most other religious minorities, such as Buddhists and Sikhs, they seek assimilation — that is, to force them to identify as Hindus.Because Muslims and Christians are targeted for elimination, they face the brunt of anti-minority violence in India today. Both communities are labeled as “foreign elements,” “internal threats,” and “traitors” to the nation. However, for a long time and for various reasons, Muslims — who are the largest religious minority group in India — have been the Number One Target of the Hindu nationalist forces that rose to power in 2014. It began with the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister, despite his implication in an anti-Muslim pogrom that left thousands dead in the state of Gujarat in 2002. Under Modi’s regime, a wave of lynchings of Muslims gradually increased, with top ministers in his government even publicly garlanding lynching convicts. It expanded in 2019, when Modi’s regime annexed Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state, and exploded during the anti-Muslim Delhi Pogrom in 2020. The threat to Indian Muslims escalated exponentially in 2021 as subsidiaries of the RSS paramilitary staged riots in the state of Tripura and rampaged through the streets of states like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, often joined by members of Modi’s BJP as they chanted genocidal slogans against Muslims. Finally, last year concluded with synchronized hate conferences in both Delhi and Haridwar where Hindu nationalist demagogues, joined by BJP officials, pledged to “fight, die, and kill” in order to make India a Hindu nation and vowed to take up weapons to slaughter Muslims. After seven years of impunity for a surge of xenophobic violence against Muslims, Hindu nationalists are now putting Christians in the crosshairs. The threat facing Indian Christians — and the impunity for their attackers — is substantiated by countless major Indian as well as international Christian groups. For instance, describing conditions in 2020, the Evangelical Fellowship of India reported, “As a result of the anti-conversion laws, religious minorities can now be targeted by just about anyone, especially vigilante groups…. Moreover, this law places the burden of proof on the person who has been accused of conversion.” The Fellowship warned that the “primary agenda” of vigilante groups “is to create an atmosphere of fear among the Christian community and other religious minorities.”Moving into the first half of 2021, the Fellowship spoke of vicious and widespread violence which “ranged from murder to attacks on church[es], false cases, police immunity and connivance, and the now normalized social exclusion or boycott.” As they concluded, “The translation of the hate into violence is sparked by a sense of impunity generated in India’s administrative apparatus.” That conclusion was echoed in December 2021 by United Christian Forum, an Indian human rights group, which warned, “The steady year-on-year increase in violence against the peace-loving community escalated in the last quarter to alarming numbers…. Sadly, this violence against the Christian community is compounded by the failure of the police to investigate and prosecute mobs and perpetrators.” Every major international Christian organization focused on tracking persecution has reached similar conclusions about the increase in violence accompanied by impunity. Open Doors USA, for instance, has — for the third year in a row — rankedIndia as the 10th most dangerous country in the world in which to be a Christian. For context, in 2013, before Modi came to power, India was ranked in 31st place. Now, however, labeled as a country of “extreme persecution,” India is ranked as even more dangerous for Christians than China, Saudi Arabia, or Sudan. What makes India unique is that, except for North Korea (which ranks as #1 most dangerous), the source of persecution of Christians in all the other top ten countries is from Islamist extremists. In India, however, Muslims and Christians are bonded by a sense of shared suffering. Open Doors USA further reported: “Hindu extremists believe that all Indians should be Hindus, and that the country should be rid of Christianity and Islam. To achieve this goal, they use extensive violence, particularly targeting Christians from a Hindu background. In their villages, Christians are accused of following a ‘foreign faith’ and often physically attacked. If they don’t ‘re-convert,’ their community may boycott them, with a devastating effect on their ability to earn income and buy food.” These reports are echoed by the renowned Voice of the Martyrs, which ranks India as “hostile” to Christians, stating: “The main persecutors are well-organized Hindu extremist groups, local governments and nationalist Hindus who seek to ‘purify’ India by making it entirely Hindu.” Warning that these groups seek to eliminate Christians, the outfit explained that it is because Hindu nationalists “view Christian converts as traitors to the Hindu homeland.” Illustrating the precarious condition of Indian Christians, Voice of the Martyrs warned, “Hindu nationalist informants live in nearly every village and report on the activities of Christians, resulting in attacks and arrests…. Many pastors have been beaten and jailed, and several are martyred each year.” All of these conclusions are corroborated by 2021 reports from US-based International Christian Concern, which named India (among 7 countries in total) as a “Persecutor of the Year.” Warning that “Christian persecution has skyrocketed” since the Modi regime took power, the outfit notes that recent surveys of Indian Christians found that over 70 percent “reported they were concerned for their personal safety as Christians in India.” As similarly detailed elsewhere, International Christian Concern reports, “Attacks on Christians and other religious minorities often go unpunished. In most cases, Hindu nationalist political leaders use anti-minority rhetoric for political gain. This hate speech inspires more assaults on minorities. When the police and local authorities take no action against the radicals, it emboldens radicals. Year after year, attacks on minorities are reported in greater number and severity.” The outfit concludes: “Religious extremists have the green light to terrorize Christians with impunity.” Sky-rocketing attacks, increasing in numbers and severity, almost always met with impunity, and the violence of the radical militants on the streets constantly encouraged by the hateful rhetoric of the Hindu nationalists in political office. First against Muslims, now against Christians. The situation in India is spiraling out of control, but the outside world is taking very little notice. Indian Muslims have been tyrannized for years, but now life in India is swiftly becoming a waking nightmare for Christians, as well. That’s why I’m on hunger-strike in solidarity with the persecuted Indian Church. I’ve heard their cries, and I’m hoping that you will too.Something has got to give.

2. The Hindu Right; Jan 17 2022; At a conference in India last month, a Hindu extremist dressed head-to-toe in the religion's holy color, saffron, called on her supporters to kill Muslims and "protect" the country."If 100 of us become soldiers and are prepared to kill 2 million (Muslims), then we will win ... protect India, and make it a Hindu nation," said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha political party, according to a video of the event. Her words and calls for violence from other religious leaders were met with a roar of applause from the large audience, a video from the three-day conference in the northern Indian city of Haridwar shows. Pandey and several others are being investigated by local police for insulting religious beliefs, a charge that carries a possible sentence of up to four years in prison, Haridwar police officials told CNN. Late Thursday, police in Uttarakhand state, where Haridwar is located, arrested a man who spoke at the event, senior Haridwar Police official Shekhar Suyal told CNN. It is unclear what the man said at the event. Police have not formally charged anyone with any crime. Analysts say the Hindu Mahasabha is at the tip of a broader trend in India which has seen an alarming rise in support for extremist Hindu nationalist groups since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power nearly eight years ago. Although these groups aren't directly associated with Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his own Hindu nationalist agenda, and the lack of repercussions for these groups' previous vitriolic comments, has given them tacit support, making them even more brazen, analysts say. Analysts fear this rise poses a serious danger to minorities, especially Muslims -- and worry it may only get worse as several Indian states head to the polls in the coming months. "What makes the Hindu Mahasabha dangerous," said Gilles Verniers, an assistant professor of political science at Ashoka University near India's capital, New Delhi, "is that they have been waiting for a moment like this in decades." Founded in 1907 during British rule at a time of growing conflict between Muslims and Hindus in the country, the Hindu Mahasabha is one of India's oldest political organizations. The group didn't support British rule, but it didn't back India's freedom movement either, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was particularly tolerant of Muslims. Even now, some members of the group worship his assassin, Nathuram Godse. The Hindu Mahasabha's vision, according to the group's official website, is to declare India the "National Home of the Hindus." The website says if it takes power, it will not hesitate to "force" the migration of India's Muslims to neighboring Pakistan and vows to reform the country's education system to align it with their version of Hinduism. was in 1991. According to Verniers, their "strength is not to be measured in electoral terms." And in the past eight years since Modi came to power, they appear to have expanded in numbers and influence based on the size and frequency of their meetings, he said. While the group does not publicly disclose how many members it has, Verniers said they are "comfortably in the tens of thousands." Hindu Mahasabha targets rural communities in northern states, where there is a large BJP presence, encouraging them to vote for parties that align with their Hindu-nationalist ideology, including Modi's BJP, Verniers said. Modi, in turn, has publicly honored the Hindu Mahasabha's late leader, Veer Savarkar, for "his bravery" and "emphasis on social reform." And as Hindu Mahasabha has grown in recent years, it has become more outspoken. In 2015, Sadhvi Deva Thakur, then a senior member of the group, caused widespread controversy when she told reporters Muslims and Christians should undergo forced sterilization to control their population growth. CNN has reached out to her for comment. Pandey, who spoke at the December conference in Haridwar, was arrested in February 2019 after a video showed her shooting an effigy of Gandhi Photos uploaded to her official Facebook page last May show her worshiping a statue of Gandhi's assassin. CNN has not been able to confirm whether she was formally charged over the February 2019 incident. Hindu Mahasabha isn't the only right-wing Hindu nationalist group to espouse violent sentiment toward liberals and minorities -- including India's 200 million Muslims, who make up 15% of the country's 1.3 billion population. At last month's conference, several speakers called on India's Hindus to "defend" the religion with weapons. Another called for the "cleansing" of India's minorities, according to video from the event. But according to Verniers, Hindu Mahasbha one of the largest right-wing political groups aiming to make India the land of the Hindus. And while the group's campaigns and ideas are decades old, they're more bold about them now. "The escalation of their hate speech is reflective of the state of affairs in India," said Verniers. "But they are able to get away with it more." The reason extremist groups appear to be on the rise is clear, according to experts: they have impunity and support. India prohibits hate speech under several sections of its penal code, including a section which criminalizes "deliberate and malicious acts" intended to insult religious beliefs. According to lawyer Vrinda Grover, any group inciting violence is barred under Indian law. "Police, states and the government are responsible to ensure (inciting violence) doesn't happen," she said. "But the state, through its inaction, is actually permitting these groups to function, while endangering Muslims who are the targets." Pandey's rant and some of the other calls for violence were the "worst form of hate speech," according to Verniers. "This is the first time I find myself using the term 'genocide' in Indian politics," he said, referring to the comments made at last month's conference. "They have tacit support in the form of government silence." That's because Modi also has a Hindu nationalist agenda, experts say. Starting from his first term as Prime Minister, minority groups and analysts say they began to see a significant shift in India's ideology from a secular to a Hindu nationalist state. The BJP has its roots in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right wing-Hindu group that counts Modi among its members. Many RSS members are adherents of the Hindutva ideology that the Hindu Mahasabha preach -- to make India the land of the Hindus. In 2018, India's current Home Minister Amit Shah said Muslim immigrants and asylum seekers from Bangladesh were "termites" and promised to rid the nation of them. The BJP's Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of the north Indian state Uttar Pradesh, known for his anti-Muslim views, once compared Muslim Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to Hafiz Saeed, the alleged planner of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks . Between 2015 and 2018, vigilante groups killed dozens of people -- many of whom were Muslims -- for allegedly consuming or killing cows, an animal considered sacred by Hindus, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. Modi publicly condemned some of the killings, but the violence continued, and in 2017, his government attempted to ban the sale and slaughter of cows --currently illegal in several Indian states -- nationwide. Human Rights Watch said many of the alleged murders went unpunished in part due to delayed police investigations and "rhetoric" from ruling party politicians, which may have incited mob violence. In 2019, India's Parliament passed a bill that would give immigrants from three neighboring countries a pathway to citizenship -- except for Muslims. It led to extended protests and international condemnation. In December 2020, Uttar Pradesh enacted a controversial anti-conversion law, making it more difficult for interfaith couples to marry or for people to convert to Islam or Christianity. Other states, including Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Assam, introduced similar laws, leading to widespread harassment and, in some cases, arrests for interfaith couples, Christian priests and pastors. All of this has only served to encourage extremist groups like the Hindu Mahasabha, say experts. Zakia Soman, a women's rights activist and co-founder of the Muslim group Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, said "a failure of governance" had given rise to more right-wing extremists. "Our community is realizing that we have become second-class citizens in our own country," Soman said. "Minority bashing and hate is becoming regular and normalized. As the intensity increases, the venom and violence in their language also increases." A 21-year-old Muslim student in Delhi, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of backlash from right-wing groups, said Muslims are filled with "a sense of fear" every time right-wing Hindu groups make hateful comments."It gives us a sense that we don't belong here," he said. Despite police investigations and public outrage, legal action against those who spoke and were present at December's event have been slow. In a letter submitted to Modi on Friday and seen by CNN, students and faculty of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and Ahmedabad said his silence "emboldens" hate, adding there is "sense of fear" among minority groups in India. Some experts agree the government's silence has only emboldened these groups further. "Hate speech precedes hate crimes," Grover, the lawyer, said. "And we are witnessing a crescendo of hate crimes. These groups are rapidly spreading poison through society." A 2019 US intelligence report warned that parliamentary elections in India increase the possibility of communal violence if Modi's BJP "stresses Hindu nationalist themes." It added that state leaders "might view a Hindu-nationalist campaign as a signal to incite low-level violence to animate their supporters." Analysts fear the BJP's divisive politics will could lead to increased violence against minority groups in the lead up to pivotal state elections this year. And reported episodes of violence against Muslims have already increased ahead of this year's state elections. In December, crowds of India's Hindu-right confronted Muslims praying on the streets in the city of Gurugram, just outside of Delhi. They prevented Muslims from praying, while shouting slogans and carrying banners in protest. "It is an electoral strategy," said Verniers, the political scientist. "Create religious tension, activate religious polarization and consolidate on the Hindu vote." Grover, the lawyer, said criminal laws are "weaponized" in India, adding anyone who challenges those in power "face the wrath of the law." "Muslim lives in India are demonized," she said. "The Indian state is in serious crisis." On January 1, Pandey held a live broadcast for her more than 1,500 Facebook followers. The subject was "Religious Parliament," her post said. For the 21-year-old student, it is difficult to "expect any sense of justice" for Indian Muslims. He says even having a Muslim name is enough to make him feel unsafe. "It is really scary to carry the Muslim identity in India today." https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/14/asia/india-hindu-extremist-groups-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

3. Muslim girls ; Jan 19 2022; When A H Almas, 18, and two of her friends stepped into their classroom on a December morning, the teacher immediately yelled at them: “Get out.” The Muslim girls were not allowed to sit in the classroom because they were wearing Hijab, or headscarf. “When we arrived at the door of the classroom, the teacher said we cannot enter with the Hijab,” Almas told Al Jazeera. “She asked us to remove it.” Since then, a group of six Muslim students at a government-run women’s college in Udupi district in India’s Karnataka state in the south are forced to sit outside the classroom because the college administration alleges they are defying the rules since Hijab is not part of the uniform. But the girls told Al Jazeera the Hijab is “part of their faith” and practicing it is “their right guaranteed under law”. They have maintained a defiant stance even as the administration has allegedly used “pressure tactics” to coerce them to give in. The girls have been marked absent from their classes since December 31 even as they say they are going to the college every day “One of my friends fell sick because of this mental torture.” Rudre Gowda, the college principal, told Al Jazeera they cannot allow the students to wear Hijab in classrooms “as it is not part of the uniform”. He said they are abiding by the directives issued by the education ministry “It is Islamophobia. It is apartheid,” she said. Karnataka is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). K Raghupati Bhat, a local BJP legislator who also heads a committee in the Udupi college, told the parents of the students in a meeting that the college would continue with its uniform code, irrespective of the religious preferences of the students. After the controversy over Hijab erupted in Udupi, students in at least two other colleges in the state, including members of the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), held protests as they donned saffron scarves inside the colleges, demanding a ban on Hijab https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/18/india-karnataka-muslim-college-students-hijab-ban-udupi

4. Minorities in India; Jan 9 2022; Some US lawmakers and political activists have alleged that “widespread persecution of India’s religious minorities and human rights defenders” under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule “threatens and undermines India’s pluralist Constitution.” US Senator Ed Markey, Congressmen Jim McGovern, Andy Levin, and Jamie Raskin and others made these accusations at a special Congressional briefing on Jan 26 to commemorate India’s 73rd Republic Day. The briefing was co-hosted by Amnesty International USA, Genocide Watch, 21Wilberforce and several other organizations, according to a press release from the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC). Expressing ‘concerned’ about Modi government’s alleged “efforts to peel back the rights of religious minorities in India,” Markey said the “laws on religious conversion, citizenship and other restrictive measures fly in the face of India’s inclusive secular Constitution and core tenets of any democracy.” US Congressman Jim McGovern, co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the US House of Representatives, said, “For the first time in 2019, a law was passed that links citizenship to religious identity. “There is every reason to fear that this change combined with the proposal for a National Register of Citizens institutionalizes discrimination against Muslims,” he said. US Congressman Jamie Raskin, spoke on India’s continuing struggle for human rights, especially under Prime Minister Modi, which affects not just India’s Muslim, Christian, and Sikh minorities, but also Hindus who dissent against the Hindu supremacist movement. Nadine Maenza, Chair of the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), alleged that “Since 2014, the BJP-led Indian government has increasingly institutionalized its ideological vision of a Hindu state at both the national and state levels through a foundation of laws and structural changes hostile to the country’s religious minorities, which include Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and adivasis.” .” Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, decried Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez’s recent arrest under India’s anti-terror law. “Khurram’s most recent arrest is a prime example of the crackdown on civic space in India and across the globe – where regimes target journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders who play a critical role of holding governments accountable for human rights abuses,” said Kerry, daughter of the late Senator Robert Kennedy. Carolyn Nash, Asia Advocacy Director at Amnesty International USA, criticized President Joe Biden’s “warm relationship” with Modi during the recent democracy summit, especially in the face of the Indian government’s “profound fear of activists and critics.” Archbishop Peter Machado, who heads the archdiocese of Bangalore, spoke on India’s rising number of anti-conversion laws, which Hindu extremists weaponize against religious minorities to harass, assault, and imprison them on flimsy claims of forcing Hindus to convert to other religions. “In the name of the freedom of religion, [India] has been bringing more and more laws and regulations to restrict our freedom of religion,” he said. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, former President of Mauritius, spoke of her Indian heritage and the strong fraternal ties she had experienced within the diverse Indian diaspora community whilst growing up. She lamented that the Constitution of India that safeguarded and protected human rights, was “being trampled upon almost on a daily basis.” Other co-hosts of the briefing included Hindus for Human Rights, International Christian Concern, Jubilee Campaign, Dalit Solidarity Forum, New York State Council of Churches, Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America, India Civil Watch International, Students Against Hindutva Ideology, Center for Pluralism, American Muslim Institution, International Society for Peace and Justice, Association of Indian Muslims of America, the Humanism Project (Australia). https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2022/01/27/four-us-lawmakers-accuse-modi-of-curbing-religious-freedom-448473/

Monthly update 28; December 2021 : Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Youth assaulted; Dec 02 2021: A 24-year-Muslim youth in Indian state of Jharkhand’s Simdega district was waylaid by a mob and beaten up ruthlessly, leaving him grievously injured, according to reports reaching from the state. The incident took place on the evening of November 28 when Adil Hussain came out of his house to offer evening namaz. Adil was hospitalised after the attack and then referred to RIMS in the capital city of Ranchi where he is undergoing treatment. “We got a call from a man named Aakash Singh who claimed he saved my brother but later Adil said Aakash was part of the mob which attacked him.” He alleged that his brother was attacked because he had beard and wearing skull cap, markers of Muslim identity. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2021/12/02/muslim-youth-on-way-to-mosque-beaten-up-in-jharkhand-village.html

2. India and human Rights; Dec 2021; A consortium of 34 international multi-faith human rights NGOs have written a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris expressing their deep concern that the president’s Summit for Democracy Dec. 9-10 will ignore the widespread violations of human rights, persecution, physical attacks and murder of members of minority religions in India as the government devolves from democracy to fascism. The letter, at more than 1,500 words, provides details and indisputable facts for 14 instances in which democracy is under attack or being abused by the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and members of his BJP/RSS party. The letter has jointly written by the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, USA, Alternatives International, Canada, Ambedkar International Center, USA, Ambedkar King Study Circle, USA, Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance, UK, Association of Indian Muslims of America, USA, Aotearoa Alliance Of Progressive Indians (Aotearoa New Zealand.), Center for Pluralism, USA, CERAS (Centre sur l’asie du sud), Montreal, Canada, Chicago Coalition for Human Rights in India (CCHRI), USA, Coalition Against Fascism in India (CAFI), USA, Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans, USA, Dalit Solidarity Forum, USA, Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA), North America, Foundation: The London Story, EU, Friends of India—Texas, USA, Hindus for Human Rights, USA, India Civil Watch International, North America, India Justice Project, Germany, Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), USA, India Solidarity Germany, Germany, International Christian Concern, USA, International Commission for Dalit Rights, USA, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India, International, International Society for Peace and Justice, USA, Punjabi Literary and Cultural Association (PLCA) Winnipeg, Canada, Scottish Indians for Justice, Scotland, South Asian Dalit Adivasi Network, Canada, South Asian Left Activist Movement (SALAM), USA, South Asia Solidarity Group, UK, Students Against Hindutva Ideology, USA, The Humanism Project, Australia, Turbine Bagh, UK, Voices Against Fascism in India, USA and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), USA. The letter also expresses regret that more members of the international civil society were not included in planning for the summit, and those who were involved were warned that specific instances of member nations’ internal affairs, abuses, discrimination and persecution will be off-limits. “While your organizing principles are commendable, the process has been weak and exclusionary,” the letter states. “… We are committed to working with your administration to strengthen the Democracy Summit process. We therefore seek urgent consultation with your administration, not only to ensure that the Democracy Summit gets off to a meaningful start, but also that the process going forward gains in strength at every stage.” Unfortunately, the present Indian government cannot be considered one that shares the democratic values of your administration. While our two countries could never have claimed to be perfect democracies, it is important that the Summit start from acknowledging one key fact: the past seven years of BJP/RSS rule in India have seen a sharp and dramatic backsliding when it comes to democratic norms. Take the case of the Farm Laws: after passing sweeping laws as an ordinance without any consultation with farmers or the opposition, the government brutally repressed and demonized the farmers’ movement against the laws. Even the repeal of the three laws occurred in a manner suited to strongmen: instead of communicating with farmers, or following the parliamentary process, Mr Modi unilaterally announced the repeal. Not a word was said by Mr Modi about the 700+ deaths that his government’s intransigence and authoritarian approach in the matter had produced. We appreciate the three organizing principles around which the summit is organized, but urge you to attend to our critical concerns regarding India under each of these pillars: Defending against Authoritarianism: Freedom House has downgraded India’s democracy to “partly free.” International commentators from every major media publication have consistently raised the issue of India’s authoritarian turn over the last seven years. Three specific issues must be raised with Mr Modi: Anti-Minority Laws: The Modi government began its second term with the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act. Together with its corollary processes of the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register, the CAA/NRC/NPR create a framework for the active disenfranchisement of India’s largest minority—Muslims—stripping away their voting and citizenship rights. Not challenging these would be the equivalent of abetting conditions for a future genocide. All this is playing out in the context of a series of other laws targeting religious minorities, including anti-conversion and anti-inter religious marriage laws, which also target Christians. In addition, Christian institutions are under attack, with International Christian Concern counting India among the seven worst persecutors of Christians in the world. Kashmir: The sudden revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, and the overwhelming use of the military in Kashmir, with there being one soldier for every seven Kashmiris at one stage, is already being acknowledged internationally as the single most visible and unambiguous sign of BJP/RSS authoritarianism and its willingness to run roughshod over constitutional protections and guarantees; Dissent, Political Prisoners, and Draconian Laws: The last 7 years have seen a continuous and rising tide of arrest and imprisonment of dissenters under draconian anti-terror laws such as UAPA and the NSA in India. The Bhima Koregaon 16 case, the arrests of students, activists, and journalists in the wake of the Northeast Delhi violence, and most recently the arrests of journalists reporting on religious violence in Tripura, are just the most known instances. Those jailed without trial include some of India’s most prominent public intellectuals, poets, writers, journalists, lawyers, and leaders of the women’s movement. At least one prominent arrestee, Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, passed away while still in custody due to the effects of being incarcerated during a global pandemic in his 80s. If dissent is the most important aspect of an active democracy, then PM Modi has a unique record in its repression. This includes significant evidence that in the landmark BK-16 case, evidence was falsely planted on defendants’ computers through malware, opening up a new vector of attack on critics of the government ;Addressing and Fighting Corruption:While the Modi government first came to office on an anti-corruption plank, it has since proven to be one of the most opaque and nontransparent governments India has known. Three issues of international scale and core to American interests and values must be raised with PM Modi at the summit: Electoral Bonds: The Modi government introduced electoral bonds in 2015, sneaking them in as part of the budget process. This set into place the most opaque electoral finance system in the democratic world. It allows for national and international corporations to pay into party funds with no oversight and no transparency. From summary figures available, it is clear that large numbers of international shell companies are involved in financing Indian political parties, and that the BJP is by far the single largest recipient of such funds. While US funders of electoral bonds in India must be revealed, this assault on the financial underpinnings of India’s democracy must stop ; Rafale and Crony Capitalism: India’s position as a valued member of the Quad is premised on transparent and incorruptible trade, particularly in the arms sector. The Rafale deal with France is a subject of an ongoing French investigation. What has already been revealed about the deal, including data submitted to the Comptroller and Auditor General in India, points to a specific corporation being favored, and millions of dollars of graft money being at play. Democracy cannot survive in an atmosphere of crony capitalism ; PMCARES Fund: The PMCARES fund is at the centre of the financial scandal that emerged even as India faced two devastating waves of the pandemic. Under Indian law and as per the government’s promotional material while raising money for PMCARES, this fund meets the definition of a government fund. And yet, today, the government of India claims the fund is not a government fund, and refuses to release any details about it, even though several government agencies, including the Indian consulate in Washington, DC, and 26 other countries, advertised PMCARES and helped raise funds for it! ; Advancing Respect for Human Rights:This government is marked by explicit attacks on human rights coming from its top leadership. PM Modi has demonized non-governmental organizations by claiming they are working to “finish him”; Amit Shah has dismissed human rights as Western concepts that don’t apply to India; National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has branded civil society as the “new frontier of war”; and Bipin Rawat, the chief of defence staff, has valorized lynching. Such naked attacks on human rights from the very top echelons of the administration need to be a central concern of the summit ; Digital surveillance and planting of evidence: Two recent revelations on surveillance and evidence planting, potentially by the Indian state, suggest a severe rise in the misuse of spying technologies to attack critics of the government. Pegasus was used to snoop on journalists, top opposition leaders, and even independent election commissioners; the malware Netwire went one step further and planted evidence on the computers of dissenters. While several democratic governments have opened investigations in the wake of these revelations, the Indian government has refused to do so thus far. Given your recent sanctions against the NSO Group, the US must call on Mr Modi to immediately stop the use of malware to target civil society, investigate these harms, and punish offenders; Worsening caste oppression and erosion of legislative protections: Caste remains the most pervasive form of violation of basic human rights in India, and the last several years have seen an alarming increase in caste atrocities. Particularly in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-led state government and police have themselves been complicit in covering up sexual violence against Dalits. Groups connected to the RSS have led to violence against Dalits on university campuses and in the state of Gujarat. Moreover, the Modi government failed to protect provisions in the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which acts as a crucial deterrent, until protests and the opposition forced it to do so. The BK-16 case is another example of the BJP/RSS’s punitive retaliation against Dalit assertion and their exercising of civil and cultural rights by commemorating Dalit valour in the historic Bhima-Koregaon battle; Labor Codes: In September 2020, the Narendra Modi government passed new laws governing Labor when the opposition was absent from Parliament. These laws make it harder for labour unions to be recognized; harder for workers to go on strike, and made it easier for some companies to lay off workers with impunity. The assault on labour rights is a critical part of the Modi government’s overall assault on human rights ; The Swedish V-Dem Institute has described India as an “electoral autocracy,” and we agree: this is the single most anti-democratic government India has ever seen. Therefore, we are committed to working with your administration to strengthen the Democracy Summit process. https://twocircles.net/2021dec08/444316.html

3. Man lynched in Bihar allegedly for stealing cattle; Dec 11 2021; Police have filed an FIR against unknown persons after a man was lynched by a mob allegedly for stealing cattle in Bihar’s Araria district on December 8. According to the police, Mohd Siddiqui, 52, was lynched by a mob at Bhawanipur village under Fulkaha police station of Forbesganj sub-division in Araria district on Wednesday allegedly for stealing cattle. However, the incident came to light on December 10. “A villager raised an alarm after he spotted some men stealing buffaloes and bullocks owned by his co-villager Sanichar Bariyet and when they started chasing thieves, one of them fired a gunshot in the air to scare them away, but another of them Mohd Siddiqui was caught by the villagers while, others managed to escape. Mohd Siddiqui was beaten up with sticks and fists and he succumbed to his injuries,” said Fulkaha police station Inspector Nagina Kumar. He also said an FIR has been lodged against unknown persons. Villagers said cattle thieves often sell stolen cattle to slaughter houses in areas bordering Nepal. The victim Mohd Siddiqui was identified as resident of the neighbouring district of Supaul. The Hindu

4. Roseville City Council Rebuked for Honoring RSS's International Wing; Pieter Friedrich; Dec 18 2021 ; Following are my remarks in full: Almost 75 years ago, in January 1947, several members of the radical Hindu nationalist RSS paramilitary who had just emigrated out of India gathered to form the international wing of that paramilitary — the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh or HSS. Meanwhile, back in the Indian subcontinent, on the eve of India’s independence, the paramilitary gathered in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir to stage its first large-scale massacre of minorities. Accounts, shrouded in the fog of conflict, vary, but historians estimate that the RSS and its collaborators slaughtered anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 Muslims. A few months later, in January 1948, India had just gained its independence when an RSS member assassinated Gandhi specifically because he hated him for supposedly being too peaceful towards Indian Muslims. Gandhi’s assassination by an RSS member led to the first of three bans on the RSS. Meanwhile, outside India, the RSS’s international wing — the HSS — flourished and expanded around the globe, setting down roots far and wide, including here in the US. And, eventually, even here in California. Even here in the City of Roseville. Last month, the City of Roseville — no doubt in innocent ignorance of the group’s ties to its parent organization, the violent RSS paramilitary — welcomed the HSS into these very chambers to honor them with a formal proclamation. Meanwhile, back in India, the RSS — despite constantly and violently putting into practice its belief that Christians and Muslims, especially, are “foreign elements” and “traitors” to the nation who must be cleansed from the land — has gained such strength and power that it now controls the country. With total impunity, it is, at this very moment, routinely flooding the streets with mobs who attack religious minorities to spread intolerance and hatred in its pursuit of the victory of evil over good. That the City of Roseville, albeit unwittingly, chose Diwali — the Hindu Festival of Lights which celebrates tolerance, compassion, and the victory of good over evil — as the occasion to honor the international wing of the most xenophobic and genocidal organization in India serves, unintentionally but tragically, as an insult not only to the countless victims of the RSS but also as an insult to the vast diversity and traditional pluralism of the Hindu religion itself. Since, as Hinduism beautifully teaches, “the whole world is one family,” we must realize that it is ultimately self-destructive to platform the HSS here in America even while the RSS is ripping our family apart back in India through acts of terror which are enabled and empowered by the HSS’s commitment to serving as an international support base and propaganda mouthpiece for the RSS’s fascist agenda. Thank you.

