Decoding Modi’s India Human Rights
Imran Hanif MBA, CMgr, FCMI, FIML, MAHRI, MRCSA, MIPSA, QEAC
Founder & MD at Visa2Land, Trained leader, Lifelong learner, Business analyst, Management Guru, Security Analyst and Writer
Overview
India is a diverse country with many religious and ethnic minorities, but it has also faced several challenges in ensuring their rights and protection. According to various sources, some of the minorities that have experienced discrimination, violence, and killings in India include Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Dalits, and tribal groups.
Muslims are the largest religious minority in India, comprising about 15% of the population. They have been subjected to hate crimes, mob attacks, lynching, and communal riots by Hindu nationalist groups and supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who accuse them of being anti-national, terrorists, or cow slaughterers. The government has also enacted laws and policies that discriminate against Muslims, such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from neighboring countries, and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which requires people to prove their citizenship or face detention or deportation. These measures have sparked widespread protests and violence, especially in February 2020, when Delhi witnessed communal clashes that killed 53 people, mostly Muslims.
Sikhs are another religious minority in India, making up about 2% of the population. They are mostly concentrated in the state of Punjab, where they have a history of demanding a separate homeland called Khalistan. The Khalistan movement was at its peak in the 1980s and 90s, when it faced a brutal crackdown by the Indian security forces that resulted in thousands of deaths and human rights violations. The movement has lost momentum in recent years, but some Sikh diaspora groups still support it. The Indian government has accused some Sikh protesters of having a Khalistani agenda, especially after they joined the mass farmer protests against the new farm laws in November 2020. The government has also filed criminal cases against journalists, activists, and celebrities who expressed solidarity with the farmers.
Christians are another religious minority in India, accounting for about 2.3% of the population. They have faced attacks on their churches, institutions, and individuals by Hindu extremist groups who accuse them of converting Hindus to Christianity by force or fraud. The government has also enacted anti-conversion laws in several states that restrict religious freedom and target Christian missionaries and NGOs. According to a report by Persecution Relief, an advocacy group for Christians in India, there were 327 incidents of hate crimes against Christians in India in 2020.
Dalits are a social group that are considered to be at the bottom of the caste hierarchy in India. They face discrimination, exclusion, and violence from upper-caste groups who consider them to be impure and untouchable. Dalits are often denied access to education, employment, land, water, temples, and other public services. They are also vulnerable to atrocities such as rape, murder, lynching, and forced labor. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there were 45,935 cases of crimes against Dalits registered in India in 2019.
Tribal groups or Adivasis are indigenous communities that live in various parts of India. They constitute about 8.6% of the population and have their own distinct cultures, languages, and traditions. They have been marginalized and exploited by the dominant groups who encroach on their lands, forests, and resources for mining, development, or conservation projects. They have also faced violence and displacement by armed groups such as Maoists or Naxalites who operate in some tribal areas. According to the NCRB, there were 6,528 cases of crimes against tribal people registered in India in 2019.
Who is Ruling India?
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the ruling party of India since 2014, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is a political party that advocates Hindutva, an ideology that seeks to define Indian culture in terms of Hindu values. The BJP traces its origins to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), which was founded in 1951 by Syama Prasad Mukherjee, a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – a Hindu supremacist organization that wants India to be defined as a Hindu nation. The BJS merged with other parties in 1977 to form the Janata Party, which defeated Indira Gandhi's Congress in the general elections. However, the Janata Party split in 1980, and the BJS leaders formed the BJP as a separate entity. The BJP initially struggled to win elections, but gradually expanded its base by forming alliances with regional parties and appealing to various sections of society. The BJP also benefited from the politics of religious polarization and strident nationalism, especially after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the Kargil War in 1999.
