Human Rights Day : An Eye-opener for India

Jamil Chughtai
As rest of the world shall observe Human Rights Day on 10th of December this year again, the ‘lesser humans’ in India including Muslims, Christians, Dalits and women (of all faiths) would continue to be subjected to physical, psychological and sexual victimization by Hindu radicals, state machinery and the sex-maniacs enjoying full control over the country. In today’s India, insecurity of non-Hindu communities as well as women and minors is an extremely serious issue; however, PM Modi’s government has instead preferred to keep only two-point agenda on top of everything, which revolves around “Cow Meat” and “who all are eating it in India”.
Considering the current state of affairs it may be safely presumed that Sniffer-dogs in India will become jobless in near future as this highly lucrative ‘sniffing’ profession has been taken over more doggedly by the ‘gau raksha’ squads. Being the extended-nose of Rashtrya Sevak Sungh (RSS), these radical Hindus have proved themselves extremely proactive in picking the scent of cow’s flesh from miles before it is eaten or even slaughtered by a Muslim or Dalit household especially in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. On December 03 a violent mob spearheaded by gau rakshaks rampaged through Bulandshahr district in northern India after the discovery of suspected cow carcasses. Showing their annoyance over the demise of the sacred animal, the unruly gangs set ablaze a number of vehicles and beaten two people to death during the riots.
Cow-slaughter had always remained a bone of contention between Hindu and Muslims communities even before partition, however under the present regime, the cows (at times monkeys & snakes as well) have become increasingly sacred in India compared to the rights and even lives of humans provided the person under doubts of such desecration happens to be a Muslim. BJP-RSS-guided vigilantes have visibly gone out-of-control after victory in the elections-2014 by PM Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Rights groups in India maintain that the issue of cow-slaughter has now been deliberately stoked by Modi-led Janata to provoke violence against Muslims and other minorities; and in return thereto win maximum favors and votes of purposely-radicalized Hindu majority during oncoming general elections.
Grave breaches of human rights in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) are everyday happenings and invariably the poor Kashmiri Muslims are the easiest subjects to bear inhuman sufferings at the hands of occupation forces. Since 1947, thousands of Kashmiris have laid their lives seeking freedom from unlawful seizure by India. The amount of torture, killings and rapes perpetrated on Kashmiri people by Indian armed forces speak volumes for India’s vicious disregard to human rights. Every new day in occupied Kashmir witnesses the Indian army’s devilish acts of gang-rapes, chopping off vital body-parts, gashing of eyes, use of ever-new methods of persecution during unending curfews, burning of the agitators alive, torching of villages and crops, and destruction of their business and economic life. Indeed a complete genocide of the Kashmiri people is being carried out in utter defiance of international human rights laws, and still India ranks itself among the champions of peace in the world.
In the shining India, Muslims are not the only entity whose rights as human are being violated for decades, women as a gender are being victimized and abused since ages. Rape and harassment incidents are not a rare happening in caste-reeking India that witnessed 47000 such occurrences against women in 2017 alone (compared to 35,000 reported rape cases in 2016) where majority of the female victims were either low-caste Dalits or women from minority faiths. Pitifully, their religion itself does not provide refuge to Hindu women, where faithful female believers are in fact discriminated against based merely on their gender. Just a couple of weeks back Hindu hardliners forcibly blocked women below 10 years and above 50 year age from visiting one of India’s holiest sites known as ‘the Lord Ayyappa Temple’ at Sabarimala in Kerala state, while police as usual kept playing a helpless role in the face of fundamentalists. More awful becomes the fate of an Indian woman causing displeasure to Hindu bigots if she happens to be from other minority faiths. Such was the treatment meted out to a Christian woman, who on some unfounded allegations was savagely beaten and paraded naked on the roads of Bihar while RSS-goons were seen shamelessly kicking, booing and stoning her on the way.
For people of India, the year 2018 has also remained horrifying on account of sexual terrorism against minors both girls and boys. Few weeks back, a thirteen year old low-caste Hindu girl was beheaded in Tamil Nadu by a man of higher caste merely for refusing sex. Who can forget the horrendous “Chennai Horror” incident in July this year when 17 men gang-raped an 11-year old girl over a period of seven months. More dreadful is the account of another 8-year old girl who was kidnapped, locked in a temple, gang-raped and then beaten to death. Similarly in the month of June a 7-year old girl was raped by two men, and after committing that appalling crime they slit her throat and left her to die.
As a matter of fact when human values become non-existent in a society, the rights of weaker segments including women, children, low-caste Hindus and the minorities do not find a niche within its national edifice. Recent reports by UNHRC, OHCHR, EUHRC and OIC-IPHRC have unequivocally exposed India’s brutal account of hostilities on innocent Kashmiris, however the situation of human rights in the occupied valley has been steadily going from bad to worse every passing day. It would be very unfortunate, if the world human rights bodies once again failed to realize the miseries of the general masses in India to prevent it from committing brutalities and inhuman excesses on her helpless subjects especially the women, marginalized citizens and the people of Kashmir.