5. Muslim man lynched; Dec 18 2021; A 27-year-old Muslim man was thrashed to death by goons in Palwal district of Haryana, his family said, calling it a case of “lynching”. Rahul Khan, a resident of Rasoolpur village near Palwal town, was kidnapped by a gang of goons on the night of December 13 when he had gone to attend a marriage, his brother-in-law Mohammad Akram told media over phone. Khan succumbed to his injuries at a hospital on December 14 at around 10 pm. He was laid to rest on Wednesday afternoon. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2021/12/17/27-year-old-muslim-man-lynched-in-haryana.html

6. Muslims genocide; Dec 23 2021; The ‘Dharma Sansad’ organised at Haridwar in Uttarakhand on December 17-19 saw an assortment of leaders from the Hindutva ecosystem taking the stage to set a new benchmark for brazen hate speech in the country. “We have to make preparations,” said Swami Prabodhanand Giri, president of the Hindu Raksha Sena, a right-wing organisation based out of Uttarakhand. “And I’ll tell you what preparations those are. I will make myself clear, this is the solution, and if you follow this solution, then the path is made for you… in Myanmar, Hindus were being chased away. The politicians, government and police were just standing and watching. They started by killing them by cutting their necks, and not only this, but they began to cut them in the streets and eat them. The people watching thought we are going to die, we are not going to live. “This is our state now. You have seen this at the Delhi border, they killed Hindus and hung them. There is no more time, the case now is that either you prepare to die now, or get ready to kill, there’s no other way. This is why, like in Myanmar, the police here, the politicians here, the army and every Hindu must pick up weapons and we will have to conduct this cleanliness drive (safai abhiyan). There is no solution apart from this.” The statements calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide are particularly alarming given Prabodhanand’s connections with the BJP. https://thewire.in/communalism/hindutva-leaders-dharma-sansad-muslim-genocide

7. Pledge to Kill: Hindutva Hatred Crystallizes in Fascist Oath of Genocide;Hindu nationalists mimic Nazi Germany with a vow to "fight, die, and kill"; Dec 26 2021; In 1933, as Nazi Germany first emerged with Adolf Hitler as head of government, the army’s traditional swearing of loyalty to Germany’s constitution was replaced with an oath of loyalty to “the Fatherland” and, not long after, an oath simply to Hitler himself. “I swear to God this holy oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the Leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath,” vowed German troops. Civil servants, though not required to swear willingness to give their lives, were compelled to take similar oaths of faithful obedience to Hitler. After the ceremony, oath-takers traditionally sang the supremacist lyrics: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt [Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world].” On 19 December 2021, in India’s capital city of Delhi, a crowded hall of hundreds of Hindu supremacists raised their arms in a salute eerily reminiscent of the infamous Nazi salute — which is banned in post-war Germany — as they pledged to “fight, and die, and, if required, we will kill as well” to turn the country into a “Hindu nation.” The pledge was led by prominent right-wing Indian journalist Suresh Chavhanke. It was no surprise that Chavhanke’s pledge echoed that of the Nazis in both words and actions. He claims to have been a member of the Nazi-inspired Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary since the age of three. The RSS, which has risen to power in India through the premiership of Narendra Modi (an RSS member, reportedly, since the age of eight), was founded in 1925, the same year that Hitler published his manifesto, Mein Kampf, and formed the Schutzstaffel (SS). That paramilitary served, first, as Hitler’s personal protection squadron and, eventually, as the primary perpetrator of the Holocaust. The RSS’s first Supreme Commander, Hedgewar, set forward a doctrine that mirrored the Aryanism of Nazi Germany. India, insisted Hedgewar, should properly be called “Hindustan” [land of the Hindus] and protected as a “nation of Hindu people” which he compared directly — and contemporarily with the rise of Nazism — to a “Germany of Germans.” In 1931, RSS co-founder Moonje visited Italy to tour dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist institutions. Applauding them for showing how “the idea of fascism” supposedly produced “unity amongst people,” he declared that India needed similar “fascist organizations” and subsequently praised the RSS as an already existing example of one such institution. In 1939, as Nazi Germany initiated the Second World War with the annexation of Austria, occupation of Czechoslovakia, and invasion of Poland, the RSS’s second Supreme Commander published a book which identified both Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany as examples of the India that the RSS hoped to fashion. Golwalkar praised the “Race consciousness” of the Italian Fascists and the “Race spirit” of the German Nazis which prompted their territorial expansionism. “Even so with us: our Race spirit has once again roused itself,” he wrote. According to the RSS chief, these European fascist nations proved his belief that “every Race [possesses] the indisputable right of excommunicating from its Nationality all those who, having been of the Nation, for ends of their own, turned traitors and entertained aspirations contravening or differing from those of the National Race as a whole.” For Golwalkar, the “National Race” of India is what he termed the “Hindu Race.” Describing non-Hindus as “internal threats,” “foreign races,” and “traitors,” the RSS chief insisted that, if they stayed in India, such minorities should be stripped of “citizen’s rights.” Claiming that only Hindus are “of the soil” and that, in “the land of the Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu nation,” he declared that every non-Hindu faced only two choices: “Either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race.” In other words, for the RSS, all non-Hindu Indians must either submit to being Hindu or face loss of citizenship and even expulsion from the country. Yet Golwalkar didn’t stop there. Pointing to Hitler’s Germany as his model, he suggested that the choice was actually between expulsion or extermination. Nazi Germany, said Golwalkar, had kept up “the purity of the race and its culture…. by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews,” thus demonstrating (in his mind) the impossibility of a pluralistic and multicultural society and serving, he argued, as “a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.” Notably, Golwalkar’s rhetoric, aside from his direct praise for the European fascists, mirrored that of Hitler in a wide variety of other ways. The December 2021 pledge in Delhi, led by life-long RSS member Chavhanke, once more invoked the supremacist ideals of Nazism with the words: “We all take an oath, give our word, and make a resolution that, until our last breath, we will make India a Hindu nation and keep it a Hindu only nation. We will fight, and die, and, if required, we will kill as well. We will not hesitate a bit to make any sacrifice at any cost. To complete this resolution, our Gurudev, our teacher, our goddess Mother India, our ancestors, give us power, give us victory.” A preceding event held from 17-19 December in Haridwar, Uttarakhand raised an identical spectre of xenophobic fascism. “If any monster poses a danger to Hindutva [ie, Hindu nationalism], then I won’t think twice before picking up weapons to fight,” declared Pooja Shakun Pandey (aka, Sadhvi Annapurna Maa), General Secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha (a political party that predates the founding of the RSS by ten years; one of its most influential leaders, Savarkar, penned the Hindu nationalist ideology’s quintessential manifesto, Hindutva, while his brother served as one of the co-founders of the RSS itself). “We will tear them apart,” continued Pandey. “Don’t think that Muslims are growing in numbers. If we wake up today, and make a resolution, and understand their plans, then what we want will be achieved. India will be declared a Hindu nation, not an Islamic nation…. Make yourself so capable, and increase your population. If we want to decrease the population of Muslims, then we are ready to kill…. If we become soldiers and kill two million Muslims, then we’ll be victorious.” Pandey’s fanatical rant was mimicked in a chorus of hate raised by multiple other Hindu supremacist leaders from the same stage in Haridwar. “Without picking up weapons, no society will ever survive,” foamed Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati (who, notably, was earlier this year invited to headline an event organized by a leading US affiliate of the RSS). Referring, apparently, to the entire population of non-Hindu Indians, he continued: “They are an economy of 400 million people. You [Hindus] are an economy of one billion…. When will you take action? Forget about the swords. They are just for display on stages. In a battle, the one with superior weapons wins…. The best of weapons: these will save you.” Narsinghanand further vowed to give ten million rupees ($133,000) to anyone “prepared to become the Hindu Prabhakaran” — a reference to infamous Sri Lankan terrorist Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Upping the ante, he pledged 1 billion rupees ($13.3 million) to anyone willing to continue in that role for a full year. Hindutva activist Swami Premanand Maharaj reiterated the call for Hindu nationalists to take up arms, stating: “You had asked how we should protect our religion? I say that protection is not possible without weapons.” Encouraging them to “own a weapon of a minimum of 100,000 rupees [$1300, ie, a firearm],” he urged his audience to buy cheap phones and shoes so that they could splurge on expensive weapons. Another extremist priest, Swami Prabodhanand Giri of the Hindu Raksha Sena [“Hindu Protection Army”], declared, “Either be ready to die or be ready to kill. There is no other option.” Referencing the Rohingya Genocide, he added, “We have to repeat Myanmar. In India. Police, politicians, soldiers, and every Hindu need to pick up weapons and start this cleaning operation [ie, ethnic cleansing].” As RSS’s second, longest-serving, and most influential Supreme Commander, Golwalkar, had pointed to the territorial expansionism of the European fascists as a supposed justification for his own Hindu supremacist beliefs. Ever since the Partition of India in 1947, the RSS has made one of its primary goals the “re-establishment” of a mythical “Akhand Bharat” [“United India”], which ostensibly stretched (at least) from Afghanistan to Myanmar, if not further. Invoking the concept of “Akhand Bharat” at the Haridwar conclave, yet another Hindutva activist warned that India — despite its nearly 80 per cent population of Hindus — “is becoming Islamic.” He argued, “Let us go back a little. Half of the nation is already Islamic, where green flags [of Islam] are already being hoisted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.” It was a crystal clear suggestion that these neighbouring nations of India actually “belong” to India herself. Officials of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including former Delhi BJP spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay and Uttar Pradesh State Minister Rajeshwar Singh, were present in both Haridwar and Delhi. The two synchronized genocidal conferences occurred in the wake of a rising wave of Hindutva hatred and violence that first started escalating — to an extent unprecedented in the past several years, with the exception of the 2020 Delhi Pogrom — around October 2021. The present onslaught only began after the then acting ambassador of the US to India, Atul Keshap, met with the current RSS chief in what was perceived as a legitimization, normalization, and whitewashing of the paramilitary’s fascism. Hindu nationalist attacks targeting Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs have skyrocketed ever since. The son of the Deputy Minister for Home Affairs (the Central Government agency in charge of internal law and order) allegedly ran over and killed several peacefully protesting Sikh farmers in Uttar Pradesh. In Chhattisgarh, a BJP official led a mob, chanting slogans about cutting Muslims to pieces while, in Madhya Pradesh, another mob raised calls to “shoot the traitors,” a slogan first raised by a BJP Cabinet Minister against peaceful Muslim protestors in 2020. Again in Chhattisgarh, a Hindutva priest, flanked by BJP leaders, urged a rally to “behead” anyone encouraging conversion. Meanwhile, The New York Times recently reported: “Anti-Christian vigilantes are sweeping through villages, storming churches, burning Christian literature, attacking schools and assaulting worshipers. In many cases, the police and members of India’s governing party are helping them, government documents and dozens of interviews revealed. In church after church, the very act of worship has become dangerous.” Yet, as the NYT also reported after the two genocidal conferences in Delhi and Haridwar, “even by the standards of the rising anti-Muslim [and anti-Christian] fury in India” these events “produced the most blatant and alarming call for violence in recent years.” In the 1990s, renowned India psychologist Ashis Nandy interviewed Modi — years before the RSS activist became Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002 and was, immediately, implicated in an anti-Muslim pogrom that left thousands dead. “Here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist,” wrote Nandy about (now Indian Prime Minister) Modi. “I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me, it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one’s ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualizing the ideology.” Nandy explained that he “came out of the interview shaken,” concluding: “For the first time, I had met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, perhaps even a future mass murderer. As the NYT reported regarding the two recent Hindutva conferences: “The government is allowing hate speech of this kind by remaining silent in the face of calls for violence.” Silence is violence, many have opined, but the silence appears calculated. As a member of the RSS, Modi remains intrinsically committed to the paramilitary’s call for establishing India as a “Hindu nation” where all “others” are expelled or exterminated, per the doctrines of the group’s founders. Thus, his silence is complicity. He, it seems, agrees with the xenophobic and genocidal ideology being espoused with impunity. As Indian journalist and human rights investigator Rejimon Kuttapan observed about the oath-taking ceremony in Delhi, this represents “1933 Germany.” As Indian Member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor pointed out, “They have learned nothing from history, but those who have must stop them.” And, as Indian MP Karti P. Chidambaram noted, “India is Germany 1933.” Chidambaram asked: “Are Kristallnacht and [the] Final Solution next?” I have sometimes called Modi the “Hitler of the East.” To my mind, the only question remaining is if and when the Hindutva pledge to kill will also include a vow of loyalty to Modi as the Fuhrer of India. By Pieter Friedrich

8. Muslim women on sale; Jan 3 2021; On January 1, Quratulain Rehbar, a journalist from Indian-administered Kashmir, woke up to see herself listed for an “online auction”. Her photograph was sourced without her permission and uploaded on an app for “sale”.She was not alone Photographs of more than 100 Muslim women, including prominent actress Shabana Azami, wife of a sitting judge of Delhi High Court, multiple journalists, activists and politicians were displayed on the app for auction as “Bulli Bai” of the day. Even Fatima Nafees, 65-year-old mother of disappeared student Najeeb Ahmed, and Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai were not spared by the perpetrators behind the app. After last July’s “Sulli Deals“, in which nearly 80 Muslim women were put up “for sale”, “Bulli Bai” was the second such attempt in less than a year. “Both ‘Bulli’ and ‘Sulli’ are derogatory words used for Muslim women in local slang. However, this time the Punjabi language was used in the ‘Bulli Bai’ interface along with English,” journalist Mohammad Zubair, who works for fact-checking website AltNews, told Al Jazeera. Ara said she is not hopeful regarding the police investigation, her fears stemming from the fact that the probe in “Sulli Deals” has seen no arrests made even after six months. “It is sad to see how these hate-mongers are licensed to target Muslim women without any fear. This is not the first time such an auction has taken place,” said Ara. “The women who have been targeted are vocal women who raise issues of Muslims on social media. It is a clear conspiracy to shut these Muslim women because we challenge the Hindu right-wing online against their hate crimes,” she added. “Police complaints were registered during the time of ‘Sulli deals’. However, no action was taken. That is the reason why these people feel emboldened,” Chaturvedi told Al Jazeera. Rana Ayyub, a Mumbai-based columnist with The Washington Post, told Al Jazeera people are “hailing targeted harassment of women without being identified by law”. “‘Bulli Bai’ takes hate crimes in India to another dangerous level where Muslim women are being virtually violated and made a free-for-all for a bigoted mob,” she said. “These auctions of women from the minority communities display the moral degradation of India and its constitutional values.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/2/bulli-bai-muslim-women-auction-online-india

Monthly update 27: November 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Mosques attacked: Nov., 5, 2021: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in a message expressed concern over last week’s targeting of Muslims and burning of mosques in Tripura and urged the Union government to “stop violence against religious communities”. The violence in Tripura took place during a rally taken out by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on October 26 in North Tripura in protest against the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh. The High Court of Tripura has initiated a suo motu PIL. “USCIRF is concerned about ongoing violence in #Tripura against #Muslims, which some regard as retaliation for attacks against #Hindus in #Bangladesh last month. The Indian government must stop violence against religious communities.” USCIRF is particularly alarmed about reports from #Tripura of mobs desecrating mosques & torching properties of #Muslims. The Indian govt must bring those responsible for instigating & engaging in religious violence to justice & must prevent further attacks.” https://ummid.com/news/2021/november/04.11.2021/tripura-us-watchdog-on-religious-freedom-flags-attacks-on-mosques-muslims.html

2. Bahraini lawmaker and India: Nov., 11, 2021: Bahraini lawmaker, Abdulrazzaq Hattab, has issued a scathing condemnation of India for the violence against Muslim which has increased in the country over the years, threatening to start a boycott of trade between the two countries. In a speech he gave in Bahrain's parliament recently, Hattab spoke against the deliberate targeting of Muslims by right-wing Hindu nationalists in India. "These practices are against international laws and Abrahamic religions, and also contradict with humanity and the country's obligation to provide safety to its citizens and their freedom, regardless of their religion and beliefs," he said. State-sanctioned and vigilante actions against Muslims have increased significantly over the years under the current Indian government headed by President Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist support base. According to Hattab, that is especially seen in states like Assam and occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The lawmaker added that "we strongly stand with respect to Islam and the 150 million Muslims in India," and announced that if attacks against Indian Muslims continue, "we will undergo severe action, including trade boycott." Such a boycott is predicted to have a significant impact, as trade between Manama and New Delhi exceeds $105 billion annually. Hattab also revealed that he and others "tried multiple times to meet with the Indian ambassador in Bahrain to send our message to his government; however, he was making unjustified excuses." The condemnation and the threat of a boycott by the Bahraini lawmaker come two months after Kuwaiti lawmakers also condemned atrocities committed against Muslims by India and Hindu extremists. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211110-bahrain-lawmaker-condemns-violence-against-muslims-in-india-threatens-trade-boycott/

3. Ehsan Jafri and Gujarat violence: Nov., 11, 2021: The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard Kapil Sibal, appearing for Zakia Jafri, said that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigating the Gulberg society massacre during the 2002 Gujarat riots did not question the accused, seize their phones and ignored evidence showing conspiracy and hate speech, and discarded sting reports which were used by in the Naroda Patya case. Sibal was making these arguments in the plea filed by Zafri, the widow of Congress leader Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the Gulberg society massacre, challenging the SIT’s clean chit to 64 persons, including Narendra Modi who was the then Gujarat chief minister. “They did not record statements of witnesses. No phones were seized from the accused. No call record details were analysed. They never arrested anybody, never checked why documents were destroyed and why the police stood by doing nothing… They just accepted the statements of the accused… There should be an investigation,” Sibal said. Sibal began his arguments by stating that he would demonstrate, largely through official documents, that the SIT did not conduct any investigation . “The question is, has the SIT followed the procedure established by the law in dealing with the evidence which was before the SIT and which they completely disregarded and never investigated?” Sibal told the bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar. “Deliberate loopholes were left in the investigation and there were no sincere attempts to nab the culprits. No investigator with a sense of justice will discard this evidence. No judge with a conscience will discard this evidence,” Sibal submitted towards the end of his arguments for the day, according to LiveLaw. Ehsan Jafri, a former MP, was among the 68 people killed in the violence, a day after the S-6 Coach of the Sabarmati Express was burnt at Godhra killing 59 people. On October 26, the apex court had said it would like to peruse the closure report of the SIT giving the clean chit to 64 persons and the justification given by the magisterial court while accepting it. Sibal had earlier argued that Jafri’s complaint was that there was a larger conspiracy where there was bureaucratic inaction, police complicity, hate speeches and unleashing of violence”. On February 8, 2012, the SIT had filed a closure report giving a clean chit to Modi, now the prime minister, and 63 others, including senior government officials, saying there was “no prosecutable evidence” against them. Zakia Jafri had filed a petition in the apex court in 2018 challenging the Gujarat high court’s October 5, 2017 order rejecting her plea against the decision of the SIT. The plea also maintained that after the SIT gave a clean chit in its closure report before a trial judge, Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition which was dismissed by the magistrate without considering “substantiated merits”. It had said the petitioner can approach an appropriate forum, including the magistrate’s court, a division bench of the high court, or the Supreme Court seeking further investigation. According to The Hindu, Sibal said though the complaint was never registered as an FIR, it was “treated” as one. “Besides, there were no proceedings going on in the magistrate court at the time as the Gulberg case trial was going on in a sessions court,” he said. Sibal, who referred to the alleged inaction by the concerned authorities during the violence, said one cannot allow communal tension to reach such a stage where violence occurs and innocent people are attacked. https://thewire.in/law/gujarat-riots-sit-made-no-sincere-attempts-nab-culprits-kapil-sibal-zakia-jaffri

4. Custodial killings and Muslims in India: Nov.,11, 2021: The death of a young Muslim man in police custody in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and the subsequent clarification by the police has triggered outrage in India. Police on Wednesday said 22-year-old Mohammad Altaf hanged himself after he went to the washroom in a police station at Kasganj district in Uttar Pradesh – India’s most populous state governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A photograph showing Altaf hanging from a water pipe in the washroom went viral on social media. Altaf, a resident of Ahroli village in Kasganj, was taken into police custody on Tuesday morning in a case related to the alleged kidnapping of a minor Hindu girl Times of India newspaper on Thursday reported that Altaf was about 5ft 6 inches (167cm) tall and the water pipe was less than three feet (91.4cm) from the ground. “This is clearly a custodial death. And custodial deaths should be prima facie treated as custodial murder. The onus has to be on the police to prove that it was not a murder but a suicide,” Kavita Krishnan, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), told Al Jazeera Earlier this year, India’s home ministry said in the Indian parliament that 348 people died in police custody and 5,221 died in judicial custody in the last three years.In Uttar Pradesh, 23 people have died in police custody and 1,295 in judicial custody in the same period. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/11/india-uttar-pradesh-kasganj-police-muslim-man-custodial-murder

5. Yogi Adityanath : Nov., 16, 2021: Yogi Adityanath, the diminutive 49 year-old saffron-clad fire-breathing monk and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (India’s most populous and thus, electorally, its kingmaker state), head priest of the powerful Goraknath Mutt (a temple-monastery-shrine complex), part of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party but boasting a famously frosty history with its elite, whose rampant, purist Hindu nationalism many believe exceeds even Modi’s, is up for re-election. And if the BJP wins the crucial state elections that are just four months away, Yogi, who is universally addressed (according to his own request) as Maharaj King) will be the front runner to be the heir and successor to Narendra Modi, the hardline Hindutva prime minister of India. Yogi Adityanath is sui generis in the Hindu nationalist ecosystem, known as the Sangh, as unlike the Modi and other current BJP government ministers, he has no current connection to or background in the secretive and militant Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the mothership of the BJP and source of its Hindus First vision for India. The RSS has been banned multiple times, most notoriously for its involvement in Gandhi's assassination. And yet Yogi is today a contender for the party's top job. So what explains the rise and rise of Yogi as the new Hindu Hriday Samrat (Emperor of Hindu Hearts), an obsequious piece of puffery over which, until recently, was Modi's favored epithet? In two words: Muslim hate. The RSS and its creature, the BJP, are excited by the idea that Yogi gives voice to a brand of maximalist majoritarian politics without the filters to which Modi is subjected and thus does not dare to say, hemmed in as he is (so far) by India's Constitution and the office of the prime minister. Yogi Adityanath, originally called Ajay Mohan Bhist, was born into the family of a forest ranger. Having obtained a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, he apparently became disenchanted with routine life and first joined the same temple movement in Goraknath Mutt that eventually led Hindu nationalist mobs in 1992 to tear down the Babri Masjid, an act that triggered nationwide intercommunal violence and which Yogi has publicly praised. He took diksha, or ordination, as a monk disciple of his spiritual father Mahant Avaidyanth and was named his successor. Yogi has always mixed realpolitik with Hindutva. He has won five parliamentary elections, representing the constituency of Gorakhpur. From the start, he's recognized the power of a cult of personality, absolute loyalty backed up by physical coercion. After his first win, he established a vigilante force called the Hindu Yuva Vahini, which was often accused of violence and extortion. His vigilantes would roar around in cars and motorbikes with only Yogi’s image emblazoned where the license plates were supposed to be. A popular slogan in his state amongst his supporters goes: UP mein rehna hoga Yogi Yogi kehna hoga, if you want to live in UP, chant Yogi’s name. Till Modi and the RSS gave him his dream job ruling Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath was, together with his band of vigilantes, set on an adversarial course against them. The Sangh, though, sensed his potential as the ultimate instrument of Hindutva, finally gave him the prize in 2017. For the RSS, the optics of a demagogic saffron-clad monk who refuses to dilute his Hindu supremacism or his exclusionary bigotry towards Muslims, ruling India's most politically significant state is a power visual. All the more so if he wins the highest national office. Yogi Adityanath has singlehandedly brought the term "love jihad" into both common use and has even criminalized it in Uttar Pradesh (a move several other BJP-ruled states then followed). "Love jihad" is a baseless conspiracy theory attacking interfaith relationships by accusing Muslim men of seducing and Hindu women and then forcing them to convert to Islam He has closed down slaughterhouses and abattoirs using cows which were mainly run by poor Muslims and Dalits, and has banned the sale of beef: killing a cow or its progeny now incurs a ten-year jail sentence. If this legislative agenda wasn’t bad enough, Yogi Adityanath routinely incites against Muslims and other non-Hindus. He declares his state government is focusing on building (Hindu) temples while non-Hindus are focused on filling burial grounds. In the run up to the UP elections he has oddly promised a "surgical strike" against the Taliban. He once launched series of attacks on Mother Teresa, accusing her of being part of a conspiracy to Christianize India. He has compared Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to the Pakistani arch-terrorist Hafiz Sayeed, mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 civilians, and after Khan spoke about growing intolerance in India, proposed he go live in Pakistan. He told Indian Muslims suspicious of increasingly coercive efforts to institute yoga in schools they should either leave the country or drown themselves in the sea. Women are not spared Yogi Adityanath’s Stone Age views. On his website, the monk writes that, "Women always need to be protected lest their energy go waste." He adds that the patriarchal protection accorded to a woman by her father, husband and brother is only to "channel" her energy and her power – for the good of perfect procreation. It is only a "controlled woman" who will give birth to mahapurush (great men). Yogi Adityanath warns that women who acquire "masculine traits" turn into demons and need to controlled for the good of society. He once sat silent on the stage during an election rally when a fellow speaker called for Muslim women’s bodies to be dragged out of their graves and raped. Yogi did not utter a word of condemnation. Yogi’s government routinely files cases against journalists for simply doing their job under a terror law called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Sedition Act. In one case, the journalist Siddique Kappan was on his way to report a rape case and was booked before he even filed a single report. Because of the stringent provisions of the Act, Kappan is still in jail for an imaginary crime Despite lethal missteps in the handling of the vicious second wave of COVID which saw bodies floating on the sacred Ganges river, Yogi Adityanath has nonetheless managed to move political debate in UP back to the usual polarizing issues of Hindus versus Muslims, where he is most comfortable. A lacklustre opposition has not been able to pin down his terrible governance record. While Modi, reluctantly, pays lip service to the Constitution of India with its guarantee of equal rights for all citizens, Yogi Adityanath is unfazed and wants an institutionalized "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindus-first state) where non-Hindu minorities will be, explicitly, second class citizens. That has always been the goal of the RSS. They see in Yogi Adityanath a successor to Modi who will outperform even his populist Hindutva towards the goal of a truly theocratic nationalism, or even a clerical fascism: fully saffronizing India. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-modi-to-yogi-the-militant-monk-who-could-lead-india-to-full-hindu-theocracy-1.10385471

6. Salman Khurshid’s house set on fire; No 16 2021; Senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid’s Nainital home was allegedly vandalised and set on fire on Monday, November 15, days after it became known that his book on Ayodhya drew parallels between Hindutva groups and terrorist organisations, such as Boko Haram and ISIS, drawing the ire of the BJP and Hindu fundamentalist groups. Talking to Facebook, Khurshid wrote, “I hoped to open these doors to my friends who have left this calling card. Am I still wrong to say this cannot be Hinduism?” The Congress leader has been at the centre of criticism from BJP and Hindutva groups after it became known that his book Sunrise Over Ayodhya: Nationhood in Our Times, released on November 10, contained observations on Hindutva politics and how religion was being used to reap electoral dividends by the BJP. Hindutva groups objected to a particular passage in the book, which reads as follows: “Sanatan Dharma and classical Hinduism known to sages and saints were being pushed aside by a robust version of Hindutva, by all standards a political version similar to the jihadist Islam of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram of recent years https://thewire.in/communalism/salman-khurshids-nainital-home-vandalised-days-after-controversy-over-hindutva-remarks-in-book

7. Prayer restrictions: Nov., 20, 2021: Muslims cannot even safely go to mosques in states such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. In Haryana, which has a sizable Muslim population, Muslims are also facing government restrictions on Friday prayer attendance. This comes a few days after reports of cow dung being thrown at mosques and other Muslim places of worship, along with a new spate of physical violence against Muslims and their businesses. In several cases, these attacks have gone unpunished, despite some people even taking credit for the attacks. Meanwhile, journalists and rights activists are facing penalties under draconian laws for simply drawing attention to the violence. The BJP fully backs the violence but doesn’t want its direct role exposed in front of the world. . India prayer bans (tribune.com.pk)

8. Section 144 imposed in Mathura after Hindu Mahasabha threatens to install Lord Krishna idol in mosque; NoV 29 2021;;The Mathura district administration has imposed prohibitory orders under CrPC section 144 following an announcement by the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha that it will install a Lord Krishna idol at the deity’s “actual birthplace”, which it claims is in a mosque close to a prominent temple.“Nobody will be allowed to disturb the peace and tranquillity in Mathura,” District Magistrate Navneet Singh Chahal said. The clampdown comes even as another right wing organisation, the Narayani Sena, has said it will take out a march from Vishram Ghat to Sri Krishna Janmasthan, demanding the “removal” of the mosque.Section 144 of the CrPC prohibits the assembly of four or more people in an area. Police said they have detained Narayani Sena secretary Amit Mishra in Mathura Kotwali, while the outfit claimed its national president Manish Yadav has been detained in Lucknow. Chahal said he, along with Senior Superintendent of Police Gaurav Grover, reviewed the security around both the religious places, the Katra Keshav Dev temple and the Shahi Idgah. He said the Hindu Mahasabha had requested permission to install the idol at the mosque but it was turned down. Question of granting permission to any event that may potentially disrupt peace does not arise, Chahal added. Hindu Mahasabha leader Rajyashri Choudhary had earlier said her organisation will install the idol of Lord Krishna in the Shahi Idgah after a “maha jalabhishek” to “purify” the place on December 6. The date marks the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the site of a temple-mosque dispute, in 1992. The Mahasabha’s threat to perform the ritual inside the Shahi Idgah comes at a time when the local courts are hearing a series of petitions seeking the “removal” of the 17th century mosque.

10. Munawar Faruqui hints at quitting after Bengaluru Police deny permission for show ; NoV 29 2021; Stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui on November 28 hinted that he may not do any more shows, a day after his scheduled event in Bengaluru was cancelled. Police had “advised” the organisers to call it off, citing possible law and order problems. Earlier, his shows have been cancelled in other cities on similar grounds. City police had said that the organisers of the event, scheduled to be held on November 28 evening, “should cancel the show”, as several groups are opposed to it and this “could create chaos and could disturb the public peace and harmony, which may further lead to law and order problems”. The police issued the letter on November 27 night. Faruqui, who had come to the city for the show, left on November 28 morning after posting a statement on his social media handles, hinting at quitting the space. Lamenting how he was jailed for a joke he did not do, and of 12 shows being cancelled in the last two months because of threats to venue and audience, he wrote: “I think this is the end. My name is Munawar Faruqui and that’s been my time, you guys were a wonderful audience. Goodbye! I am done.” Organisers of the November 28 event said Faruqui felt dejected at how he is being systematically targeted. Faruqui was himself not available for further comment. Faruqui was arrested in Indore in January earlier this year after a Hindutva right wing activist alleged he denigrated Hindu gods. He spent 37 days in jail before the Supreme Court granted him bail. Bengaluru Police cancelling the show comes close on the heels of 12 shows of the comic being similarly cancelled by the police in Maharashtra and Gujarat this month alone, following a campaign by Hindutva right wing organisations calling for a ban on the artiste and threatening protests if his shows are held. The city police move has come under severe criticism by rights activists in the city. “It is sad that a systematic campaign by Hindutva groups has scuttled a comedian, just because of his religion,” said advocate-activist Vinay Sreenivasa. “It is sad to note that a threat of a protest leads to stifling of freedom of expression in this city. Some groups cannot hold the city to ransom. Society needs to stand by the artist,” said human rights advocate B.T. Venkatesh.

Monthly update 26: October 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Namaz denied; October 18 2021: Muslims offering namaz in the open on Friday, October 15, in Gurugram’s Sector 47 faced protests from some people who attempted to reach the spot, prompting police to cordon off the area. This is the fourth consecutive week when Friday prayers by the Muslim community in the area have been targeted .As a mark of protest, around 12:40 pm, 70 to 80 people attempted to march towards the site where the Muslim community congregated singing bhajans using a microphone and portable speaker. The protestors also raised slogans against the government for allegedly not stopping namaz from being offered in public places and open government lands. The said site in Sector 47 in Gurugram is among the list of 37 designated sites locally where prayers could be offered in the open. The list of sites was a result of a negotiated settlement between Hindus and Muslims after similar disruptions for prayers in the open were reported in 2018. Sensing trouble on Friday, the police had asked Muslim community members offering namaz in Sector 47 to reach the site from the Subhash Chowk side, to avoid any possible confrontation between two religious communities. “Prayers were offered peacefully. In the last week, we have held meetings with representatives of both communities and we are working towards resolving the issue According to Muslim community members who have been coming to the prayer site for the last three years, the latest controversy is because of a few people who want to gain political mileage by causing disruption to prayers. The protestors did not relent even as the Muslim community moved 100 metres away from the original prayer site after police had instructed them when protests were witnessed first a few weeks back. “This has only become an issue in the past few weeks. Some people who are trying to gain political mileage from this are creating a ruckus,” said Taufiq, who has been attending prayers regularly in Sector 47 As The Wire reported earlier, one Dinesh Bharati a leader of the Hindutva group Bharat Mata Vahini is central to these protests. He was also arrested earlier for disrupting Friday prayers. Bharati had said, “This is an international conspiracy. They are offering namaz as part of this conspiracy of… love jihad, land jihad. If we don’t raise our voice, they will build a mosque here.” On September 24, he put out a video on his social media pages asking his followers to disperse Muslims offering namaz in the open. “If the government does not stop this, we will open a gaushala and a gurukul here, and build a Hanuman mandir here,” he was seen saying in the video. On September 29, another video went viral in which a local resident was seen protesting against Muslims offering Friday namaz on public land. He claimed that due to the presence of Muslims locally, there had been an increase in the instances of sexual harassment against women. The video went viral on Twitter gaining a lot of traction among Hindutva supporters. “By October 8, 2021, this had escalated into a full-scale protest at the area, with dozens of people carrying placards and shouting slogans to protest the Friday gathering,” The Wire had reported. Ever since right-wing groups have continued to amplify the issue which actually began as a protest by not more than seven to eight people. https://thewire.in/communalism/gurugram-sector-47-protest-namaz

Urdu in India: October 27, 2021: Last week, Hindu right-wing forces in India forced a leading firm to withdraw its festive season advertisement after it featured a couple of words from the Urdu language, which in the popular imagination in the country is a “Muslim language “The Hindutva project sees Urdu as a ‘Muslim’ language. And invisibilising Urdu is part of the larger project of marginalising the Muslim community, in fact, physically eliminating it,” Nivedita Menon, professor at the Centre for Political Studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Al Jazeera. Today, Urdu is among the 22 languages officially recognised by the Indian constitution. Apart from poetry and literature, Urdu had a huge influence over Bollywood, the site of India’s “Hindi” film industry based in the western city of Mumbai. A large number of Urdu poets and writers wrote film scripts, songs and dialogues. But many believe that too has changed in a religiously polarised India. After the FabIndia controversy, many social media users shared memes featuring popular Bollywood dialogues and songs, replacing their Urdu words with Hindi counterparts in an attempt to showcase that the effect is not the same. Screenwriter Javed Siddiqui, who has written several Bollywood films, told Al Jazeera that Urdu had a “better position than any other language” in the Indian film industry and that the “trend changed in the past few decades”. But Siddiqui added that the influence of Urdu in India’s popular culture will always remain. “You cannot write [any song] without ‘dil’ [heart in Urdu] and ‘mohabbat’, ‘ishq’ [both mean love in Urdu] and so on. I don’t think there is a lack of words in Hindi or it doesn’t have words but the phonetics and the music which Urdu has, no other language can provide,” he said. Legendary Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, who died in 1955, perhaps summed it up best. “Why are Hindus wasting their time supporting Hindi, and why are Muslims so beside themselves over the preservation of Urdu? A language is not made, it makes itself. And no amount of human effort can ever kill a language “From 1857 onwards, this Hindi-Urdu dispute was created, particularly in present-day Uttar Pradesh state, which continued until 1900,” Mohammad Sajjad, a professor of history at the Aligarh Muslim University in the same state, told Al Jazeera. Sajjad said the linguistic divide, “aggravated by the colonial state”, was based on the script. Urdu uses Nastaliq, borrowed from the Perso-Arabic script, while Hindi uses the Devnagri script. Christopher Rolland King in his book, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India, wrote that Hindi and Urdu are “considered two different languages on political and cultural – not linguistic – grounds”. Despite Urdu’s Persian-Arabic script and its so-called “Muslim” association, many leaders of India’s freedom movement used the language in their fight against British rule. Linguist Ganesh N Devy told Al Jazeera that when iconic freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, from what is now the West Bengal state, formed an army to fight the British in 1942, he named it “Azad Hind Fauj”. “Azad” in Urdu means free or independent while “fauj” is an army. “He did not use ‘swatantra’, the Hindi word for freedom,” he said, adding that most slogans of the freedom movement were in Urdu, including “Inquilab zindabad” (Long live revolution).“There is a move towards unity and also a move towards segregating the two, and both the tendencies existed in pre-independent India during the late colonial times,” Devy said. Devy said Urdu was among the top seven languages spoken in the country, according to the 2001 census. In the 2011 census, the data of which was disclosed in 2018, the “fortunes of Urdu started sinking in our country”. “When the [2021] census takes place, my fear is that many speakers of Urdu might simply report Hindi as their mother tongue. There is a fear perception among Urdu speakers of getting identified as Muslims though Urdu is not a language of Muslims,” he said.Experts say while the number of Urdu speakers in India was dwindling, Hindi speakers have shown steady growth since independence. The ruling BJP has time and again hinted at making Hindi India’s national language, but has so far faced stiff opposition from non-Hindi speaking states, mainly in the south and the east. “If Urdu was a Muslim language, people would be reading the Quran in Urdu and not in Arabic and Muslims in [West] Bengal and Kerala would be speaking Urdu and not their local languages such as Bangla and Malayalam,” she told Al Jazeera.Safvi said Urdu was projected as the language of Muslims because of its Perso-Arabic script. Academic Menon said the “outrage against the [FabIndia] ad was manufactured” and not a “genuine outrage on the part of ordinary people”. Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a historian and political scientist who teaches at Ashoka University in the capital, agreed with Menon and said the whole controversy was broadly more illustrative of the “deep-seated prejudice over anything associated with Muslims now”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/27/india-urdu-hindu-groups-hate-campaign-muslim-language-fabindia

Monthly update 25: September 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Muslims of India ; Sep 3 2021; Despite the rising number of hate crimes against Muslims of India, the country's Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government hardly ever condemns such incidents as Hindu mobs "routinely" target the largest minority, BBC reported. In August, a video went viral on social media, showing a terrified little girl clinging to her Muslim father as a Hindu mob assaulted him. The daughter of a 45-year-old rickshaw driver could be seen in the footage showing the helpless man being paraded through the streets of Kanpur city as the mob kept hitting him. The attackers asked the rickshaw driver to chant "Hindustan Zindabad" or "Long Live India" and "Jai Shri Ram" or "Victory to Lord Ram" - a popular greeting that's been turned into a murder cry by Hindu lynch mobs in recent years. He complied, but the mob still kept hitting him. The man and his daughter were eventually rescued by the police. Three men arrested for the attack were freed on bail a day later. The report stated that a few days later, another viral video surfaced showing a Muslim bangle-seller being slapped, kicked and punched by a Hindu mob in Indore city. "The attackers could be heard abusing Tasleem Ali and telling him to stay away from Hindu areas in future." In a police complaint, the victim later said that he had been "beaten by five-six men who hurled communal slurs at him for selling bangles in a Hindu-dominated area and robbed him of money, his phone and some documents". But in a strange turn of events, the report added, Ali himself was arrested the next day after the 13-year-old daughter of one of his alleged attackers accused him of molesting her. His family and neighbours have strongly denied the accusation. They said it was inconceivable that the father of five would do something like that. And eyewitnesses, quoted in the Indian press, said he was attacked because of his religious identity and the molestation accusation against him seemed to be an afterthought. The two attacks were among several instances of anti-Muslim violence in August, but the last month by no means was cruellest for India's biggest religious minority group, with a population of more than 200 million. Similar attacks were reported in the preceding months too - and many made headlines, the BBC report added. "The violence is overwhelming. It's rampant and common and also very acceptable," says a freelance journalist Alishan Jafri was quoted in the report as saying. Alishan has been documenting attacks on Indian Muslims for the past three years. He said that he came across "three-four such videos every day" but is able to verify only one or two which he then shares on social media The BBC report quoting critics said that anti-Muslim violence has risen since 2014 under the Hindu nationalist government of PM Modi. "Communal violence is not a recent phenomenon, but it grows in sync with the strategies of those in power and political mobilisation," Prof Tanvir Aeijaz, who teaches politics science at Delhi University, said. "The distrust was always there but cleavages have been sharpened now by religious nationalism and ethno-nationalism." During Mr Modi's first term in power, the report added, there were numerous incidents of Muslims being attacked by so-called "cow vigilantes" over rumours that they had eaten beef, or that they were trying to smuggle cows - an animal many Hindus consider holy - for slaughter. The prime minister did not condone such attacks. In 2019, a fact-checker website that counted "hate crimes" in India reported that more than 90% of victims in the past 10 years were Muslims. And the perpetrators of the attacks remain unpunished amid accusations that they enjoy political patronage from Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party after a government minister garlanded eight Hindus convicted for lynching a Muslim. "Such attacks have become so common in our country today only and only because of the impunity these thugs enjoy," said Hasiba Amin, a social media co-ordinator for the opposition Congress party. "Today hate has gone mainstream. It is cool to go attack Muslims. The hate mongers are also rewarded for their actions." BBC report stated that since Modi's return to power for a second term in 2019, the anti-Muslim violence has expanded in its scope. The report said that Muslim women haven't been spared either. "In July, dozens of them found they had been put up "for sale" online. In May, many of them, including Amin of the Congress party, were offered in a mock online 'auction'." In August, participants at a rally, organised by a former BJP leader in Delhi, shouted slogans calling for Muslims to be killed. "It's a very sustained, organised campaign by nationalist politicians to radicalise Hindus into believing that Muslims need to be marginalised if Hindus are to progress," said. Prof Aeijaz said that the attack on working-class Muslims, such as tailors, fruit vendors, electricians, plumbers and bangle sellers, is also an attempt to take control of the political economy and jobs through religious nationalism. "The religious divide has deepened. The distrust has deepened. But the hate is also for profit. The idea is to make Muslims the other, the enemy. "The process of creating the other is by propagating the idea that if we don't destroy the other, we will be destroyed. So you stoke hate, create fear, and violence is part of this larger narrative." But religious nationalism, Prof Aeijaz said, is a dangerous idea that can lead to sectarian violence. "The buck stops with the political executive in a parliamentary democracy. How long can they look the other way," the report quoted Prof Aeijaz as saying. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2318288/attacks-on-muslims-becoming-routine-in-modis-india-report