The BJP came to power for the first time in 1998, under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who formed a coalition government with several other parties. The BJP lost power in 2004, but regained it in 2014, when Modi led the party to a historic victory, winning a clear majority in the parliament. Modi's charisma, popularity, and development agenda helped the BJP consolidate its position as the dominant party in India, while the opposition parties remained weak and divided. One must understand that Narendra Modi is the only person ever denied a U.S. visa based on a little-known law on religious freedom. There are clear cut evidence that Mr Modi was involved in killings of thousands of Muslims in Gujrat State when he was chief minister in 2002.
The BJP's main objectives are to promote India as a Hindu state, economic growth of India, national security, social welfare, and cultural nationalism. The BJP also supports the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya, the abolition of Article 370 that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the implementation of a uniform civil code that would replace personal laws based on religion, and the enactment of a citizenship law that would exclude Muslim immigrants from neighboring countries. Modi has taken over Justice in India by appointing pro BJP judges. Four senior Indian supreme court judges have gone public with an extraordinary warning that India’s chief justice is mishandling sensitive cases and endangering the court’s integrity and the country’s democracy.
Most recently assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist activist, on Canadian soil has sparked a diplomatic crisis between Canada and India. Canada has accused India of being behind the killing, based on intelligence from the "Five Eyes" network of Western allies. India has denied any involvement and condemned Canada for supporting the Khalistan movement, which seeks to create an independent Sikh state in parts of northern India. The Khalistan movement is banned in India, where it is seen as a terrorist threat. Nijjar was a leader of the Khalistan Tiger Force and the Canadian arm of Sikhs for Justice, two pro-Khalistan groups. He was also on India's National Investigation Agency's wanted list for allegedly carrying out terrorist attacks in India, a charge he denied. Nijjar had publicly spoken of the threat to his life from Indian intelligence agencies and had led peaceful protests against human rights violations in India. His death has triggered outrage and grief among the Sikh community in Canada, which accounts for about 2 % of the population. The Canadian government has expelled a senior Indian diplomat (spy chief) and demanded an explanation from India for its alleged role in the assassination. The Indian government has called the allegations baseless and irresponsible and has warned Canada of serious consequences for its relations with India. The tension between the two countries has also put pressure on the United States, which is a close partner of both Canada and India. All five eyes members have asked India to cooperate with ongoing investigation to unearth the true picture and reach bottom of the case for people responsible for this murder. The following is a joint statement by the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia on the recent diplomatic crisis between Canada and India.
The United Kingdom says it is in close touch with its Canadian partners about “serious allegations” from Ottawa that the Indian government was involved in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia province earlier this year.
The U.S. is in touch with Indians at high levels after Ottawa said Indian government agents had links to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada, and Washington is giving India no "special exemption" in the matter, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on last Thursday.
The spokesperson for Australian foreign minister Wong said Australia is “deeply concerned by these allegations and notes ongoing investigations into this matter”. “We are closely engaged with partners on developments. We have conveyed our concerns at senior levels to India,” said the Australian official.
Blast from the Recent Past:
1. Story of RAW agent involved in killings in Pakistan?
Kulboshan Yadav is an Indian national who was arrested by Pakistan in 2016 on charges of spying and terrorism. He is accused of being a commander in the Indian Navy and working for India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) who funded his activities and set him up as a businessman working in Iran undercover. Pakistan claims with evidence that he was involved in subversive activities in Baluchistan and entered into Pakistan via Iran border on a fake Pakistani passport, a province that has been facing a separatist insurgency. Initially India denied knowing any such person exists but later their stance was that he was a former naval officer who was kidnapped from Iran, where he was running a business. Yadav was sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan in 2017, but his execution was stayed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019. The ICJ ordered Pakistan to review his conviction and sentence and to grant him consular access. India and Pakistan have been locked in a diplomatic dispute over his case, which has added to the tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. This story was covered by New York Times and Dawn in detail as under:
