| |
 Print
India wants Kashmir – Not Kashmiris
2-20-2019
This is an election year in the world’s largest democracy, India, and things don’t look good for the ruling right-wing Hindu, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader. The bare naked and uncensored truth is, writes, Rupa Subramanya, an economist and researcher based in Mumbai, for the Washington Post, “Modi has failed to reform India’s economy. Populist tricks are all he has left.”
Last December, within twenty-four-hour span, Mr. Modi was struck with several blows. First was an abrupt resignation by the Reserve Bank of India, Mr. Urjit Patel, followed by Modi’s BJP defeated in three Indian key state elections, that carried him to a historic victory in 2014.
Last December, CNN’s Nikhil Kumar, wrote, “Ahead of India's general election next year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing an unexpected image problem: he's starting to look weak. It's a dramatic shift in the way he's been perceived ever since a history-making general election victory in 2014. For years, political observers in New Delhi spoke with awe of the "hawa," or political wind, that lifted Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power.”
As the political wind “hawa” changes in India. The biggest fear remains for the Muslims of India, Kashmiri Muslims and Pakistan. As the weaker and embattled leader of the right-wing Hindu nationalists, the mastermind of Gujarat Genocide of 2002, previously banned entry around the world for his role in Gujarat Genocide.
Modi and his BJP associates know no bounds when it comes to appealing to their right-wing Hindu nationalist vote bank, which in Indian terms means resorting to pogroms of ethnic violence, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide. If this is what it takes to win the populist vote. Mr. Narendra Modi and his BJP has a proven track record of doing just that.
All minority groups in India are fearful, not just the Muslims. Sikhs and Christians are equally fearful of their not only for their livelihoods, but also their lives.
The BJP finds its support in its para-military foot soldiers among the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS. A century old right-wing Hindu fanatic group modeled after Hitler’s Nazi doctrine, and a known terrorist group, since the British Raj in India. Mainly influenced by the writings of the Hindu nationalist ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and adopted much of his rhetoric concerning the need for the creation of a “Hindu nation” – Hindustan – a nation exclusively for the Hindus. It could only be achieved by eliminating all minorities, may it be Muslims, Sikhs, and Christian. The three dominant faith groups, representing nearly thirty percent of the population in this nation of one billion are these three minority groups.
RSS also has subgroups, Bajrang Dal, and youth wing, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). Its stated objective is "to organise, consolidate the Hindu society and to serve, protect the Hindu Dharma." The weaker embattled Modi and his BJP are scrambling to cling on to power and to rally their vote bank. Mr. Modi and his BJP are now resorting to what they know best, terror against Muslims in India, against Kashmiris, and India’s arch enemy, Pakistan, to rally the right-wing Hindu fundamentalist crowd. It all seems to be working in a country where more than twenty-five percent of the country can’t read or write, as Modi’s BJP are now getting their terror machinery, within RSS, Bajrang Dal, and VHP ready to do whatever it takes to win the upcoming election.
This has everyone worried, including a large majority of mainstream Hindus, who do not subscribe to the doctrine of violence being taught through BJP controlled RSS.
The former Inspector General of police from one of India’s largest and financial capital state Maharashtra, S.M. Mushrif accused the Federal Intelligence Bureau, (IB) equivalent of FBI in United States, on “being hand-in-glove with right wing extremists and called for a ban on the RSS, describing it as India’s NO. 1 terrorist organization,” reported Hindustan Times.
The struggling Modi’s BJP in this crucial election year have already created a wave of ethnic cleansing in Kashmir to rally the Hindu populist vote. The Kashmir Media Service reported “The Jammu and Kashmir People’s Freedom League Chairman, Muhammad Farooq Rehmani has said that the RSS backed lynch mobs are being organised in Jammu and across India to thrash or lynch Kashmiris & the Muslims.”
News Click India, an online magazine in an article by Subodh Varma, Kashmir without Kashmiris, writes, “Innocent of any moral, political or even nationalistic responsibility, Meghalaya governor and former president of BJP’s West Bengal unit, Tathagata Roy, has let the cat out of the bag. In a tweet yesterday, he made the shocking statement that he agreed with an unnamed army officer’s view that “Don’t visit Kashmir, don’t go to Amarnath for the next 2 years. Don’t buy articles from Kashmir emporia or Kashmiri tradesman who come every winter. Boycott everything Kashmiri”. This has been panned extensively in social media, and condemned by most political parties, except the BJP.”
Mr. Varma adds, “But what he says has been playing out in reality in many parts of the country. Led by RSS affiliates like the VHP and Bajrang Dal, groups of people have attacked Kashmiri students or traders in places as far apart as Patna, Jaipur, Dehradun, Ambala and even Delhi.”
With all this going on and knowing the history of genocidal Modi and his BJP, the world cannot afford to sit back silently and allow Mr. Modi and his BJP goons to massacre millions of innocents lives in Kashmir and elsewhere. Its time the world speaks out before it is too late!
Footnotes:
|