The rule of law is almost non-existent in all BJP-controlled states as political and religious leaders instigate violent mobs against Muslims. Hindutva extremist attack them in mosques, streets and even homes. Police sponsored mob vigilantism and violence continues unchecked in Delhi, Gujrat, UP, Uttarakhand and Karnataka, among other states. Even police personnel are seen joining the mobs.
Attacks by Hindu supremacists on Muslim vendors have been surging over time. Mobocracy and vandalism is becoming to be normal. Muslims in the States of Gujrat, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Madhaya Pardesh were recently attacked on the occasion of the Ram Navami birthday festivities. They kept chanting provocative slogans against Muslims and other minority groups. Dozens of videos made rounds in social media, showing saffron-clad processions of Hindu supremacist armed with clubs and swords, playing aloud provocative and threatening songs in Muslim neighbourhoods. Eruption of violence in Khargone resulted in the burning of 10 Muslim houses and left 24 people, including a police officer, injured.
Amidst this, experts from Amnesty International, Genocide Watch and human rights organisations have made an alarming prediction on the surging Islamophobia under Modi and the subsequent threats of extermination of ethnic Muslim minorities in India.
Dr Gregory Stanton, the director and founder of Genocide Watch, has claimed in a US congressional brief that there are clear “signs and processes” of pogrom in Assam and Indian occupied Kashmir. The policies Stanton quotes have accelerated the process and prospects of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in India and include the undoing of autonomous status of Kashmir and Citizenship Amendment Act, that excluded Muslims from citizenship.
Representing his organisation that he formed in 1999 with objectives of predictions, prevention and accountability of excesses against humanity, he warned that genocide in India is quite imminent. He drew a parallel between the discretionary treatment of Muslims by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that of the Myanmar government against Rohingya back in 2017. He feared the identical scenario to Myanmar where Rohingya Muslim’s citizenship was revoked, followed by violence and massacre.
“What we are now facing (in India) is a very similar kind of plot (as witnessed in Myanmar),” he said. Terming Modi an extremist leader and the Hindutva ideology being contrary to Indian secular history and constitution, he said that we cannot let (genocide of Muslims) happen in India.
Genocide Watch also warned of pogrom in India in 2002 following the Gujrat massacre that mercilessly killed over 1000 Indian Muslims.
Stanton is the expert who had predicted the pogrom of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1989 and had warned Juvénal Habyarimana, the then Rwandan president, that if he did not take measures to prevent the impending massacre, there would be genocide within a span of five years. Stanton’s warning proved prophetic with the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
Given his proven expertise in accurately predicting genocides, his warning shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Govind Acharya, Kashmir/India specialist associated with Amnesty International USA, has sounded alarms over the extremist groups’ open calls for Muslims execution.
“That the participants [at the gathering] would openly urge Hindus to emulate the violence against Rohingya Muslims and boast about it in the days afterwards in the media is illustrative of the atmosphere of bigotry that pervades these groups,”. “The calls to large-scale massacres of Muslims [aim] to institute Hindu supremacy over India,” Acharya said.
Aakar Patel, a rights activist and former head of India Office’s Amnesty International, suggested reports that there to be taken seriously.
“I think the history on the record of India’s civic violence shows either the state does something that provokes the violence (against Muslims) or does not do enough to stop it,” Patel said.
Moreover, renowned American scholar and professor Noam Chomsky has also expressed grave concerns on the lethality of Islamophobia in India, which has reduced around 250 million Muslims into a persecuted minority.
“The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India” the renowned activist and author said in a webinar video message organized by a Washington-based Muslims advocacy group.
More worrying, however, is the deafening silence of the Indian government and even its support of Hindutva extremists bent on the ethnic cleansing of Muslim minorities, among others. Amidst all this mayhem, police failed to find any conspiracy against Muslims. Rather than taking action against extremist leadership and instigators of violence, they swiftly arrest journalists and peace activists.
Raqib Hameed Naik, a US-based journalist who recently interviewed the United Nations special adviser on Prevention of Genocide, said that the BJP leadership has clear support for Hindutva’s excesses against Muslims of India.
“Those who are calling for genocidal massacres are in one way or the other linked to BJP’s ideological mentor, RSS, and revered by the senior party leaders who hold top constitutional offices. In other words, Mr Modi’s silence means an endorsement,” Naik explained.
All reports, predictions and ground realties portray a bleak picture for the Muslims of India. Given that various states are going for elections, anti- Muslims tirades and bigotry are expected to rise in the coming days. The growing radicalisation, genocidal and provocative speeches and anti-minority sentiments would make massacres not a distant reality.
The world would then witness horrifying displays of state-instigated and sponsored massacre of marginalized minorities in India sooner than later
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