Indian campaigners say Modi turning India into a Hindu supremacist state

By Murtaza Ali Shah
January 28, 2018

LONDON: A coalition of progressive Indian organisations has called on the international community to pay heed towards Narendra Modi’s India and stop Modi government from turning it completely into a Hindu supremacist state.

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Members of various Indian organsations gathered outside Indian High Commission here as part of India’s Republic Day candlelit protest to highlight the cases of mob lynchings, discriminations, violence and threats to Indian constitution by the Modi government.

The protesters remembered victims of Hindu supremacist forces in mob lynching, murders and assassinations, with protesters holding large photographs including those of Junaid Khan, Pehlu Khan, Pastor Sultan Masih, Zafar Hussein, Otara Bibi, Afrazul Khan, Gauri Lankesh, Justice Loya and others.

The protest outside Indian High Commission came less than a week after Dalit groups had marched in a large number through central London against abductions and arrests of Dalit activists in their thousands in India.

The protesters said that Indian government has nowhere to hide because the world is watching its crimes against its own people. They demanded that the killers and attackers and propagators of hate be brought to justice; the Constitution be protected and upheld and that the many political prisoners like severely disabled Professor G N Saibaba, Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan and the young Kashmiri photojournalist Kamran Yousuf be immediately released and the fake charges against them be dropped.

Nirmala Rajasingham on behalf of South Asia Solidarity Group said: “We stand with the many, many Indians who are rising in grief and rage against the horrific violence choreographed by the Hindu supremacist Modi regime and its openly fascist parent organisation the RSS. Here in the UK too these Hindu organisations are spreading their casteist venom and virulent Islamophobia. We will continue to confront them as we pledge to resist India’s descent into a Republic of Fear.”

Rutuja Deshmukh of SOAS India Society said: “From the lynching of Muslims in the name of the cow, to the attack on a school bus over a film, and Justice Loya’ s mysterious death, there are more than enough reasons to conclude that the Indian state is turning into a fascist regime sooner than anyone imagined. It is our duty as responsible citizens to resist this advent of fascism.”

Satpal Muman of the Dr Ambedkar Memorial Committee of Great Britain which also supported the vigil said: “We are deeply concerned about the horrific attacks on Dalits which have escalated vastly under the Modi regime, about the hatred and violence against minorities and on all those who simply tell the truth. We cannot stand by while the democratic fabric of India is being threatened by the rise of Hindu supremacy."

Also present at the vigil was Imran Dawood who had witnessed the murder of members of his family who were visiting Gujarat on holiday from the UK, during the Gujarat massacres of 2002, while Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

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