Indian organisations based in the UK have expressed their “distress and
concern” to President of India Kovind in a letter this Independence Day,
about the anti-minority violence by the BJP government.
A demonstration was held in London on India’s Independence Day.
Here are extracts from the letter:
Your Excellency,
We the undersigned are extremely distressed and concerned that during the
last three years, India has become a country where Hindu supremacist gangs
can lynch and rape freely and without any fear of punishment, where
children, women and men are brutally killed for what they eat, who they love
and simply for who they are.
On this 70th anniversary of Independence, India has become a Republic of
Fear where justice, democracy and the basic right to life lie in tatters. PM
Modi made highly Islamophobic comments about retiring Vice-President Hamid
Ansari, after he dared to suggest that Muslims felt increasingly insecure in
India.
We demand that the BJP government put an end to the violence against
Muslims, Christians and Dalits and indict not only the perpetrators of these
horrific crimes but those, including senior politicians of the BJP, who have
instigated communal and anti-Dalit violence.
We demand the immediate resignation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi
Adityanath who has been one of the most virulent promoters of hate and has
callously tried to evade responsibility for the deaths of nearly 70 children
in a government hospital in his longstanding constituency.
Some of the types of extreme violations affecting Muslims, Christians and
Dalits include:
• Lynchings of Muslims and Dalits, and stripping, flogging and public
humiliations. These terrible acts of violence are taking place across India,
including in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam and even in the
outskirts of the national capital, Delhi. To start with the pretext was
often that the victims have eaten beef, or slaughtered cows, or are
transporting cows in order to slaughter them. The perpetrators are
Hindu-supremacist gangs of so-called Cow Vigilantes. In the vast majority of
cases, they have been neither punished nor condemned by the government.
Instead the police have often charged the victims and BJP state governments
have given tacit encouragement to the violence by making statements and
announcing policies which call for harsh penalties for cow slaughter.
• There is a horrifying rise in the rapes, mutilation, acid attacks and
other forms of violence, often followed by murder, of women and girls of all
communities, but Dalit women and girls and those from religious minorities
are being specifically targeted. Among recent cases are two Muslim women
raped and their relatives killed after being falsely accused of eating beef
in Haryana and the gruesome gang rape of the recently buried body of a
Muslim woman in UP.
• Muslim or Dalit and so-called 'lower-caste' men in relationships with, or
married to, Hindu or upper-caste women have been brutally attacked or
murdered by mobs. In the case of Muslim men these murders are being
instigated and justified by the baseless trope of 'love jihad' according to
which Muslim men abduct and have relationships with Hindu women only to
convert them to Islam
• Many areas, particularly in UP, but also elsewhere, have seen attempts at
ethnic cleansing with threats and attempts to displace long-established
Muslim communities. 2013 saw a pogrom in Muzaffarnagar UP which had a
chilling similarity with the genocidal killings of Muslims which took place
in Gujarat in 2002 when Modi was Chief Minister of the state. In
Muzaffarnagar some 50,000 people were displaced, many were children. As
human rights organisations have noted, the attacks in both Muzaffarnagar as
in Gujarat were deliberately engineered by Hindu supremacists
• The appointment of Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of UP, India's most
populous state, in March 2017 has further emboldened those perpetrating
communal and caste violence in UP, which is also spilling over to other
states. Adityanath has a record of hate speech and has several criminal
cases pending against him.
In the last few days, nearly 70 young children died in UP in a government
hospital in Gorakhpur, which was Yogi Adityanath's own constituency. We are
appalled that the Chief Minister has tried to justify the recent deaths,
saying it is ‘normal’ for children to die in August, and has ordered the
police to organise Janamashtami celebrations on a ‘grand’ scale when people
are in mourning for the avoidable deaths of so many children.
On the 70th anniversary of India's Independence, we will not remain silent
and allow the forces of the Hindu right to transform India into a Republic
of Fear.
Yours sincerely
Nirmala Rajasingam, South Asia Solidarity Group
Satpal Muman, Castewatch UK SOAS India Society
Santosh Dass, Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance
Federation of Ambedkarite and Buddhist Organisations UK
Eugene Culas, Voice of Dalit International (VODI)
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Forwarded by Eddie
