“Mother India must be weeping” 3-3-2020

3, March 2020               “Mother India must be weeping”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a long history of fanning religions tensions dating back to the time when he was chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002. His failure to order the police to intervene when mobs of Hindus went on a rampage led to the killing of over 2,000 Muslims.

Responding to international outrage, Modi was denied a US visa from 2005 to 2014. He became a hero to Hindu nationalists and a pariah to Muslims.

The direct impact of polices enacted by Modi pouring hatred and intolerance into India’s eco system caused a recent bloodletting spree in New Delhi where Hindus targeted their Muslim neighbors unimpeded by the local police. An unhealthy culture of impunity exists which harks back to the savage killing of Sikhs in 1984 when 3,000 were slaughtered in New Delhi and an estimated 8,000 - 17,000 or more were killed in 40 cities across India. Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director for Human Rights Watch stated , “supporters of the government feel enabled to commit all kinds of crimes, because they feel they have political protection. They have allowed a culture of hate and bigotry to prevail.’’ Muslims in integrated neighborhoods no longer feel safe. Collectively they make up just 15 percent compared to 80 percent of Hindus. Modi’s election slogan in 2014 “Together for all, development for all” rings hollow. He seems hopelessly entrapped by the Hindu Nationalist party, the RSS’s ideology.Hindu lynch mobs have been guilty of scores of murders of Muslims and lower-caste Dalits under the pretext of protecting cows, a holy animal in Hinduism.Modi’s political appointments expose his religious fanaticism.Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, has called Muslims a “crop of two-legged animals” and promised to wage a “religious war.”

Other Hindu nationalist have been appointed at the heads of important universities and cultural institutions. Muslim heritage sites have been erased and replaced with Hindu names. Text books have been rewritten  promoting the BJP’s political ideology and a false narrative of Indian history. Under Modi, a culture of impunity flourishes. Muslims filmed being savely savagely beaten by Hindu mobs go unpunished or the few arrested are hailed as heroes. Last August the only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, suffered a complete lockdown for many weeks. 

But what most concerns moderates is the BJP’s passage of the new "Citizenship Law” blocking Muslims from seeking citizenship from neighboring states.The Modi government is using the Trump playbook to silence critics. A culture of self-censorship has gripped the Indian media. Most newspapers and TV media parrot government propaganda dismissing legitimate criticism as “fake news.”


Mother India must be weeping!