Rising hate crimes against minorities!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

India has witnessed rising tide of religious bigotry and worsening prejudices against minorities since 2014. Ascendency of the Hindutva outfits has posed existential threats to secularism (religious neutrality), democracy and diversity. Attacks on Christians jumped from 147 in 2014 to 687 in December 2023.

Through history, people have seen examples of dictators worldwide that came to power with some genuine intentions to lead the nation to a better future and morphed, over time, into a ruthless tyrant, oppressing the citizenry and willing to do anything to remain in power. Usually, when a leader in his ruthless phase becomes politically incorrect to say they may have once been reasonable or at least more reasonable with some genuine intention to provide good leadership to their country.

Even if a dictator wants to resign from power, he fears prosecution for his crimes in office. His only effective guarantee against prosecution is to retain the power that he wants to relinquish. Once an autocrat exits office, he does not return again. What moral value does a dictator stand for other than winning elections and staying in power?

During the last ten years of the RSS Pariwar union government, India has become a country of beasts, not so much of lion and wolf variety as of porcine one. Its collective social values have almost collapsed into a sinking pool of prejudices, ignorance, triumphalism and religious intolerance.

Hatred, majoritarianism, intolerance, lack of accountability, religious fanaticism have been steadily spreading its poisonous tentacles as the RSS Pariwar consolidated itself. For this, explicit blame goes to RSS Pariwar union government. If there is one quality Indians cannot be accused of, it is the ability to be sensitive, and higher the pecking order or social ladder, one is the more sensitive. Far too many people these days, in the false security of their cocoons, chose to ignore what is happening around them or simply keep quiet.

Violence and bigotry are the order of the day during the last ten years. What makes one civilized are ‘Making and liking beautiful things, thinking freely, and living rightly and maintaining justice equally between human and human’, said C.E.M.Joadh in his book ‘The Story of Civilisation”. It is true that banality of evil and the normalization of bigotry, immorality and lies have become so prominent in our country over the past decade with multiple checks and balances, and education system, all in absolute shambles.

Today we are at a stage when the Indian state and the mainstream elite together are both robbing millions of kids of good educational opportunities in formal institutional spaces, as well as encouraging their mis-education via other spaces, most significantly the propaganda suffused social media discourse. We witness the wanton spread of mis-information and normalization of twisted morals and the disdain for critical and intellectual rigor, all continue with the same zeal and speed as is happening today with kids growing up in such a toxic cultural environment, it would not be long before we become a country mostly peopled by individuals whose minds are suffused with bigoted concepts and bereft of any logical thinking skills. We will become a country peopled by big idiots.

We will see and are already witnessing more and more individuals who cannot be able to appreciate basic moral ideas like justice and equality, and who would not be able to distinguish between reality and lies. We will become a nation whose gullible people can easily be goaded to believe that their lives and their country are being destroyed by Muslims and leftists, feminists, and farmers, even as, politicians, news anchors, diaspora Indians, film actors, individualists and other elites, all take the people for a ride. As some brave smaller media platforms in the country have been reporting for years, relaying hateful propaganda has become highly profitable business venture for the elites and influencers, most of whom are cunningly sending their kids and loved ones either abroad or into the protective higher echelons of the current ecosystem, even as they poison the discourse and the social fabric for the rest of the Indians.

Meanwhile, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2024 annual report released on May 1, 2024, classified India for the fifth consecutive year as a Country of Particular Concern. Report highlights the state of religious freedom abroad. The USCIRF, established under the U.S.’s International Religious Freedom Act or IRFA, the guaranteed right to freedom of religion or belief as a priority in the U.S’s foreign policy. The report speaks of RSS Pariwar union government’s discriminatory policies and its 

failure to handle communal violence. Notably, most of the communal violence incidents (1,488) in the last decade happened in Uttar Pradesh, according to an analysis of home ministry data by India Spend.

“In 2023, religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate. The government, led by the BJP, reinforced discriminatory nationalist policies, perpetuated hateful rhetoric, and failed to address communal violence disproportionately affecting Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, Jews, and Adivasis (indigenous people)”, the USCIRF report said. “Continued enforcement of UAPA, FCRA, CCA and anti-conversion cow slaughter laws resulted in the arbitrary detention, monitoring, and targeting of religious minorities and those advocating on their behalf”, it added.

“Both news media and non-government organizations (NGOs) reporting on religious minorities were subjected to strict monitoring under FCRA regulations. In 2023, NGOs documented 687 instances of violence perpetrated against Christians, who continued to be detained under various anti-conversion laws. In June 2023, more than 500 churches and two synagogues were destroyed and over 70,000 people displaced during clashes in Manipur. Home Minister received widespread criticism, including by the United Nations (UN) experts, for his delayed response to the violence.” 

Indian authorities continued to detain and harass Kashmiri journalists, religious leaders and human rights defenders. Journalist Irfan Mehraj was arrested in March for his reporting on marginalized religious minorities.” The report said, “throughout the year, violence  against Muslims and their places of worship continued.” The report continued to quote several instances.

It is established fact that lotus flower blooms best in dirt and filth. If India’s political world is any measure, there is filth all around, and a few political and cultural organisations are thriving even as the people leap from one crisis to the next. A particularly worrying consequence of this pervasive dirt is that kids and teenagers are being constantly exposed to intellectual garbage. It is not hard to conclude that when today’s kids and teenagers become adults, many or most of them might lack basic decency and compassion, as also fundamental logical thinking skills. Until people acknowledge the seriousness of toxic state of India and resolve to clean up the filth and throw out the poisonous lotuses being powered by it, we have to work with all our might to keep garbage-free Bharat, a new India where “goli maro……...” toxicity is neither normalized nor rewarded!

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