Guilty by default
Using religious beliefs, racial features and lineage to target people, discriminate against them, question their loyalty to the state, and even lynch them is a sure sign of impending societal implosion. Yet, this is what is currently happening openly in India but gets only a muted response from the world. Ever since Narendra Modi was elected PM, backed by the ultra-right RSS, the Indian state has adopted a religiously discriminatory policy that has promoted exclusionary citizenship laws at the state level and vigilante lynch squads at the street level. Their targets have primarily been the substantial Muslim population of the country who have been singled out for abuse and attacks.
The impression created has been that Muslims and Hindus have been on opposites sides of a divide because Muslims ruled the subcontinent for around 600 years. Even the creation of a predominantly Muslim Pakistan is blamed by the ultra-religious extremists on this age-old division. Now, with the tables seemingly turned, these extremists demand some sort of equalisation. A religiously charged government and its street goons fly in the face of a constitution that promised a secular state. They seek out and target Muslims, Christians and any other who do not share their faith or caste. Such people are dragged from their homes and termed traitors to the state just for their personal religious beliefs. Sentenced by default, it seems, for the faith they were born in.
Just this past month, when both India and Pakistan celebrated their independence, several incidents of attacks on Muslims have been recorded, with dozens more documented over the past 18 months in the annual US International Religious Freedom report. Being a Muslim, Christian or even a lower caste Hindu has become nothing less than a death sentence in India. It is time for the world to wake up to the kind of systemic discrimination taking place in India and act before we see a Myanmar or an Auschwitz take place there.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 6th, 2021.
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