India rights abuses

India's increasingly violent actions overseas and outright refusal to acknowledge its domestic problems

A recent US State Department report was unusually critical of India’s human rights record, a major shift from the ‘kid gloves’ approach that the West has given India in recent years. This change is at least partly driven by India’s increasingly violent actions overseas and its outright refusal to even acknowledge the existence of domestic problems such as the communal violence in Manipur, which experts in India and abroad have said may amount to ethnic cleansing.

Despite the widespread violence and suffering that began last year and has only abated slightly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi only condemned it after reports of Hindus also being killed by communal mobs, and still does not consider it worth his time to actually go to the affected area, lest he be photographed amid the hellscape that his hateful Hindutva rhetoric has created. Even now, elections in Manipur were marred by violence as Hindu militias — allegedly backed by the BJP-led state government — took over polling places and assaulted voters and poll workers.

Other rights issues mentioned in the report include unlawful killings by security forces, enforced disappearances, torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners in several parts of the country. Instead of improving its inhuman track record in Occupied Kashmir, New Delhi has approved the export of the same lawless and cruel methods across India. Invasions of privacy and attacks on press freedom, freedom of movement and freedom of information also got prominent mentions, as did the harassment of rights groups, NGOs and aid agencies that even mildly criticise a BJP-led government.

Meanwhile, even when there are mountains of evidence to prove the military and law enforcement’s criminal conduct, the government refuses to prosecute. Instead, there have been a handful of cases where the disgraceful soldiers and policemen were actually rewarded. Unfortunately, unlike other noted tramplers of human rights, blunt criticism is the worst the US will do to India, as the country’s value vis-a-vis China outweighs any concerns about the atrocities the Modi government is inflicting on its own people.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 25^th, 2024.

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