2. Youth lynched; Sep 11 2021;A 22-year-old Muslim youth was lynched by a mob of extremist Hindus in Shamli district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The deceased identified as Samir Chaudhary as lynched by the extremist Hindus when he was returning home from the work on Thursday evening. Samir’s Cousin, Pravez Chaudhary told media that the assailants lynched him for his “Muslim identity”. “While returning from work some boys caught hold of him near Shamli bus stand. They attacked him with sticks and iron rods and killed him,” he said.“He has been killed just because he is a Muslim and there can be no other reason,” Parvez said. He said that the Hindu groups attacked two other younger boys who were with Samir but they managed to escape.Samir was the sole breadwinner in his family after his father died of cancer four years ago. He left behind a family of two brothers, a sister and a mother. https://www.kmsnews.org/kms/2021/09/10/hindu-extremists-lynch-22-yr-old-muslim-youth-in-uttar-pradesh.html

3. Muslims Marginalized; Sep 14 2021; . It was the latest attack on the livelihoods of India’s Muslims, a trend now so far-reaching that even industrialists are not immune to it. Before this, a series of shocking videos had gone viral showing Hindutva supporters attacking working-class Muslims as they went about doing their jobs. In Madhya Pradesh, a Muslim bangle seller was beaten up for doing business in a “Hindu area”. In Uttar Pradesh, a dosa vendor’s stall was vandalised simply because he had, as a Muslim, named his shop after a Hindu god. In Madhya Pradesh, a Muslim scrap dealer was surrounded by a gang of men and forced to chant the Hindu religious slogan “Jai Shri Ram”. In Lucknow, a horse carriage owner was hounded to chant “death to Pakistan” because of the fake claim that he had painted that country’s flag on his cart. This is just the latest wave of such violence aimed at attacking Muslims for simply doing their jobs. The last few years have seen extremist politics around the issue of beef and even meat itself. Just after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, it launched a thinly veiled communal campaign against the informal meat industry, shutting down slaughter houses and shops that, it alleged, did not conform to laws and regulations. Given that a major part of Uttar Pradesh’s economy is informal, the reason for singling out meat was not difficult to miss: it was dominated by Muslims. Even five years later, the Uttar Pradesh government is continuing along the same lines. On August 30, Chief Minister Adityanath announced that meat would be banned completely from Mathura given the town was holy for Hindus. In one stroke, the BJP had ended the livelihoods of thousands of people associated with the meat industry in Mathura, most of them Muslim. Even worse, officials across North India have winked at mob violence against Muslims involved in the cattle and dairy trade. In 2017, a dairy farmer named Pehlu Khan was lynched in Rajasthan with all accused walking free in 2019. In fact, the lynching of Muslims transporting cattle is almost a routine occurrence in India now. So entrenched is communal sentiment in India that even the Covid-19 pandemic was weaponised to attack Muslim livelihoods. The first wave of Covid-19 in India saw vituperative, bigoted campaigns absurdly blaming Muslim fruit vendors for spreading the disease. In Mahoba district of Uttar Pradesh, for example, this led to mob action against Muslim vegetable vendors, preventing them from selling their goods. The economic marginalisation of Muslims in India is not new. In 2005, the Sachar committee report pointed out that the economic conditions of Muslims lagged even those of Dalits on key parameters. A 2018 study showed that Muslims were the only group in India with lower social mobility than even their parents. As a religious group, Muslims rank last when it comes to holding jobs which provide regular wages and salaries as per data from the National Sample Survey 2009-’10. Most Muslims are involved in low paying, irregular jobs Incredibly, rather than lending the community a helping hand, many Indian politicians have concentrated on trying to push down Muslims even further. The past few decades have seen a rise in allegations of Muslims being “appeased”. The charge is absurd given the community’s dismal socioeconomic indicators but serves to further marginalise them. To all of this is now added the fact that violent attacks on Muslims doing their jobs is now being normalised. At the start of its second term, the BJP had promised a Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register of Citizens “chronology” that would subject Muslims to a communal citizenship test, thus reducing the community to second-class citizens. While that project has faced several obstacles, another equally insidious form of marginalisation is taking place in the economic sphere, with Muslims being pushed to the wall by being denied a chance to making a living. Indian democracy has faced a number of challenges since it was instituted 70 years ago. But attempts to reduce its massive population of 200 million Muslims to a life without hope and the prospect, at best, of second-class citizenship, is the gravest danger it has faced till now. https://scroll.in/article/1005133/from-industrialists-to-hawkers-in-india-muslim-livelihoods-are-coming-under-increased-attack

4. Muslim Families evicted: Sep., 23 2021; The Assam government carried out a massive eviction drive in a village on a sandbar in the Darrang district on Monday, September 20, leaving at least 800 families homeless. This was the second round of evictions carried out in the last three months at the village – Dhalpur – which is populated mostly by Muslims of East Bengal origin. A fact-finding committee had visited the village soon after the district administration carried out the first eviction drive in June. The committee had stated that 49 Muslim families and one Hindu family had been uprooted in the drive, which local newspapers said had “cleared” 120 bighas of land (1 bigha is around 900 square yards), purportedly belonging to “pre-historic” Shiva temple. The September 20 drive, however, was a much larger exercise. A report by the Sentinel called the state government’s actions a “never before seen massive eviction drive at Dhalpur No. 1 and Dhalpur No. 3 areas”. These areas fall under the Sipajhar Revenue Circle in the Darrang district. The newspaper said that the government’s actions were taken to “evict encroachers from government land.” The news reports said the district administration cleared “8000 bighas” of land which led to the eviction of 800 people. Some residents of Dhalpur told The Wire that the number of evicted families was more than 900, which would take the count of affected people to at least 20,000. Photos and video clips surfaced on social media showing evicted families taking shelter under makeshift sheds to protect themselves from a heavy bout of rain after their dwellings were demolished. The drive was carried out while the state government still has multiple pandemic-related restrictions in place. According to the villagers, the local administration engaged more than 1,200 police personnel and jawans from the Assam Police’s 14th battalion to carry out the drive at Dhalpur No. 1 and No. 3. “The drive was carried out by the Darrang administration and led by the chairman of the proposed Gorukhuti multi-purpose agricultural project. At the same time, the district administration used 22 tractors to plough the cleared, cultivable land right after the eviction,” said a villager. https://thewire.in/rights/assam-government-evicts-hundreds-of-families-from-dhalpur

5. Biden to Modi; Sep 25 2021; In his first meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Joe Biden spoke about the need for non-violence, tolerance and diversity in current times, even as he said that both countries are destined to be “stronger, closer and tighter”. Biden’s comment marks the second time the US has spoken to Modi in public about the importance of democracy in as many days. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday said “it is imperative that we defend democratic principles and institutions within our respective countries”. These remarks come against the backdrop of growing concerns abroad over the rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric in India and curbs on dissent. “Kamala Harris presses India’s Modi gently on human rights in historic meeting,” the Los Angeles Times reported in its headline. https://thewire.in/diplomacy/biden-to-modi-gandhis-message-of-tolerance-respect-diversity-needed-more-than-ever

6. HRs Organizations on India in Kashmir and India; Sep 25 2021; As Indian Prime Minister is set to address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) forum in New York on September 25, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the international community to "spotlight the human rights abuses" of his government. On September 22, the U.S. congressional briefing on 'Religious freedom in India' by the Human Rights Watch revealed an appalling record of the human rights violations by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The testimony of John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director put forward "scathing criticism" of the Indian government's assault on religious minorities inIndia. The U.S. congressmen were briefed that the attacks against religious minorities in India, especially Muslims, had increased especially since the BJP came to power in 2014. The testimony also documented the Indian laws and policies to discriminate against religious minorities, the bias against Muslims in the Indian justice system, ongoing clampdown in Jammu and Kashmir, BJP's government's empowering of vigilantes and crackdown on civil society for raising these issues. It was highlighted that the BJP leaders and affiliated groups had long stigmatized minority communities as a "threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life", and making hate-filled remarks against Muslims around state and national elections. The Modi government has adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against Muslims and other minorities. This divisive political discourse has served to normalize violence against minorities, especially Muslims, in India. The prejudices embedded in the government have infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass, and attack religious minorities with impunity. https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/modis-rights-abuses-in-spotlight-ahead-of-un-1359060.html

7. Muslim Business attacked; Sep 28 2021; Experts say rising attacks on Muslim vendors and businesses by Hindu supremacist groups point to a worrying trend. Not everyone in India is excited about the upcoming festive season in October and November. For Afzal, a mutton seller in Greater Noida – a suburb in Uttar Pradesh state neighbouring capital New Delhi – who did not wish to give his real name for fear of reprisal, it would mean a loss of business for nearly 10 days. “The Bajrang Dal [Hindu far-right group] in this area distributed pamphlets ordering the closure of shops during the festival period. They have become very active ever since Yogi Adityanath came to power,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the saffron-robed Uttar Pradesh chief minister, who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “We have nowhere to complain. The police and the municipality officials side with such groups,” adds Afzal, with some trepidation. Afzal has been fortunate: though he has been targeted, he has not faced any physical violence. Many others have not been so lucky. On September 23, two Muslim men in Mathura, a temple town in Uttar Pradesh, were badly beaten up for carrying meat. Earlier this month, the government decided to make a large part of the city alcohol- and meat-free. About a month ago, in Indore city of Madhya Pradesh state, also governed by the BJP, a Muslim bangle-seller, Tasleem Ali, was beaten up because he was selling his wares in a “Hindu locality” allegedly under an assumed Hindu name. Within a week or so, in Ujjain city in the same state, a Muslim scrap dealer was forced to shout “Jai Shri Ram” (Victory be to Lord Ram), a war cry used by Hindu supremacist groups. Similar incidents were reported in Uttar Pradesh as well in the same month. The owner of a horse carriage in Lucknow was forced to chant “Death to Pakistan” on the basis of a fake claim that he had hoisted a Pakistani flag on his carriage. Then again, in Mathura, a Muslim eatery owner was forced to change its name from “Shrinath Dosa” to “American Dosa Corner” because right-wing groups objected to him using the name of a Hindu god. All these incidents were recorded in a series of disturbing videos that went viral. The common thread in the videos is that they showcase Muslim vendors and small traders being assaulted because of their religious identity. Also, the assaulters in all such cases are alleged members of Hindu right-wing groups, who feel emboldened under Modi’s government and exercise significant impunity. Such incidents are being seen as part of a larger attack on the livelihoods of Muslims, many of whom are self-employed or are engaged in low-paying jobs. Nearly 46 percent of Muslims are self-employed in urban India, the largest as compared with any other community, according to data from the government’s National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), 2013. The report adds that Muslims are the poorest among all religious groups in India and are concentrated in low-paying jobs in the informal sector. Jeremy Seabrook and Imran Ahmed Siddiqui, in their book People Without History: India’s Muslim Ghettos, have documented a gradual “de-skilling of Muslim workforce” due to globalisation, which has forced them into low-paying jobs. If these frequent incidents of attacks on Muslim livelihoods are seen “in consonance with some policy measures which the BJP government has taken in different states in the last few years, then it is a worrying trend indeed,” Abdul Waheed, professor of sociology at the Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh, told Al Jazeera. In 2017, when the BJP government came to power in the northern state, one of its first moves was to shut down slaughterhouses and meat shops. The ostensible reason was that such places were not following legal regulations. However, till date, no related regulation has been enacted. “The absence of any regulation in this regard makes it clear that the intention behind such a move was to destabilise Muslim businesses,” Manoj Singh, journalist and researcher in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur city, who has been tracking the rise of the BJP in the state, told Al Jazeera. In March this year, the city council in Gurugram in Haryana state – also governed by the BJP – decided to close all meat shops and ban all restaurants from serving non-vegetarian food on Tuesdays to respect “Hindu sentiments”. Such measures are likely to affect Muslims adversely. “This is a clear attack on Muslim livelihoods since, traditionally, it is primarily Muslims who are engaged in the meat and poultry business in India,” says Waheed. Singh argues that such incidents belie the Uttar Pradesh government’s claim that it is interested in the development of all. “We do not see members of such vigilante groups arrested which only means that they have the tacit support of the government.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/27/india-muslims-livelihoods-islamophobia-hindu-groups

8. Qatar Boycott of Indian goods; Sep 29 2021; After over a year, an Indian embassy in the Gulf again issued a warning about “false propaganda” against India after an Arabic Twitter hashtag trended calling for a boycott of Indian products.The reason for the twin tweets seemingly was one of the top Twitter trends in Qatar. Translated from Arabic, it meant “Boycott Indian products”.In April 2020, a number of Indian missions in the Gulf had to also post on social media urging the Indian community to remain vigilant against attempts to sow religious divisions. There had been a social media backlash after some prominent Arab Twitteratis highlighted Islamophobic posts by a couple of Indians based in the Gulf. Screenshots of an older tweet of a BJP member of parliament were also circulated The latest Twitter trend was largely related to the shooting by Assam police firing during an eviction drive in Darrang, which led to the death of at least one person. The video of the shooting had gone viral. At the time of Indian embassy in Qatar posting the tweet, the hashtag, “#مقاطعه_المنتجات_الهنديه” was at number 2 on Tuesday night. It remains in the top five of Twitter trends in the Gulf state on Wednesday. Most of the posts with the trend claimed that the Indian government has been persecuting Indian Muslims and called for a boycott of products from Indian companies. https://thewire.in/government/false-propaganda-indian-embassy-in-qatar-after-boycott-indian-products-trend-on-twitter

Monthly update 24: August 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Sikhs; Aug 10 2021; A Written Statement submitted by Bhupindar Singh and Boota Singh Kharoudh from Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) America Inc. to the Joint US Commissions hearing focusing on the multi- stages of Sikh Genocide that has happened since 1984 has been accepted for congressional and record. The Joint US Commission on International Religious Freedom and Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a hearing on Ending Genocide: Accountability for Perpetrators on July 28^th 2021. The statement explored the different timelines; staged killings of Sikhs in November 1984 and denial of justice, the killings of Sikh youth during the counter-insurgency operation of 1990's, synthetic drug infiltration and wiping of a whole generation and now through the Indian Agricultural laws 2020 to acquire the ancestral lands of Sikhs. The statement cited the congressional evidences of Sikh persecution to the tune of 2.3 to 3.2 million since 1947 by the Indian Government under different timelines. These different timelines discuss the malicious intent of Indian government against any minority community. Singh and Kharoudh further reiterated that the Sikh community has lost one whole generation to counter-insurgency operations in 1990s and another generation to deep synthetic drug penetration. These different stages fit the eligibility criteria prescribed by the ten stages of genocide by Genocide Watch. The written statement further noted the accountability for perpetrators and urged the US government to hold India accountable for these human rights abuses and be addressed accordingly as per the existing frameworks. The statement also mentions the ongoing Muslim persecution through Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and deliberate attempt by Indian government to wipe out the Sikh and Muslim communities. The detailed written statement can be found at below links https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/Sikh%20written%20testimony.pdf https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/sikh-genocide-report-accepted-for-joint-us-congressional-commissions-of-human-rights-and-international-religious-freedom-hearing-824252964.html

2. Anti Muslims protest; Aug 12 2021; Delhi court on Wednesday granted bail to former BJP spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay, arrested in connection with the communal slogans allegedly raised during a protest at the Jantar Mantar here. Hundreds of people had attended the protest organised by ‘Bharat Jodo Aandolan’ at Jantar Mantar on Sunday.Shipra Srivastava, media in-charge of Bharat Jodo Aandolan, had said the protest was held under the leadership of Upadhyay. The video shows a group of people shouting inflammatory slogans and threatening Muslims during the protest at Jantar Mantar.

3. Muslim man assaulted ; Aug 13 2021; A Muslim man was assaulted in the public and allegedly asked to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’even as his minor daughter tried to save him, said police here on Thursday, PTI reported. A one-minute video of the incident surfaced on social media on Wednesday. The 45-year-old man is seen being assaulted by some men, who ask him to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. The victim’s daughter is seen trying to save her father, crying and asking the attackers not to beat him. Later, some policemen took the man to their Jeep. The footage also shows the man being hit while in police custody. The victim, an e-rickshaw driver, said that around 3 pm, some people started abusing and assaulting him. They threatened to kill his family. He said he was saved by police.

4. Recent Incidents; Aug 24 2021; An Imam of a local mosque was forced to chant Vande Matram in Bapauli, Panipat. Later, he was coerced to leave the village. (15 August, 2021). Shia mourners assaulted with tear gas shells, pellets in Srinagar. (17 August, 2021). Tariq Bhat, a Kashmiri man was brutally attacked by 5-6 men in Sector 44, Gurgaon. (19 August, 2021). Muslim man, Hindu woman dragged to cops by right-wing group in Karnataka. (19 August, 2021). Old Bilal Mosque demolished in Faridabad by authorities. (20 August, 2021). Two Kashmiris beaten up in Himachal for ‘Islam Zindabad’ written on truck. (20 August, 2021). Assam Police slaps UAPA and arrests 14 Muslims over social media posts supporting Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. (21 August, 2021). A Muslim bangle seller was beaten by a Hindu mob for selling bangles in a Hindu dominant locality in Indore. (21 August, 2021)

5. Missing; Aug 31 2021; Najeeb Ahmed went missing from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the national capital of New Delhi on October 15, 2016, after a reported scuffle with members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student wing of the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Ahmed’s case has been investigated by the country’s top investigation agencies but his family believes the authorities are in cahoots with those responsible for the student’s disappearance. Nothing is known about the disappearance of the 31-year-old biotechnology student who was doing his masters at JNU. Hailing from a poor family, he was the eldest of three brothers and one sister. But Fatima Nafees, Ahmed’s mother, said she has not given up hope of seeing her son again.“I still believe that he is alive and has been put in some jail. One day he will definitely come back,” she told the Anadolu Agency. Ahmed enrolled at JNU on August 1, 2016, and disappeared on October 15 that year. Kumar, a former president of the JNU Students’ Union, was arrested along with two other students in February 2016 on charges of sedition for an event held on the campus In Ahmed’s case, police registered a First Information Report (FIR) was on October 15, 2016. Nine people were named as suspects behind his disappearance.The police investigation did not make much progress. Unhappy with the probe, Nafees went to the Delhi High Court the next month. In May 2017, the court handed the case to the CBI, which is controlled by the federal home ministry. In December that year, Ahmed’s mother again alleged that the CBI was not interrogating the suspects the way it should. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/30/india-nafees-ahmed-jnu-student-disappeared-muslim

Monthly update 22: June 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Temple evections: June, 5 2021; Javaid Akhter, 71, has lived all his life in his 100-year-old ancestral house built by his grandfather. The house is located just a few metres away from a famous Hindu temple in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Akhter, a retired engineer with the Indian railways, says Gorakhpur district officials, including the police, visited his house recently and took measurements of the surrounding land. The next day, he was asked to sign a “consent letter”, which said the residents living on the southeastern side of the Gorakhnath temple had given their “consent to transfer or hand over (their) lands and houses to the government” for the “safety of the temple premises”.Nearly a dozen families, all from the minority Muslim community living in the vicinity of the temple, were asked to sign the consent letter, with the signatories alleging they have been asked to vacate their houses. Akthar told Al Jazeera that he saw a few families had already signed the letter. “The officials told us that if we do not sign the letter, they have other ways to get our signatures as well. We were pressured,” he said. Incidentally, Uttar Pradesh’s right-wing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is the “mahant” or chief priest of the Gorakhnath temple.

2. Before he became the chief minister in 2017, Adityanath, a saffron-clad hardline leader from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was a member of parliament from Gorakhpur for nearly two decades. Spread across an area of 52 acres (21 hectares), the temple traces its origin to the 11th century monk, Guru Gorakhnath, who belonged to the Shaivite tradition within Hinduism. Last month, the local administrators in the state’s Barabanki district demolished what Muslims in the area claimed was a 100-year old mosque, causing anguish in the community. On May 27, Musheer Ahmed was not at home when officials from the local revenue and police departments visited his house. The officers also measured Ahmed’s house. The next day, the 70-year-old was asked to sign the “consent letter”.Ahmed, who has suffered from hypertension and depression for 10 years, says he is worried about his 125-year-old ancestral house.“My tension has since then increased. Have I signed on my death certificate?” he says. “I do not understand why my house, which is 125 years old, is being taken away. I am scared.” Intezar Hussain’s house is lies southwest of the Gorakhnath temple. He says he has been “verbally told” by local officials that his house would be “acquired” for security reasons and that he would be compensated for the loss. Shahnawaz Alam, the chairman of the opposition Congress party’s minority department in Uttar Pradesh, said journalists have reported that the administration “forcibly acquired the signatures” of the residents around the temple. “Instead of acting against the officials, the state government is instead threatening those journalists of charging them under the National Security Act (NSA),” a statement released by Alam said. A report by Maktoob website on Friday said Gorakhpur officials threatened a New Delhi-based journalist, who was covering the alleged eviction of Muslim families near Gorakhnath temple with arrest under the “draconian NSA https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/4/muslims-near-india-hindu-temple-allege-pressure-to-vacate-homes

3. Facebook and Hindu extremism: June, 2021; Facebook allowed a Hindu extremist group to operate openly on its platform for months, even after the company banned the group’s main pages for violating its policies. It was not until TIME pointed out a network of more than 30 pages linked to the Sanatan Sanstha—with more than 2.7 million total followers—that the social media giant followed through and purged them in April. The pages regularly shared hate speech and misinformation, largely targeting India’s Muslim minority, including Islamophobic depictions of Muslims as green monsters with long fingernails.The Sanatan Sanstha’s extended presence on Facebook, despite the ban, raises questions about how effectively the company is delivering on its commitment to root out hate speech and incitement to violence—including in India, its largest market. And as governments around the world increasingly bring more stringent regulations to bear on social media platforms, the case is also a window into how political pressure may be having an impact on the ways those platforms police extremist groups. At its headquarters in Goa, western India, the Sanatan Sanstha preaches a radical variant of Hinduism to devotees. Among its teachings: that a third world war is approaching, bringing with it “adverse times” that will only end when India becomes a Hindu nation. The Sanstha, which has been called an “extremist group” by the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House, has been under the watchful eye of Indian police for years. In 2011, the state of Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism unit called on India’s central government to outlaw it, though the government never acted. Since then, followers of the Sanatan Sanstha have been accused by Indian authorities of involvement in four murders, including the 2017 assassination of Gauri Lankesh, a journalist who was fiercely critical of the Hindu nationalist government. Police investigating her murder allege that her killers were inspired by a book published in 1995 by the group’s hypnotherapist founder, Jayant Balaji Athavale. A portion of the book, cited by investigators, calls on adherents to “destroy evildoers.” “So long as evildoers exist in society, we cannot live in peace,” a portion of the book reads. The victims in the three other cases were progressive intellectuals. Facebook quietly banned the Sanatan Sanstha’s main pages in September 2020, removing at least three pages that had about 70,000 followers between them. The company did not publicize the action, but explained its reasoning in an email to an administrator of one of the pages, who was also banned. “We don’t allow credible threats to harm others, support for violent organizations, or exceedingly graphic content on Facebook,” the email, which was seen by TIME, said. But the ban was only a small blow to the Sanstha’s wider presence on the platform. The Facebook pages of the Sanatan Sanstha’s newspaper and online shop escaped the ban, along with dozens carrying the branding of its sister organization, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS). In total, 32 pages with more than 2.7 million followers between them remained active on Facebook until April. The pages often shared identical posts, including misinformation and hate speech targeting Muslims, and regularly linked back to websites maintained by the Sanatan Sanstha. Content shared by the network was viewed more than 11.4 million times between September 2020 and April 2021, according to data from CrowdTangle, an analytics tool owned by Facebook. Days after TIME asked Facebook about the pages in April, all but three were removed from the social media platform. “We have disabled Sanatan Sanstha’s accounts from Facebook for violating our Community Standards,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We apply our policies globally and enforce content without any regard to political affiliations.” The HJS and Sanatan Sanstha are two arms of the same organization, according to Dhirendra K. Jha, a journalist who visited their headquarters for his book Shadow Armies: Fringe Organizations and Foot Soldiers of Hindutva. They are staffed by many of the same people and are run in practice from the same building in Goa, says Jha, who was sued by the group for defamation but had the case dismissed in 2020. “The Sanatan Sanstha is basically the mother organization,” he says. “The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti is its main outfit through which it does all its work. Whatever you can think of that the Sanatan Sanstha wants to do, that would be the responsibility of the HJS.” While the Sanatan Sanstha and HJS are not officially affiliated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many of the posts shared by the pages dovetail with its Hindu nationalist political project. In 2013, before he became Prime Minister, Narendra Modi said he was proud of the HJS’s work on the eve of a conference organized by the group. Three years later, BJP state lawmaker T. Raja Singh addressed the same conference, calling for “action against those indulging in cow slaughter, Love Jihad and religious conversion of Hindus by deceit”—all references to India’s Muslim population and echoes of core BJP talking points. Globally, Facebook has committed to removing hate speech from its platform and banning any groups that “proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence.” But in India, alienating the ruling Hindu nationalist government could put its multibillion dollar ambitions at risk. The government is becoming increasingly punitive toward foreign social media companies. Last summer, India banned the social network TikTok nationwide after a geopolitical spat with China. In April, it ordered Facebook and Twitter to remove more than 50 posts that criticized its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. And in May, Indian police entered Twitter’s offices in New Delhi after the company affixed “manipulated media” labels to a handful of posts by members of the BJP. The costs of not falling into line are clear: new rules that came into force on May 26 require social media companies to appoint staffers who face possible arrest if their companies don’t comply with Indian law. “Facebook sees itself as stuck in a very difficult position in India,” says Dia Kayyali, associate director of advocacy at Mnemonic, a digital rights group. “Their stance has been to comply with the government as much as possible to maintain their business interests.” Immediately after Facebook’s partial takedown of the Sanatan Sanstha last September, the group publicly accused Facebook of “anti Hindu bias,” calling Facebook’s ban part of a campaign of “anti Hindu forces trying to stifle Hindu voices.” In a public post on the group’s website, Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson Chetan Rajhans called on the Indian government to “take action against Facebook” for “arbitrarily restricting the freedoms granted by the [Indian] Constitution.” And in an email to TIME, Rajhans says the group has taken Facebook to court over the matter, in a case that he said was still ongoing. (Facebook declined to comment.) The company “acted in an arbitrary manner,” Rajhans says. “It has become the judge, jury and the executioner. Facebook’s actions have managed to keep invaluable knowledge from those desirous of learning about Hindu Dharma and Spirituality.” in recent years, social media has provided the Sanstha and HJS with the ability to reach millions more people. They built up a presence everywhere they could, including on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram messenger, services where they maintain an active presence even today. But the jewel in their crown was Facebook, where the Sanatan Sanstha and HJS had many times more followers than on any other platform. TIME’s review of the now-deleted pages also uncovered a constant stream of Islamophobic messages and misinformation. “The structure of building up a follower-base with spiritual content and then leveraging it to spread political hatred is something that has been a feature of Hindu nationalism online since the early days of the web,” says Rohit Chopra, author of The Virtual Hindu Rashtra, a book about Hindu nationalists’ use of social media. “There will be dozens of articles about how you can do this puja [worship] online. But here and there they will also make a point about how Muslims are violent.” A post by the "Hindu Adhiveshan" page depicting a Muslim man as a green monster with long fingernails. The accompanying text accuses "Jihadis" of attacking a temple in Bangladesh, and urges Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to "protect the Hindus of Bangladesh." Images depicting Muslims as green monsters in menacing poses were shared by several pages in the network, including Sanatan Shop, which advertised books for sale carrying the depictions. Rajhans, the spokesperson for the group, says the depictions were not hateful. “We do not believe that it constitutes hate speech since the image is not born out of prejudice, but merely states the facts as they stand,” he said in a statement to TIME.The HJS pages generally steered clear of direct references to Muslims or Islam, which are becoming increasingly easy for Facebook’s automated systems to detect as potential hate-speech. Instead, the HJS pages are replete with coded language and imagery. The pages regularly shared allegations of violence by Muslims against Hindus—often taken from unconfirmed reports in right-wing news outlets. But the posts rarely even mentioned the words “Muslim” or “Islam;” in India, it is often possible to assume someone’s religion by their name alone One recent post on the largest page in the network, with 1.4 million followers, reported that somebody called “Junaid” (a common male Muslim name) had concealed his religion in order to marry a Hindu girl, whom his family then allegedly tortured. The name “Junaid” was rendered in green text—a color associated with Islam. The post referred to the alleged perpetrator only by his first name, and did not link to a source. It was illustrated with a cartoon picture of a menacing Muslim man with a beard and prayer cap, beside a picture of a crying Hindu woman. Copies of the image were shared on several other pages in the network.The posts were part of a wider Islamophobic conspiracy theory popular among Hindu nationalists known as Love Jihad, which alleges that Muslims are waging a secret holy war against Hindus by tricking women into marriage and forcing them to convert to Islam. Pages in the network repeatedly raised examples of so-called “Love Jihad,” stoking “an existential fear of minorities among the Hindu population by associating them with acts of violence,” says Ayushman Kaul, a research assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who first flagged three of the pages in the HJS network to Facebook in 2020. Kaul also analyzed the wider HJS network as part of a report that the DFRLab is publishing alongside this one. “On multiple occasions, we saw the same content posted across several pages in the network within minutes, suggesting either a degree of coordination between page managers, or that the content dissemination was centrally managed,” he says. Other posts shared by pages in the HJS network in 2020 referred to Corona Jihad, a conspiracy theory popularized by Hindu nationalists in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that alleged Muslims were purposely spreading the disease to attack Hindus. The HJS being allowed to operate for months after its parent-group was banned suggests the existence of what activists and observers say is a blind spot for Facebook with regard to Hindu nationalist hate speech in India, Facebook’s biggest market where it has at least 328 million users. “Facebook’s general attitude toward Hindu extremist groups has really been to do the bare minimum, and with this group, it clearly hasn’t changed,” says Kayyali, the digital rights activist. “They have consistently removed speech critical of the Modi government, and left up dangerous speech coming from people who are in political power.”Specifically at fault, critics say, is Facebook’s “dangerous organizations” policy, which outlines its most severe punishment—a form of ban reserved for groups or individuals that “proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence.” The company keeps a list of hundreds of groups around the world that fit this description. When Facebook labels an organization dangerous, not only is it banned, but so is any “content that expresses support or praise” for the group, according to Facebook’s rules. The rules also cover “hate organizations,” which Facebook defines as any group that “is organized under a name, sign or symbol and that has an ideology, statements or physical actions that attack individuals based on characteristics, including race, religious affiliation” and other characteristics. Part of the reason may be that any such reckoning risks provoking retaliation from the Modi government, with which Facebook has a delicate relationship. Last year Facebook’s safety team concluded that a militant Hindu nationalist group, the Bajrang Dal, supported violence against minorities and should be designated a “dangerous organization,” the Wall Street Journal reported in December.But Facebook decided not to apply the ban after its security team warned that doing so “might endanger both the company’s business prospects and its staff in India,” according to the Journal. The same team also “issued warnings about banishing” the Sanatan Sanstha in 2020, the Journal reported. It is unclear whether those warnings were followed. “We don’t comment on issues of employee safety,” a Facebook spokesperson told TIME. The quasi-independent Facebook Oversight Board criticized the company in January for its lack of transparency around the dangerous organizations list, and called on the company to make the list public. Facebook has not complied with the request, which was non-binding.Despite Facebook’s failure to fully purge the Sanatan Sanstha from its platform, the company has now done more to tackle the group than any of its competitors. As of early June, the Sanatan Sanstha and HJS continue to maintain an active presence on Twitter, Telegram and YouTube. “These social media platforms should go into the detail,” says Jha, the journalist who studied the Sanstha. “They took a position when they banned Donald Trump. They should take a position here also. It is very important for Indian democracy.” https://time.com/6072272/facebook-sanatan-sanstha-india/

