‘To be lynched is a crime. To be poor is a crime. To defend the poor is to plot to overthrow the government.’
Arundhati Roy addresses a press conference in Delhi on Thursday.
This morning’s papers settle something that we have been debating for a while. A front-page report in the Indian Express says “Police to Court: Those held part of anti-fascist plot to overthrow govt.” We should know by now that we are up against a regime that its own police call fascist. In the India of today, to belong to a minority is a crime. To be murdered is a crime. To be lynched is a crime. To be poor is a crime. To defend the poor is to plot to overthrow the government.
When the Pune police conducted simultaneous raids at the homes of well-known activists, poets, lawyers and priests across the country, and arrested five people – high-profile civil rights defenders and two lawyers – on ludicrous charges, with little or no paperwork, the Government would have known that it was stirring up outrage. It would have already taken all our reactions into account, including this press conference and all the protests that have taken place across the country, before it made this move. So why has this happened?
Recent analyses of real voter data as well the Lokniti-CSDS-ABP Mood of the Nation survey have shown that the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are losing popularity at an alarming pace (for them). This means that we are entering dangerous times. There will be ruthless and continuous attempts to divert attention from the reasons for this loss of popularity, and to fracture the growing solidarity of the opposition. It will be a continuous circus from now to the elections – arrests, assassinations, lynchings, bomb attacks, false flag attacks, riots, pogroms. We have learned to connect the season of elections with the onset of all kinds of violence. Divide and Rule, yes. But add to that – Divert and Rule. From now until the elections, we will not know from when, and where and how the fireball will fall on us, and what the nature of that fireball will be. So, before I speak about the arrests of lawyers and activists, let me just reiterate a few points that we must not allow our attention to stray from, even while it rains fire, and strange events befall us.
1. It has been a year and nine months since November 8, 2016 when Prime Minister Modi appeared on TV and announced his policy of demonetisation of 80% of the currency in circulation. His own Cabinet seemed to have been taken by surprise. Now the Reserve Bank of India has announced that 99% of the currency was returned to the banking system. The Guardian in the UK reports today, that the policy has likely wiped 1% from the country’s GDP and cost approximately 1.5 million jobs. Meanwhile, just the printing of new currency has cost the country several thousand crores. After Demonetisation, came the Goods and Services Tax – a tax that is structured in ways that have dealt a further body blow to small and medium businesses that were already reeling under Demonetisation.
While small businesses, traders and most of all the poor have suffered enormously, several corporations close to the BJP have multiplied their wealth several times over. Businessmen like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi have been permitted to decamp with thousands of crores of public money while the government looked away.
What kind of accountability can we expect for all of this? None? Zero?
Through all this, as it prepares for the 2019 election, the BJP has emerged as by far the wealthiest political party in India. Outrageously, the recently introduced electoral bonds ensure that the sources of the wealth of political parties can remain anonymous.
2. We all remember the farce in Mumbai at the ‘Make in India’ event inaugurated by Mr Modi in 2016 at which a massive fire burned down the main tent of the cultural festival. Well, the real bonfire of the idea of ‘Make in India’ is the Rafale fighter plane deal, that was announced by the Prime Minister in Paris seemingly without the knowledge of his own Defence Minister. This is against all known protocol. We know the bare bones – a deal had already been put in place in 2012 under the Congress led UPA government to buy planes that would be assembled by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. That deal was scrapped and reconfigured. Hindustan Aeronautics was surgically excised. The Congress Party as well as several others who have studied the deal have alleged corruption on an unimaginable scale and have questioned the involvement in the “offsets” deal to Reliance Defence Limited, which has never built a plane in its life. The Opposition has demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe. Can we expect one? Or must we swallow this whole fleet of planes along with everything else and not even gulp?
3. The investigation by the Karnataka police into the assassination of the journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh, has led several arrests which have in turn led to the unveiling of the activities of several right-wing Hindutva organisations like the Sanathan Sansthan. What has emerged is the existence of a shadowy, full-blown terror network, with hit-lists, hide-outs and safe-houses, flush with arms, ammunition and plans to bomb, kill, and poison people. How many of these groups do we know about? How many are continuing to work in secret? With the assurance that they have the blessings of the powerful, and possibly even the police, what plans do they have in store for us? What false-flag attacks? And what real ones? Where will they occur? Will it be in Kashmir? In Ayodhya? At the Kumbh Mela? How easily they could derail everything – everything – with some major, or even minor attacks that are amplified by pet media houses. To divert attention from this, the real threat, we have the hue and cry over the recent arrests.