2. What is the story of Indian cornicles?
Indian cornicles is a term used by EU DisinfoLab, an independent NGO that investigates disinformation campaigns, to describe a massive operation that originated from India and targeted international institutions and Pakistan for more than 15 years. According to EU DisinfoLab, Indian cornicles involved resurrecting dead media, dead think-tanks and NGOs, creating fake media outlets and NGOs, impersonating EU institutions and officials, and using ANI, India's largest wire service, to amplify the content produced by the network. The main purpose of Indian cornicles was to discredit Pakistan internationally and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council and the European Parliament. EU DisinfoLab exposed the network partially in 2019 and fully in 2020, revealing that it was run by a Delhi-based holding company called Srivastava Group (SG) and that it operated across at least 116 countries. EU DisinfoLab called Indian cornicles "the largest network we have exposed" and "a threat to the integrity of the EU and UN institutions". This story explains details of this entire episode:
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Years ago a shocking story of India's involvement in the assassination of a Canadian national has gone viral on social media, sparking outrage and condemnation. The story claims that India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), orchestrated the killing of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who exposed the mass disappearances and killings of Sikhs in Punjab by Indian security forces in the 1980s and 1990s. His body was never recovered. His case became a symbol of the struggle for justice and accountability in Punjab. Read more here:
The story alleges that RAW agents infiltrated the Sikh community in Canada and hired a hitman to shoot Khalra outside his home in Surrey, British Columbia, on September 6, 1995. The story also claims that the Canadian government and police were aware of RAW's involvement but did not take any action to prevent or investigate the murder.
According to a report by CBC News, the story of India's involvement in Khalra's murder is based on a single source: a former RAW officer named Anil Kumar Sharma, who claims to have been part of the operation. Sharma says he decided to come forward and reveal the truth after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and felt remorse for his actions. He says he has documents, audio recordings and video footage to prove his claims, but he has not shared them with any media outlet or authority. He says he contacted Khalra's widow, Paramjit Kaur, through an intermediary and offered to testify in her ongoing civil lawsuit against the Indian government for her husband's murder. To understand why Sikhs want independent homeland one needs to understand what happened in 80s and 90s. Here are few links to explore to understand background:
Conclusion:
These crisis are the test for Western democracies and moral stand they always claim on human rights. According to the annual U.S. report on human rights practices released March 2023 listed "significant human rights issues" and abuses in India, including reported targeting of religious minorities, dissidents and journalists. The findings come nearly a year after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some government, police and prison officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of the Asian nation's rights record. Read this news story for details:
As per NYT story American intelligence gave assistance, but communications intercepted by Canada were more definitive in linking India to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
The incident has triggered protests and violence in both countries, raising fears of further escalation and instability. To defuse the current tensions and restore trust and cooperation between India and Canada? Some possible steps could be:
1. Establishing a joint investigation team forthwith to probe the circumstances and motives of the death, and to ensure that justice is served for the victim and his family.
2. Engaging in dialogue and mediation at the highest levels of government, as well as through civil society and cultural exchanges, to address the underlying grievances and misunderstandings that may have contributed to the conflict.
3. Promoting mutual respect and tolerance for the diversity and values of each country, and avoiding inflammatory rhetoric and actions that may incite hatred and violence.
4. Strengthening the bilateral ties and cooperation on areas of common interest, such as trade, education, health, and security, and reaffirming the shared commitment to democracy, human rights, and peace.
The Indian authorities have refused to cooperate with the Canadian investigations so far and have denied any involvement in the crime in spite of clear message from five eyes members to cooperate with the investigation. Remember Canada PM has taken this stance after credible evidence shared from five eyes intelligence alliance. Canada has several options to deal with this situation, such as:
- Applying diplomatic pressure on India through bilateral talks, multilateral forums, or third-party mediation.
- Imposing economic sanctions on India or specific individuals or entities related to the case.
- Seeking legal recourse through the International Court of Justice or other relevant bodies like UNO.
- Expelling more or recalling diplomats or consular staff from either country.
- Providing support and protection to the victim's family and other Canadians in India.
Note: Views are writers own and should be taken as such.