4. Mosques in India: June 15 2021; Indian Muslims worry that several mosques will meet the fate of Babri Masjid, which was first demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992 and then officially handed over to the Hindu community in 2019. “This time mosques may not be knocked down like it was when Babri Masjid was demolished,” she said, pausing for thought. “This time the courts may approve construction of temples, razing the mosques.”A 16th-century Mughal era mosque Babri Masjid was demolished by a large crowd of Hindus in the winter of 1992. The demolition triggered a decades-long legal dispute with the far-right Hindu groups claiming that the Mughal king Babur destroyed a temple of Hindu god Ram and replaced it with a mosque that was named after him. The legal tussle ended in 2019 when the Supreme Court of India handed over the ‘entire disputed land of 2.77 acres in Ayodhya’ to the Hindu community, allowing the construction of a temple devoted to Lord Ram.“Following the Babri judgement, the political parties are aware that if public opinion can be swayed in one direction, courts will be nervous enough to go against the mood of the masses as it may trigger unrest,” Khan, the activist, told TRT World. Buoyed by the 2019 judgement, lawyers “with a mission” are regularly filing suits– mostly in UP state– challenging the legality of centuries-old mosques.“Conversion of mosques to temples will be faster and smoother following Babri judgement,” opined Khan, a researcher in Gandhian Institute of Studies in Varanasi. The number of disputed mosques and monuments across India is around 50, inferred Vishnu Jain, a 35-year-old Supreme Court advocate who authored many of the recent petitions to dismantle mosques. Jain said his “mission” is to challenge the legality of disputed mosques” as he believes many Islamic houses of worship were constructed “by demolishing” Hindu temples. The Delhi-based advocate’s recent petitions are premised on findings of Jadunath Sarkar, a major early 20th-century Indian historian. Two of Sarkar’s observations on two of UP mosques– the Shahi Idgah of Mathura and the Jahanara Mosque (Jama Masjid) in Agra – formed the two petitions of Jain where he challenged the legality of the mosques. First of the key mosques to come under Sarkar’s scrutiny is the Shahi Idgah which was allegedly built on the 13.37 acres (5.5 hectares) of land where Hindu god Krishna, as yet a mythological character, was born. Sarkar translated from Persian the annals of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb– Maasir-I-Alamgiri (1707) – composed soon after the emperor's death. Aurangzeb, Sarkar posited, “issued orders for the demolition of the temple situated in Mathura.” Page after page of the Bengali historian’s book was quoted in Jain’s petition. “I have great respect for Sarkar,” said Jain, who is not affiliated to any religious groups but represented a Hindu nationalist outfit, Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) in the Babri Masjid case as an advocate-on-record. In another work, ‘Anecdotes of Aurangzib and Historical Essays’ (1917), Sarkar asserted, the Mathura temple– where the Hindu god Krishna was ostensibly born– “was razed to the ground in January 1670 and a mosque (was) built on its site” while the “idols were brought to Agra and buried under the steps of Jahanara’s mosque.” The observation formed the crux of another petition seeking a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) test to ascertain if the idols were buried under the steps of the Agra mosque. Jain told TRT World a petition seeking GPR for the Shahi Idgah “will be moved in due course.” A week before the GPR application was filed in Mathura court a similar plea advocated GPR in Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi in eastern UP, adjacent to a Hindu temple, Kashi Vishwanath. It was filed on the basis of an original suit filed in 1991 with the claim that Aurangzeb destroyed parts of the Kashi Vishwanath temple in the 17th century to construct Gyanvapi. The Varanasi court’s judge not only admitted the plea but also ordered a GPR. On October 23, 2002, the UP High Court ordered “to carry out” a GPR on Babri Masjid, the order eventually facilitated handing over of the site to the Hindus. The Varanasi court’s order is controversial on two counts. One, a land ownership dispute in the Kashi Vishwanath–Gyanvapi Masjid case is pending in the states’ High Court. Two, a 1991 ‘Places of Worship Act’ noted in its Section 4 (1) that “the religious character of a place of worship existing on the 15th day of August, 1947 (day India’s independence) shall continue to be the same as it existed on that day.” Thus the order surprised Anjuman Intezamia Masajid, the management committee of the mosque.“Despite the Act clearly narrating, characters of religious places cannot be changed, the Varanasi court ordered the GPR,” the joint secretary of Intezamia Masajid, S.M. Yaseen told TRT World. Yaseen and the committee do not accept that temples were “flattened” to construct Gyanvapi. “We conducted our investigation and failed to figure out how the mosque was built on a temple.” The fear of the Muslim community, says Yaseen, is about the dilution of Section 4. “If the Section is removed then petitions to flatten mosques will be filed in UP on a daily basis as thousands of mosques are claimed to be under dispute,” said Yaseen. Indian Muslims did not “utter a word” when disputed Babri Masjid land was handed over to the Hindus assuming it would put an end to the temple-mosque row. “But it has prompted more claims and now even the 1991 Act is challenged in the Supreme Court,” Yaseen said with a sigh of disappointment. Jain and his father Hari Shankar Jain, 68, also an advocate in the Babri Mosque case, challenged the constitutionality of the Act in the Supreme Court in 2020, arguing “parliament cannot restrain Hindu devotees to get back their religious places of worship through judicial process.”The Jains filed a range of petitions in various courts seeking removal of mosques they considered “disputed” and even pressed for the right of the Hindus to worship in the 12th century Qutb Minar complex in India’s capital, Delhi India’s ruling Hindu nationalists have nurtured its mosque deracination plans for decades, noted US-cased academic Shridhar K Damle in his authoritative account of Hindu nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Known for his access to RSS, Damle noted in his 1987 book, ‘The Brotherhood in Saffron– the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism’ that Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council affiliated to RSS) “identified 25 other mosques to be converted.” Enthused by its “major role” to obtain a favourable court decision in 1986 permitting Hindu devotees to worship Lord Ram at the site of the Babri Masjid– being denied by law hundred years ago– VHP furthered its agenda to convert “two other historic sites in Uttar Pradesh'', the Shahi Idgah and Gyanvapi Mosque. Damle and his co-author Walter K Anderson, a US State Department academic-analyst, forewarned: “While this effort (to dismantle mosques) is clearly popular, and may result in enhanced Hindu solidarity, it almost certainly will exacerbate Hindu-Muslim tension. Another columnist Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar argued that the lower courts’ admission of petitions probe mosques is “in clear contravention of the (1991) Act and the Supreme Court’s interpretation.”“The1991 Act makes it criminal to attempt religious takeovers,” Aiyar noted. Yet more petitions are being filed routinely and the courts are hearing those too. https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/after-babri-masjid-india-s-far-right-seeks-to-raze-several-other-mosques-47518

5. Delhi Riots; June 6 2021; Ever since their son Mohammed Farman, their family’s only earning member, was arrested in March 2020 just after the violence that overtook North-East Delhi, Salma and Mohammed Farid have been supporting their six-member family by begging and rag-picking. Having lost their home in a fire after the police took 22-year-old Farman away last year, the couple and the rest of Farman’s family now live in a shanty in the middle of a small, barren park alongside old Wazirabad road near North-East Delhi’s Khajuri Khas Pushta. This may explain why they had not heard anything about their son till early June this year, when they were approached by social workers who had been asked by Farman’s lawyer to seek his family. Farman is one of the 17 people charged by the Delhi Police in connection with the murder of Babbu Khan, who was killed by a mob at Khajuri Khas Pushta on February 25, 2020, during the violence in North-East Delhi in which 53 people were killed and hundreds were injured. “Please bring my son back, this is all I ask,” said 45-year-old Salma, sitting outside the small shanty where the six members of Farman’s family live. “I wonder if he is well. We are so helpless and have no idea what to do.”After the violence in Northeast Delhi last year, many people, mostly belonging to the Muslim community, were picked up by the Delhi police for investigation and later pushed behind bars, charged with several offences under the IPC. When the cases went to court, many were granted bail. However, some remain behind bars, including Farman. According to Farman’s family, he had been with them for the whole period of last year’s violence in Northeast Delhi. “He had no part in the violence. He was with us the whole time,” said Salma. Farman’s parents have been unable to see him even now since they lost all their identification documents in the fire. “We have no way to hire a lawyer or know how we can visit Farman. We just know that he has been in Mandoli jail and that he was named in a Delhi riots case,” Salma said. Pappu, the younger brother of Babbu Khan whose murder Farman is accused of, told The Wire that the chargesheet does not list the names of the real perpetrators of Babbu’s murder. “They have named Muslims from my neighbourhood in the murder, while it is clear it was Hindus, a few of them even living on the other side of Khajusri Khas Pushta, who killed my brother,” alleged Pappu who lives in Khajuri Khas. “This was a clear case of communal violence. So why did the police pick up innocent Muslim men in the name of Babbu’s murder?” “If you see my son by any chance, can you let him know we are alive and getting by?” Salma asked the social activists looking after Farman’s case. https://thewire.in/rights/delhi-riots-family-starves-as-son-remains-in-jail-for-more-than-a-year

6. Muslim man attacked; June 17 2021; A 72-year-old Muslim man was attacked by a group of Hindu extremists in the Indian city of Ghaziabad, cutting off his beard with a pair of scissors and called him a "Pakistani spy". In a two-minute video, which went viral on social media over the weekend, Sufi Abdul Samad can be seen beaten with sticks by the attackers, who kidnapped the old man in a rickshaw as he was going to the mosque. “He returned to the house in a state of shock on June 5 afternoon. He was shaking and took some time before telling us what happened. His back bore injury marks and his beard was cut, Asif, a relative of Samad, was quoted by The Times of India as saying. Asif said that Samad, who was in Ghaziabad city to meet his niece and did not know the routes, was taken to a secluded house where four youths started hitting him with sticks, adding that the 72-year-old told him that one of the men brought a pair of scissors to cut his beard and then forced him to say "Jai Shri Ram" and "Vande Mataram". According to Samad's relative, the attackers even called the man a "Pakistani spy" and kept hitting him. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2305659/hindutva-mob-cuts-off-elderly-muslim-mans-beard-beats-him-to-pulp-in-india

7. Street vendor Jihad; June 28 2021; “redi jihad” (street vendor jihad) has been unearthed by right-wing activists intent on targeting Muslims. Activists from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party are involved in this communal campaign . On June 20, 2021, several Hindutva activists blocked a busy road in Uttam Nagar, New Delhi, to protest against the encroachment of fruit sellers in the area. The activists raised anti-Muslim slogans and gathered with lathis to send a “strong message” to the mostly Muslim vendors that they were not welcome in the neighbourhood. Later, in the evening, some of them recited the Hanuman Chalisa in the middle of the road in a display of ‘Hindu unity, local Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and various Hindutva organisations have taken the route of vigilantism. But apart from threatening to evict Muslim fruit sellers from the area by force, but the activists who descended on June 20 also called upon Hindus to stop doing business with Muslims. Sudarshan News, a far-right TV channel often accused of broadcasting hatred against Muslims, reported the Uttam Nagar protest in an extremely inflammatory manner. Throughout the show, Sudarshan reporter Sagar Kumar and anchor Shubham Tripathi referred to Muslims as “jihadis” and used other derogatory terms. Two days before this show of strength, a Muslim vendor named Rizwan was assaulted by unidentified Hindutva activists. “It started because of a petty fight between a fruit vendor and shopkeeper. However, many anti-social elements got involved and communalised this matter. Later, one of our vendors named Rizwan was targeted by a mob armed with sticks and rods. He was grievously injured and admitted to Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital. Instead of arresting the criminals, the police are harassing the street vendors now,” “Around 9 PM on June 18 2021, I was pulling my fruit cart away from the market. An angry mob of 10 to 15 people attacked me. They said nothing but rained blows. I don’t know who they are,” Rizwan told The Wire. While Rizwan was reluctant to speak about the matter and wanted to move on, the FIR registered by the Bunda Pur police station in Delhi’s Dwarka on June 19 notes that he was accosted by a group of men shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’, asked to give his name and then brutally assaulted when he said it was ‘Rizwan’. They told him he should no longer bring his cart to the area. Though Rizwan sustained serious injuries and the FIR describes an attack which is clearly communal in nature, Delhi Police did not invoke the relevant – and more serious – IPC sections (i.e. 153, 295 or 505) and instead limited the case to one of ordinary assault. Ajay Singh, the fruit vendors union leader, said that the attack was committed by anti-social elements with patronage of local politicians. He alleged that the vendors had complained against illegal ‘vasooli’ and harassment by the administration. “For a long time, this communal build-up was being allowed because of ulterior motives. I had complained to the Police that this can disrupt peace and even provoke riots in the area,” Singh added, sharing several call recordings with the PCR in which he had complained about this violent build-up. His claim is also supported by the fact that there have been multiple incendiary videos and social media posts by Hindutva activists targeting Muslim vendors for more than a year. We also found inflammatory videos promoting anti-Muslim violence on Hindutva social media networks in which all the Muslim fruit vendors in Delhi were declared as Rohingyas. Present with Vinod and Pulkit Sharma was another prominent protestor, who featured in many videos, Himashu Yadav, a prominent local BJP local leader in Najafgarh. “Some people will say that 90% of these people are Rohingyas. I believe that all of them are Rohingyas. They send juveniles and women forward to attack and murder people.” Yadav has posted photos of himself with Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma on his Facebook page The thoughts of Mishra and Chavhanke on the subject of Muslim domination of certain informal job segments are echoed by Vinod Sharma of Sudarshan Vahini, another right-wing Hindu organisation. Sharma was one of the prominent activists at the protest in Uttam Nagar on June 20 and is an ardent proponent of the economic boycott of Muslim businesses. Last year, he had joined Mishra his pro-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests. Sharma live-streamed the “redi jihad” protest on YouTube on June 20 and can also be spotted in several videos with Hindutva leader Ragini Tiwari and Sudarshan News’s Suresh Chavhanke. The Wire profiled Sudarshan Vahini and its involvement in violent protests in a series of investigative reports. Sharma had also joined Chavhanke’s protest at India Gate, calling for the economic boycott of Muslims. “We want to support all Hindu brothers who want to get into the business of fruit-selling, hairdressing or tyre fixing. Everyone knows the problem, we are working on the solution. Suppose we tell you, don’t get a haircut from ‘them’ [Muslims] then we have to give options… if we want to remove ‘them’ from these businesses then we need to have our own men,” Sharma had said last March at the India Gate protest. His speech was recorded in a video that went viral. The goal of the Hindutva groups’ ‘redi jihad’ campaign is to cripple Muslims economically and drive them out of informal trade and social life in India. To achieve this goal, right-wing activists spread the fear that India’s Muslims are conspiring to take over Hindu livelihood and employment opportunities. However, the campaign is not limited only to the fringe elements of the Hindutva movement. It gained more currency after the media trial of the Tablighi Jamaat in 2020 when BJP MLAs and right-wing leaders obstructed the entry of Muslim hawkers in their neighbourhoods, sticking up boards outside villages that banned the entry of Muslims and marking the carts of Hindu vendors with saffron flags. In April 2020, the Hawkers Federation of India issued a statement on the discrimination against Muslim vendors during the lockdown. “They [the hawkers] are being profiled and surveilled, stopped and harassed, and heckled and beaten up by vigilante groups who are acting with complete impunity. These incidents seem to have been spurred by a maelstrom of disinformation and propaganda campaigns being run by motivated agents and spread amongst people through social media [platforms] like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp,” the statement said. Ghazala Jamil, assistant professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and author of the 2017 book Accumulation by Segregation: Muslim Localities in Delhi, explained the politics and economics behind the militant Hindutva campaign targeting Muslim livelihoods. “Labour market segments in the informal sector in India are organised largely around caste and kinship networks. This is why you will see only people of certain castes and regions working in certain occupations. Muslims are known to be segregated into certain sectors. For example, the term ‘puncture wala’ is used as a slur for Muslims because a lot of automobile mechanics are Muslims,” she told The Wire. “Through complicated processes that include subtle discrimination, open hostility, targeted violence and caste-based notions of pollution and purity, Muslims tend to be segregated into segments that contain the worst jobs, marked by low wages, thin profit margins, low on dignity too, but high on hardships. They are able to take up space in these segments because these jobs are either not desired by others or are out of bounds for others. Street vending is one of these segments,” Jamil added. She believes that the large-scale shrinkage in the informal economy due to the lengthy lockdown in 2020 to control the COVID-19 pandemic is catalysing these campaigns. The ever-present anti-Muslim prejudices are merely being refashioned as fear-mongering related to COVID-19 infections or economic attacks on Hindu livelihood, she said. “They want to push Muslims out of more labour segments. The boycott might be successful in edging many Muslims out of the fruit- and vegetable-selling business on the streets, but only so far, as not many [Hindu] workers are willing to work in this segment,” Jamil explained. One thing is certain: public places have become more hostile towards Muslims in the last few years; not only to those who are visibly Muslim, but even to Muslims who are working hard to somehow earn a livelihood. The Hindutva vigilante drive has made their lives even more precarious. In the ten stages of genocide described by Gregory Stanton, founding president and chairman of the international NGO Genocide Watch, discrimination through boycotts occupies the third position. In January 2021, addressing a “Hindu Panchayat” in Meerut, controversial anti-Muslim preacher Swami Anand Swaroop explained the rationale of these campaigns in clear words: “My argument is that if you [Muslims] want to remain associated with us, you should first stop reading the Quran and stop offering namaz.” Then he offered a solution to Hindus: “You decide that you will not buy anything from a Muslim. If you destroy them socially, politically and economically, they will begin converting to Hinduism from Islam Tanvir said, “Protesting with lathis or any other weapon and openly advocating the boycott of a community is a criminal offence. It violates several sections of the Indian Penal Code and promotes enmity amongst Hindus and Muslims. Shockingly, it’s happening with no action from the police.” In the wake of incessant calls to boycott Muslims after the Tablighi Jamaat media trial last year, lawyer Mohammad Afeef wrote in The Wire about the ‘unconstitutionality’ and explicit criminal nature of these boycott calls. According to him these calls violate basic international human rights law. “Enacting an unambiguous law on inter-community boycott is not only urgently required in India, it will also bring India in accordance with its legal obligations under the United Nations Convention on Genocide,” he wrote. https://thewire.in/communalism/hindutva-ecosystem-muslim-fruit-sellers-threat-india

Monthly update 21: May 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Muslim man killed; May 19 2021; Muslim man was abducted and beaten to death in India’s Haryana state while he was returning home after buying medicines His family said Asif was lynched by a mob and was forced to chant Jai Shri Ram. Two of his cousins were injured in the attack too.The deceased’s uncle, Maktoob Khan, said that Asif’s car was intercepted by a group of men and he was thrashed by them.“They abused Asif and his cousins and forced them to say Jai Shri Ram,” Khan said. https://www.samaa.tv/global/2021/05/muslim-man-forced-to-chant-hindu-slogans-killed-in-india/

2. Makkah Masjid blast Case; May 18 2021; 14 years ago, when Friday prayers were ongoing at historic Makkah Masjid in Hyderabad’s Old City, a bomb blast took place which left nine dead and at least 60 severely injured. Five others were killed in police firing in the violence that followed immediately after the blast. But the pain inflicted in the blast still remains fresh as the role of National Investigation Agency (NIA) failed to prove anyone guilty in all these years. A special court of NIA on April 16 acquitted all the five accused charge-sheeted in the cell phone-triggered pipe bombing inside the mosque in 2007.In a very interesting development, Justice Ravinder Reddy, within hours of delivering the judgment, resigned from his job citing personal reasons and went incommunicado.The role of NIA came into question as it failed to prove anyone guilty after pursuing investigations against the accused for more than seven years after taking over the case from the CBI. The removal and transfer of officer-in-charge Pratibha Ambedkar, two weeks before the controversial verdict, raised more eyebrows about the integrity of the NIA https://www.siasat.com/14-years-on-makkah-masjid-blast-case-has-no-accused-nia-silence-raises-suspicion-2138339/

3. Mosque demolished; may 29 2021: Two days ago, on Monday, Monday 17, a mosque in the central Uttar Pradesh town of Barabanki was demolished by the administration in defiance of an order of the Allahabad high court. The Gareeb Nawaz Al Maroof Mosque had been around for at least six decades, according to electricity bills held by its committee members, and was registered with the UP Sunni Waqf Board. “They demolished our century-old mosque. Thousands of people used to offer namaz (prayer) here,” Maulana Abdul Mustafa, a mosque committee member, told The Wire. On March 20, a day after protests broke out against the administration’s plan to demolish a mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki, close to 180 Muslims were booked under serious charges, including attempt to murder. It is important to note that in FIR 89 – the main FIR, which named 22 people and charged another 150 “unnamed” – 16 named and several of the unnamed accused were granted bail in a district court on April 12. Around six additional FIRs were filed in relation to this and roughly 30 people are still in jail, locals say. On April 11, nearly three weeks later, Barabanki police also arrested one Ishtiyaq alias Sonu in this case under the National Security Act (NSA), considered to be a draconian law often used to target dissenters. An official press release by the police on the matter said that he was arrested in a mission against criminals in the district. “On April 11, the administration took action against a dreaded criminal Mohammad Ishtiyaq, son of Mohammad Iliyas…who had attacked and attempted to murder police force on March 19.” Five weeks later, the mosque was demolished with the administration claiming the mosque’s supporters “ran away” and chose not to contest the demolition order. The fact is that the indiscriminate arrests made in March weighed heavily on the community’s mind, say locals. No Muslim “dared” to protest on the day of the demolition, Maulana Mustafa told The Wire. “They did not even dare to go close to the mosque while it was getting demolished because of fear of the police,” he said. Locals say that dozens of Muslims have left their homes since the incident and are hiding in other areas because they fear being incriminated in fake cases. On March 15, the mosque authorities received a notice questioning the presence of an “unofficial mosque”, requesting evidence for the permission they had to occupy the land. It also cited a court ruling that said illegal religious constructions could be demolished if they caused obstructions. The mosque authority says that they had filed a detailed response in this matter, including an electricity bill from the year 1959. The response also made it clear that the mosque was not obstructing traffic on the road. However, the administration never officially acknowledged their response and proceeded with the demolition. On March 18, three days after the notice was sent, the mosque committee knocked on the doors of the Allahabad high court with concerns of “imminent demolition” of the mosque. The high court disposed of the petition and ruled that the local administration was only seeking documentation. “In any case, considering the fact that the notice has been given to the petitioners only for the purpose of seeking documentary evidence, and not for demolition, nothing needs to be proceeded any further in this writ petition,” the order said. According to locals and photographs that The Wire has seen, the debris of the mosque was thrown into a river. Since then, security forces have been deployed in the area to prevent people from coming to the location of the mosque. Residents also say that a wall was being built to block access to the mosque. On March 19, Muslims were disallowed from offering Friday prayers inside the mosque, which resulted in tension and protest. At least 35 protesters were arrested and several serious charges were levelled against the protesters. The mosque committee says the demolition was in violation of a high court order issued on April 24, stating that buildings in the state should be protected from any eviction or demolition until May 31 “in the wake of the upsurge of the pandemic”.In that order, the Allahabad high court said, “That any orders of eviction, dispossession or demolition, already passed by the High Court, District Court or Civil Court, if not executed till the date of passing of this order shall remain in abeyance for the period till 31.05.2021.” Zafur Ahmad Faruqi, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Waqf Board, condemned the demolition, calling it “illegal.” He added that this will further alienate the Muslim population in the state, referring to the Babri masjid’s demolition by right-wing groups in 1992. In a court ruling in 2019, the Supreme Court handed over the land to Hindu groups, permitting the construction of a new Ram temple, which is now under construction. However, the Supreme Court had also noted that the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was an “egregious violation of the rule of law” and that “Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years. Dozens of people in the area have left their homes so far and the rest live in fear, a Muslim resident who wished to stay anonymous, told The Wire. Syed Farooq Ahmad, another resident of Barabanki, said, “People got scared. They were worried that more people would be implicated in fake cases and left the place as soon as they could.” He added that since the court promptly granted bail to many people, it was clear that the FIRs had been filed without any basis or investigation. He said, “It became clear that these FIRs were filed by the police simply to scare people so they do not speak against the demolition or protest it. None of the charges could be proven in multiple cases, and the court granted bail in the first hearing itself,” Ahmad further said. At least seven FIRs were filed on March 20, a day after Muslims protested the demolition plans. People were booked under sections of the Arms Act. Other charges, such as rioting, unlawful assembly, attempt to murder and causing grievous hurt to deter a public servant, of the Indian Penal Code.Several were also charged with Section 7 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1932, which deals with molesting a person to the prejudice of employment or business. https://thewire.in/rights/before-demolition-of-barabanki-mosque-wave-of-arrests-spread-fear-scuttled-protests

4. Hindus on Palestine; May 26 2021; As violence escalated in Israel–Palestine earlier this month, Fatafta, who is Palestinian and works as a policy analyst for an online think tank focusing on Palestinian human rights in Berlin, had been posting pictures and stories about families killed in the Gaza Strip to her 14,000 followers. In response, she was being trolled. Some of the hate speech, which called Palestinians like her “terrorists,” came from far-right Israeli accounts. But many seemed to be from India — Fatafta said that they had Indian names and the Indian flag in their usernames. “It seemed like all these ethno-nationalists from India and Israel coming together,” Fatafta told BuzzFeed News. “It was a fascinating phenomenon. I haven’t been trolled by people from India before.” the conflict has also stoked an online wave of hate speech and misinformation against Muslims around the world. A full-page ad in the New York Times accused pop star Dua Lipa and models Gigi and Bella Hadid of antisemitism. Last week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, ran Facebook ads that superimposed Rep. Ilhan Omar’s face onto Hamas rockets, with the factually inaccurate caption: “When Israel targets Hamas, Rep. Omar calls it an act of terrorism.” Israel’s official Arabic-language Twitter account angered Muslims by tweeting verses from the Qur’an along with an image of an Israeli airstrike on Gaza (that tweet has since been deleted). That conflict in the Middle East could set off waves of hate and lies against Muslims is not new. But what is novel is the source: India. In the world’s largest democracy, anti-Muslim hate has steadily become mainstream, both online and offline. On Saturday, First Draft News, a UK-based nonprofit that researches misinformation, published an analysis of more than 300,000 tweets relating to the Israeli–Palestinian crisis. They found a campaign containing thousands of tweets and hashtags that appeared to have been created in India, one of Twitter’s key markets. “While analyzing the tweets, we noticed that the top hashtags always had some Indian references,” Carlotta Dotto, senior data journalist at First Draft, told BuzzFeed News. “It was striking.” Dotto focused on #UnitedAgainstJehad, an intentionally misspelled hashtag that was mentioned more than 40,000 times by nearly 6,000 accounts between May 12 and May 17. The analysis showed that the hashtag was at the heart of a coordinated campaign aimed at getting it to trend, accompanied by tropes about Muslims that Indian Hindu nationalists have spouted for years — such as love jihad, a baseless conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of converting Hindu women to Islam through marriage. Ten percent of the accounts using the hashtag were created in May.“It was clear that they were using the Israel–Palestine conflict to promote their own narratives on Twitter in India and around the world given the amount of attention that it was getting online,” Dotto said. Although India had previously tended to avoid becoming involved in the region, relations between India and Israel improved dramatically under Modi, who became the first Indian prime minister to visit the country in 2017. In part that’s because the leaders of both countries are conservative nationalists. In addition, right-wingers in India draw on their country’s long-standing rivalry with neighboring Pakistan. “India’s right wing finds Israel fascinating for multiple reasons,” Jency Jacob, managing editor at Boom, a leading Indian fact-checking organization, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s a small country surrounded by Muslim neighbors that’s battling it out, it has a strong leader who is focused on protecting its borders “Whenever there is tension between an Islamic country and any other country, the far-right ecosystem gravitates towards whoever is on the non-Muslim side,” Jacob added. “For them, it’s a natural aggression that brings out all their prejudices about Muslims in general.” Members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its supporters have seized on the conflict. Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, a BJP spokesperson, called Islam a “Virus” that was “generating Terrorism in the world” and said, “Israel is Vaccine of this Virus, please support Israel.” Each of Bagga’s tweets got thousands of retweets and likes. Hundreds of messages vilifying Muslims were also forwarded through WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned instant messaging app used by hundreds of millions of Indians.

5. “Checked most of the #IndiaStandWithIsrael tweet handles,” tweeted Rana Ayyub, a high-profile Indian journalist frequently targeted by far-right Modi supporters. “A common thread that runs through is a visceral hatred for Muslims and a bloodlust to see Muslims massacred and shown their place.” As watchdogs within Israel struggled to keep up with the glut of hate and lies, their counterparts outside the country weren’t having it easy either. Boom, for instance, has fact-checked nearly two dozen stories, some of which painted Palestinians as faking their distress. “It’s become one of our big topics,” Jacob told BuzzFeed News. viral clip tried to pass off a 2017 news report about Palestinian makeup artists as Palestinian residents faking injuries during the current conflict. “Repression is transnational,” Fatafta said. “Islamophobia is the common denominator here.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/anti-muslim-bias-india-israel-palestine

6. Lakshadweep islands ; May 27 2021; Locals on an Indian archipelago — Lakshadweep islands have expressed resentment at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appointed administrator Praful Khoda Patel's recent policies which they consider as "anti-Muslim" and a way to "settle outsiders" on the islands, similar to the Narendra Modi-led government's policy in Kashmir, it emerged on Wednesday. The recently proposed regulation for the creation of a Lakshadweep Development Authority (LDA) has been widely resented by the local population, according to a report by Indian publication The Hindu which said that hundreds of islanders had written to the administrator for the draft regulation to be withdrawn. "The regulation empowers the government, identified as the administrator, to constitute Planning and Development Authorities under it to plan the development of any area identified as having 'bad layout or obsolete development'," the report said. The law would give the administrator the power to remove or relocate islanders from their properties if required by planning or development activities, according to Arab News. Around 93 per cent of the island's population of 70,000 are Muslims, the report said. "The island community is a close-knit group with families living in close proximity. The regulation will destroy the way of life practised by them for generations" an islander told The Hindu. "The way the government is trying to settle outsiders in Kashmir, I feel a similar design is at work on the islands," Dr Ayshabi Kalpeni, chief medical officer at the Life Care Hospital in Malappuram, Kerala, was quoted as saying by Arab News. However, this is not the only controversial regulation introduced by Patel — who was Modi's home minister in Gujarat before he became prime minister — with previous decisions including a proposed ban on the slaughter of cows and the consumption of beef; draft legislation that would disqualify people with more than two children from contesting local elections; and the introduction in January of the Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Act (Pasa), a draconian law under which individuals can be detained, without any public disclosure, for up to a year, according to the report. "Our existence has come to be questioned with these decisions and we feel that the government is working with the same majoritarian mindset here as it is working elsewhere in the country," Kalpeni added. Politicians and activists in Kerala — the closest Indian state at a distance of 240 kilometres — have launched a "Save Lakshadweep" campaign along with the islanders. "The whole idea of the BJP is to change the demography of Lakshadweep and create another Kashmir in southern India," Tasleem Rehmani, a member of the Kerala-based Muslim Political Council of India, was quoted as saying by Arab News. K. A. Shaji, a political analyst in Kerala, told Arab News the proposed ban on cow slaughter is a "clear expression of Patel's vindictive agenda targeting Muslims". "I do believe this is a move to weaken the Muslim demography on the islands and to open up the islands to private corporations from the mainland," he said. Meanwhile, the main opposition party — Congress — has written a letter to the Indian president demanding Patel's removal and "immediate withdrawal of [his] 'unilateral and anti-people' orders https://www.dawn.com/news/1625839

Monthly update 20: April 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Protests: Apr.,1, 2021: Pakistani-Kashmiri, Bangladeshi and Sikh rights groups have vowed to stage demonstrations across the United Kingdom (UK) on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to attend G7 summit 2021. Tehreek- e- Kashmir TeK (UK) President Raja Fahim Kayani, Dalkhalsa Chairman Gurcharan Singh, and Former Councillor and Chief Advisor of British Bangladeshi Community Alliance, Mozaquir Ali held a discussion on Wednesday to chalk out the campaign under the banner of United Front against Modi, on the occasion of his scheduled visit to the UK in the Coastal Town of Carbis Bay Cornwall to attend the G7 Summit being held on June 11-13. Dalkhalsa Chairman Gurcharan singh, representing Sikh's in the UK, said that he would like to call on the British people to oppose PM Modi's visit to the UK. “Modi is a fascist dictator whose sole aim in politics is Hindu supremacy and creation of a Hindu state.” https://tribune.com.pk/story/2292574/protests-planned-for-modis-visit-to-attend-g7-summit-in-uk

2. Ishrat Jahan: Apr.,1, 2021:On the day when a special CBI court discharged three police officers accused in the 2004 alleged fake encounter case, the mother of Ishrat Jahan, the woman killed in the firing, said she had expected this.“This has been happening for the last 17 years,” says Jahan’s mother, Shamim Kausar. Jahan was 19 years old from Mumbra when she was killed with three others in an encounter alleged to be fake near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. Special CBI judge V.R. Raval allowed the discharge applications of IPS officer G.S. Singhal, retired police officer Tarun Barot and Anaju Chaudhari. The CBI court observed that the officers had acted within the purview of discharge of official duties “No one talks about her. Though we live in the same compound we just know that a girl existed who was killed in an encounter. She has been forgotten now, except to her mother and close relatives,” says one of the neighbours, requesting anonymity. Police claimed that those killed in the encounter – Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar – were terrorists working with Laskar-e-Taiba and had planned the assassination of then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. The Gujarat police had claimed that they had received intelligence inputs regarding the group, and based on that, the operation was carried out. Ishrat’s family has consistently claimed she is innocent and was killed as a part of a conspiracy by the policemen involved. An investigation by the SIT set up by the Gujarat high court established that the encounter was staged. The Supreme Court later handed over the case to the CBI, which filed a chargesheet against several Gujarat police officers for their involvement in the crime. Jahan’s mother Shamim says the trial was one-sided from the start. “I had hopes when the Special Investigation Team filed its report stating that the encounter was fake, but as events progressed, I was left shocked and broken,” she says. “We haven’t got justice and the killers are being set free. This is nothing new. These are their people, their law and their verdict. What else can be expected?” she added. Shamim feels that the ground is prepared for the encounter to now be called a genuine one. As The Wire has noted in its report, “A fake encounter is illegal no matter who it is conducted against, and the murder charge against police officers is not dependent on the identity of the victims” – i.e. whether they are terrorists or not.“They said she was a terrorist and now they say even the encounter was genuine. But then, why did the SIT earlier say that the encounter was fake? Clearly the SIT in its report had stated that it was a cold-blooded murder and not an encounter. When the government can over rule this report then it became obvious that one day the accused will walk free,” Shamim says. “Right now I am very disturbed by all this but I will take this up again. I will be consulting my lawyers and doing the needful. We have still not got any justice. I don’t intend to give it up at all,” she says. https://thewire.in/rights/ishrat-jahan-mother-cbi-fake-encounter-discharge

3. Delhi riots: Apr., 8, 2021: In February 2020, this was one of the sites of the worst communal riots in Delhi’s history since the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. Fifty-three people were killed and thousands more were injured or displaced. At Gali number 13, rioters damaged the Madina mosque; and Muslim families’ homes near it were burnt, damaged or vandalised. One year later, even as communities and courts come to terms with what happened in those harrowing days, a major change is slowly unfolding in these lanes – a change best described by 40-year-old Zubaida Begum. Although her house was spared from violence, and her son narrowly escaped rioters, in July 2020 Begum and her husband Salim sold their house and moved out. “We were stressed that every other Muslim family from the lane was leaving and we were getting lonely,” Begum told me one morning in February 2021, from a new house she has taken on rent. “We were the last to move out, five months after the riots.” Begum moved within Shiv Vihar, but out of the Gali and near the main road where she says she feels safer.In the last one year, the number of Muslim families selling their homes in the riot-hit neighbourhoods has increased. Muslims families sold their houses at low prices – at least 25% below market rates, according to several testimonies including from property dealers, some of whom appear to have encouraged the sales. Mohammed Rizwan, a property dealer who operates from an office near Gali number 13, said he is looking for buyers for nearly 40 homes put up on sale by Muslim families. He is so busy, he is barely in his office. There were about eight Muslim families who lived in Gali number 13 before February 2020; only two or three have remained, said Mohammad Mukhim, another resident of the lane who shifted into a rented house in another lane of Shiv Vihar phase 6. When asked if he will manage to sell all the houses, Rizwan said that sales happened when sellers were open to selling at a sizeable loss, and had no restrictions on the buyers’ religion – meaning they were open to selling to Hindu families. The segregation in neighbourhoods as seen in Delhi can cause more violence in the future . “As long as you live in a mixed colony, there is a greater chance to intermingle,” says Harsh Mander of the Centre for Equity Studies in Delhi. “Now, the next generation will not even have the opportunity to call a member of the other community as their friend. Then the manufacturing of hatred becomes easy.” In Delhi, neither the NCT nor the Union governments have made any effort to address the sale of properties and segregation of neighbourhoods. Without intervention from the government, there will be permanent changes to the demographics of North-East Delhi, which may make the region vulnerable to more riots in the future. Zubaida Begum, whose husband works as a welder, sits in a tiny room in her rented house on 25 feet main road of Shiv Vihar Phase-6. A small rickety staircase leads to a terrace and the house’s only toilet. She and her family of ten moved here in July 2020 after selling their old home. This is a rented house; they have been looking for a house of their own but it is difficult to buy one because they sold their earlier house for much lower than the price of equivalent homes. “It is our makeshift house,” she says. They had made up their mind to sell their house while they were still living at their relative’s place after the riots. She told us that she sold her 25 gaj house (equal to 225 square metres) house for Rs 12 lakh, though the market value would be around Rs 18 lakh. “After the riots, the property rates have gone down by 20-25% in Shiv Vihar,” says Mohammad Ameel of Pappu Bhai Mansuri Properties in Shiv Vihar. “Several Muslim families we came across reported regular harassment from Hindu neighbours after the riots, such that they had to move out,” says Ashmeet Kaur from the Institute of Social Studies Trust, which is involved in relief work in Seelampur. Not only riots but the “fear of riots” has been driving housing segregation, says Mehmood Pracha, a Supreme Court lawyer who has been defending several persons accused in the riots in Delhi. He added that local strongmen – other than the real estate agents – play on this fear and have become prominent in these localities. “The intentions of communal violence or those who perpetrate the riots is to ghettoise neighbourhoods and drive the other community out,” says Teesta Setalvad https://thewire.in/communalism/a-year-after-delhi-riots-muslim-families-are-selling-homes-and-moving-out

4. Delhi riots: Apr., 9, 2021: That afternoon, half a dozen policemen in helmets and riot gear converged on the 23-year-old Faizan, a meat-shop worker. Wielding batons and wooden sticks, they first beat him, repeatedly striking his head, and then taunted a group of injured men — including Faizan — to sing the national anthem. The assault was caught on multiple videos. Later that night, Faizan was held at a police station without charge. When he was released the next night, he could barely walk, recounted his mother, Kismatun, 61.“They beat him mercilessly,” said Kismatun “When we got him home, I had to cut off his clothes. He couldn’t even raise his hands.” He died at a hospital the following day. The postmortem report detailed 20 wounds on his body and said he died as a result of a head injury. Faizan was one of more than 50 who died in the deadliest Hindu-Muslim violence in Delhi in over seven decades. Police were later criticized for failing to quell the clashes and in some cases were accused of participating in them. Hundreds of people from both communities have been arrested in many of the killings. But more than a year later, no one has been charged in Faizan’s death, raising questions about the police department’s ability to act as an impartial investigator in instances of police brutality. Most of those who were killed were Muslims. Hundreds of Muslim families fled their homes in Hindu-majority neighborhoods where they had lived all their lives. Mosques were vandalized, shops looted and homes ransacked in clashes that lasted over two days, while President Donald Trump was in Delhi for a state visit. Faizan and the other men beaten by the police on camera were “being targeted on account of their religious identity,” said Vrinda Grover, a lawyer representing Kismatun. “This is a very clear and lethal illustration of institutional bias present in our law enforcement agencies.” An investigation by Amnesty International India six months after the riots documented a “disturbing pattern of grave human rights violations” committed by Delhi police that went unpunished.