4. The speed at which educational institutions are being dismantled. The destruction of Universities, with fine track records, the elevation of phantom universities that exist only on paper. This is arguably the saddest thing of all. It is happening in several ways. We are watching JNU – Jawaharlal Nehru University – being taken down before our very eyes. The students as well as the staff are under continuous attack. Several television channels have actively participated in spreading lies and fake videos that have endangered the lives of students, and to an assassination attempt on the young scholar Umar Khalid who has been mercilessly defamed and lied about. Then you have the falsification of history and the idiotification of the syllabus – which will, just in a few years’ time, lead to a kind of cretinism from which we will be unable to recover. Finally, the privatisation of education is undoing even the very small good that the policy of Reservation did. We are witnessing the re-Brahminisation of education, this time fitted out in corporate clothes. Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students are once again being pushed out from institutions of learning because they cannot afford the fees. This has begun to happen already. It is completely unacceptable.
5. Massive distress in the agricultural sector, increasing numbers of farmers’ suicides, the lynching of Muslims and the relentless attack on Dalits, the public floggings, the arrest of Chandrashekhar Azad, leader of the Bhim Army who dared to stand up to attacks by Upper castes. The attempt to dilute the Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribes Atrocity Act.
Having said this much, I come to the recent arrests.
None of the five people who were arrested yesterday, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira, Sudha Bhardwaj, Varavara Rao and Gautam Navlakha – were present at the Elgar Parishad rally that took place on December 31, 2017, or at the rally the following day when approximately 3,00,000 people, mostly Dalit, gathered to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Bhima-Koregaon victory. (Dalits joined the British to defeat an oppressive Peshwa regime. One of the few victories that Dalits can celebrate with pride.)The Elgar Parishad was organised by two eminent retired judges, Justice Sawant and Justice Kolse Patel. The rally the following day was attacked by Hindutva fanatics, which led to days of unrest. The two main accused are Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide. Both are still at large.Following an FIR registered by one of their supporters, in June 2018 the Pune police arrested five activists, Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawle, Shoma Sen, Mihir Raut and the lawyer Surendra Gadling. They are accused of plotting violence at the rally and also of plotting to kill the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They remain in custody, charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Fortunately they are still alive, unlike Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi, who, years ago, were accused of the same crime, but did not live to see a trial.
It has been important for governments, both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP to disguise their attacks on Adivasis, and now, in the case of the BJP, their attack on Dalits – as an attack on “Maoists” or “Naxals.” This is because, unlike in the case of Muslims who have been almost been erased from electoral arithmetic, all political parties do have an eye on those Adivasi and Dalit constituencies as potential vote banks. By arresting activists and calling them “Maoists’, the Government manages to undermine and insult Dalit aspiration by giving it another name—while at the same time appearing to be sensitive to “Dalit issues.” Today, as we speak, there are thousands of people in jail across the country, poor and disadvantaged people, fighting for their homes, for their lands, for their dignity—people accused of sedition and worse, languishing without trial in crowded prisons.
The arrest of these 10 people, three lawyers and seven well known activists also serves to cut whole populations of vulnerable people off from any hope of justice or representation. Because these were their representatives.
Years ago, when the vigilante army called the Salwa Judum was raised in Bastar and went on a rampage, killing people and burning whole villages, Dr Binayak Sen, then the General Secretary of the PUCL (Peoples Union for Civil Liberties) Chattisgarh spoke up for its victims. When Binayak Sen was jailed, Sudha Bhardwaj a lawyer and Trade Union leader who had worked in the area for years, took his place. Professor Saibaba, who campaigned relentlessly against the paramilitary operations in Bastar stood up for Binayak Sen. When they arrested Saibaba, Rona Wilson, stood up for him. Surendra Gadling was Saibaba’s lawyer. When they arrested Rona Wislon and Surendra Gadling, Sudah Bhardwaj, Gautam Navlakaha and the others stood up for them… and so it goes.
