Hindu hard-liners, one holding a sword, chanted slogans against Muslim communities during a rally in November 2018 demanding a Hindu temple on a site in northern India where hard-liners in 1992 had attacked and demolished a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya Uttar Pradesh.
Modi’s India has been systematically oppressing, marginalizing, and inciting hatred toward its 220-million Muslim minority. This campaign has been slowly gathering momentum over the years and has concluded with the inauguration of a temple in Ayodhya.
Last year, Mumbai and adjoining cities in the state of Maharashtra witnessed fifty anti-Muslim rallies attended by thousands of Hindus, often led and participated in by leaders of the BJP.
From young children to 80-year-olds marched in the streets, expressing Hindu rage, calling for termites and bearded traitors, all terms for Muslims, to be wiped from the face of the country. Young women dressed in saffron performed traditional folk dances and held placards asking Muslims to choose between Pakistan or the graveyard.
None of this has been spontaneous. Modi himself faced criticism for failing to take responsibility for stopping the 2002 riots in Gujarat that killed more than 1,000 people while he was chief minister there and even for inflaming passions in the run-up to the massacres.
Members of the BJP have continued to stoke hatred and intercommunal tensions since then. In but one example, Devendra Fadnavis, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, held a rally last year in Ayodhya, where a Hindu mob famously demolished the iconic Babri mosque in 1992. Modi’s government planned to consecrate a new Hindu temple on the same site ahead of the 2024 general elections.
Outside of several civil society groups that are standing up for a pluralistic India and Muslim rights, the Supreme Court has been the most powerful check on the BJP. However, even among the country’s highest judges, there is a sense of exasperated helplessness.
“The state is impotent, the state is powerless. It does not act in time. Why do we have a state at all if it is remaining silent?” Justice K.M. Joseph exclaimed during a hearing, during which he condemned local BJP authorities for not prosecuting hate-speech violations at a rally.
Modi is making the case that he is an irreplaceable global leader who holds the key to world peace. Western leaders are looking to him as a partner to stand firm against a rising China Russia.
Never before in his career in Hindu nationalist politics has Modi found himself more emboldened. It is unconscionable that the international community remains silent in the face of what is going on.
Take the case of the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IoK). India is continuing its atrocities there and considers every man, woman, or child protesting against its atrocities a terrorist while simultaneously killing and maiming them and engaging in terrorism itself.
The killing of young Kashmiris is a blatant violation of human rights. There are many victims of indiscriminate firing of pallet guns by the Indian security forces. India continues to escalate tensions at the Working Boundary and the Line of Control to divert the attention of the international community from its continuing atrocities in IoK.
Encouraged by international silence, India continues to refuse to resolve the J&K dispute in line with UNSC Resolutions. Pakistan has consistently maintained that the only way forward is through a comprehensive dialogue. India continues to reject reciprocating this stance of Pakistan.
Under the UNSC resolutions, India cannot bring about any material change in the status quo in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. However, the BJP government, through a presidential decree of August 5, 2019, revoked Article 370 of India’s constitution that guaranteed special rights to the Muslim-majority State.