5. The police responded to the Amnesty report by issuing a statement that questioned the credibility of the organization, calling it “lopsided” and “biased.” Amnesty International ceased its human rights work in India in September after authorities investigating the group’s funding sources froze its bank accounts. Kismatun, the mother of Faizan, at her home in northeast Delhi. She says she will not give up until the policemen responsible for her son‘s death are punished. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post). In court filings in Faizan’s case, the police say they have enlisted an expert to enhance images from the video to identify the perpetrators of the beating. They claim Faizan was seen “standing” among a mob throwing stones in media footage obtained by them and that he was held at the police station at his own request because of the riots. The family says the police claim is hard to believe, because Faizan had been beaten by them. They also say that Faizan might have lived if he had received immediate medical care and not been detained. In March, the police told a court that the closed-circuit TV camera at the police station where Faizan was held for over 24 hours was not functional.“The police are protecting their own,” she said. “But I lost my dear son. I will not give up.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/06/india-delhi-riots-deaths/

6. Minorities in India: Apr., 18 2021: In recent weeks, these “hypocrites”, as the minister called them, must have noted the thrashing of a Muslim boy for drinking water in a temple and the bullying of nuns in a train by Hindutva activists. Taken together with a vice-chancellor’s protest against the muezzin’s pre-dawn call to prayer on the grounds that it disturbed her sleep, it is clear that those who “find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval”, in Jaishankar’s words, will have a great deal to mull over the conditions of the minorities in India. As if the adverse comments by Sweden V-Dem Institute and America’s Freedom House were not enough, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the US Senate, Bob Menendez, had called upon the US defence secretary, Lloyd J. Austin, to raise the question of human rights with the Indian leadership during his visit to New Delhi. India is going through a phase which it hasn’t experienced before. Now, it has been dimmed again though not fully snuffed out. But the threat of the light being permanently quenched is probably greater than what it was four decades ago because there is an ideological agenda behind its dousing backed by official clout and the organizational heft of the BJP and the RSS. If Hindu-Muslim polarization and the incarceration of prominent social activists are features of a “partly free” India, in the words of the Freedom House, then the Left-Right divide abroad will tend to determine India’s place in the company of nations. Before the BJP’s rise, India was generally in the Centre-Left section of the international ideological spectrum largely because of its democratic status which made the West ignore its non-aligned position during the cold war when it was perceived to be close to the then Soviet Union. Among the offshoots of this position was India’s proximity to the Palestinians and distance from Israel. Now, the rightward shift in Indian politics has brought it closer to Israel.These diplomatic oscillations wouldn’t have caused much of a flutter if India was not seen to be sliding towards an “electoral autocracy”, as the V-Dem Institute has said. The fundamental nature of such a change is more significant than the periodic adjustments in the relations between different countries depending on varying circumstances because it signals a transformation in India’s internal politics which can have fateful consequences for its people and even for the nation’s stability. History tells us that an autocracy is inherently fragile because the authorities can only maintain their hold on power with increasing high-handed conduct and even external adventurism. A declining democracy, therefore, is a recipe for internal unrest, especially in a country of India’s size and diversity. There is little doubt that it was democracy which kept together a nation of 4,635 communities, 325 languages, 22,000 dialects and 24 scripts. An achievement of this magnitude is beyond the capacity of a “partly free” country. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/western-concerns-at-indias-slide-towards-electoral-autocracy-not-unwarranted

7. Minorities in India ; Apr 22 2021: A US commission on Wednesday recommended for the second year in a row that India be placed on a blacklist for religious freedom, saying treatment of minorities had deteriorated further.The commission, which offers recommendations but does not set US policy, said in its annual report that “religious freedom conditions in India continued their negative trajectory.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government “promoted Hindu nationalist policies resulting in systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom”, it said. It pointed to allegations of police complicity in violence against Muslims during deadly riots last year in New Delhi and continued concerns over a citizenship law championed by Modi that critics say defines Muslims as non-Indian. It also said the Indian government has been stifling dissent and voiced concern over the rise of restrictions on inter-faith marriages including in India's largest state Uttar Pradesh. The commission recommended that the State Department designate India as a “country of particular concern”, a blacklist that includes China, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Other nations already on the State Department's blacklist are Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. In addition to India, the commission called on the State Department to add Russia, Syria and Vietnam to the blacklist. https://www.dawn.com/news/1619526

8. RSS and minorities: Apr., 25 2021: The relationship between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP is that of the soul and the body. The BJP disposes of what the RSS proposes. Most chief ministers, governors, and civil appointees, including the president of India were recommended by the RSS. The RSS is at the forefront of every election in India. Founded in 1925, the RSS has been overtly and covertly supporting the Hindutva parties. RSS’s ideological offshoot BJP took nearly 89 years to form d a Govt in 2014 at the Center with 282 majority seats of its own. The BJP fulfilled the RSS’s desire to abolish 370 and the conversion of the Babri mosque into Ramjanam Bhoomi (god Ram’s birthplace Lashing out at PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, RSS’s Muslim Rashtriya Manch chief Indresh Kumar on Monday, termed Mufti a ‘traitor to Islam and India’ for not raising the national flag in Jammu-Kashmir. Lauding her decision to not contest elections till Article 370 is restored, he said it was for the greater good if Mufti remains away from electoral politics throughout her life. A massive controversy has broken out between BJP and PDP over Mufti’s remark to ‘not raise Indian flag till Kashmir’s state flag is restored’. The RSS’s idea of Hindu Rashtra is to expel all minorities from India. It wants the minorities to revert to Hinduism or leave India. While speaking at the RSS’ annual Vijayadashami (foundation anniversary) at Nagpur, the RSS’ then chief and ideologue Mohan Bhagwat listed various “noteworthy incidents” like Article 370 abrogation, Ram Mandir Bhoomi puja, Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that took place in the last one year. The RSS leaders declared former IHK chief minister Mahbooba Mufti a traitor. It then rushed its goons to hoist India’s national flag at his party’s headquarter. Muslims are even forced to perform Durga pooja. The anti-Muslim amendments in India’s Citizenship Act were contrived by the RSS. The RSS’s ideologue talks of India’s Constitution, but the amendments are repugnant to provisions of India’s Constitution. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) goes against the principle of constitutional secularism envisaged by the framers of the Indian Constitution. The CAA emerged out of a new, refined Hindutva ideology, formulated by the RSS. The RSS and the BJP avoided talking explicitly talking about Hindutva. The reason was that it was associated with Savarkar and Hindu Mahasabha. But, after the judgment of the Supreme Court in 1997 on Ayodhya, the BJP formally accepted Hindutva as its philosophy. Bhagwat is so clever that he does not make any direct comment on citizenship in formal sense. Instead, focuses on explaining a few core values of Hindutva. He says, “According to us, Hindutva has three basics: patriotism, the glory of our ancestors, and respect for culture… The collective notion of values belonging to the religions (sampradaya) that are sprung from the entirety, that is India, is known as Hindutva. … This is the mark of India. And, India belongs to that.” Bhagwat refines the punyabhumi (pious land) argument of Savarkar. He invokes the distinction between the Indian origin of a few religions as originally Indian to describe Islam and Christianity as alien This new Hindutva-driven ‘national consensus’ actually points towards a new package of Hindutva politics (the Ayodhya conflict, Article 370, and triple talaq/Uniform Civil Code, the CAA). Bhagwat’s queer logic is that he “Hindutva does not want a Hindu state; instead, it wants a constitutional state of Hindutva nation”. RSS’s growing influence over all realms of life in India indicates that would compel the BJP to amend the Constitution in accordance with its whims. Under RSS and Hindutva’s influence, the judges in India increasingly pass judgments in favor of the fanatic Hindus. The Courts dabble in Muslim religious matters. They may one day pass a uniform religious civil code upon all minorities. Under the RSS’s influence, the syllabi in India have already been amended to include Hindu myths and distorted history as Hindu religion. https://www.globalvillagespace.com/exploring-the-unholy-nexus-between-rss-and-modis-bjp/

Monthly update 19: March 2021: Muslims in India

1. BJP on Muslims: Mar., 2021: In the last week of February 2020, 53 people were killed in Delhi in violence that lasted four days. Even though three-quarters of those killed were Muslims and most of the worst property damage was sustained by Muslims, BJP leaders describe what happened as an ‘anti-Hindu riot’. And the Delhi Police have also helped in this cover up, alleging a conspiracy to trigger violence by Muslim and progressive activists involved in the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. focus on Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati and his associates whose hate speeches and incitement played a crucial role in radicalising the rioters who eventually unleashed a bloodbath in North East Delhi in February 2020. It is now clear that the relentless call for violence against Muslims in the run up to the riots was not abstract advocacy but an essential component of the real conspiracy – executed in the open because they knew the police would never touch them. Yati Narsinghanand is a militant Hindutva leader with his headquarters in Dasna in Ghaziabad, where Uttar Pradesh meets Delhi. His influence in Delhi’s overground and subterranean Hindutva networks has grown exponentially because of his association with top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party like Kapil Mishra – and his willingness to say bluntly and openly what mainstream Hindutva politicians baulk from saying about Muslims. Two months before the Delhi riots, Narsinghanand described Muslims as rakshasas, or demons: “Those we call Muslims in our current era were called demons in earlier eras” Narsinghanand is also a self-confessed admirer of Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse: “We cannot find words enough to praise Nathuram Godse ji. I consider Veera Savarkar ji and Nathuram Godse ji as my biggest heroes.” Narsinghanand’s calls for violence against Muslims actually predate the CAA and the protests against it. Right after a militant Hindutva leader Kamlesh Tiwari was stabbed dead in Lucknow in October 2019, he threatened all Muslims with violence and said that he would eradicate Islam from India: “Muslims around the world are celebrating because a Hindu lion has been killed and all our homes are in mourning. I am telling every one of those bastards, telling the Muslims, if I don’t make you mourn the way Kamlesh Tiwari’s house is mourning today, then I am not my father’s son. As long as I am alive I will use weapons. I am telling each and every Muslim, we will eradicate Islam from the country one day.” And the man in the grey shirt and orange scarf is Deepak Singh Hindu, the Hindutva leader who went on to post a video on the morning of February 23, 2020, calling for mobs to assemble at Maujpur chowk in Delhi at 2:30 that day. The Delhi riots started soon after. Six weeks later, in a speech he delivered on December 4, 2019, Narsinghanand expanded on his usual theme of Hindus having lost the will to fight Muslims. He lamented the fact that riots had not taken place of late, blaming this on the failure of Hindus to take to the streets with weapons:“Today, many Hindus tell me, Maharaj, there are no riots happening anywhere. Why aren’t there riots? Because the issues which used to bring Hindus on to the streets with weapons earlier, no Hindu has the courage to even raise his voice about those issues. I don’t know what use our organisations are. Big or small, we are not prepared to fight for our brothers, not even prepared to speak for our brothers. While not a day goes by in India when some Muslim cuts the throat of a Hindu.” Yati’s public utterances in and around Delhi in the weeks and months before the February 2020 riots were clearly aimed at remedying what he saw as this weakness. And his stated aim was to bring Hindus on to the streets with weapons so that there would be a riot in which Muslims would be taught a lesson. What gave Narsinghanand’s propaganda added edge was his use of social media and video. He was and remains a regular studio commentator on the panels of leading Hindi news channels like News Nation, Sudarshan TV and AajTak, and is a hero for a number of militant Hindutva networks on YouTube who make sure his calls for violence reach lakhs of people. His speeches in December 2019 and then January and February 2020 easily qualify as hate speech. But seen against the backdrop of the anti-Muslim violence which eventually took place, it is clear that his speeches were an important tool for radicalising and mobilising hundreds and thousands of people to commit violence. Which is why it is strange that the police would not regard Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati as a key conspirator in the riots. We know that the riots started as an assault on those protesting the CAA at Jafrabad and then quickly morphed into vicious attacks on Muslim lives and property in northeast Delhi that lasted three days. In the wake of the Shaheen Bagh protest by Muslim women against the CAA, which started on December 14, 2019, Yati was an active participant in meetings and demonstrations held in support of the CAA. The aim of these events was to ridicule the Muslim protesters, demonise them as enemies of the Hindus and work towards forcibly ending their protest. And the record shows how his rhetoric – including the call for violence – gradually escalated from December 2019 to February 22, 2020, the day before the violence started. there is no case against him. the police turned a blind eye to this buildup which was taking place on the streets and on YouTube. On December 22, 2019, he said in Jantar Mantar in Delhi: “The CAA is not against Muslims but against traitors. They thought they can increase their population and capture the country. But Modi ji and Amit Shah have brought this law and smashed their dream. I urge them not to step back but go forward with NRC, uniform civil code and then a population control law.” On December 25, 2019, a rally in support of the CAA was held at Jantar Mantar by Updesh Rana, founder of the extremist Vishwa Sanatan Sangh. Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati was a star speaker. By now, his rhetoric had already climbed several notches. Amit Shah may have insisted that the CAA had nothing to do with Indian Muslims but for Yati, the CAA was the first step towards controlling the population of Indian Muslims. And at Jantar Mantar he also said for the first time that Hindus would have to come on to the streets to teach a lesson to the Muslims who were protesting the CAA: “I appeal to all you young people, these Muslims who keep coming out [on the streets], they should find out what will happen to them the day we come out. And I would like to tell Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, please don’t worry, we are all with you. You have brought the CAA, now bring the National Register of Citizens and after that put a stop to the population of the ‘katuon’. If these swine increase their numbers, they will spread filth, so to save this country from filth and dirt, please bring a law to stop their population, we will support you.” Narsinghanand uses abusive terms like ‘sooar’ and ‘katuon’ for Muslims and then calls for their eyes to be gouged out:“And all of you, you fighters for dharma, each one of you tigers is more than enough for 125,000 pigs (cheers). And if [the Muslims] are seeing dreams of taking over India, then tell them that we will gouge their eyes out.” Narsinghanand’s rhetoric in this period is suffused with the idea that a final battle and final solution is approaching. He says on December 25, 2019, eight weeks before the riots:“I am once again appealing to Hindus, today the time has come, if even today we don’t stand up then we won’t survive. I want to tell Hindus that this is the final battle, if you lose this battle then nothing will remain.” However, Yati Narsinghanand had lots more to say that day. After finishing his provocative speech, he gave interviews to several Hindutva YouTube channels where he kept up his fierce rhetoric. A report from one of these channels, ‘Hindu Publisher’, asked Yati for his comments on the people who he said were opposing the CAA and ‘burning the country’.“These people are enemies of the country, they should be put in jail. And if they do not reform after being jailed, they should be sentenced to death.” The ‘Hindu Publisher’ channel reporter then asks Yati who these people are who want India to open its doors to Muslim refugees from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Narsinghanand’s answer is shocking: He describes India’s Muslims as jihadis who are out to destroy Hindus and India, and says finishing off such people from their roots should be the basic religious duty of Hindus: “These people are jihadis who want to spread filth in the country, these are jihadis who want to destroy the country, these are jihadis who want to take over our resources, these are jihadis who want to kill us all, these are jihadis who want to make prostitutes of our sisters and daughters. Such people have to be destroyed from their roots and this is our basic religious duty.”Narsinghanand was prepared to say what Modi government advocates of the CAA wanted to leave unsaid: that the CAA was an essential part of what the Hindutva groups call the unfinished agenda of partition – the expulsion of all Muslims from India: Yati: After partition, the jihadis Gandhi and Nehru kept these traitors in the country. This is India’s biggest misfortune Q: But maharaj ji these people say they stayed here by choice Yati: It was not their choice, it was our weakness, we should have driven them out… Hindus will have to understand, these are not our people, they are jihadis and we will have to finish them off, this is our religion, this is patriotism. If there was any doubt about the genocidal import of his message, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati told the Khabar India news channel that India had to follow China’s example in dealing with its Muslims, which is to treat Islam as a mental illness that must not be allowed to spread: Yati; The whole world has seen what China is doing with the Muslims. The president of China has said Islam is a mental illness and that we won’t let our country fall prey to this disease. Q: So how should we save our country? Yati: Our country will save itself by following China’s pattern There is no other way. On December 29, he put out a video appeal for what he called ‘Hindu lions’ to come to his headquarters in Ghaziabad for an important two day dharam sansad. ‘Nothing will happen if you don’t help me’, he said: “I appeal to all young Hindus, wherever my voice reaches, you should all take part in the Dharam Sansad in Ghaziabad on January 12 and 13. This is my appeal. My children, my lions, nothing will happen if you don’t help me.” The dharam sansad, or religious gathering, was held on January 12 and 13, 2020 and saw a number of inflammatory speeches by Hindutva ideologues and religious figures. Narsinghanand said one decision is that Hindus should not depend on the police and army but assert their manhood and do what it takes for their own protection. Every Hindu home should produce more children. Every Hindu home should be armed. He also said the Dharma Sansad had resolved to honour Donald Trump because he believes in killing terrorists in their homes: “Our Dharm Sansad has decided that it will honour Donald Trump and will invite him for our next dharm sansad. The way he is killing terrorists in their own homes, this is very necessary for the whole world and we regard Donald Trump as our hero.” Was this reference to Trump a subtle message about the timing of the final battle that Nasinghanand had been speaking about since December 2019? Was it just a coincidence that militant Hindutva activists, radicalised by the kind of message Narsinghanand had been putting out, chose to honour their hero by targeting Musims in their own homes during his visit? This is a question the Delhi Police could have answered if only they had investigated the real conspiracy. The reason Yati’s dharam sansad appears as a key event in the Delhi Riots chronology is because its real message was to tell the hundreds of young Hindus who attended it that their real enemy were Muslims and that this enemy had to be killed. “Guru Gobind sahab once said that he would pit one against 125,000. Since then, we wondered who these 125,000 were. Yati ji in very clear words has told who those 125,000 are. They are jihadis. They are enemies of our religion. From here, young people have got clearance to understand the play of words because earlier they could never realise who those sava lakh (125,000 people) were against whom Guru Gobind had said in his time that one should fight and one should cut up.” Yatima Chetna Saraswati, to make the closing comment. And what she said was an open exhortation to killing, literally, in so many words (from 15’21’’). “Today, Narsinghanand Saraswati ji, who is our guru, has given us this message: that now the time has come for us to arm ourselves with weapons and massacre the enemy. Because the account of these nar-pishaach (demons/vampires) can only be settled when you have arms and the capability to uphold your faith. Otherwise all is lost. So my request to all those to whom this message reaches, they should listen carefully to this message and understand what the times are asking from them.” One month after these chilling messages were conveyed and circulated, the ‘sanghaar’ or massacre Narsinghanand’s dharma sansad spoke of was enacted on the streets of north-east Delhi. And the young lions unleashed were in no doubt about kaun hain woh log jis se ladne ki baat kahi gaee aur kaatne ki baat kahi gaee aur jinki aankhein phod di jayengi – who was to be fought and cut up and blinded. But there was a final, genocidal call that Narsinghanand made, on February 22, 2020 – that is one day before the anti-Muslim violence began – where he said Muslims had no right to live. He was asked by another Hindutva channel whether he believed there could be ‘live and let live’ with Muslims (from 6’00’’):“Good people should live and let good people live but those who are our enemies, who are enemies of our religion, who want to wipe us out, until we finish them off, until we remove this evil from society known as Islam, how can we survive? Live and let live can only be for civilised people, not for uncivilised thieves, not for terrorists, not for jihadis. We have to let our friends live, those who don’t cause us any problem. But those people have no right to be alive whose aim is to kill our children. Such people cannot be given the right to live.”While inciting violence is an offence by itself, a proper police investigation is needed to see whether Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati played any direct role in the killings which followed his call:We know that his aide, Pinki Choudhary, leader of the Hindu Raksha Dal, claimed responsibility for an armed mob attack on JNU; We know his close associate, Deepak Singh Hindu of the ‘Hindu Force’, issued a video appeal on the morning of February 23, 2020, for his supporters to gather in strength at Maujpur chowk at 2:30 pm, when BJP leader Kapil Mishra made a provocative speech;We know that at least one rioter – the RSS activist Ankit Tiwari, who we featured in the first part of our investigation – attended some of the events where Narsinghanand spoke. He was in the audience during the December 25, 2019 event at Jantar Mantar where Yati called for violence against Muslims. Ankit Tiwari posted a video of the same speech on his Facebook page.After the first part of our expose, Tiwari has deactivated his social media accounts but we have saved all his videos, in case the police ever decides to investigate him. The chronology we have established in our investigation makes it clear that there was indeed a conspiracy to launch violence as early as December 2019, and that the ground was prepared over the next two months, culminating in the violence that took the lives of 53 people. Sadly, this is not the conspiracy the Delhi Police is investigating. https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-riots-conspiracy-anti-muslim-cleric-yati-narsinghanand

2. Acquittal after 20 years: Mar., 8, 2021: Surat, Gujarat: A court in Gujarat’s Surat on Saturday acquitted all the 127 accused arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for participating in a meeting organised here in December 2001. Most of the accused were in jail for over 20 years since their arrest over the allegations of being members of a banned organisation Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), an advocate said. The court of Chief Judicial Magistrate AN Dave on Saturday acquitted 127 persons arrested on the charges of being members of the banned outfit SIMI, giving them the benefit of doubt. In its order, the court said that the prosecution failed to produce “cogent, reliable and satisfactory” evidence to establish that the accused persons belonged to the SIMI and had gathered to promote the activities of the banned outfit. The central government had through its notification dated September 27, 2001 banned SIMI. https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/court-in-indias-surat-acquits-122-muslims-accused-of-being-simi-members-20-years-after-arrest-1.77669095

3. Tablighi Jamaat : Mar., 10, 2021: Nearly a year ago, around 3,500 foreign nationals had visited India to attend the Tablighi Jamaat event at Nizamuddin Markaz, a mosque in South Delhi. The gathering, including men, women and children, soon found itself in a quandary when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown on March 24, 2020, giving them less than four hours to prepare for its onset and many dire implications. By the time lockdown was announced, several attendees had moved to different parts of the country, to attend smaller gatherings at local mosques. And different state police forces responded in a different manner. In Delhi, around 960 foreign nationals were held at quarantine centres for many months. In Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and other states, they were sent straight to jail. The police accused them of being “super-spreaders” – a derogatory term applied to people who were thought to spread the novel coronavirus to many other people – and charged them under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Epidemic Diseases Act and the National Disaster Management Act and Foreigners Act for defying government restrictions. Police in some states also applied the unbailable charge of ‘attempt to murder’.The country’s sub-par preparedness at the time for the COVID-19 epidemic was blamed on the foreign visitors stuck in India. Both the government and several sections of the media played a crucial role in criminalising those attending the Tablighi Jamaat. A year on, around 146 of the 3,500 or so attendees are still struggling to find their way home; 26 among them still await trial. The cases in Uttar Pradesh were divided into regions. Bareilly handled cases in nine districts, of which two – in Moradabad and Bijnor – are still pending. The Allahabad high court had directed the Bareilly trial court to complete these trials in eight weeks, but to no avail. Of the 26 who face trial, 16 are Indonesian and 10 are Thai. Lawyers coordinating the trial told The Wire that in October last year, after the high court’s direction, the trial court had received the relevant legal papers – but continued to drag its feet. “Meanwhile, the Jamaat has continued to support those left behind, in some cases even their families back home,” one lawyer said. Although the principal Tablighi Jamaat event was held in Delhi, not one of the 960 foreign nationals were sent to jail. “They were kept in quarantine; in some cases, the quarantine extended to several weeks. But no one faced incarceration,” advocate Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi said. But this wasn’t the case in other states. And it didn’t matter which party governed each of these states – foreign nationals were promptly sent to jail for anywhere between a few weeks to several months. Those in Uttar Pradesh in particular faced prolonged incarceration; the affected individuals’ prospects were pretty grim in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as well. Tamil Nadu had in fact set up a detention centre exclusively for tourists attending the Tablighi Jamaat Despite these long jail terms, most states didn’t manage to convict the detainees. For example, of the individuals in Delhi, over 920 opted for “plea bargains” – an agreement between the prosecution and the defence such that the accused person pleads guilty to receive a lesser punishment. The lawyers said they picked this option because they were desperate to return to their homelands. The remaining 36 were firm and wished to face trial come what may – and were all acquitted. It was a similar story in almost all states. One lawyer in Delhi described the foreigners as “hostages”. “Look at the charges they were booked under. They were really not accused of committing some crime but were held hostages. And when you are held hostage, you don’t really get to choose,” the lawyer said. ?” In Delhi, the Nizamuddin Markaz, a mosque in South Delhi and the global headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat network, has been locked since last March 2020. Almost all Indian states have lifted restrictions on visiting religious places – but the Markaz remains out of bounds. A part of it that housed thousands of pilgrims hasn’t been sealed but is in police control.In the writ petition filed before the court, the Waqf board has said “the local police have put locks on the entire premises ostensibly fothe purpose of its sanitisation and the said premises are lying locked since then, i.e. almost a year.” https://thewire.in/rights/tablighi-jamaat-one-year-trial-struggle-return-home-covid-19-legal-action

4. Hindu attack on Islam: Mar., 13,2021: A vitriolic anti-Muslim speech by Yogi Narsinghanand Saraswati, mahant (chief priest) of Dasna Devi temple Ghaziabad has become viral. In this speech, the priest furiously spoke against jihad and vowed to eliminate Muslims from India. He intends to hold a world congress of religions inviting scholars from all religions except Islam. He harbours the hallucination that there is a Muslim hand in all the evils in the world, including the farmers’ protest aimed at repeal of new marketing and distribution laws. He exhorted Hindus to have at least five children in a family lest Muslims should outnumber them. Hindus draw inspiration from the Jewish state of Israel. They want Hindus to be given preferential treatment and minorities, particularly the Muslim be relegated to a lower class of. It is unfortunate that the international organisations took no notice of hate speeches being delivered by Hindu priests, and followers of the RSS and its affiliates. The Bajrang Dal is even giving military training with live firearms to its recruits. https://www.globalvillagespace.com/distortion-of-jihad-by-hindu-priests-another-attack-on-muslims-in-india/

5. Middle East Oil and India: Mar., 27, 2021: Indian state refiners are planning to cut oil imports from Saudi Arabia by about a quarter in May, in an escalating stand-off with Riyadh following OPEC's decision to ignore calls from New Delhi to help the global economy with higher supply. Two sources familiar with the discussions said the move was part of the government's drive to cut dependence on crude from the Middle East. Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp., Hindustan Petroleum Corp and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd are preparing to lift about 10.8 million barrels in May, the sources said on condition of anonymity. State refiners, which control about 60% of India's 5 million barrels per day (bpd) refining capacity, together import an average 14.7-14.8 million barrels of Saudi oil in a month, the sources said. India, the world's third-biggest oil importer and consumer, imports more than 80% of its oil needs and relies heavily on the Middle East. Hit hard by rising oil prices, India's oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan has repeatedly called on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, known as OPEC+, to ease supply curbs. He has blamed Saudi's voluntary cuts for contributing to a spike in global oil prices. OPEC+ decided this month to extend most cuts into April. Responding to Pradhan's request, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman suggested India dip into strategic reserves filled with cheaper oil bought last year. https://www.livemint.com/industry/energy/india-plans-to-cut-saudi-oil-import-as-stand-off-escalates-11615949230271.html

Monthly update 18: February 2021: Muslims in India

This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India

1. Shaheen Bagh Protest: Feb., 14, 2021:The Supreme Court refused to reconsider its judgment that the Shaheen Bagh protests, by a collective of mothers, children and senior citizens, against the Citizenship Amendment Act was inconvenient for commuters.“The right to protest cannot be any time and everywhere. There may be some spontaneous protests but in case of prolonged dissent or protest, there cannot be continued occupation of public place affecting the rights of others,” said a three-judge Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, declining the review petitions.The original judgment of October 7 last year had declared the demonstrations and road blockades in the Shaheen Bagh area of the national capital as “unacceptable”. The Review Bench, which comprised the same judges who delivered the original judgment, said they did not find any “error apparent warranting reconsideration” in their verdict. On October 7, the court had concluded that protesters should express their dissent only in designated areas chosen by the administration. In the review petition, Kazi Fatima and 11 others said the protesters were not even heard by the court. The petitioners asked how the court could restrict expressions of dissent to certain designated areas. “Restricting protests to designated areas upsets the very concept of dissent and protests... Protests are the only way for citizens in a democracy to show their dissent. Curb on this freedom leaves citizens with no report to voice their concerns,” the review petition had said. The review petitioners had referred to how the “police have in the recent past acted arbitrarily by beating students and protesters”. The observation made by the court in the judgment “clothes the police with an arbitrary discretion to attack any peaceful protesters”.“This would lead to a situation wherein the administration would never engage in dialogue with protesters, but instead take action against them, including their prosecution,” the review petition had argued.