The vulnerable are being cordoned off and silenced. The vociferous are being incarcerated.
‘To be lynched is a crime. To be poor is a crime. To defend the poor is to plot to overthrow the government.’
Pune police conducted simultaneous raids at the homes of well-known activists, poets, lawyers and priests across the country, and arrested five people – high-profile civil rights defenders and two lawyers – on ludicrous charges, with little or no paperwork,
Arrests, assassinations, lynchings, bomb attacks, false flag attacks, riots, pogroms – all kinds of violence.+ arrests of lawyers and activists.
As it prepares for the 2019 election, the BJP has emerged as by far the wealthiest political party in India.
Karnataka police led the assassination of the journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh, which have in turn led to the unveiling of the activities of several right-wing Hindutva organisations like the Sanathan Sansthan. What has emerged is the existence of a shadowy, full-blown terror network, with hit-lists, hide-outs and safe-houses, flush with arms, ammunition and plans to bomb, kill, and poison people.
With the assurance that they have the blessings of the powerful, and possibly even the police.
The privatisation of education is undoing even the very small good that the policy of Reservation did. We are witnessing the re-Brahminisation of education, this time fitted out in corporate clothes. Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students are once again being pushed out from institutions of learning because they cannot afford the fees.
The lynching of Muslims and the relentless attack on Dalits, the public floggings, the arrest of Chandrashekhar Azad, leader of the Bhim Army who dared to stand up to attacks by Upper castes. The attempt to dilute the Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribes Atrocity Act.
Approximately 3,00,000 people, mostly Dalit, attacked by Hindutva fanatics, the Pune police arrested five activists, accused of plotting violence at the rally and also of plotting to kill the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They remain in custody, charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Fortunately they are still alive, unlike Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi, who, years ago, were accused of the same crime, but did not live to see a trial.
Both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP to disguise their attacks on Adivasis, and now, in the case of the BJP, their attack on Dalits – as an attack on “Maoists” or “Naxals.” Arresting activists and calling them “Maoists’, the Government manages to undermine and insult Dalit aspiration. There are thousands of people in jail across the country, poor and disadvantaged people, fighting for their homes, for their lands, for their dignity—people accused of sedition and worse, languishing without trial in crowded prisons.
The vulnerable are being cordoned off and silenced. The vociferous are being incarcerated. Arundhati Roy
Data on Rising Crimes Against OutCastes — Why Crime Is Rising Against India’s Lowest Castes And Tribes — Highlighting India's Caste Problems in Numbers, Figures, Charts and Graphs! (Interactive Charts & Graphs)
21 States are now BJP-Ruled : Home to Over 70 percent of Indians.
In 2014, when the Narendra Modi government came to power in Delhi, the BJP ruled just seven states.
The cumulative population of NDA-ruled states is 849,825,030 (70.18 per cent of India’s population).
Seven of the country’s 10 most populous states as per Census 2011 are now BJP-led NDA-ruled.
(The last time a political party or group had this big a footprint across India was a quarter century ago. In end-1993, after a round of state elections, the Congress held 16 of India’s then 26 states — 15 on its own; one in alliance.)
‘To be lynched is a crime. To be poor is a crime. To defend the poor is to plot to overthrow the government.’
Pune police conducted simultaneous raids at the homes of well-known activists, poets, lawyers and priests across the country, and arrested five people – high-profile civil rights defenders and two lawyers – on ludicrous charges, with little or no paperwork,
Arrests, assassinations, lynchings, bomb attacks, false flag attacks, riots, pogroms – all kinds of violence.+ arrests of lawyers and activists.
As it prepares for the 2019 election, the BJP has emerged as by far the wealthiest political party in India.
Karnataka police led the assassination of the journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh, which have in turn led to the unveiling of the activities of several right-wing Hindutva organisations like the Sanathan Sansthan. What has emerged is the existence of a shadowy, full-blown terror network, with hit-lists, hide-outs and safe-houses, flush with arms, ammunition and plans to bomb, kill, and poison people.
With the assurance that they have the blessings of the powerful, and possibly even the police.
The privatisation of education is undoing even the very small good that the policy of Reservation did. We are witnessing the re-Brahminisation of education, this time fitted out in corporate clothes. Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students are once again being pushed out from institutions of learning because they cannot afford the fees.
