The plight of minorities in India

High time for international community to take effective measures to ensure basic human rights to minorities of India

Lynching of minorities took centre stage in India when about 20 Hindu zealots attacked four Muslims on a train on the outskirts of Delhi, fatally stabbing a teenager and injuring two others in June 2017. Following this on June 22^nd, three Muslims were killed in West Bengal after being accused of cow smuggling. But the rise of communal violence and religious extremism in India is not new.

Non-religious tendency of the Congress, deep-rooted divisions within the society and demands of dominant environment pushed India to commit their political system to so-called secularism. What then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted was the preservation of Indian unity through an ideology that remains grounded in its secular outlook. However, the fact remains that Hindu fanaticism has largely dominated the social sphere of the Indian society. Case in point: Ahmedabad riots in 1969 and Bhagalpur violence of 1989.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar laid the foundations of Hindu nationalism in 1923, when his seminal work Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? became the source of principles that shaped the ideology of Hindu nationalism. This was followed by the establishment of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925, aimed at ensuring the unity of Hindu community to form Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation). After independence, the RSS came up with its own political wing, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, but failed to mobilise the Hindu community to form Hindu Rashtra. However, the RSS had a rebirth in 1980 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was launched as its political face. Since then, it has successfully socialised its narrative within the Indian society, aimed at marginalisation of minorities. Babri Mosque incident of 1992 and anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 reflect the gradual internalisation of extremist narrative propagated by the RSS and the BJP.

Narendar Modi, a staunch advocate of the establishment of Hindutva as the dominant ideology in secular India, assumed power as the prime minister in 2014. Under Modi administration, according to lndia’s home ministry, in 2015 India experienced a 17% increase in communal violence. Mob-killing became the order of the day — of 63 attacks reported since 2010, 61 took place under Modi’s government, and 24 out of 28 people killed in attacks were Muslims. During the first six months of 2017, 20 beef-related attacks were recorded in India.

Hinduisation of India has damaged the professed secular fabric of society, resulting in inequality, political and administrative discrimination, patriarchal control, threats to physical security of minorities and consolidation of exclusionary practices. Unity of the Indian nation is largely threatened by the forced cultural transformation of minorities. Campaigns like ‘Love Jihad’ and ‘Ghar Wapsi’, aimed at achieving the cultural homogeneity are fraught with grave ramifications for India. Grievances of minorities are more likely to instigate reactionary elements within the minority groupings.

In India itself, there are still strong holdouts resistant to religious intolerance and communal violence. In 2015-16, over 50 Indian writers and filmmakers returned top government awards and prominent scientists signed petitions against rising communal polarisation and attacks on free speech. In the face of recent events, demonstrations were carried out in 11 Indian cities to condemn acts of violence directed against minorities. The most important bulwark against state-led violence and persecution of minorities is public opinion, especially that of public intellectuals.

In recent times, India is trying to project itself as a key player in international politics and is demanding the same responsibilities, prerogatives and obligations as the current permanent members of UN Security Council have. Keeping in view the abysmal human rights record of India, it can be argued that a country with such a poor human rights record can’t strive for a key role in international political affairs. It’s high time that the international community and organisations took effective measures to ensure the availability of basic human rights to minorities of India. The Indian government should also conform to the international human rights regimes to reshape its image as a responsible state. The purported universality of minority rights requires their availability to minorities living under the world’s largest democracy.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2017.

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