2. Samjhauta Express: Feb., 18, 2021: Thirteen years on, the families of victims of Samjhauta Express mourn the tragedy when 68 persons onboard Delhi-Lahore train were burnt alive including 40 Pakistani nationals on Feb 18, 2007. In the ‘travesty of justice’, the Indian court in 2019 had acquitted all culprits of the incident despite the availability of ample evidences, illustrating the unwillingness of the Indian government to hold the perpetrators to account for their barbaric action. A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in India’s Haryana state on March 20, 2019 acquitted four individuals accused in the Samjhauta Express bombing case. The ruling cited lack of evidence for the acquittal of Swami Aseemanand, Kamal Chauhan, Rajinder Chaudhary and Lokesh Sharma. This was the second major setback for the NIA in a “terror” case allegedly involving Hindutva groups. In April 2018, the NIA court had acquitted all the 11 men charged in the Mecca Masjid blast case, where six people were killed in Hyderabad. Astonishingly, Indian courts have failed in provision of justice in almost all cases where ‘Hindutva Wave’ was involved in brutalizing Muslims whether it was Babari Masjid Case, Mecca Masjid Case, Malegaon Blast and Samjhauta Express. Eight judges were changed during the proceedings of the case. Vikash Narain Rai, former Haryana police officer who headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) from 2007 to early 2010, had confirmed Indore as the epicenter, where RSS member Sunil Joshi and his two accomplices were found to be complicit in the crime. Joshi was murdered in 2007 before he could be interrogated. The prosecution had accused the NIA of pressure to ‘go soft on the Hindutva extremists.’ It was revealed later that the explosions were planned to take place in Delhi for more publicity and to involve Pakistan through arranged investigation, but it actually took place in Pani Pat, Haryana. So it became the Haryana case. Had it been a Delhi case, it would have received more publicity. Kamal Chauhan, a RSS Sevak confessed during investigation of planting the bombs onboard the Samjhauta Express after undergoing training in arms and explosives in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. According to India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), which probed the case, the attack was carried out by a Hindutva far-right group to avenge similar attacks allegedly carried out by Muslim groups with the aim of threatening the “unity and integrity” of India. Swami Aseemanand, who featured prominently in the course of the investigations, had said in a taped interview in 2014 to Indian magazine ‘The Caravan’ that some of the worst attacks in the country were sanctioned by the then-RSS top leadership. https://www.app.com.pk/top-news/13-years-on-victims-of-samjhauta-express-tragedy-mourn-indian-travesty-of-justice/

3. Golwalker: Feb., 20, 2021: The RSS has constantly faced criticism over non-participation in the Indian freedom struggle. In 1942, Golwalkar is said to have forbade RSS volunteers from taking part in the Gandhi-led Quit India Movement. He said that fighting against the British was not a part of RSS’s mission. Golwalkar wrote about the glories of the motherland, or punyabhoomi, and its chief religion, Hinduism. The RSS chief wrote of Hindu society as the only one that could fulfil the grand mission of salvation of mankind. He also wrote about the caste system, defending it by saying that it kept Hindus organised and united through centuries. Further, Golwalkar wrote about nationalism and what his idea of a nation was. He wrote that hostile elements within the country pose a far greater menace to national security than aggressors from outside. He saw three major internal threats to India: Muslims, Christians and Communists. Golwalkar also rejected the concept of democracy because it gave too much freedom to the individual, and condemned Communism as a menace. He wrote that the “framers of our present Constitution also were not firmly rooted in the conviction of our single homogeneous nationhood”. https://theprint.in/theprint-profile/ms-golwalkar-the-rss-chief-who-remains-guruji-to-some-a-bigot-to-others/245534/

4. Lopsided development: Feb., 25, 2021: the leader of the political outfit, Asaduddin Owaisi, while addressing political gatherings at Godhra and Modasa, pointed out how the development in Gujarat is lopsided and does not touch Muslim-dominated areas. “You all know that in Godhra, no development works have been carried out in areas that have Muslim majority. There is a railway line passing through the city. On one side of this railway line, ‘Sabka ka Saath, sabka Vikas’ can be seen. On the other side, where topi and burkas can be seen, there is no Vikas (development),” said Owaisi in Godhra town. He said there were 20 secondary schools in Godhra city of which, only three were in Muslim areas. He said the dropout rate among school going Muslim girls were as high as 80 per cent due to lack of Urdu medium schools. “Modiji then says, Beti Bachao, Desh Bachao. How will daughters be saved, if there are no urdu schools for them…,” he added. Owaisi said, “If people sitting in power in AMC think that they will continue to ignore Muslim areas like they did in the past, then I would like to tell that that so far you were engaged in a friendly duel with Congress or independents. Now now we will fight (for development). In the upcoming elections https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/asaduddin-owaisi-ahmedabad-municipal-corporation-elections-godhra-modasa-7202316/

5. Muslims In India: Feb., 28, 2021: In a 39-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Ghazala Wahab says Indian Muslims are caught “in a pincer grip” comprising two prongs. The external is “the socio-political discrimination they face at the hands of both lawmaking and law-enforcing authorities”. It often amounts to physical and mental violence. It denies them equal opportunity, even justice. “This forces Muslims to seek security in their own numbers, and they withdraw into ghettoes on the periphery of the mainstream, thereby limiting their choices in terms of accommodation, education and profession,” the journalist says. Wahab also speaks about her book Born a Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India. https://thewire.in/video/watch-what-does-it-mean-to-be-muslim-in-india

6. Delhi riots 2020: Feb., 28, 2020: a year, Irfan has remained almost entirely in his house, too terrified to leave. A Muslim living in north-east Delhi, he says that his powerful Hindu neighbours, many belonging to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), are keeping a close watch on him. Jobless and afraid, he spoke in whispers of his fear of being “eliminated” at any time. “I take a safe route to occasionally leave my house to see my lawyer,” said Irfan, who requested a pseudonym for protection. “I know that BJP leaders and their followers are after me so I move around very carefully. I have to stay alive at least to see those who attacked me are brought to justice.”It was one year ago last week that Irfan’s life as a simple Muslim shopkeeper was ripped apart: 23 February 2020, now known as the first night of the Delhi riots. For three days, communal violence ripped through the north-east of India’s capital, the worst religious conflict in the city in four decades. it was predominantly Muslims who fell victim to violent Hindu rightwing mobs roaming the neighbourhoods. Many of those involved had travelled from outside Delhi and carried guns, rods and explosives. Muslims were beaten, shot and lynched in the streets, thousands of their shops and homes were attacked and at least four mosques were left in charred ruins. Of the 53 who died in the violence, 40 were Muslim. Irfan is among those still fighting for justice. He was sheltering in his shop when a mob of around 150 people, including many of his Hindu neighbours, descended, throwing stones and armed with guns and rods. Irfan alleges they were led by a local BJP leader, who put a pistol to his head. He says the rioters shouted Hindu nationalist slogans and Muslim slurs as they looted his shop and then set it on fire with a petrol bomb. Irfan had been a member of the BJP for almost a decade but, as a Muslim living in a Hindu-majority area, it was not enough to protect him. Two days later, on 25 February, as neighbourhoods across north-east Delhi burned, the mob struck again, targeting his house, this time allegedly led in part by Mohan Singh Bisht, a local BJP politician who, Irfan says, threw a petrol bomb at his house and led the mob with the cry: “Kill all katwa [kill all the circumcised Muslims].” Several of Irfan’s neighbours confirmed this account to the Observer. Yet in the year that has passed, the police – who, Irfan alleges, were complicit in the attacks – have repeatedly refused to register his case naming Bisht, other local BJP leaders and some of his Hindu neighbours as the perpetrators.More than 25 Muslims in his neighbourhood were also allegedly denied the right to file a case by police, despite claiming to know the identity of their attackers.They took their cases to a lawyer, Mehmood Pracha, but Irfan is one of the few who has kept up the fight after local BJP figures and police allegedly threatened them with reprisals if they persisted in taking the matter to court. “I told them on no condition would I withdraw,” said Irfan. Irfan’s case is not an isolated one. Hundreds of Muslim victims who have attempted to file cases against their alleged Hindu attackers – who have often been affiliated with the BJP – have spoken of being harassed and threatened by Delhi police who have refused to register their cases. In some instances, when victims went to police stations to identity and file their cases against rioters, the police instead charged them or their family members with rioting. Delhi police, a predominantly Hindu force, is under the remit of the government’s ministry of home affairs, led by Amit Shah, one of the most hardline Hindu nationalist ministers in the BJP government. Of the nearly 1,750 people arrested in connection with the riots, more than half are Muslim, even though disproportionate damage was done to their community. In charge sheets filed by Delhi police, almost 70% name Muslims as the perpetrators of attacks, even in cases when only Muslims were the victims Syed Zulfiqar, 34, a light-maker from Mohanpuri, was shot in the head on the 24 February when a local Hindu leader, whom he knew personally, fired at him during the violence. “He pointed a gun at me and I heard him cry, ‘you are a Muslim, we will kill you’, and then he fired the gun at me from a distance of about 20 metres,” said Zulfiqar. “I almost died. But when I went to the police station to register a case against this man, the police told me they would only accept the report if I named my shooter as unidentified.” He alleges police then filed riot charges against his brother. Mohammad Nasir Khan, 35, a government employee, who was shot in the eye and blinded when a mob of influential local Hindu men he knew fired at him, has still not been able to file his case. “I have tried so many times but it has been one year and the police still refuse,” said Khan, wiping the gently weeping wound where his eye once was. Instead, police filed their own report on Khan’s case in June, naming several Muslims as the perpetrators of the attack and not mentioning the four local Hindus Khan alleged shot him. Pracha is the lawyer representing many of these victims, yet he has also found himself a target and, in December, his office was raided by dozens of members of Delhi police special cell on allegations of forgery.“Due to the police’s proactive role in threatening, assaulting and intimidating the riot victims, very few dare to open their mouths,” said Pracha. “The police took some complaints from Muslim victims but only on the condition that they would not name any police officer or any BJP member,” said Pracha. In several bail hearings against accused Muslims, the police have failed to produce any evidence. At a hearing last week, a judge granted bail to three Muslims accused of shooting another Muslim, 25-year-old Shahid Alam, during the riots on the basis it was “hard to believe” that Muslims would kill other Muslims in a communal riot. Delhi police have also been accused of protecting their own officers from being charged. Hundreds of eyewitnesses – in allegations verified by CCTV footage – accused police of both taking part in the attacks on Muslims, allowing the Hindu mobs to target Muslims unimpeded and ignoring thousands of distress calls. Last year, Amnesty International released a detailed report on the Delhi police’s role in the riots. But not a single officer has yet been arrested or charged. Instead, those who have felt the strong arm of the law since the riots are those who say they had nothing to do with the violence at all. After Shah, the home minister, told parliament that the riots were a “deep conspiracy”, Delhi police began a crackdown on anyone who had been involved in peaceful anti-government protests in the months before the riots. Activists, academics, feminist collectives, students and civilians – who had been described as “terrorists”, “traitors” and “jihadis” by government figures in the weeks before the riots – have been charged with conspiring to stir up communal riots in order to tarnish India’s reputation, some under draconian terrorism laws. Many have described this as a turning point in the BJP government’s crushing of democratic dissent. “The Delhi riots have been used by the police to go after all activists and anti-government protesters in Delhi in the name of a false conspiracy that has no basis in evidence,” said Nadeem Khan, co-founder of the activist group United Against Hate, which has had multiple members arrested. “The whole of Delhi civil society is living in a state of fear.” Notably absent from the Delhi police’s charge sheet are the names of many Hindu rioters and BJP leaders, in particular Kapil Mishra, the local BJP leader whose speech in north-east Delhi on 23 February, calling for his followers to clear the Muslim protesters and “teach them a lesson”, is widely seen as sparking the riots. Sitting in the recently rebuilt al-Faruqi mosque in the suburb of Mustafabad, Imam Mohammad Jalaluddin carries a haunted look. He was beaten almost to death by rioters who broke into the mosque and set it on fire on 25 February. His jaw, smashed into three parts, is now constructed of steel plates and his face – ripped completely in half – has been sewn back together. His fingers, built back together with steel pins, no longer bend properly. No charges have been brought against Jalaluddin’s attackers. He and the mosque president, Mohammad Fakhruddin, allege it was police officers who led the violence, including firing tear gas into the mosque and beating the imams. It was also allegedly police officers who returned the next morning to destroy the CCTV evidence.“I find it very hard being in this mosque and sometimes I get flashbacks to what happened to me and I start shaking and break into tears,” Jalaluddin said softly. “Next week, I will go back to my village in Bihar and live there,” he added. “I studied in a madrasa here since I was 10 and later became an imam. I loved this city. But after the violence that left me almost dead –and I have survived by the grace of Allah – I am too afraid to live here any longer.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/28/delhi-muslims-fear-they-will-never-see-justice-for-religious-riot-atrocities

Monthly update 17: January 2021: Muslims in India

1. Muslims forced to leave village: Jan., 8, 2021:“These people victimise us. We keep meeting with their elders but they aren’t listening. The police are also pressuring us. If they keep targeting us, how will we live here? So we are leaving,” said Shakeel Ahmed of Mawi Meera in Daurala area of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. His is one of about 20 Muslim families that have decided to abandon the village, putting up notices on their doors that declare, “This house is for sale. We are leaving.” It all started on December 23. Sundar Singh had bought cigarettes on credit from a Muslim shopkeeper on Muhammad Tayyab’s guarantee. That day, when Tayyab asked him to pay, Sundar got violent. People standing nearby broke up the fight, and Sundar left. Sometime later, he returned with a mob of about 20 men and attacked the Muslims. CCTV footage from cameras installed on a couple of houses shows the Gurjar mob vandalising Muslim homes and firing countrymade guns. The Muslims went to the Daurala police station, about 5 km away on the highway to Muzaffarnagar, and made a written complaint. Instead of taking action against the attackers the police pressured the Muslims to “compromise” with them, Tayyab’s uncle, Muhammad Yunus, claimed. The police have refused to file an FIR so far and the village’s pradhan is also siding with the accused, he added. Instead, the police have left the assailants free to harass the Muslims, leaving them with no option but to abandon their homes. “These people victimise us. We keep meeting with their elders but they aren’t listening. The police are also pressuring us. If they keep targeting us, how will we live here? So we are leaving,” said Shakeel Ahmed of Mawi Meera in Daurala area of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. His is one of about 20 Muslim families that have decided to abandon the village, putting up notices on their doors that declare, “This house is for sale. We are leaving.” https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/01/05/this-house-is-for-sale-how-muslim-are-being-driven-out-of-a-meerut-village

2. Plight of Muslims: Jan., 11, 2021 As the communal divide deepens with every passing day, Muslims in today’s India have a lot to despair about and much more to be afraid of. The concerted attack on the jewellery-maker Tanishq over something as trivial as a TV ad was a small symptom of the ‘othering’ in which, not to speak of maintaining any sort of relations, they would like the Muslims to vanish out of mind and out of sight. When the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws banned marriages with Jews, their objective was to maintain ‘racial purity’. Their categorisation of Jews as sub-humans (Untermensch) was based on race, not religion. In today’s India, through the anti-conversion laws, they are making religion the basis of criminalisation. Recently, when a politico talked of carrying out a surgical strike on the old city of Hyderabad (that is, the Muslim dominated area), it was not just political rhetoric or slip of the tongue; it actually reflected their deepest, darkest desires. Another leader said that every vote for Asaduddin Owaisi was a vote against India. Of course, he could not be bothered to explain how a vote cast during elections in India, held under the Indian constitution, becomes a vote against India. The Indian society is now increasingly being driven by a strict binary system. Either you conform to the majoritarian narrative or you are a traitor of some sort – jihadi, urban naxal, ISI agent, whatever – who must be jailed or banished. That Muslims are under-represented in all types of jobs and over-represented in jails as under-trial prisoners is an old story. A relatively newer phenomenon is denial of rented accommodation, residential or commercial, and ‘boycott’ in trade and businesses – baby steps towards their eventual economic deprivation. Majoritarian violence is seldom punished. Riots take place all the time because rioters know they will perhaps never be punished. Surabhi Chopra et al of Centre for Equity Studies, in their research ‘Accountability for Mass Violence: Examining the State’s Record’, have shown that despite some 25,628 lives having been lost in communal violence since independence, there is massive bungling by the police at every stage. From reluctance to register FIRs to registering deliberately flawed FIRs; from extremely few arrests and remands to deliberately poor investigations, it is natural that acquittal rates of the accused have been extremely high. In fact, summary closure rates for communal violence cases are ten times higher than the national rate, showing how the police abuse the discretion given to them under the law. Recently, all the 32 accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case were acquitted due to ‘lack of proof’ and more than three months later also, I could not locate any information regarding the CBI having filed an appeal. For the notorious Hashimpura massacre of 42 Muslims by the UP police itself, it took over 31 years for them to be convicted by the Delhi high court after they were acquitted by the trial court. The worst part of majoritarian violence is that the victims are encouraged to ‘move on’ or it is simply presumed that they have moved on. A demand for accountability and justice is described as one disturbing the peace. In the wake of the coronavirus scare, it took three high courts to debunk the summary maligning of the Muslim community and call it ‘unjust and unfair’. It took the Allahabad high court to conclude that the anti-cow slaughter law in UP was being misused against innocent persons leading to their languishing in jail. Within just one month of bringing in the notorious law against conversions primarily involving inter-faith marriages (popularly known as anti-love jihad law), UP police has raced to register 14 cases and arrest 51 people. Remember, inter-faith marriages are only one of the numerous pretexts possible. Tomorrow, they could very well object to certain dress also on the pretext that it facilitates the concealment of terrorists. Experience shows that, far from upholding the law, police have been acting as the agents of communal forces in furthering their agenda. The law has been ‘weaponised’ as the most preferred tool of harassment. Listing the cases of harassment of innocent Muslims by the police by falsely implicating them in terrorism related cases would be long. Whether it be the case of a comedian who did not crack any insulting jokes or a street vendor who was selling shoes manufactured by a regular company, they were charged essentially because they were Muslims – never mind that a string of Supreme Court judgments make the police action palpably wrong. Many people taking part in a rally organised by right-wing groups in Mandsaur district in Madhya Pradesh went on a rampage in the Dorana village, breaking open houses and looting. A nearly 100-strong police contingent decided to watch the proceedings with great insouciance, without using any force at all to disperse the rioters. Incidentally, a Muslim constable was obliged to watch his house ransacked, vehicles damaged, and his brother’s grain shop looted over a video that was shared amongst WhatsApp groups. We must hang our heads in shame that even 73 years after Independence, Muslims have so little trust in the police that, on the rally day, they had to send their women to another village for safety. In a police state, the government abuses its legal powers over its citizens. Ours is, however, more of a case of selective abuse. We have therefore become worse than a police state because the police are used to ‘selectively’ target and harass a part of the citizenry. Obtaining justice through courts, given the inherent intricacies of our criminal justice system, is such an uphill struggle that it will remain beyond the reach of most people. What could be the ultimate objective of all this? Is it political gains? I do not think so. The degree of communal polarisation already achieved is more than adequate to ensure comfortable electoral victories for the communal forces for years on end. Yet, they are unremittingly discovering new methods of harassing the Muslims every day. Why? The ultimate objective of the overkill could only be to harass the Muslims so much that eventually, they come to accept their ‘social defeat’. Having started with the process of ‘othering’, they would force them first to accept a ‘second grade citizen’ status, then a ‘pariah’ status, and finally the status of ‘nowhere people’. The ‘grand design’ is to break their very will to live with self-respect, dignity and honour. States implementing the so-called anti-conversion laws enthusiastically are actually crucibles where ingredients are being melted to forge a sword that will ensure the eventual and ‘complete subjugation’ of Muslims. During the rampage in Mandsaur, the planting of a saffron flag on the local mosque as if they had ‘conquered’ it, albeit for a little while, proved that the protectors of law had once again failed Muslims. The triumphant pose struck by the rioter with his arms raised up recorded on video, was acutely reminiscent of the chilling photo of a man striking a similar pose during the Gujarat riots – a photo that became synonymous with those riots. To me, the writing on the wall is clear. Communal harmony, as we loved to envisage it, is dead. Those amongst us who choose to ignore the inexorable envenomation of the Indian society as some sort of fleeting aberration might be forced to stare in the face of some very dehumanising acts, if not outright pogroms. Even blood cancer initially shows up as low-grade fever only https://thewire.in/communalism/the-trials-and-tribulations-of-being-a-muslim-in-todays-india

3. HRW Report: Jan., 16, 2021: A prominent international human rights watchdog has denounced Narendra Modi-led Indian government for intensifying repression in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, targeting Muslims in India and for harassing, arresting and prosecuting activists, journalists, and others critics. In its World Report 2021, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Indian government continued to impose harsh and discriminatory restrictions in IIOJK since revoking special status of the territory in August 2019. The report said scores of people remained detained in IIOJK without charge under the draconian law Public Safety Act, which permits detention without trial for up to two years. It said, the Indian government announced a new media policy in Kashmir in June 2020 that empowers the authorities to decide what is “fake news, plagiarism and unethical or anti-national activities” and to take punitive action against media outlets, journalists, and editors. “The policy contains vague provisions that are open to abuse and could unnecessarily restrict and penalize legally protected speech. The government also clamped down on critics, journalists, and human rights activists,” it said. “The restrictions, including on access to communications networks, since August 2019 adversely affected livelihoods, particularly in the tourism-dependent Kashmir Valley. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries estimated that the first three months of the lockdown to prevent protests since August 2019 cost the economy over US$2.4 billion, for which no redress was provided. Losses nearly doubled since the government imposed further restrictions to contain the spread of Covid-19 in March 2020,” it added. The report said the pandemic made access to the internet crucial for information, communication, education, and business. However, even after the Supreme Court said in January that access to the internet was a fundamental right, the Indian authorities permitted only slow-speed 2G mobile internet services, leading doctors to complain that the lack of internet was hurting the Covid-19 response, it said. The report maintained that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act continued to provide effective immunity from prosecution to Indian forces, even for serious human rights abuses. In July, the forces’ personnel killed three people in Shopian district, claiming they were militants, it said. “However, in August, their families, who identified them from photographs of the killings circulated on social media, said they were laborers. In September, the army said that its inquiry had found prima facie evidence that its troops exceeded powers under the AFSPA and it would take disciplinary proceedings against those “answerable”,” it added. The HRW said that the Indian forces also continued to use shotguns firing metal pellets to disperse crowds, despite evidence that they are inherently inaccurate and cause injuries indiscriminately, including to bystanders, violating India’s international obligations. In the 761-page World Report 2021, its 31st edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries.In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that the incoming United States administration should embed respect for human rights in its domestic and foreign policy in a way that is more likely to survive future US administrations that might be less committed to human rights. Roth emphasizes that even as the Trump administration mostly abandoned the protection of human rights, other governments stepped forward to champion rights. The Biden administration should seek to join, not supplant, this new collective effort. The HRW pointed out that the attacks continued against minorities, especially Muslims, in India even as authorities failed to take action against BJP leaders who vilified Muslims and BJP supporters who engaged in violence. The Covid-19 lockdown disproportionately hurt marginalized communities due to loss of livelihoods and lack of food, shelter, healthcare, and other basic needs, it said. “The Indian government seems determined to punish peaceful criticism using draconian laws, while sending a broader message that chills dissent,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Instead of addressing growing attacks on Muslims, minorities, and women, Indian authorities increased their crackdown on critical voices in 2020,” she added. The report said that last February communal violence in Delhi killed at least 53 people, with over 200 injured, properties destroyed, and communities displaced in targeted attacks by Hindu mobs. While a policeman and several Hindus were also killed, the vast majority of victims were Muslim. The attacks came after weeks of peaceful protests against the Indian government’s discriminatory citizenship policies. “Violence broke out after BJP leaders openly advocated violence against the protesters, while witness accounts and video evidence showed police complicity. The Delhi Minorities Commission reported that the violence was “planned and targeted” and found that the police were filing cases against Muslim victims, but not taking action against the BJP leaders who incited it,” the report said. The HRW said that crimes against Dalits increased, in part as backlash by members of dominant castes against what they might perceive as a challenge to caste hierarchy. “Crimes against women increased too. In September, a 19-year old Dalit woman died after being gang-raped and tortured, allegedly by four men of dominant caste in Uttar Pradesh. The authorities’ response highlighted how women from marginalized communities faced even greater institutional barriers to justice,” it added. The report maintained that the intensifying repression in India resulted in international criticism, including by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who raised concerns over human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, arrests of activists, and restrictions on civil society. https://kmsnews.org/news/2021/01/15/hrw-slams-india-for-hr-abuses-in-iiojk-attacks-against-muslims-and-crackdown-on-critics/

4. Human rights in India : an., 23, 2021: The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy organization dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos, has launched a report titled, “Crushing Dissent: 2021 Status Report on Human Rights in India,” detailing human rights abuses in India. At the launch of this report, UN Special Rapporteur Ms. Mary Lawlor called upon the Indian government to immediately release 16 human rights defenders who have been imprisoned on charges of terrorism in the ‘Bhima-Koregaon Case’. “These people should not be in jail. They are our modern-day heroes and we should all be looking to them and supporting them and demanding their release,” Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, said on Thursday. Along with Father Stan Swamy, the octogenarian Jesuit priest against whose “arbitrary detention” in this case she has already written to the Indian Government, Ms. Lawlor said 15 others jailed in the same case must also be released. Ms. Lawlor while read out the names of the imprisoned rights activists who have worked to uphold the rights of the others should be acknowledged and they are Surendra Gadling, Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Fereria; Supreme Court lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj; authors Gautam Navlakha and Anand Teltumbde; poet Varvara Rao; academicians Hany Babu and Shoma Sen; and theater artistes Ramesh Gaichor, Sagar Gorkhe and Jyoti Jagtap. The so-called Bhima-Koregaon case refers to violence at a public meeting called three years ago by low-caste Hindus at a village known as Bhima-Koregaon in Maharashtra state. Several civil rights investigations have established that upper caste Hindus allied with India’s ruling party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, carried out the violence. Police have; however, targeted human rights defenders, who deny their involvement. Ms. Lawlor, whose three-year term as UN Special Rapporteur began last May, also called out the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), under which the Bhima-Koregaon accused have been charged, as among the “several prominent pieces of legislation that would appear on paper and in practice to undermine rights contained in the covenant and the work of human rights defenders.”Amendments to the UAPA made in 2019, which granted “greater powers” to designate individuals as terrorists “despite the definition of a terrorist act not being precise or concrete,” failed to “comply with the principles of legal certainty,” Ms. Lawlor said. “This has opened up the Act, which was already being used to target human rights defenders, to greater abuse. In 2020, it continued to be applied against human rights defenders with the extremely damaging effect of conflating the defense of human rights with terrorist activities,” Ms. Lawlor said, adding, there was “a very concerning deterioration of the environment for defending human rights” in India. Saying that India’s human rights “situation is very serious,” Ms. Lawlor said she sent “six communications” to the Indian Government since May to “convey our concerns on human rights issues”. India had responded to just one. In June she wrote to the Indian Government raising concerns over the arrest of 11 human rights defenders for protesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. “However, this communication has gone unanswered.” Noted human rights defender Teesta Setalvad said “among human rights defenders who are today incarcerated, besides those mentioned by Mr. Lawlor, we have a list of almost 23 very young and dynamic human rights defenders incarcerated in post February 2020 anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi. Among the 23, almost 19 happened to be young Muslims activists, who actually came into the forefront of leadership to resist the draconian citizenship Amendment Act. These young activists were deliberately targeted by the state because of their clarity, courage and determination. “The lower caste (the untouchables) have been singularly targeted for thousands of years and subjected to othering and discrimination by the dominant caste. Then, it is the Muslim community who is facing discrimination and marginalization for the last 40 years. And since the 1990s, Indian Christian community has also been subject to this kind of othering. added Teesta. The Indian Government had arrested Father Stan Swamy only because he had worked for four decades for the uplift of the poor tribal people in Jharkhand state, Father Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest and a human rights defender, said. Fr. Swamy became an obstacle for successive governments who, “in collusion with vested interest, especially those who deplete the forests of the precious resources, like the mining mafia, the timber merchants,” wanted to wrest control of the forests from the tribal people. “Fr. Swamy was fighting for the release of more than 3000 tribal youth, struggling for their rights, accompanying them in their legal battles, and so on.” Former Australian Senator Lee Rhiannon said “the notion that India is a great secular democracy has become a cloak to conceal the extent of the injustice.” The foundation on which is India’s judiciary, parliamentary and education systems have been “extensively eroded” as Mr. Modi’s government’s “passing discriminatory laws, neutralizing judges and cultivating a BJP controlled police force is at an advanced stage.” IAMC National General Secretary Mohammad Jawad said “This exhaustive report’s coverage of all the aspects — from the sedition laws and hate speech, to national security legislation and the criminalization of dissent, from the questions on the independence of the judiciary to the dilution of labor laws and the universal health policies — demonstrates how the Modi government is set to undo decades of positive and progressive work in India.” IAMC will share the 2021 Human Rights report, “Crushing Dissent”, with members of US Congress, the White House, the Department of State, the National Security Council, think-tanks, the US academia and research community and the civil rights activists and NGOs, he added. https://twocircles.net/2021jan22/440701.html