The lynching of Muslims and the relentless attack on Dalits, the public floggings, the arrest of Chandrashekhar Azad, leader of the Bhim Army who dared to stand up to attacks by Upper castes. The attempt to dilute the Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribes Atrocity Act.
Approximately 3,00,000 people, mostly Dalit, attacked by Hindutva fanatics, the Pune police arrested five activists, accused of plotting violence at the rally and also of plotting to kill the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They remain in custody, charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Fortunately they are still alive, unlike Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi, who, years ago, were accused of the same crime, but did not live to see a trial.
Both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP to disguise their attacks on Adivasis, and now, in the case of the BJP, their attack on Dalits – as an attack on “Maoists” or “Naxals.” Arresting activists and calling them “Maoists’, the Government manages to undermine and insult Dalit aspiration. There are thousands of people in jail across the country, poor and disadvantaged people, fighting for their homes, for their lands, for their dignity—people accused of sedition and worse, languishing without trial in crowded prisons.
The vulnerable are being cordoned off and silenced. The vociferous are being incarcerated.
BJP/BJP Alliance Ruling 22 States in India : List of BJP/ BJP Alliance Ruling States in India
—> https://www.mapsofindia.com/assemblypolls/state-assembly-leading-parties.html
—> https://www.mapsofindia.com/assemblypolls/states-with-government-composition-with-a-bjp-perspective-map.jpg
—> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indische_Parlamentswahl_2014_Parteien.svg
Religious tolerance has deteriorated and religious freedom violations have increased in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's regime – 'Constitutional and Legal Challenges Faced by Religious Minorities in India' and sponsored by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
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Religious minority communities and Dalits face discrimination and persecution in India where hate crimes, social boycotts and forced conversion have escalated dramatically since 2014.
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"Under Congress Party and BJP-led governments, religious minority communities and Dalits, both have faced discrimination and persecution due to a combination of overly broad or ill-defined laws, an inefficient criminal justice system, and a lack of jurisprudential consistency. In particular, since 2014, hate crimes, social boycotts, assaults, and forced conversion have escalated dramatically,"
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"Since the BJP assumed power, religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by BJP politicians and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by affiliated Hindu nationalist groups such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Sangh Parivar, and Vishva Hindu Parishad."
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There are constitutional provisions and state and national laws in India that do not comply with international standards of freedom of religion or belief, including Article 18 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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"The Indian government-at both the national and state levels-often ignores its constitutional commitments to protect the rights of religious minorities. National and state laws are used to violate the religious freedom of minority communities."
Consider crimes against Dalits. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data shows that crimes against Dalits increased from less than 50 (for every million people) in the last decade to 223 in 2015. Among states, Rajasthan has the worst record although Bihar is a regular in the top 5 states by crimes against Dalits. Gujarat had a rate lower than all-India average (for crimes against Dalits) in 2011. It has crossed the mark since then.
How Dalit anger against the government found expression in the Ambedkar Bhavan and Una protests —
The rally against the historic building's demolition in Mumbai also united anti-BJP forces in one voice.
OutCaste women face particular issues. These women are often victims of human trafficking and sexual violence where their perpetrators are rarely convicted. They are denied access to education, women’s health care, and other services a woman needs to live. The subordinate position of the OutCaste women continues to be perpetuated by the lack of assistance from public and government officials.
About one-third of all winners had at least one pending criminal case against them, with some having serious criminal cases.
Compared to the 15th Lok Sabha, there is an increase of members with criminal cases. In 2009, 158 (30%) of the 521 members analysed had criminal cases, of which 77 (15%) had serious criminal cases.
Indian government once again attempted to silence discussion of women’s issues by banning “India’s Daughter,” a stirring documentary that revisits the savage 2012 gang rape of a 23-year-old Delhi woman.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu called the film “an international conspiracy to defame India.”
Just a few weeks after the 2012 Delhi Rape Case, a 17-year-old Indian girl who was gang-raped committed suicide, apparently because police would not file an official report on the attack. A year later, a 16-year-old girl was gang-raped, set on fire, and two months later died of her injuries. During those two months, the police did not file a crime report. More recently, The Indian Express reported that a 6-year-old girl was sexually assaulted with an iron rod by a security guard.
