India’s real face exposed

The real face of Indian democracy and secularism has been unraveled or well-exposed by the ongoing incidents of violence against Muslims demonstrated by the far-right ultranationalists and the Shiv Sena’s thugs, who seem to have been supported, nurtured and motivated by Narendra Modi-led BJP’s government in India. On Friday, hundreds of lawyers marched through the streets of New Delhi, pledging to attack anyone found to be “anti-national,” after some were accused of assaulting a student arrested for sedition. Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar’s arrest over a rally at which anti-India slogans were shouted triggered a week of mass protests, in an escalating row over freedom of speech in the world’s so-called largest democracy and secular state. In a brazen show of strength, lawyers wearing black courtroom robes marched past the iconic India Gate monument in New Delhi shouting nationalist slogans in counter-protest.
Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on February 12 after a rally at Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University called to mark the 2013 hanging of Kashmiri Mohammed Afzal Guru over a 2001- attack on the Indian parliament. Kumar, in judicial custody since Wednesday, denied shouting anti-India slogans and so has Geelani. Some rights campaigners say the Hindu nationalist government is using the British-era sedition law to clamp down on dissent. Barkha Dutt, editor of NDTV, who also led the protest march on Tuesday after one of her colleagues was attacked, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the rising anti-national debate. She wrote: “Yet, heartlessness and hypocrisy combined with sneering aggression is what’s been on display this entire week. As goons in black robes rampaged through the Delhi court house where Kanhaiya Kumar is being tried, they assaulted journalists.”
In a lengthy letter, she had pointed out excesses by the fundamentalists, and quoted many instances of outrage. She went on to write: “You wouldn’t need me to remind you of the famous case Balwant Singh Vs State of Punjab – the Supreme Court overturned the charge of sedition and acquitted those who had shouted, “Khalistan Zindabad, Raj Karega Khalsa” a few hours after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. If the highest court of the land can show that maturity in a much more volatile and sensitive case than the JNU controversy, why can’t the government? Do we even need a sedition law that was given to us by the British in the 1860s? (Britain incidentally scrapped it in 2010).” India has drawn flak from right thinking media men in India and elsewhere for the atrocities perpetrated on minorities including Dalits, Muslims and Christians.
An uneasy calm prevailed in state of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) where a Hindu mob had lynched a Muslim man following rumors of cow slaughter and beef eating. India’s gradual descent into fundamentalism is alarming. The growth of anti-secular violence is a warning signal to all the right-thinking citizens of India to resist the growing clout of these medieval forces. At the national level the BJP advances the ideology of ‘Hindutva’ through propaganda, the manipulation of cultural institutions, undercutting laws that protect religious minorities, and minimizing or excusing Hindu extremist violence. At the state level its functionaries have abetted and even participated in such violence. The brutal violence perpetrated on Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002 also brought the dangers of Hindu extremism to world attention, when about 2000 Muslims were massacred. This had happened during the tenure of Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat.
On 27th February 2002, the western Indian state of Gujarat, governed by then chief minister Narendra Modi, witnessed one of the country’s biggest pogroms. It all started with the rumours/reports that on 27th February 2002, Muslims had set afire a train carriage killing 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayudhya, a venue where Babri Masjid was demolished in December 1992. The riots flared up again on 15 March, and killing, raping and looting continued until mid-June. More than 2,000 Muslims were murdered, and tens of thousands rendered homeless in a planned and coordinated attacks. The killers were reportedly in touch with police and politicians and were provided protection. According to the 2011 Amicus report, two cabinet ministers even sat in police control rooms, and reportedly Narendra Modi explicitly instructed civil servants and police not to stand in the killers’ way.
A senior police officer’s sworn statement to India’s Supreme Court in 2011 had alleged that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi deliberately allowed anti-Muslim riots in the state. Sanjiv Bhatt said he attended a meeting at which Narendra Modi said that the Hindus should be allowed to vent their anger. Modi has always denied any wrongdoing. Sanjiv Bhatt was a senior police officer in the Gujarat intelligence bureau during the 2002 riots. In a sworn statement to the Supreme Court, he said that his position allowed him to come across large amounts of information and intelligence both before and during the violence, including the actions of senior administrative officials. He also alleged that in a meeting in the night before the riots, Mr Modi told officials that the Muslim community needed to be taught a lesson following an attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. The Gujarat government has responded to the allegations by saying they have already testified before a special panel investigating the riots and will wait for the court’s verdict. The pogrom was extensively televised by India’s TV channels. Many Indians were shocked to hear how even the very young had not been spared – the slayers of Muslims were seen smashing the heads of children against rocks. Since then Indian activists have doggedly pursued Modi through the courts and in the media. A Muslim mob was accused of setting the train carriage on fire, although there was no concrete evidence, and it was just a rumour. Anyhow, coordinated attacks on Muslims soon followed. Some 98,000 people were displaced in Gujarat by the 2002 riots that were put up in relief colonies. Following the initial incident there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three weeks.