India’s impunity

An independent commission in the US has recommended that Modi’s government be added to a religious freedom blacklist. In its annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has asked the US Department of State to designate India as a “country of particular concern”, adding that the situation of religious minority groups in the country "continued to worsen" in 2022. This is the fourth year in a row that the US panel has made this recommendation. But while the commission has powers to make recommendations, it cannot dictate policy and it is unlikely that these recommendations will transfer into policy. Like other Western countries around the world, the US is eager to develop good links with India, which it sees as an important partner in the future in terms of both the economy and as a strategic asset against China. This means it is not likely to penalize the country in any way. We have already seen how over the past years the West has been ignoring gross human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir as well as in India. While Pakistan too remains a country of concern for the commission, the question is whether India will come under any kind of pressure to reform its policies or to improve its human rights records, particularly in regard to discrimination against religious minorities which occur on a regular basis. For far too long has India been kept protected in a bubble of warmth by the West – allowed to essentially get away with human rights abuses of all kinds without any rebuke from powerful Western leaders.

The citizens of Indian-occupied Kashmir – called the world’s largest open-air prison – have been under army occupation since 1947 and have been persistently denied not just their right to choose their own fate but also basic freedoms of expression and assembly. Their existence is a humiliating one of army checkposts and intrusive searches. Any attempt to assert their authority is swiftly followed by massacres and unmarked mass graves. Within India, ever since the BJP assumed power in India in 2014, its leaders have been trying to incite hatred against religious minorities, especially Muslims. It is time for India to face the consequences of its hate-filled policies. Pakistan has raised its voice as a neighbouring country against what is happening in India but it received very little support from the rest of the world. In many ways, this simply exposes the hypocrisy of the US and the rest of the West. In a world of self-serving strategic policies, can we even hope for the oppression in Kashmir as well as in India to be taken up by democratic Western nations?