5.     Muslim Comic: Jan., 27, 2021: An Indian Muslim stand-up comic has spent 25 days in a Madhya Pradesh jail for jokes he did not tell an audience, but on suspicions he was “going to”. Mumbai-based Munawar Faruqui, 28, is facing legal action in two states. In Madhya Pradesh, he was arrested while performing by Indore police for allegedly insulting Hindu deities during rehearsals. In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, he is sought by the police in another case of allegedly insulting Hindu deities as well as Home Minister Amit Shah. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/26/indian-muslim-comic-in-jail-for-weeks-for-jokes-he-didnt-tellMonthly update 16: December 2020: Muslims in India This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India . 1. Discrimination against Muslims: Dec., 13, 2020: The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos, has condemned an increasing pattern of discrimination against Muslims at Indian American IT companies. The now infamous incident at Nityo Infotech is one example of blatant expression of bigotry against Muslims, driven by Hindu nationalist narratives and Islamophobic stereotypes. Mohammad Tarique Anwar (name changed) had applied for a job in the IT sector in California a few months ago using his first name. Mohammad. He did not get any call for an interview. A month later he applied at the same firm using “not so Muslim sounding” name of Tarique. He got the call and subsequently the job Allegations of religious discrimination against Nityo Infotech became widely known after a screenshot of this memo went viral in the tech circles. its alleged attempt to discriminate against Muslims are part of a larger malaise of brazen Islamophobia in Indian American IT companies. Pervasive discrimination against Muslims in the tech industry violates the law as well as basic principles of fairness and religious freedom. IAMC has called upon the Attorney General of New Jersey to investigate the complaint against Nityo Infotech. IAMC has also urged Nityo Infotech to carry out a diversity, equity and inclusion audit, and to take immediate corrective and preventive steps in order to address the issue. “The Nityo Infotech case should serve as a wake up call for everyone interested in keeping our workplaces free from religious bigotry and hate,” said Mr. Ahsan Khan, president of the Indian American Muslim Council. “The fact that the firm felt emboldened to openly ask the recruiter to exclude Muslim candidates shows the extent to which Islamophobia has now been normalized.” Rasheed Ahmed, executive director of IAMC, said it is evident from Anwar’s case, that this level of discrimination is not limited to Muslims from India, but to anyone with Muslim sounding name or Muslim appearance “A scrutiny of the hiring practices of Indian American IT companies is long overdue,” Ahmed said. http://aapress.com/ethnicity/indian/employment-discrimination-against-muslim-americans-at-indian-american-it-companies-causes-outrage/# 2. Owaisi: Dec., 14, 2020: The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi is poised to become a national leader of the Muslim community. Apart from Hyderabad, his electoral base has now spread to Maharashtra and Bihar, where the AIMIM has won both assembly and municipal seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, AIMIM won a seat in Maharashtra, apart from Hyderabad. The rise of AIMIM is in the backdrop of the RSS and the BJP’s politics, which has been steadily isolating the Muslim community in India. According to the 2011 census, Muslims constitute 14.2 per cent of the Indian population. In certain urban pockets, AIMIM could win seats on its own, if the Muslims vote as a bloc. Asaduddin Owaisi is educated in England, and trained as a barrister, with a deep conviction that democracy is a necessary political system for Muslim well-being in India. He broke away from the UPA in 2012, which gave a boost to his national ambitions. It also turned him into a Muslim face that the BJP/RSS has constantly attacked and targetted. AIMIM’s spread has serious implications for the BJP and Congress. His success in carving out a Muslim constituency will benefit the BJP and bleed the Congress. If Muslims move away from the Congress, the BJP’s winning possibilities in every state will increase. Some of the regional parties like the Samajwadi Party and the RJD also stand to lose. So Owaisi’s rise as a visibly Muslim leader is as much BJP’s need as the AIMIM’s. However, this may have another implication for Muslim life in India. Since a large chunk of the Muslim populace is concentrated in urban areas, their political organisational mobilities will increase and a religious-ideological leadership will emerge. By and large, Muslim masses are also unhappy with secularism, which traps them in a majority-minority discourse in which their Muslim identity is lost. The old slogan of SC/ST/OBC minority unity is also likely to go for a toss now. Though he talks about Dalit-Muslim unity, Owaisi has no language to address the Shudras or OBCs. The RSS-BJP combine wants to expand their base in a state like Telangana by militantly opposing Owaisi. They made inroads in the Hyderabad city by mainly mobilising OBCs against Muslims, as is clear in the recent municipal elections — a politics that they will now take to rural Telangana. Since AIMIM has a history of asking for an independent Nizam state (what they called South Pakistan during Kasim Razvi’s Razakar movement in the 1940s), Hindutva forces conveniently labelled the old city as Pakistan and Owaisi its Jinnah. In many cities with a significant Muslim population, as in Hyderabad, the Shudra/OBC population have no intimate relations with Muslims. The OBCs are meat-eaters, but many do not consume beef. The RSS/BJP networks want to use these differences and organise Shudra/OBC masses against Muslims. Owaisi’s entry into caste language is recent and his more militant brother treats all OBCs as Hindus. In fact, no Muslim leader and intellectual has studied the fault line of caste adequately. Their focus has always been the Hindu-Muslim divide. Their understanding of caste contradictions is limited to Alberuni’s Al-Hind. But India has had too long a history of caste oppression from the days of the Vedic civilisation, which predated the beginning of Muslim rule in the 11th century. The Hindutva nationalism forged by RSS-BJP has challenged the idea of secularism, under which Muslim leaders had a place. Under Owaisi, the AIMIM, too, speaks a Muslim nationalist language. Since Owaisi’s ancestors refused to leave Hyderabad for Pakistan, the AIMIM leaders use their Indian-Muslim nationalism as a weapon against the BJP-RSS’s attempt to brand Muslims as foreign or Pakistani. That is also why Muslims across India may gravitate towards him. . https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/asaduddin-owaisi-aimim-hyderabad-muslims-rss-7103600/ 3. UN on Kashmir and Delhi: Dec., 24, 2020: Three United Nations human rights experts have called on India to “immediately” stop its intimidation and a series of reprisals against Amnesty International (AI) in response to the organization’s work in exposing human rights violations in India, especially in occupied Kashmir and during the February anti-Muslim riots in Delhi. London-based Amnesty International, a human rights organisation, halted operations in India in September after its bank accounts were frozen and its executives interrogated by Indian financial authorities, in what AI called was a two-year campaign of harassment. In a second joint letter sent to India from Geneva, the UN experts recounted the systematic harassment being inflicted by the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pointing out the “illegal freezing” of the bank accounts under the the Foreign Contribution Regulation (FCRA) law, which is incompatible with international human rights standards. The signatories of the letter include prominent experts such as Ms. Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression; Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on peaceful assembly and of association; and Ms. Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders. The respective retributive actions “are a strong indication that the Indian Government has tried to intimidate, muzzle and punish the Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) for its reporting on and advocacy against human rights violations in the country”.The State-sanctioned smear campaign against Amnesty, evident from media leakage of a dossier on AI by Indian investigative agencies, was a deliberate attempt to tarnish the reputation, the experts said, and called for unfreeze the organization’s bank accounts. The joint letter was sent by the experts, also known as UN Special Procedures or Rapporteurs, to India on 21 October 2020, and made public on Monday after India did not respond to it within the given deadline of 60 days. In October, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have already publicly voiced her serious dismay over the tightening of space for human rights organizations in India and appealed to New Delhi to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders, and their ability to carry out their crucial work. https://kmsnews.org/news/2020/12/23/un-experts-slam-india-for-targeting-rights-groups-exposing-abuses-in-kashmir-delhi-pogroms Monthly update 15:November 2020 : Muslims in India This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India . 1. Muslims in India: Nov., 17, 2020: With growing tide of bigotry and oppression against Muslims in India, Modi led BJP regime has let loose horrific forms of torture against them. A research survey conducted by Kashmir Media Service said Muslims are portrayed as terrorists in present-day India as the wave of hatred against them has seen a dramatic rise under fascist Modi’s government. “Lynching of Muslims has become a norm in Modi’s India where Hindutva forces like BJP and RSS are ideological equals of the Nazis,” the survey report said adding that Modi and Hitler are the two faces of the same coin. The report mentioned the recent anti-Muslim violence in Delhi and said that mass extermination of Muslims is underway in Modi’s India. It pointed out that it was Narendra Modi who has already committed a Muslim slaughter in Gujrat and the same Modi is planning genocide of Muslims in IIOJK as well. Kashmiri Muslims are witnessing unparalleled victimization under BJP-ruled India. The survey report said that there was a systematic campaign by BJP leaders aimed at spewing venom at Muslims. Draconian citizenship laws are aimed at large-scale expulsion of Muslims from India. https://kmsnews.org/news/2020/11/16/mass-extermination-of-muslims-under-way-in-modis-india/ 2. Facebook: Nov., 18, 2020: In a letter to Facebook, top US senators urged the social media company to clamp down on anti-Muslim bigotry. The letter, which references India, Myanmar, China and Sri Lanka, was written by Chris Coons, who was tagged by publications like Politico and Reuters as a top pick for the post of US secretary of state in a Biden administration. The letter was signed by Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Dick Durbin, Mark Warner, Robert Menendez, Patrick Leahy, Ben Cardin, Michael Bennet, Gary Peters, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, and Bernie Sanders.“Facebook is a groundbreaking company that has revolutionised the way we communicate. Unfortunately, the connectivity that can bring people together in many positive ways also has been used to dehumanise and stoke violence against Muslims, black people, Latinos, immigrants, the Jewish community, Sikhs, Christians, women, and other communities here and across the world,” according to the letter. The letter specifically mentions India. "Reports indicate that the platform has also been used to support the internment of the Uyghurs in China and other human rights violations against this population, that Facebook and WhatsApp have been used to incite violence against Muslims in India, and that Facebook has been used to promote hate and violence in other areas around the world," the senators wrote in the letter. "Advocacy groups similarly detailed the extent and persistence of anti-Muslim hate content on Facebook India in multiple reports last year, concerns that have been amplified by recent allegations that some high-ranking employees at Facebook India have enabled hate speech against Muslims and others by applying the platform's content moderation policies in a selective manner," wrote the senators. Of particular concern is how Facebook has addressed the targeting of mosques and Muslim community events by armed protesters through the platform. In June 2019, Facebook responded to concerns about these practices by creating a “call to arms” policy that prohibits event pages that call for individuals to bring weapons to a location. However, the senators note that Facebook has not taken adequate steps to enforce this policy, which should have barred an event page in Kenosha, Wisconsin earlier this year, as well as a 2019 event page used to plan an armed protest at the largest Muslim community convention in the country. “We recognise that Facebook has announced efforts to address its role in the distribution of anti-Muslim content in some of these areas,” the senators wrote. “Nevertheless, it is not clear that the company is meaningfully better positioned to prevent further human rights abuses and violence against Muslim minorities today. As members of Congress who are deeply disturbed by the proliferation of this hate speech on your platform, we urge you to do more.” An independent civil rights audit of Facebook from July 2020 highlighted disturbing examples of anti-Muslim abuse on the platform ranging “[f]rom the organization of events designed to intimidate members of the Muslim community at gathering places, to the prevalence of content demonising Islam and Muslims, and the use of Facebook Live during the Christchurch massacre…” These concerns have also prompted current Facebook employees to write a letter demanding action on anti-Muslim bigotry and calling for broader structural changes. https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2020/11/17/in-letter-to-facebook-against-anti-muslim-bigotry-possible-biden-cabinet-pick-cites-india.html 3. Delayed Justice: Nov., 29, 2020: “A raging crowd yelling Jai Shri Ram pulled me out of the auto and I fainted. This is all I remember after nine months,” says 22-year-old Shahrukh. Shahrukh had been returning from a religious event on the afternoon of February 24, 2020, when his autorickshaw was stopped by a mob at Shiv Vihar Tiraha. He had been dragged out of the auto, beaten up and left on the street, unconscious. Seven hours later, Shahrukh’s younger brother, Sameer, began frantically contacting people, asking if they knew where Shahrukh was. Sameer had heard about the violence and was anxious about his missing brother. Later, one of their cousins phoned Sameer to tell him he had seen Shahrukh being assaulted and had run away to save his own life. The same day, Sameer received a video of Shahrukh being brutally attacked by rioters holding rods. The video showed the rioters shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ while assaulting Shahrukh and dragging him for at least 500 meters on the road. Abrasions on Shahrukh’s body left traces of blood on the street. The video went on to show Shahrukh being dragged without his trousers, his eyes bleeding and his face completely concealed by his own blood, as rioters took turns to beat him with their rods. The barbaric beating left the 22-year-old garment seller completely blind in his left eye and only able to sense changes in light with his right eye. Shahrukh had also been shot. The bullet had gone right through his chest. On February 25, Sameer received calls and photos from the families of riot victims at Guru Teg Bhadur (GTB) Hospital, informing him that his brother had been found there. When Shahrukh’s family arrived at the hospital, they discovered that he had been placed in the mortuary, since he had had nobody to admit him to the hospital .Shahrukh regained consciousness after 17 days.“Jab mujhe hosh aaya aur maine aankhein kholi, mujhe kuch dikhaai hi nahi dia, aur main phir bayhosh hogaya (When I regained consciousness and opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything and then I fainted again),” Shahrukh told The Wire. He added, “I couldn’t make sense of why my body was so battered, why every inch of me hurt and what my crime had The video shows one of the perpetrators of the assault on Shahrukh very clearly. Sameer claims that this man is the owner of a medical store in Shiv Vihar, yet he continues to live freely, as though nothing had happened. The assault on Shahrukh wasn’t just an emotional catastrophe for the family. It was a financial blow too, since he was the only earning member in the family of four. His father is bed-ridden and requires assistance with daily tasks. The family has received monetary compensation from the Delhi government, but their topmost priority is to see the perpetrators behind bars. Shahrukh’s mother, Shehnaz, says that when her son needs assistance for the simplest tasks, it is like burning coal placed on her heart. “Hume in dangaiyon ke liye sirf umar qaid chahiye, jawaan bacche ki, hum sabki zindagi barbaad kar di (We want life imprisonment for the rioters; they have destroyed my child’s life and all our lives),” said Shehnaz. https://thewire.in/communalism/northeast-delhi-riots-shahrukh-blinded-victim 4. Election success: Nov., 23, 2020: A significant highlight of the match was the electoral performance of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM). This was Owaisi’s second assembly election in Bihar. His party won five out of the 20 seats on which it contested. Owaisi said that he is rekindling the hope of minorities in. Owaisi’s stance on CAA has not changed an inch. He has maintained that the law must be repealed and that all political prisoners be released. After the Delhi riots, he poignantly expressed the angst of all Indian Muslims in parliament. In Bihar, his vocal attacks on the anti-minority politics of the BJP forced the mahagathbandhan to break its silence on the CAA. Seemanchal, a Muslim-dominated area, always fall among the lowest in social development indices. Since Independence, it has mostly been represented by Congress, or in recent years by its allies like the RJD. Muslims in every election were given the responsibility to preserve secularism. They had to keep their developmental needs like school, roads, hospitals, and colleges aside by voting en masse for Congress and RJD. While they successfully rescued secularism, they never received any attention from the successive “secular” governments. The malaise was so bad that the “secular” parties did not even mention development during their campaigns. Muslims of Seemanchal were fed-up with the “BJP aa jayegi” blackmail. Meanwhile, Owaisi focused his campaign on under-development. His “Seemanchal ko nyay” and promise of a better representation converted into votes, as did the anti-incumbency against representatives from mahagathbandhan. While development was a focal point in his speeches, he spoke in detail about CAA-NRC protests, rampant mob-violence, and the “unjust” Babri Masjid verdict. He frequently questioned the welcoming “soft-Hindutva” stand of Kamal Nath and Priyanka. With Owaisi, be it chanting of particular national slogans or the issue of Babri demolition, unlike the Congress party, he has vehemently protested all these narrow litmus tests for national belonging. While the Congress supported the draconian UAPA in parliament, Owaisi warned that UAPA will be used indiscriminately against Muslims and political dissenters. In the past six years, many Muslims have faced violent attacks by extremist Hindu mobs on the pretext of ‘love jihad’, cow slaughter, forced chanting of Hindu slogans, and at times for merely appearing Muslim. “Secular parties” failed to stand by the Muslims. However, Owaisi has been consistent in calling out the government for its inability to prevent hate crimes against minorities and abetting them. Owaisi’s alliance with Upendra Kushwaha led RLSP, Mayawati’s BSP, and two other small parties demonstrates his intentions to expand his voter base to non-Muslims. Although AIMIM contested only on 20 seats, 5 out of its candidates were non-Muslims. Owaisi has cleared his intentions to contest in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh elections. If the “secular parties” have learned anything from Bihar, they won’t simply discredit Owaisi. As a party which can get in alliance with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra in the name of “preserving democracy” cannot digest the rise of aspirational Muslims, this reeks of nothing but insecurity and misplaced anger as it marks an end to the politics of “hostage secularism”. https://thewire.in/politics/nobodys-b-team-the-politics-of-owaisis-aimim 5. Love jihad: Nov., 27, 2020: India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, introduced a law outlawing so-called “Love Jihad” on Tuesday, the first of at least five states led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that are considering new legislation targeting interfaith relationships in the world’s largest democracy. Love Jihad is a baseless conspiracy theory that Muslim men are attempting to surreptitiously shift India’s demographic balance by converting Hindu women to Islam through marriage. The narrative has been pushed by Hindu nationalist groups close to India’s ruling BJP since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was first elected in 2014. Since Modi came to power, his government has introduced several other measures that target India’s minority Muslim community. The conspiracy has received renewed attention after a Hindu woman in Haryana was murdered in October by a Muslim man who, her family said, had pressured her to convert and marry him. https://time.com/5915579/love-jihad-uttar-pradesh/ 6. AIMIM as the party of minorities: Nov., 28, 2020: One of the chief successes of Hindutva politics has been to oversee the alienation of Indian Muslims. Over the last six years, the message that has gone out is whereas it is normal to woo different social segments of the polity as potential vote banks but speaking for Muslims constitutes not just communal, but amounts to anti-national politics. Three legislations enacted by parliament in recent months have drawn opposition from the people of India; yet it is noteworthy that only protesters against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the reading down of Article 370 have been dubbed as anti-national elements. Thankfully, no one yet has been bold enough to attach that ubiquitous epithet to the farmers, protesting across the country calling for the repeal of the recently enacted farm laws. It is worth noting that even the farmers’ union affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is opposed to the said legislations. This ejection of Indian Muslims from the national electoral and policy attention has come to comprise a central feature of political “new India”. Nowhere have the effects of this ideological drive been more felt than in the deliberations and praxis of the Congress party. A report brought by the party after its worst performance in the 2014 general elections, and known as the A.K. Antony report, has put the matter baldly: “the grand old party has been suffering setbacks because it has come to be seen as an anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim party.” However much the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have ‘sloganised’ its rhetoric ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas (standing by everyone and winning everyone’s trust)’, it is to be understood that Indian Muslims cannot be considered a constituent of that totality, canny rhetoric notwithstanding. It is not just in the matters of electoral representation but even in exercising their right to protest the indignities they suffer on a daily basis. As the Indian Express has put it editorially, the success of this rightwing drive has tended to oblige the other national party, the Congress, to pursue its recent politics in consonance with this transformed social and ideological landscape regardless of the fact that some 63% of the Indian electorate voted against the ruling BJP in the General Elections of 2019. It further notes that Indian Muslims have throughout India’s post-independence history trusted their fortunes with all sorts of political formations, none of them led by Muslims. But the events of the last six years of national life could not but have engendered a rethink about that course, as Muslims have come to see that most “secular” parties are now hesitant to include their concerns as equal citizens in their democratic practices, albeit with honourable exceptions Yet, it would be gross and inappropriate to consider the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) as a communal outfit, established to further the prospects of only Indian Muslims. Although launched understandably from a dominantly Muslim base, the Owaisi-led AIMIM sees itself as a new political force that seeks to speak not just for Muslims but a conglomerate of India’s marginalised sections. This is substantiated by the remarkable fact that its ticket distribution in the recent elections has included a number of non-Muslim candidates. Especially, those that may have listened with care to the enunciations made by the outstandingly intelligent and patriotic Asaduddin Owaisi will have noted that the central burden of his perorations has been to restore to all marginalised sections – including the Indian Muslims – the rights of citizenship granted to all Indians by a republican constitution. His heartfelt cry repeatedly has thus been to bring back the principles of inclusive and secular politics that he rightly sees as having been trampled underfoot by the Hindutva juggernaut. Indeed, in pursuing this course, the AIMIM rather shames hitherto “secular parties” into taking a hard look inward into the not-so-subtle compromises they have succumbed to make with their purported ideological protestations. Most of all, the AIMIM thus invites the Congress party to come out bold to counter the forces of the communal right not on the terms set by them but on the founding convictions of its own. Accused of causing “radicalisation” among Muslims, Owaisi asks in return whether it is not the case that the most profound and deleterious radicalisation has been engineered by the right-wing forces, as more and more secular Hindus are sought to be converted to the terms of political Hindutva. Even in the matter of so localised an occasion as a municipal election in Hyderabad, canvassing scions of the BJP have made a reference to the prime minister as ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’. No doubt, there is a need to sift the reactive fulminations of some hotheads within the AIMIM from the core of its ideological effort. Its central message seems to carry to sections of the polity who are in no way at the centre of any sort of “Muslim” politics, or any covert conspiracy to revive the politics of the Muslim League. Any perusal of speeches made by Owaisi, in parliament and outside, will show that his agonised concern is to re-establish constitutional verities without discriminatory practices, and to foreground the patriotic citizenship of Indian Muslims who reject both the politics of the erstwhile League and of its brainchild, Pakistan. The politics of Hindutva understandably thinks that the best way to meet this new vibrant participation in democracy is to give the dog a bad name and then kill it. The other charge levelled against the AIMIM is that its participation in electoral politics fractures the secular vote. It may be asked as to why is it that even in straight contests with the ruling BJP, candidates of ‘secular parties’ continue to suffer electoral defeats. Or, why it should be the case that, for example, in the forthcoming elections to the West Bengal assembly, secular forces should be so insistent on dividing the secular vote. Is it not likely that a TMC and the Congress-Left combine, should that materialise, will not but facilitate the BJP to further consolidate its impressive gains in that so consequential part of the republic? It may, therefore, be more sagacious for parties opposed to the BJP to evaluate the AIMIM phenomenon without blinkers and with empathy, and to prepare to build political coalitions crying to be made. Only a deucedly cunning or blinkered view would consider Owaisi as doing politics that challenges the constitutional regime. That challenge may indeed be coming from political forces of greater repute. https://thewire.in/politics/aimim-asaduddin-owaisi-hindutva-bjp-challenge-secular 7. Bengal elections: Nov., 9, 2020: The ever-changing population demographics of West Bengal has been a matter of concern for the Hindu population in the State. With a low birth rate, coupled with mass infiltration of illegal Muslim immigrants from the neighbouring country of Bangladesh, Hindus have already been outnumbered in Murshidabad, Malda and Uttar Dinajpur districts. Now, in an undated video, Islamic cleric Peerzada Abbas Siddiqui has revealed that Muslims constitute the majority in the State of West Bengal. “This is Bengal. We (Muslims) are not minorities here. We are the majority here. Keep this in mind. We have a 35% population in the State,” he emphasised. Siddiqui also claimed that such a thing was possible as Adivasis, Matuas and Dalits did not fall into the Hindu fold. “We are the majority here,” he reiterated. As per 2011 Census data, Muslims constitute around 27% of the population in West Bengal. According to Siddiqui, the Muslim population in the State has increased by 8% to 35% in the past 9 years. In 2015, the Times of India reported that if the growth of Hindu population declined by 0.9% in India, then, it was 1.9% in West Bengal. On the contrary, if the Muslim population increased by 0.8% in the country, then their population in West Bengal grew by 1.77%. AIMIM will contest elections in the state for the first time, and it will be benefited by the existing grassroot support that Siddiqui enjoys. Muslim parties coming together to contest Bengal election may result in trouble for Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, which has been getting Muslim votes in the last elections. Speaking to Times Now the cleric said he has asked Mamata Banerjee to take immediate steps to stall the Act or else “she risks losing the support of Muslims in West Bengal.” He added that all the protests that the West Bengal CM is leading in the state might be satisfactory for other people, but they are not enough to satisfy the Muslim population. https://www.opindia.com/2020/11/cleric-peerzada-abbas-siddiqui-says-muslims-are-majority-in-west-bengal/ Monthly update 14:October 2020 : Muslims in India This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India . 1. Muslims in India: Muslims are the second largest populous religious group after Hindus in the country. Muslims have the highest population with 14.2 percent. Muslims, despite being the largest religious minority of the country are lagging behind as compared to the other religious minorities on all indicators of human development, such as living standards, financial stability, political existence, education and other aspects, thereby showing poor performance in most fields. Their socio-economic status is far behind that of other minorities and is also less than the national level. The Sachar Committee found that Muslims have low level access to educational opportunities and their educational quality is even lower or is as bad as the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The report has also revealed that one fourth of Muslim children in the age group of 6-14 years have either never attended school or are dropouts. For children above the age of 17 years, the educational attainment of Muslims at matriculation is 17%, as against national average at 26%. Only 50% of Muslims who complete middle schools are likely to complete secondary education, compared to 62% at the national level’ (Ministry of Education, GOI). Their literacy rate, mean year of education, representation in senior secondary education and higher education is below other communities in India. For example, the literacy rate among Muslims is 57.3%, which is far behind the national average of 74.4%. When we see other minority communities in India their literacy levels are far better than the Muslims. This shows that the Muslims have the highest illiteracy rate of any single religious community in India. Although the literacy rate for Muslim women was higher than SCs and STs Women, but lower than others (Times of India, 2020). As per National Sample Survey Report of the 75th Round (2018), reported by the Times of India (2020) the Gross Attendance Ratio (GAR) of Muslims was lower (i.e., 100) than SCs (101), STs (102), OBCs, and minorities. The same case is also at upper primary level; here the GAR was lower than other communities. The GAR of Muslims at Secondary level was 71.9%, which was less than STs 79.8%, SCs 85.8% and from OBCs also. Similarly, in the case of higher secondary level and the GAR of Muslims was lowest i.e. 48.3%, below the SCs 52.8%, STs 60% and lowest compared to other communities as well. At the level higher secondary and above, their GAR has been 14.5%, just above the STs 14.4%, but below from the SCs 17.8% and other communities. In the age group of 3 to 35 years, among all communities, Muslims have the highest proportion that had never enrolled in formal educational institutions or programs. The enrolment of Muslims in higher education is pathological. As per All India Survey on Higher Education Reports (AISHE) (conducted by MHRD, GOI), it was revealed that the representation of the community in higher education was also the lowest compared to the communities such as SCs, STs and OBC. The growth rate of Muslims in higher education from the years 2010-11 to 2018-19 was 26.92%, while that of the STs was 20%, and that of the SCs was recorded at 25.50 %, and OBCs 23.96%. This clearly shows that, among all the minorities, Muslims have the highest growth rate, but in terms of proportion their enrolment is the lowest among these communities. The importance of education and skill in the rise and fall of the communities is well known, and everyone also knows that in the present scenario (which is known as knowledge society) it is impossible to spend a self-dependent and dignified life without an education. From the above discussion and evidences, and various reports, it shows that, in the matter of education, the condition of Muslims at all levels (i.e. primary, upper primary, secondary, senior secondary and higher education) of education remains pathetic in comparison with other religious group as well as among SCs, STs and OBCs group. It is a serious constraint in planning for the education of Muslims. A large population of Muslims is not only poor, but also deprived of the legacy of education. It is very difficult to get education for those Muslims who earn their livelihood through hard work and small businesses. There are only two ways for these poor and hard working class of Muslims to get education, either government schools and colleges or madarsas. https://www.thenewleam.com/2020/10/the-appalling-educational-status-of-muslims-in-india-needs-urgent-attention/ 2. Harassment; Nov., 1, 2020: More than seven months after the communal riots that shocked northeast Delhi with instances of looting, vandalism and targeted killings of Muslims and their properties, survivors still report harassment and humiliation within their immediate neighborhoods. A month ago, 14-year-old Fiza’s family sold their house in Shiv Vihar so they could move to a safer location. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they not only moved out but also accepted the abysmal amount they received when they put their property on the market. In ordinary times, the house, which they had bought in 2010, would have sold for Rs 20 lakh. However, with the property market down due to the pandemic, they could sell it for just Rs 12 lakh. The loss of Rs 8 lakh was worth it, they said, since they continued to feel unsafe in their Shiv Vihar neighbourhood long after the overt violence ended. “Hindus in our lane had been making daily life difficult for us since the riots,” said Fiza’s mother, Nasreen (name changed)*. “They created a problem even if we walked past them. When they saw us walking down the lane, they used to call us ‘coronavirus’ and cover their mouths.” She added: “They used to taunt us, saying that we were the rioters and we lack faith because we eat biryani.” Fiza had grown up in that lane and was doubly upset when her family moved away, first, because she missed her home and second, because none of her close friends came to visit her when she was leaving. “They were behaving as if they don’t know us. We played Holi together, celebrated Eid together and used to go for our tuition sessions together. How can they forget all that?” she asked. “When they saw us emptying the house our father loved, they slammed their doors loudly.” According to Nasreen, the neighbourhood had been a happy place until the riots. “This year, our voices couldn’t escape our throats to wish them a happy Holi, we were so scared of being attacked. Till now, our cheeks waited every year for their Holi colours and their plates waited for our Eid sewaiyaan (sweet vermicelli).” Like Fiza’s family, Irfan (36) has sold a portion of his property at a loss of Rs 4 lakh. This portion had been a general store run by his family till the violence earlier this year, when it was looted and vandalised. Now his family has begun the process of seeking a home elsewhere so they can move out of Shiv Vihar permanently. “Our children have been terrified since they witnessed the riots; they aren’t able to come out of the house because of their fear,” Irfan told The Wire. Scarred by being targets of violence and plagued by financial losses due to the riots, Irfan’s family accepted the sale of their property at a lower rate due to their urgent need for money. “People here have never been communal in nature; the Hindu-Muslim divide has come to influence them since the riots,” Rizwan told The Wire. “Muslim sellers who come to me wish to sell their property and shift to Mustafabad, to live among their own community https://thewire.in/communalism/muslims-northeast-delhi-sell-homes-harassment-riots Monthly update 13:September 2020 : Muslims in India This page updates news related to the plight of Muslims in India . 1. Facebook In India: Sep., 11, 2020: A letter addressed to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and his second-in-command Sheryl Sandberg wanted the social network's India policy chief Ankhi Das sidelined pending the results of a civil rights audit. "Facebook should not be complicit in more offline violence, much less another genocide, but the pattern of inaction displayed by the company is reckless to the point of complicity," said the letter signed by more than 40 groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Witness, Muslim Advocates, and Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. The letter comes in the wake of controversy over anti-Muslim remarks posted on the page of a member of the ruling party that were not initially removed. Facebook has acknowledged in the past that it needs to do more to fight hate speech in India. The social network did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. India is the American firm's biggest market with more than 300 million users while the company's messaging app, WhatsApp, boasts 400 million users in the world's second-most populous nation. Dozens of Muslims have been lynched in the past six years by vigilantes, with many of the incidents triggered by fake news regarding cow slaughter or smuggling shared on WhatsApp. Opposition parties said the social media company favours the BJP after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Facebook's Ankhi Das refused to take down anti-Muslim comments by Raja Singh because it could damage the company's business interests. The social media giant admitted last month that it has to do better to curb hate speech as it battled a storm over how it handled comments by a member of India's ruling party who called Muslims traitors. A 2019 analysis by Equality Labs, a South Asia research organisation, showed that groups sharing anti-Muslim content on Facebook included supporters of Modi's party or were linked to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation and the ideological parent of the BJP. It found that 93 percent of the hate speech reported to Facebook was not removed. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/facebook-bias-spurs-violence-india-rights-groups-200910053833321.html 2. Ladakh: Sep., 12, 2020: China and India agreed on Friday that troops from both countries should “quickly disengage” troops from their disputed Himalayan borde rafter months of tension. In their first formal agreement since a deadly clash in June, the foreign ministers from both countries also agreed to work out a new framework to maintain peace at the border.But analysts said the deal’s prospects were undermined by battered trust on both sides. In a joint statement released early on Friday, the two foreign ministers said the stand-off was “not in the interest of either side”, and “the border troops of both sides should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions”. “The ministers agreed that as the situation eases, the two sides should expedite work to conclude new confidence-building measures to maintain and enhance peace and tranquility in the border areas,” the statement said, adding that both sides should avoid any action that could escalate matters. In a Chinese foreign ministry statement after the Moscow meeting, Wang said China-India relations had reached “a crossroad”, and both sides would have to stick to the correct path. According to Associated Press and Reuters, Indian officials said Jaishankar told Wang that India was deeply concerned about the build-up of Chinese forces on the Line of Actual Control on the poorly defined border. Jaishankar said the immediate task would be for troops to step back from the “areas of friction” so that things did not get worse, an Indian source said. Fudan University international relations professor Lin Minwang said it was too early to say if the border tensions had reached a turning point, with India stopping short of an explicit commitment to withdraw troops. “I think if Indian troops do not withdraw from their position, occupied since late August, the probability of resolving the stand-off by the end of the year is low,” Lin said. He said both sides apparently realised the need for a new arrangement to manage their border areas but the difficulty of reaching a consensus should not be underestimated. “The existing arrangement has been damaged – at least rules were violated with the firing-in-the-air incident, and the Line of Actual Control was breached,” he said. Liu Zongyi, a South Asia expert with the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, agreed that trust had been damaged. “The original confidence-building measures to keep peace and tranquillity at the border – including the no-fire rule – has been broken, especially after the fatal clash at Galwan Valley on June 15,” Liu said, referring to what Chinese experts see as New Delhi’s effective authorisation for forward troops to open fire in the aftermath of the deadly brawl. “Both sides have had several diplomatic consultations since the tension arose in the Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso, but what the Indian foreign affairs and defence departments said was not consistent with what they did. We still need to observe and ... to be prepared for any eventuality.” “The principle of disengagement has to be decided at the political level. It cannot be decided by the commanders,” said Hooda, who was the commanding officer of the Indian Army’s Northern Command. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3101102/first-agreement-between-china-and-india-june-clash-pledge?utm_medium=email&utm_source=mailchimp&utm_campaign=enlz-scmp_china&utm_content=20200911&tpcc=enlz-scmp_china&MCUID=5db4b6f7af&MCCampaignID=cafd52ccf8&MCAccountID=3775521f5f542047246d9c827&tc=5 3. US : Sep., 21, 2020: Ten Republican and four Democratic senators have reportedly signed a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanding that India be designated ‘Country of Particular Concern’ (CPC), which is the US government’s special term for countries that have questionable standards of religious freedom. Earlier, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had recommended that India be designated CPC. The Coalition to Stop Genocide in India, a broad coalition of Indian American and US-based civil rights organizations and activists, has welcomed the letter by the 14 senators. “We are encouraged to see the pressure from Congress to designate India a Country of Particular Concern. The US should always lead with its values and hold our friends accountable when they miss the mark on religious freedom,” said Matias Perttula, Advocacy Director, International Christian Concern. “The Modi government must move away from its radical agenda and secure the rights and liberties of all religious minorities in India as is guaranteed in its constitution.” Added Ahsan Khan, National President, IAMC: “The Senators’ letter to Secretary Pompeo shows that there is a strong bipartisan Congressional support for holding India accountable for its escalating violence against its principal minorities, the Muslims and the Christians. The US Government must designate India as CPC.” The Senators who have reportedly signed the letter are James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota), Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), Steve Daines (R-Montana), Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). Previously, US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called out the Centre’s repression of minority communities in India, especially the treatment of people in Kashmir in wake of the abrogation of Article 370. In July, San Francisco passed a resolution opposing CAA-NRC-NPR. Similar resolutions had also been passed by Seattle (Washington), Albany (New York), St. Paul (Minnesota), Hamtramck (Michigan) and Cambridge (Massachusetts). https://indicanews.com/2020/09/19/india-to-be-registered-as-an-offender-of-religious-freedom-according-to-14-us-senators/ 4. EU: Sep., 25, 2020: Speakers of a webinar in Brussels called upon the European Union (EU) to insist on safeguarding the human rights particularly rights of the oppressed people of Jammu and Kashmir in its strategic partnership negotiations with India. The webinar titled, “India’s Democracy: Shrinking Space for Freedom of Expression, Press Freedom and Human Rights Defenders,” was organized by Kashmir Council Europe (KCEU) based in Brussels, the European capital.Speaking on the occasion, the KCEU Chairman, Ali Raza Syed, said that the EU should pay attention of the worse situation of human rights in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir as well as different parts of India where minorities and lower castes were being oppressed by the extremists backed by the state. As the topic of his speech was “EU-India Relations (Free Trade Agreement) and the human rights dimensions,” Ali Raza Syed reiterated that EU’s authorities have already decided to strengthen the EU-India Strategic Partnership based on shared principles and values of democracy, freedom, rule of law, and respect for human rights, aiming at delivering concrete benefits for the people in the EU and India. He added, the leaders of the European Union should not ignore the fact that India continuously harms the human rights in IIOJK. He further said, the rapporteurs of the UN observed continued deterioration of human rights conditions in IIOJK following severe restrictions imposed after 5th August 2019, in particular illegal detentions, violations to the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment and sacked the citizen rights of the people of the occupied territory. The KCEU Chairman also drew attention towards the Indian attempt for demographic changes in Jammu and Kashmir saying that the situation is getting even worse as up to 25,000 non-Kashmiri people have been granted domicile certificates in IIOJK since May 18 this year which is raising fears of the beginning of demographic changes of the disputed region. This certificate, a sort of citizenship right, entitles a person to residency and government jobs in the region, which till last year was reserved only for the local Kashmiri population. Another speaker of the online seminar Khaoula Siddiqi, Co-founder of Student International League of Kashmir (SILK) based in Canada said, around 38,000 additional troops from Indian were brought into IIOJK to enforce military lockdown in august last year, which in addition to the 800,000 that had already existed there and now Jammu and Kashmir is one of the most densely militarized region in the world. “Kashmiris were cut off the internet and telephone services and public prayer was prohibited. 100 of the main political people were placed under preventive detention including almost all of the elected legislators of IIOJK, not to mention the lawyers, journalists, teachers who fight for human rights and freedom of expression. In addition there were thousands of youth who were also detained and held in various jails in India and even detention places some of them are still unknown. Industries have suffered large economical blows, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, schools and universities have been greatly affected, health care has been restricted even during COVID-19 and the media has been shut down,” she said. Farzana Yaqoob, Former Minister For Social Welfare and Women Development, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, in her speech said, it has been over 70 years that the situation in IIOJK went from bad to worse. “The life of the women is even worse because not only they have to go through the agony of sexual violence but they also have to suffer the loneliness and the constant fear that their children, their brothers and their husbands once they leave house that they will not come back. Every women live in tears of fear that they might never see their loved ones back alive, and this is extremely painful situations to live in,” she added. Ewout Klei, Historian & Editor of de Kanttekening Magazine from Holland, who was also among the speakers said, freedom of the press in IIOJK is under serious threats from Indian forces as a report of an international media institute urged the Indian government to end restrictions and harassment of journalists. He also quoted a statement of the Press Club of India and said that “the Cyber Police appears to be super-active” in the Kashmir region, “parsing every word written and then summoning journalists to the police station”. “Journalists in Kashmir have been summoned and questioned by the police, the filing of first information reports (FIRs) against them for their journalistic work appears to be the latest trend or tool to target the media in Kashmir. Besides legal harassment and the monitoring of content of news reports and social media, journalists have also been subjected to physical attacks like beatings since August last year,” he deplored. Ms Iffy Bukhari, the Student in International Relations and Politics at University of Sheffield (UK) in her speech said, Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of India. She said, the native thought streams became highly relevant in Indian history when they helped form a distinctive identity in relation to the Indian polity and provided a basis for questioning colonialism. They inspired the independence movements against the British Raj based on armed struggle, coercive politics, and non-violent protests. They also influenced social reform movements and economic thinking in India. After the landslide victory, critics wondered whether Modi would double down on the Hindu nationalism and illiberalism that characterized his first term in office, or rein it in. In the months since then, the answer has become clearly the former. In August, Modi revoked Kashmir’s special status and imposed a media and internet blackout on the territory, she said. The speakers also condemned recent extrajudicial killing of Kashmiri youth and urged the world community to help stop crimes against humanity in IIOJK and play its role for a peaceful and just resolution of the Kashmir dispute. https://kmsnews.org/news/2020/09/23/speakers-urge-eu-to-insist-on-human-rights-in-its-talks-with-india 5. AI to leave India: Sep., 30, 2020: Amnesty International says it is halting work in India due to a “continuing crackdown” and “harassment” by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The human rights watchdog said the bank account of its India branch has been frozen by the right-wing government, forcing it to lay off staff and stop campaign and research work in the South Asian nation. It also accused the government of running an “incessant witch hunt” campaign against human rights organisations over “unfounded and motivated” allegations. The group said it has been facing a crackdown over the past two years over allegations of financial wrongdoing that it said were baseless. Its bank accounts were frozen on September 10, the group said. “The continuing crackdown on Amnesty International India over the last two years and the complete freezing of bank accounts is not accidental,” said Avinash Kumar, Executive Director of Amnesty International India, in a statement on Tuesday. Amnesty said the federal financial crimes investigation agency, the Enforcement Directorate, had targeted it.“The constant harassment by government agencies including the Enforcement Directorate is a result of our unequivocal calls for transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi police and the Government of India regarding the grave human rights violations in Delhi riots and Jammu & Kashmir. Amnesty and other groups have accused police of complicity in the riots in Delhi in which at least 50 people were killed, most of them Muslims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced accusations that it is clamping down on dissent, including in Muslim-majority Kashmir, where rebels have battled government forces for more than 30 years. Activist Kavita Krishnan told Al Jazeera it was a “very deliberate” attempt by the Indian government to suppress an international human rights organisation. “It’s a direct attempt by the Indian government to tell international human rights group that if you document rights violations by the Indian state we won’t let you continue to function in India,” said Krishnan, who is also the secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA).“I think this raises a big question which the world needs to wake up and recognise that India is no longer a functioning democracy. “We need to wake up and understand what is happening in India to rights defenders, many of whom are in jail under draconian laws,” she said. Opposition politician Shashi Tharoor said Amnesty’s exit was a blow.“India’s stature as a liberal democracy with free institutions, including media & civil society organisations, accounted for much of its soft power in the world. Actions like this both undermine our reputation as a democracy & vitiate our soft power,” he said on Twitter. Last week, the government enacted changes in the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill setting new conditions for organisations. Some NGOs said the measures seeking tighter control of funds were aimed at creating an air of distrust. Kumar said more than four million Indians have supported Amnesty’s work in the last eight years and about 100,000 Indians had donated money. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/29/amnesty-says-its-halting-work-in-india-due-to-govt-witch-hunt 6. Babri Mosque: Sep., 30, 2020: A special court in Lucknow delivered the much-awaited judgment on Wednesday in the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case. All the 32 accused, including BJP veterans L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, have been acquitted. The case relates to the razing of the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ayodhya-babri-masjid-demolition-case-verdict/article32728552.ece 7. EU: Oct., 7, 2020: Maria Arena, the Chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights has cautioned against the increasing attacks on religious minorities in India, stating that it carries serious implications on European Union and India’s bilateral relations. “It is with great concern that I have been observing the rule of law deteriorate in India, which is the very cornerstone of our special relationship,” said Arena. She continued that marginalized communities and religious minorities in India, particularly Muslims, “have been under increasing pressure for a long time” for being critics of government policies under the Narendra Modi regime. While mentioning attacks on Muslims in India, Arena also quoted the Amnesty International India report that revealed “grave human rights violations committed by the Delhi police in the February 2020 Delhi riots.” Concerning the same, she said, “I strongly support the call for a prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into all human rights violations committed by law enforcement officials.” She further called for “a fully independent, public and transparent inquiry into the role of the police in failing to prevent the violence,” accusing the police of “even aiding it.” Arena expressed serious concerns about “the absence of action by India’s authorities since the outbreak of the violence,” urging the BJP government at the Centre to “promote justice and fight impunity” to ensure stop and prevention of police brutality. She also indicated that Amnesty International India’s recent halting its work in India due to government reprisals is “very worrying.” Speaking on press gag and witch hunt of scholars in India over the anti-CAA protests, Arena said that such government action “have resulted in arbitrary detentions and an unnecessary loss of life.” Arena reminded the Indian government that “as a sitting member of the Human Rights Council, India has pledged to continue to foster the genuine participation and effective involvement of civil society in the promotion and protection of human rights,” therefore, the authorities must fulfil its duty as a responsible member of the Council. She concluded that India must act “in a manner worthy of the global role model it aspires to be,” highlighting that it is “high time for India to translate words into action. http://twocircles.net/2020oct07/439268.html Monthly update 12:August 2020 : Muslims in India 1. Muslims In Civil Service: Aug., 5, 2020: The UPSC has recruited 42 Muslim candidates through the Civil Services Exam (CSE) for the 2019 batch — up from 28 last year. Safna Nazarudeen, who ranked 45, has secured the highest rank among Muslim candidates and is the only one from the community among the top 100. According to the CSE results released by the UPSC Tuesday, a total of 829 candidates have cleared the latest exam. Muslim candidates comprise 5 per cent of this, as has been the trend over the last few years. Muslims are believed to constitute nearly 15 per cent of India’s population.The number of Muslim candidates picked last year was 28, or 4 per cent of the 759 candidates recruited https://theprint.in/india/governance/5-muslims-among-new-civil-services-recruits-only-one-in-top-100/474488/ 2. Ram Mandir: Aug., 6, 2020: August 5 – the date chosen consciously by baleful men to humiliate the people of India whose independence on August 15 they never fought for – will go down in history as a day that celebrates the triumph of vandalism and destruction over renewal and regeneration, crime and illegality over law and justice, fiction and fabrication over reality and truth.On the appointed day, when India slept, the people of Kashmir awoke to curfew and unfreedom. On the appointed day, a group of criminals among those assembled in Ayodhya basked in the freedom they have to build a temple – their temple, and not Rama’s and certainly not India’s – despite belonging in prison for having planned and orchestrated the demolition of a mosque that stood in its place for over four centuries.With Prime Minister Narendra Modi supervising the obsequies, the wreckage of what remains of the Indian constitution has been interred in the foundations of the temple that his organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is building with the full backing of the ‘secular’ Indian state. I say ‘what remains of the constitution’ because key sections of that document had already been waterboarded and drowned in the dark waters of Dal Lake – its pages torn and scattered in the days, weeks and months which followed the scrapping of Article 370 and 35A last August. Both these acts which help to define the ‘New India’ Modi is ushering in – of turning citizens (in Kashmir, but later elsewhere) into subjects without fundamental rights, of allowing Hindu chauvinist criminals to take control of the scene of their crime and present their factional project as a ‘national’ one – would not have been possible without the indulgence of the Supreme Court. But as a journalist, I find the complicity of the media to be just as shocking.The campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid and replace it with a Ram temple was first and always an RSS-BJP campaign. From the mid-1980s to the destruction of the mosque on December 6, 1992, the BJP used the RSS cadre base to launch a highly visible agitation. And though the resulting communal polarisation helped the BJP grow its presence in parliament from two seats in 1984 to 85 in 1989 and 182 a decade later, its vote share, even when Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister in 1999, never exceeded 24%. A decade later, the party’s vote share had fallen to 18% and though Narendra Modi has increased the BJP’s votes, the 2019 election saw only 37% of Indians voting in an ‘either you’re with us or against us’ fight for the party whose manifesto promised a lot of things and also a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Modi fast-tracked the mandir project through the courts even as he used his control over the Central Bureau of Investigation to ensure the criminal case against the conspirators who demolished the mosque made no progress. The court’s verdict was perverse – it accepted that the Muslims had been illegally and forcibly dispossessed of their mosque and that the 1992 demolition was a crime, and yet allowed the site to be given to those who were still standing trial for that crime. What made this bizarre verdict possible was that very criminal act, without which the court would have had to order a historic mosque’s demolition in order to allow the Sangh parivar to have its way. I like to believe our lordships would have baulked at delivering such an order. After the verdict, the government promptly announced the establishment of a trust to oversee the temple. However, the pretence of this being a non-partisan project came to an end quickly when Nritya Gopal Das and Champat Rai – key figures in the Sangh’s temple agitation who have been indicted by the CBI for demolishing the Babri masjid and can still be imprisoned for the crime – emerged as president and secretary of the trust, respectively. On August 5, Modi laid the foundation stone for a structure conceived in the crucible of lies and deceit, violence and bloodshed. He can call it a temple; perhaps he can convince millions of people that it is a temple. But nothing spiritual or holy can ever emerge from a structure built by men who have spent their entire political career demolishing law, morality and the bonds of unity that unite Indians with each other. https://thewire.in/communalism/sangh-parivar-august-5-kashmir-ayodhya 3. Protests: Aug., 13, 2020: At least three people have died in southern India's Bengaluru city after protesters clashed with police over a provocative social media post about the Prophet Muhammad, police have told Reuters news agency. The Facebook post offensive to Muslims sparked protests in India's tech hub on Tuesday night in which a police station was attacked, and a politician's house and vehicles were torched Pant said the person responsible for the offensive post had been arrested. It gave the first name of the accused man as Naveen, and said he is the nephew of Congress politician R Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy, whose house was attacked and burned in the violence. The post, which reportedly involved the Prophet Mohammed, has since been deleted. Facebook did not immediately comment on the issue. Muslim leaders and politicians urged people to refrain from violence."There is a youth who is related to a local politician. He has posted that 'I am not secular' and then also posted a derogatory post on social media against Prophet Muhammad, which angered people," Maulana Mohammed Maqsood Imran Rasheedi, a top Muslim religious leader in Bengaluru, told Anadolu https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/india-deadly-violence-breaks-bengaluru-facebook-post-200812033701368.html 4. FaceBook India Tilt: Aug., 16, 2020: An India right-wing politician who has called for violence against Muslims and threatened to raze mosques continues to remain active on Facebook and Instagram, even though officials at the social media giant had ruled earlier this year the lawmaker violated the company's hate-speech rules, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The move to not proceed against T. Raja Singh, a member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party, came after Facebook's top public-policy executive in India, Ankhi Das, opposed applying the hate-speech rules to Singh and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence, the newspaper quoted current and former employees as saying. According to the report, Facebook employees charged with policing the platform had concluded by March that Singh's rhetoric against Muslims and Rohingya immigrants online and offline not only violated hate-speech rules but he also qualified as "dangerous" for his words could lead to real-world violence against Muslims. Yet, instead of following the officials' recommendation to permanently ban him from the platform, the company allowed Singh, a member of the Telangana Legislative Assembly, to remain active on Facebook and Instagram, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers. The decision was influenced by Das, whose job also includes lobbying the Indian government on Facebook’s behalf, telling staff members that punishing violations by politicians from the BJP would "damage the company’s business prospects in the country", which is Facebook’s biggest global market by number of users, the exposé said.The way Facebook has applied its hate-speech rules to prominent Hindu nationalists in India "suggests that political considerations also enter into the calculus" of policing hate speech, it added. Current and former Facebook employees cited in the report said Das’s intervention on behalf of Singh is part of "a broader pattern of favouritism by Facebook toward Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu hard-liners. While on the one hand Facebook refused to censor hate content by BJP lawmakers, a couple of years ago the social media giant had come under sharp criticism for censoring content by journalists and academics against Indian oppression and violence in the occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir. In 2016, Facebook censored dozens of posts related to the death of Burhan Wani, a locally revered Kashmiri freedom fighter, reported The Guardian. Photos, videos and entire accounts of academics and journalists as well as entire pages of local newspapers were removed for posting about the occupied valley. During that time, the Indian government had imposed curbs on newspapers but residents of occupied Kashmir complained that censoring posts on Facebook made information blackouts worse. Due to limited access to newspapers and TV channels, journalists and news organisations would keep readers informed by updates on social media, until the social media giant started censoring news articles and updates about occupied Kashmir. The Facebook account of Kashmiri journalist Huma Dar, who is based in the United States, was deleted soon after she posted pictures of Wani's funeral. She was told that she had "violated community standards" when she wrote to the company."The biggest irony is that I get death threats, I get people saying they’ll come and rape me and my mother. None of those people, even when I complain to Facebook, have ever been censored," she told The Guardian. https://www.dawn.com/news/1574532/facebook-refused-to-check-hate-speech-by-indias-bjp-fearing-business-fallout-wsj-report 5. Cow vigilantism: Aug., 22, 3030: Two men were seriously injured on August 15 after the latest attack on Muslims by Hindu “gau rakshaks,” or cow protectors. “Cow vigilantism” is well-documented across India, where Hindu groups take action against Muslims accused of transporting, harming or slaughtering bovine animals. This attack follows a pattern of similar actions against the Gujjar Muslim community in northern India. Videos of the event posted online show herdsman Muhammad Asghar and his nephew Javeed Ahmad attacked, dragged outside and hit with sticks by a mob reciting Hindu nationalist slogans, even as a police officer arrives and attempts to stop the violence. The beating occurred in the Garri Gabbar village in the Reasi district in India’s northern Jammu division, where the local Muslim population belongs mainly to the Gujjar ethnic group. https://observers.france24.com/en/20200820-cow-vigilante-attack-india-gujjar-muslim# 6. Naik: Aug., 25, 2020: Zakir Naik claimed, “Onslaught on Muslim minorities in India over the last four-six years and noted that Indian Muslims were divided along sectarian lines fighting and criticising each other. Zakir Naik categorised his response into two, “Muslims as a whole and as individuals.” Naik said that Indian Muslims as a whole should be united. “Noting they are divided on a basis of different sects in Islam, and belonging to different political parties and social organisations,” he added. Naik urged the Indian Muslims to do Hijra (migration) to other countries or states if they are a minority where they live. Zakir Naik said Muslims who could not move out of the country could go to another state, “which is more lenient towards Muslims”. Naik added that the best state I can think of” is Kerala. He has advised the Indian Muslims to form their own political party https://dailytimes.com.pk/658549/indian-muslims-should-form-own-political-party-zakir-naik/ 7. Delhi Police: Aug., 29, 2020: Police in Delhi were "complicit and an active participant" in the February violence in which 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed, according to an investigation by Amnesty International India."The Delhi police personnel were complicit and an active participant in the violence that took place in Delhi in February 2020, yet in the last six months not a single investigation has been opened into the human rights violations committed by the Delhi police," the rights group said in a statement on Friday. The police were accused of either supporting the mobs or looking the other way as the capital burned accusations. "This ongoing state-sponsored impunity sends the message that the law enforcement officials can commit grave human rights violations and evade accountability. That they are a law unto themselves," Kumar, the Amnesty International India head, said. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/india-police-complicit-anti-muslim-riots-alleges-amnesty-200827095318194.html 8. Facebook and Muslims: Aug., 31, 2002: The social media platform has been used to incite and condone violence against adherents of the Islamic faith, from Myanmar to Kashmir to Palestine The social media giant Facebook poses an existential threat to vulnerable Muslim communities. This assessment is based on how Facebook has failedto prevent its platform from being used to incite mob violence against adherents of the Islamic faith. Palestinian and Kashmiri human rights activists have long complained of having their accounts suspended or permanently deleted after posting videos of Indian and Israeli soldiers carrying out human rights violations. "Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended," said Yanghee Lee, a UN investigator who in 2018 described the social media platform as a vehicle for inciting "acrimony, dissension and conflict" and driving the Rohingya Muslim genocide in Myanmar. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal has revealed that when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable Muslim minorities, Facebook not only puts profits and politics before social and moral responsibility, but also before its stated user policies or what it calls "community standards" - as evidenced by how it refused to punish a right-wing Indian politician for advocating violence against Muslims because doing so would be bad for the company's business These revelations should be seen not as an isolated incident, but rather in the broader context of Facebook managing its business in a way that puts it in lockstep with the Hindu nationalist agenda - because India, with its more than 290 million Facebook users, represents a key market. "For years now, verified Facebook pages of BJP leaders such as Kapil Mishra have routinely published hate speeches against Muslims and dissenting voices. The hate then translates into deadly violence, such as the anti-Muslim attacks in Delhi that left many people dead in February in some of the worst communal violence India's capital had seen in decades," observed Indian journalist Rana Ayyub. "... It's clear that Facebook has no intention of holding hate-mongers accountable and that the safety of users is not a priority." In June, after The Gambia requested in a US District Court for Facebook to release "all documents and communications produced, drafted, posted or published on the Facebook page" of Myanmar military officials and security forces, in order to evaluate what role they played in the mass violence against the Rohingya, Facebook indicated that it would evaluate the request. The hopes of Rohingya activists were buoyed when Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, acknowledged the company had found "clear and deliberate attempts to covertly spread propaganda that were directly linked to the Myanmar military". "I wouldn't say Facebook is directly involved in the ethnic cleansing, but there is a responsibility they had to take proper action to avoid becoming an instigator of genocide," Thet Swe Win, who founded Synergy, a group devoted to encouraging social cohesion in Myanmar, told the New York Times. This month, however, Facebook rejected The Gambia's request, arguing that the release of "all documents and communications" by key military officials and police forces was "extraordinarily broad" and would constitute "special and unbounded access" to accounts. The profit motive apparently drives Facebook to stand with powerful states and against the victimised and downtrodden. The idea that Facebook is an impartial platform built on fairness and equality for all is patently absurd, given that it is a for-profit corporation that bases its commercial decisions on the quest for ever-higher revenues. There is much evidence of this in both India and Israel/Palestine. A 2019 report noted that WhatsApp, the messaging app now owned by Facebook, blocked or shut down around 100 accounts belonging to Palestinian journalists and activists, banning them from sharing information and updates as Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza in November 2019. Facebook has also been accused of showing favouritism to Israel by categorising vague or even commonly used Arabic terms or slogans as "incitement to violence," while simultaneously turning a blind eye to Israeli accounts that openly call for "death to Arabs". Facebook has revealed a "political bias in favour of elevating the Israeli narrative while suppressing the Palestinian one," observed +972 Magazine. Marwa Fatafta, a Palestinian writer and policy analyst, says that Facebook "cannot use ignorance as an excuse," noting that "economic and political incentives" explain why social media companies comply with Israeli government requests. In Kashmir as well, journalists and human rights activists have for years accused Facebook of censoring content that casts Indian security forces in a negative light. Four weeks after India revoked Kashmir's autonomous status in August 2019, Facebook suspended scores of accounts over posts on the disputed territory, including "Stand With Kashmir," a page owned and managed by a Kashmiri American based in Chicago."Why is it that only Muslims get blocked? Facebook is being one-sided by supporting the atrocities committed by the Indian army. Other people can say whatever they want, but if Muslims say something, we get blocked. It is not neutral," Rizwan Sajid, a Kashmiri activist, told the Guardian. What's clear is that Facebook, like much of the international community, appears to hold a bias against Muslims, because the international community is oriented towards the economic and strategic interests of non-Muslim majority countries, where the social media giant exacts the lion's share of its profits. Amarnath Amarasingam is an expert in violent extremism and the author of Sri Lanka: The Struggle For Peace in the Aftermath of War. He told MEE: "Many of the more frontline people at Facebook dealing with hate speech and incidents of violence against minorities - often Muslims - in places like India, Myanmar [and] Sri Lanka are quite knowledgeable, and I've found them to be eager and open when it comes to reaching out to experts and learning about the ground realities. I fear that at the leadership level, different calculations are at play."When it comes to the choice between social responsibility and responsibility to shareholders, it would appear that Facebook is eschewing measures that might impede delivering greater profits to the latter https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-facebook-threatens-vulnerable-muslim-communities 9. CAA protest from Australia: Sep., 3, 2020: Australian politician and Greens party MP David Shoebridge recently tabled a motion in the New South Wales parliament’s Legislative Council, calling for greater attention to India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and the Modi government’s reaction to the protests against it. “The citizenship legislation is a effectively being used to revoke the citizenship of religious minorities and will result in statelessness for many vulnerable, marginalised groups.“Large numbers of people have been declared to be foreigners left at risk of statelessness by citizenship verification processes of questionable legality and protests and dissent have been met with an authoritarian government response and civil liberties have been dramatically curtailed.”Not only were protesters subject to police violence during the protests, but intellectuals, activists and students who were active in the anti-CAA protest scenario have been arrested amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, in the aftermath of violence in northeast Delhi.“This house calls on the Australian government, (a) require an ongoing dialogue as part of its broader engagement with the Modi administration that critically reviews Indian Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, and (b) they renegotiate trade agreements between Australia and India so that they include a human rights clause,” Shoebridge ultimately said. The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah terming the detentions of several Indian human rights activists as ‘arbitrary’. The IFHR has raised concerns, saying the activists have been arrested for “their participation in peaceful protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA)” in the last few months. https://thewire.in/world/australia-citizenship-amendment-act-david-shoebridge Weekly update 51: Human rights violations in Indian Occupied Kashmir from Aug., 18, 2020 to Aug., 25, 2020 1. Youth martyred: Aug., 20, 2020: In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Indian troops in their fresh acts of state terrorism martyred three Kashmiri youth in Kupwara and Shopian district, today.The troops martyred the two youth during a cordon and search operation in Kralgund area of the Handwara. Earlier, the troops martyred one youth in Mulu area of Shopian district. https://kmsnews.org/news/2020/08/19/indian-troops-martyr-one-kashmiri-youth-in-shopian-5/ 2. Youth martyred: Aug., 23, 2020: In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Indian troops in their fresh act of state terrorism martyred one Kashmiri youth in Baramulla district, today. The troops martyred the youth during a cordon and search operation at Saloosa in Kreeri area of the district. The operation continued till last reports came in. Indian police arrested two youth, Showkat Ahmed Butt and Aadil Fayaz Butt, from Ganderbal and Islamabad districts. https://kmsnews.org/news/2020/08/22/indian-troops-martyr-one-kashmiri-youth-in-baramulla-6/ 3. Cost of Kashmir struggle (From Jan 1989 till July 31, 2020) Total Killings * 95,647 Custodial Killings 7,144 Civilian arrested 160,621 Structures Arsoned/Destroyed 110,345 Women Widowed 22,917 Children Orphaned 107,797 Women gang-raped / Molested 11,214 4. (July 2020) Total Killings * 24 Custodial Killings 3 Tortured/Injured 59 Pellet Injured : 09 Persons whose sight in one eye has damaged 1 Persons whose one or both eyes are injured 3 Civilian arrested 98 Structures Arsoned/Destroyed 11 Women Widowed 1 Children Orphaned 4 Women gang-raped / Molested 7 5. From July 8, 2016) 6. Atrocities by Indian Troops (Jan-Jul 2020 ) Total Killings * 172 Custodial Killings 8 Tortured/Injured 492 Total pellet Injured 90 Persons whose sight in one eye has damaged 6 Persons whose one or both eyes are injured 13 Civilian arrested 2219 Arson (Houses etc) 888 Women Widowed 6 Children Orphaned 13 Women gang-raped / Molested 39 7. (Aug 5, 2019- July 2020) (Aug 5, 2019- July 2020) Total Killings * 214 Custodial Killings 16 Tortured/Injured 1390 Total pellet Injured 437 Persons whose sight in one eye has damaged 17 Persons whose one or both eyes are injured 134 Civilian arrested 13680 Arson (Houses etc) 946 Women Widowed 9 Children Orphaned 22 Women disgraced / Molested 84 8. Casualties during ongoing uprising (From July 8, 2016 - Jul 31 2020) Total Killings * 1275 Custodial Killings 86 Tortured/Injured 29125 Arrested 25566 Structures Arsoned/Destroyed 4267 Women Widowed 100 Children Orphaned 227 Women gang-raped / Molested 1021 Inured by pellets 10240 Eye-sight damaged/ at the verge of blindness 385 Compiled by Kashmir Media Service

