Campaign against Indian Muslims getting stronger

The CAA, the legislation termed divisive, discriminatory and against Muslims as well as the country’s secular constitution, is still making waves in India, eclipsing the poor economy and the escalating pandemic Covid-19. According to the CAA, six minorities from three neighboring countries are eligible to get citizenship of India if they have lived for six years in the country. These lists exclude Muslim immigrants who have entered the country the same way as other non-Muslims immigrants. It is the first time that India, a so-called secular country, has used religion as a legal basis for determining nationality.

Around 60 people recently died in New Delhi due to the contentious law, most of them Muslims who were deliberately targeted and their properties and worship places burnt down. On the other hand, not a single temple in Indian capital was touched. Indian journalists were also not spared by zealot mobs led by the CAA supporters and RSS goons. The Indian home ministry is thought to be involved in the killing of Muslims, along with the New Delhi police. The real face of India was out for everyone to see.

About the bloodshed in New Delhi, an article in NYT last month stated that India has suffered its worst sectarian bloodshed in years, in what many see as the inevitable result of Hindu extremism that has flourished under the govt of PM Modi. His party has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism and its leaders have openly vilified Indian Muslims. It said that two-thirds of more than 50 people who were killed in Delhi were Muslim and human rights activists were calling it an organized massacre. The article pointed out that what seems to be different now, observers contend, is how profoundly India’s law enforcement machinery has been politicized by BJP. “Some judges have also seemed to be caught up – or pushed out – by a Hindu nationalist wave. A Delhi judge who expressed disbelief that the police had yet to investigate members of Modi’s party who have been accused of instigating the recent violence in Delhi was taken off the case and transferred to another state. At the same time that Supreme Court has made a string of rulings in govt’s favor, one of the judges, Arun Mishra, publicly praised Mr Modi as a visionary genius.”

The report said the Muslim leaders see the violence as a state-sanctioned campaign to teach them a lesson.

After years of staying quiet as Hindu lynch mobs killed Muslims with impunity and Mr Modi’s government chipped away at their political power, India’s Muslim population awoke in December and poured into the streets, along with many other Indians, to protest the new immigration law.

Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party’s leader Dr Subramanian Swamy’s remarks against Muslims that they were not equal citizens were read with disbelief around the world. It was a reflection of the hate and fascist ideology of the Indian state against the 14 percent Muslims in the country. As India continues genocide, lockdown and use of rape as a weapon to further its political agenda in held Kashmir, it has started state sponsored hate crimes against Muslims on the whole.

Analysts have openly wondered at the rationality of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, also a Rajya Sabha MP, who floated the idea of inscribing the picture of Goddess Lakshmi on India’s banknotes to “improve the performance of Indian currency”.

Earlier, another BJP leader Dilip Ghosh declared the Indian government was committed to implementing the proposed nationwide National Register of India and would send back 10 million Bangladeshi Muslims living in the West Bengal state, according to him “living illegally”. He said that those opposing the CAA were anti-India, another example of India turning into a Hindu state where one can say Muslims are facing challenges on more than one account for merely being Muslims.

Similarly, Vinay Katiyar, another Member of Parliament representing BJP, had passed a contentious statement, “Muslims should not be living in this country, they should go to Pakistan or Bangladesh.”

Milan Vaishnav, an India expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been on record saying “The CAA has fostered both pro and anti-CAA protests, with the state and the ruling party offering a measure of support in favour of the former.” He said the Muslim population in India has felt increasingly marginalised over the years as the country’s political landscape was overrun by Hindutva.

Former Indian National Security Adviser, also ex-Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, has warned the Modi Sarkar that India will face diplomatic isolation because of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “Cumulative effect of a series of actions, including what happened in Kashmir. We seem to know we are isolated. External Affairs Minister ducked a meeting with US legislators.” He said that global public opinion on India had shifted if one saw the international press and even India’s friends were speaking in a dismissive manner about the internal developments in the country.

As it is, the CAA is a precursor to a national register of citizens that many among India's 200 plus million Muslims believe will leave them stateless as many poor Indians did not get documents over the years that could prove their nationality. The dream of secular India is fast eroding as Hindutva envelopes the country by brute force.