Often, women who suffer violence stay silent because they have no faith in India’s justice system.
India’s southwestern state of Kerala, noted for its high levels of social development, exhibited markedly different patterns in the 2014 election from most other parts of the country. In Kerala, parties on the far left did quite well, as did the center-left Indian National Congress, whereas the center-right BJP performed quite poorly, as did regionalist parties. To understand the electoral geography of Kerala, it is necessary to examine religion and caste.
The Ezhavas, the most numerous of all the Hindu groups in Kerala, are also the most puzzling of its peoples. Subdues by centuries by the Brahmins and the Nairs, regarded as outside the four-fold caste system, they nevertheless retained a pride even in their position as the leading caste of the outcastes, and during the nineteenth century developed a great will to rise above the limitations which society had laid upon them … . The Ezhavas sought education, even established their own schools… . Fortunate Ezhavas took to business and the Congress Party: unfortunate ones to radical rebellion, for the poor Ezhavas have long formed the dedicated core of the Communist Party in Kerala. … No group anywhere in India has so successfully, by its own efforts, removed itself from the double stigma of untouchability and ex-untouchability.
From Narendra Modi, the leading political face of a growing Hindu nationalist movement - contesting for parliament from Varanasi, the holiest city for Hindus which lies along the banks of the Ganges River, there is a sense that the current nationalist wave represents a more fundamental shift in India’s identity by belief in the hegemony of a particular religion, which has never been practiced in this country.
In the last two decades, Indian cities are being restructured based on religion. That is accompanied by the rise of Hindu nationalism.
Modi’s campaign about his role in the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat that killed more than 1,000 people, many of them Muslims. Modi has said the riots made him “sad” but he has declined to accept responsibility or to apologize. In an interview with Reuters last year, Modi raised many eyebrows when he likened the 2002 deaths to those of dogs.
On the campaign trail, Modi has attempted to shift the conversation away from the riots and toward economic development, presenting the Gujarat model as a kind of salve.
“Demonization and stigmatization is on the rise,” said Irfan Engineer, director of the Center for Study of Society and Secularism which documents rising communal violence across the country and works to counter the rise of Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva. “Hate speeches by right-wing BJP candidates go unpunished by the state,” Engineer continued. “Violence is becoming more normalized and more part of everyday life, unfortunately."
Though India’s constitution declares the country to be both “secular” and “socialist,” religious violence involving Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians has been a persistent part of the national struggle.
Yet anti-Muslim discrimination here is common, and Muslims are often treated like an “untouchable” caste in matters of housing and employment. Indeed, Muslim Indians face hugely disproportionate levels of unemployment, illiteracy and ill health, who tend to live in more isolated communities or ghettos, sometimes masquerading as Hindus to find work.
Statistics from National Crime Records Bureau's Crime in India 2012 report plotted on a map of India to highlight which Indian states have the highest rate of crime against women. The rate of crime against women means the number of crimes against women per one lakh population of women. The statistics from the 2011 Actual Census (Provisional) women population have been used to calculate the crime rate.
India has systematically failed to uphold its international legal obligations to ensure the fundamental human rights of Dalits, or so-called untouchables, despite laws and policies against caste discrimination, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. More than 165 million Dalits in India are condemned to a lifetime of abuse simply because of their caste by Hindutva terrorist.
“The Indian government can no longer deny its collusion in maintaining a system of entrenched social and economic segregation.”
In 1996, CERD concluded that the plight of Dalits falls squarely under the prohibition of descent-based discrimination.
The pervasiveness of abuses against Dalits is corroborated by the reports of Indian governmental agencies, including the National Human Rights Commission, and the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. These and other sources were compiled, investigated, and analyzed under international law by NYU School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic.
India’s report to CERD, eight years overdue, covers compliance with the convention from 1996 to 2006 yet does not contain a single mention of abuses against Dalits – abuses that India’s own governmental agencies have documented and verified.
On 25 March 2007, Awadkesh Kumar, 24, was hit by gunshots fired by members of the dominant caste in his community. Awadkesh was semi-unconscious for five days and lost both eyes. Four arrests were made, but the court case is still pending. Meanwhile, Awadkesh is unable to feed his family and relies on the help of neighbors.