Monthly update: Muslims in IndiaVolume II

This page will update the plight of Muslims (excluding Kashmir which is dealt  elsewhere) living in India on a monthly basis

For previous updates kindly visit

https://javedrashid.blogspot.com/2019/10/monthly-update-muslims-in-india-jr197.html

Monthly update 11:July 2020 : Muslims in India

1.     KBDS: Jul., 3, 2020: Pakistan is piling on pressure at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, but it all boils down to whether Arab powers will relent. Adding further specifics, Khan proposed a “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement against India, one modelled on the successful BDS Israel campaign, which began in 2005. Khan advocates that the import of 'non-halal meat and non-halal products from India' be banned.    But where there’s crisis, there’s also hope – and when it comes to Kashmir, hope can be found in Arab countries, where growing and measurable anger towards India’s repressive and discriminatory policies towards Muslims in Kashmir, and 180 million more in India, can be found. This rage was sparked thanks to efforts by right-wing Indians to blame Muslims for the spread of Covid-19, and anti-Muslim posts made on social media by Indian expatriates living in Dubai. “Thanks to anti-Muslim bias in the media and even official messaging over the coronavirus in India, the intelligentsia in India-friendly Gulf countries, like Kuwait and UAE, has started critically examining the ruling BJP’s attitudes towards Muslims and Arabs,” observes the Indian online newspaper The Wire. Moreover, Arab populations are now starting to identify and compare India’s recent moves in Kashmir with Israel’s illegal colonisation of the Palestinian territories, which leaves Arab rulers with reduced political space to continue their unfettered support for the current Indian government. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE may soon find it increasingly difficult to resist Pakistan’s call for a BDS campaign against New Delhi.None of this augurs well for Modi’s Hindu-nationalist agenda in Indian-occupied Kashmir. https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/can-pakistan-trigger-a-bds-campaign-against-india-over-kashmir-37801

2.     Muslim massacre: Jul., 7, 2020: “I just killed two Muslims at around 9 pm in B Vihar...and threw them in the drain...with my team...you know that I am always at the forefront in such acts).This message was sent at 11.49 PM on 26 February by Ganga Vihar resident Lokesh Solanki alias Rajput on a WhatsApp group called “Kattar Hindut Ekta”. This was in the middle of the Northeast Delhi riots. At least nine people, most of them members of this WhatsApp group, have now been arrested by the Delhi Police for killing Muslims in Bhagirathi Vihar that falls under Gokulpuri Police Station. According to the charge sheet, nine Muslims are said to have been killed in Bhagirathi Vihar on 25 and 26 February.   “Their modus operandi was: they used to catch the people and ascertain their religion by asking name, address and by their document ie Identity Card,” the charge sheets say.The police also say that victims were forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” several times.“They (the accused) were forcing them to call ‘Jai Shri Ram’ many times.” https://www.thequint.com/news/politics/northeast-delhi-riots-kattar-hindu-whatsapp-group-chargesheet-muslims

3.     Arrest: Jul., 8, 2020: Sharjeel Usmani, a student activist from Aligarh Muslim University, was arrested from his home at Azamgarh on Wednesday evening as the Uttar Pradesh police moved to turn the heat up on students and activists involved in protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act last December. Without showing any identification, they demanded to see Usmani’s room. “They confiscated his laptop, all his books, and a solitary set of clothes. Each of us was made to stand and be photographed, stating our relation to him”, Usmani’s brother Areeb said. He also said no female officer was present, even though there were women, such as Usmani’s maternal aunt, who were also compelled to get themselves photographed. Usmani was one of those who led protests against the CAA-NRC-NPR at AMU inside the campus. The police allege that the students threw stones and refused to disperse, claiming that 19 policemen were injured in the fray, after which they entered the campus with the university administration’s permission.Before he was picked up himself, Usmani had been a vocal critic of the targeting of other anti-CAA activists and students including Sharjeel Imam, Safoora Zargar, Umar Khalid, Aasif Iqbal Tanha, Chandrashekhar Ravan and Meeran Haider, who had been arrested under various acts such as NSA, UAPA, Goonda Act, and Sedition (IPC 124A). https://thewire.in/rights/amu-sharjeel-usmani-arrested-aligarh-caa-protest

4.     Biden on Kashmir: Jul., 12, 2020: The Biden administration, if elected, will raise the issue of Kashmir with India and would also convey its concerns on a recent Indian law that discriminates against Muslims, says the Biden campaign’s foreign policy adviser, Antony Blinken It was Mead who raised the issue of Kashmir in the conversation, pointing out that India had some serious human rights and democracy issues, particularly with Muslims, in Kashmir and elsewhere. “We obviously have challenges now and real concerns, for example, about some of the actions the Indian government has taken, particularly in cracking down on freedom of movement and freedom of speech in Kashmir, and about some of the laws on citizenship,” said Blinken while responding to the moderator. Blinken declares that concerns on recent Indian law that discriminates against Muslims will be conveyed to Delhi. Mead noted that while India was a democracy, “it has somewhat a different view of what that might mean than we do”.   https://www.dawn.com/news/1568227/biden-as-president-will-raise-kashmir-issue-with-india-says-his-adviser

5.     CAA protests: Jul., 14, 2020: Several anti-CAA activists and students have been arrested by the police in the past couple of months and incarcerated under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The FIRs on the basis they have been arrested contain no averment, let alone proof, that any of them have committed a single violent act. The suspicion, therefore, is that they have been targeted and charged for merely holding or expressing a different point of view. To beef up these allegations, “The students have also been booked for the offences of sedition, murder, attempt to murder, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and rioting.” Among those arrested is Safoora Zargar, a 27-year old research student from Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central university “Safoora was not arrested because she was involved in any act of violence, or because she was in possession of arms and ammunition, or because she has a criminal record. No, none of them. She was arrested under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA – and thrown in prison for no other reason but that she was an outspoken critic of CAA and mobilised others to peacefully oppose the law – as they have the democratic right to do. In other words, Safoora was arrested only because she exercised her right to dissent. The arbitrary manner in which the names of social activists Harsh Mander, D.S.Bindra and Dr. M.A. Anwar have cropped up in charge-sheets for allegedly aiding and abetting the riots are other examples. Apart from the high profile cases, a large number of people were taken into custody, most of them without charges, in the aftermath of the violence “Police have filed over 700 cases and arrested or detained 3,400 people in connection with the communal violence in northeast Delhi last month, officials said on Saturday [March 14, 2020].” However, till date, the names of those arrested or detained have not been made public, although furnishing the details of those arrested and in custody to the concerned families is necessary. It has been over 130 days since the riots/pogrom shook North-East Delhi, but the names of the 3400 arrested and detained suspects have not yet been displayed by the police outside the district control rooms in total disregard of the relevant sections of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), 1973. In fact, as per Section 41-C(3) This statement by the Delhi Police raises an important question. While PTI had reported on March 14 that the police had “arrested or detained 3,400 people in connection with the communal violence in northeast Delhi…”, the Delhi Police letter to The Hindu says the number of those arrested is only 1300. The Delhi Police have refrained from disclosing the number of those detained purportedly for riot-related violence, i.e., those who were taken into police custody but were eventually not arrested for any , there has been no effort to investigate, let alone proceed against leaders of the ruling BJP who made inflammatory speeches in the run up to the violence.Thus, one of the main alleged instigators, BJP politician Kapil Mishra, as well as Union minister of state for finance Anurag Thakur, who delivered an inflammatory speech on January 27, 2020, Parvesh Verma, who delivered an inflammatory speech on January 28, 2020, and Abhay Verma, who made a provocative statement on February 25, 2020, to arouse communal passions, continue to remain free.This is despite the fact that the Delhi high court bench of Justices S. Muralidhar and Talwant Singh took note of some of these speeches on February 26, 2020, and gave the Delhi Police time until February 27, 2020, to take a decision on filing FIRs against Mishra, Thakur, Parvesh and Abhay Verma. “When you’ve registered FIRs for damages to property, why aren’t you registering it for these speeches. Don’t you want to even acknowledge the presence of a crime?”, asked Justice Muralidhar. “Every day’s delay in registering FIR is crucial. The more and more you delay, the more problems are getting created.” .In fact, the Delhi Police has refused to register FIRs against several complaints filed with the police by victims. The Caravan published a report last month: “The Caravan is in possession of numerous complaints filed in February and March by residents of northeast Delhi, who wrote that they witnessed violence perpetrated by or at the behest of BJP leaders. Several complaints were copied to the prime minister’s office, the ministry of home affairs, the Delhi lieutenant governor’s office and multiple police stations. Many of them bore the stamp of the office or station that received the complaint, sometimes bearing multiple receiving stamps. The other BJP leaders named in these complaints include Satya Pal Singh, a member of parliament from Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat constituency who previously served as the commissioner of police in Mumbai; Nand Kishore Gujjar, UP’s MLA from Loni; Mohan Singh Bisht, the MLA from Delhi’s Karawal Nagar constituency; and Jagdish Pradhan, a former Delhi MLA from the Mustafabad constituency, who was defeated in the assembly elections held weeks before the violence broke out.” As if the police’s refusal to act against powerful people were not bad enough, the Caravan report alleges that the complainants are being intimidated too:“While the BJP leaders appear to be comfortably escaping culpability, the complainants said they continue facing threats on their lives and that of their families for attempting to pursue their complaints. Mehmood Pracha, an advocate who helped the residents file their complaints, said his main concern now was the security of the complainants. ‘The police is openly knocking at their doors, threatening them not to pursue’ the complaints, he said.” There have also been shocking reports of the Delhi Police hobnobbing with some of the rioters. According to the Deccan Herald: “While tributes poured in for Delhi Police head constable Ratan Lal who was killed in city violence evoking anger and outrage on social media, role of some of the cops has also come under cloud as several videos surfaced on social media on Tuesday [February 25], suggesting their complicity with the rioters in some of the violence-hit areas in the national capital….“In another video, a man was seen praising the Delhi Police as his companions hurled stones at a group of people on the other side while chanting Jai Shri Ram.” Video evidence of the Delhi Police sheltering pro-CAA rioters can be seen in the video footage, which has been authenticated by AltNews (Ahmedabad, March 12, 2020). According to AltNews:“The video reveals a heavy police presence in the area [Vijay Park, Babarpur]. Police vans are spotted on the left – the same direction in which the shooter runs after firing into the all[e]y. Here, policemen can be seen amidst the mob present outside the all[e]y….“Times Now [TV] ran a clipped video of the February 25 violence in Babarpur’s Vijay Park. The channel claimed that the man seen shooting in the video was aiming at policemen. Longer videos of the violence, however, reveal that the channel’s interpretation was grossly misleading. The man can be spotted running in the direction of the cops after he fires into a residential colony. Journalists who reported from the ground and area residents confirm that the shooter was part of the pro-CAA mob.”While there were reports of those among the police who seemingly had no reservations about hobnobbing with CAA-supporters, the manner in which sections of the police dealt with some of those who were perceived as anti-CAA protesters is an eye-opener. According to Newslaundry,“One of the most disturbing videos to emerge during the communal violence in Delhi shows five bloodied men spread out on a metalled road being beaten up and forced to sing the national anthem by, purportedly, a group of policemen. The incident, according to some of the victims and eyewitnesses, took place near Kardampuri on the afternoon of February 24. One of the victims was Faizan, 23, from Gali No.5, in Kardampuri. He succumbed to his injuries two days later, apparently after being denied medical treatment by the police.” Although the authenticity of the video has not been questioned [in fact, AltNews has reaffirmed its authenticity], the Delhi Police is yet to initiate action against the culprits in uniform. Indeed, the FIR files after Faizan’s death fails to mention the beating incident or name any suspect. What is also disturbing is the manner in which the police have attempted to erase evidence on the Delhi riots by destroying CCTVs. One such video was uploaded on YouTube by The Logical Indian on February 26, 2020. India Today TV also uploaded a video on YouTube on February 27, 2020, in which policemen can be seen in the presence of rioters who are throwing stones and attempting to destroy CCTVs (at 01.09 minutes of the video). But there is no information till date on whether the concerned police personnel have been taken to task. https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-riots-2020-double-standards

6.     Delhi riots: Jul., 16, 2020: One of the more disturbing aspects of the communal violence which took place in Delhi in February 2020 is the manner in which sections of mass media also came under attack for showing what was happening on the ground. Two Malayalam channels, Asianet News and Media One, were targeted, with the Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting issuing orders to ban their telecast for 48-hours, from 7.30 pm on March 6 to 7.30 pm on March 8, 2020. Among the remarks made by the Asianet News anchor/ correspondent in the February 25 telecast cited by the I&B ministry were the following:“The violence of the previous day has continued this morning. The violence turned into communal violence after a group of Hindu people chanted Jai Sri Ram and the Muslims shouted Azadi slogans. The commuters on the roads are forced to chant Jai Sri Ram. Muslims are brutally attacked. Union Home Ministry claims that 33 company central forces [about 4500 armed personnel] are deployed, but still violence continues in the areas. The Centre can control the violence within hours, but no action has been taken till now. Similarly, among the remarks made by the Media One anchor/ correspondent in the February 25 telecast cited by the I&B ministry were the following: “It seems the vandals and police are hand in glove “The provocative speech of BJP leader in Jafrabad has led to the violence and it seems vandals were prepared to target anti-CAA protesters. Delhi police has failed to register an FIR for hate speech…. But most significant thing is the inefficiency of Delhi police in containing the violence. In many areas police paved the way for vandals to roam free with weapons and carry out attacks and arson.” It is pertinent to note that the I&B ministry did not accuse either Asianet News or Media One of broadcasting fake news. The only fault of the two channels was that the news they were broadcast. It is against this larger political ba asting was completely at variance with the official narrative on the Delhi riots. In the face of protests against the unwarranted ban on the two channels, the ministry effectively nullified its orders dated March 6, 2020 with the result that both the news channels were back on the air within 14 hours of the ban – Asianet News by 1.30 am and Media One by 9.30 am on March 7. The accuracy of the reports of the two Malayalam news channels about the worsening situation in the riot/pogrom-hit areas which earned the wrath of the I&B ministry –“The Centre can control the violence within hours, but no action has been taken till now” (Asianet) and “It seems the vandals and police are hand in glove (Media One) as borne out by a concurrent event. The rioters were preventing the shifting of scores of seriously injured victims from Al Hind hospital to a better equipped hospital for proper treatment. The unwillingness of the police to act until the high court issued necessary orders to evacuate the injured from the Al Hind hospital to appropriate government hospitals spoke volumes about its conduct In short, there is plenty of evidence regarding the partisan role that the Delhi Police played or was compelled to play during the Delhi pogrom of February 2020   Yes, the anti-CAA protesters were wrong in blocking the road at Jaffrabad. However, it was still a peaceful protest – a matter that the Delhi Police could have easily handled and resolved. Instead, the police not only allowed ‘CAA supporters’ mobilised by BJP politicians to hold a counter-protest very close to the anti-CAA protest site but also chose to look the other way when the BJP’s Kapil Mishra delivered an incendiary speech, which instantly inflamed the passions of his supporters. Moreover, the intelligence wing of the Delhi Police alerted the police headquarters at least six times about the need to deploy more forces to prevent an outbreak of violence – warnings that the police headquarters and the Union home ministry conveniently ignored. The CAA supporters could have chosen a different location to demonstrate their support for the CAA if they had no intention of physically confronting the anti-CAA protesters. On the contrary, the very fact that they chose a spot near the site of the anti-CAA protest announced their intent to provoke a confrontation. As Prabhjit Singh has reported in Caravan magazine, at least two notable “outsiders” have been named by riot victims: BJP leaders Satya Pal Singh, a member of parliament from Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat constituency who previously served as the commissioner of police in Mumbai and Nand Kishore Gujjar, UP’s MLA from Loni. It is inconceivable that they would not have been accompanied by their supporters as well. There is no doubt that the spread of the anti-CAA movement across the country has been a grave irritant for the home ministry. Its efforts to brand the anti-CAA movement as ‘anti-national’ have been accompanied by a systematic and widespread campaign to portray the CAA in favourable light by repeatedly stating that there was nothing discriminatory about the CAA.      of video evidence by the police that was obtained through the use of drones is another disturbing   against the former civil servant-turned-activist for ‘contempt of court’ and instigating violence Register of Citizens (NRC), Ayodhya Verdict and Kashmir…‘ultimate justice’ could only be done on the streets.” The concerted attempts by the police and the wider Hindutva eco-system to pass off concocted stories as truths certainly indicate that there was a planned conspiracy to implicate the anti-CAA protesters as the perpetrators of the Delhi riots of 2020 as a way to quell the anti-CAA movement. The Delhi Police is busy executing that plan to perfection by providing full immunity to the real perpetrators of that heinous crime. https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-riots-2020-there-was-a-conspiracy-but-not-the-one-the-police-alleges

7.     Delhi Riots: Jul., 18, 2020: A government-appointed commission promoting the rights of India's religious minorities said police failed to protect Muslims campaigning against a new citizenship law during violent riots in Delhi this year. At least 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and more than 200 were injured in the worst communal violence in the Indian capital for decades. The clashes erupted amid an outcry over a new federal law laying out the path to citizenship for six religious groups from neighboring countries, except Muslims. Critics said the law was discriminatory and flouted India's secular constitution. The Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) said Muslim homes, shops and vehicles were selectively targeted during the rioting that erupted in northeast Delhi in February when protests against the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) broke out across the country. In all, 11 mosques, five madrasas or religious schools, a Muslim shrine and a graveyard were attacked and damaged, a team from the commission said in the report released on Thursday. The commission said police had charged Muslims for the violence even though they were the worst victims Attacks on minorities, especially Muslims, have risen sharply across India in the last few years under Modi's leadership. https://www.dailysabah.com/world/asia-pacific/indian-police-failed-to-protect-muslims-during-delhi-riots-report-says

8.     CAA and Canada: Jul., 20, 2020: Canada joined in with New Westminster in the province of British Columbia becoming the first Canadian city to join the chorus opposing the act that allows illegal immigrants of most religions to apply for Indian citizenship but leaves Muslims off the eligibility list. The New Westminster council motion, passed July 13, urged the Canadian government to “take a position in opposition” to the controversial Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) that became law in India in January. And India took particularly harsh action in the state of Kashmir, revoking the section of the constitution that guaranteed special rights to the Muslim majority state of 12.55 million (as of 2011). That added to the tension between India and Pakistan, where Islam is by far the main religion.   https://eurasiantimes.com/canada-denounces-the-indian-citizen-amendment-act-calls-it-discriminatory-against-muslims/

9.     BJP leader: Jul., 30, 2020: A BJP leader and Member of Legislative Assembly in Uttar Pradesh has sent a chilling message to the Muslims asking them to sacrifice their children instead of animals on Eid-ul-Azha. Nand Kishore, the BJP MLA from Loni assembly constituency in Ghaziabad, made these remarks at a time when the international community is pressing for more freedom for minorities in India. He also claimed that “meat spreads coronavirus” so people should not be allowed to sacrifice animals.“People who want to sacrifice on Eid should sacrifice their children. I will not let people consume meat and alcohol in Loni. We will not let people sacrifice innocent animals because meat spreads coronavirus,” the BJP legislator said while speaking to reporters https://kmsnews.org/news/2020/07/29/bjp-mlas-chilling-message-to-muslims-in-uttar-pradesh/

10.                        Muslim man attacked: Aug., 1, 2020: A Muslim man was brutally beaten up by a group of cow vigilantes in southwest of New Delhi in northern India for transporting cow meat.The incident happened in Gurugram area when around a dozen members allegedly belonging to a Cattle Protection Unit (CPU) thrashed the man identified as Lukma in the presence of police officials. Lukman said he had reached Sector 4-5 Chowk around 9am with a shipment of buffalo meat in his pickup van when the assailants started chasing him. “There were around eight to 10 men. They shouted at me to stop my vehicle. Fearing for my safety, I sped up. I had just stopped my vehicle in Sadar Bazar when the men reached me and pulled me out of the truck. They thrashed me with iron rods saying that I was transporting cow meat,” Lukman told police.When police tried to intervene, the youths attacked them and damaged their vehicle. https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/01-Aug-2020/muslim-man-thrashed-with-hammer-in-india-over-transporting-cow-meat #IslamoPhobia_in_India

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Monthly update: Muslims in India JR197 Volume II JR 231

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