The pathology of Islamophobia is taking its most lethal form in India, with almost 250 million Muslims in the country becoming a persecuted minority, said Professor Noam Chomsky, a renowned public intellectual Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chomsky made the remarks while speaking at a Congressional Briefing “Worsening Hate Speech and Violence in India” on February 09, co-hosted by 17 organizations, including Amnesty International USA, Genocide Watch, Indian American Muslim Council, International Christian Concern, Dalit Solidarity Forum, and Hindus for Human Rights.
“The assault is taking other forms as well, including a general attack on independent thought and the educational system primarily directed against Muslim victims, but by now expanding beyond. That’s apart from India’s terrible crimes in Kashmir, those crimes have a long history. They’ve been sharply escalated by Modi’s rightwing Hindu nationalist regime,” Chomsky said.
“Kashmir is now a brutally occupied territory,” he said, adding, “its military control in some ways is similar to occupied Palestine.”
Annapurna Menon, Indian author and lecturer at the University of Westminster, urged the international community to focus on the status of press freedom in India as, under the BJP government, the situation has become a cause of concern.
“The situation on the ground is extremely alarming as four journalists have already been killed in 2022, simply for doing their job,” Menon said, adding that journalists, especially women, have been exposed to all kinds of reprisals including harassment, illegal detention, police violence and sedition charges.
Fahad Shah, editor of ‘The Kashmir Walla’ was arrested recently by police in Pulwama under terrorism and sedition laws, Menon pointed out. Similarly, Sajjad Gul, another journalist of ‘The Kashmir Walla’ was also arrested at the beginning of January 2022.
Meanwhile, John Sifton, Washington, D.C.-based Asia Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch, said the “greatest threat” to India’s Constitution today was the Modi government’s “promotion of India’s majority religion, Hinduism, at the expense of the country’s secular foundation and its religious minorities. Worse still, there are growing concerns over the independence of Indian institutions. The Election Commission, the judiciary, and the National Human Rights Commission are all facing increasing scrutiny under implications of bias.”
“These deterioration’s are threatening India’s underlying identity—the very idea of India as a diverse, pluralistic nation-state—and they harm India’s global standing as a functioning, rights-respecting democracy. In every opportunity that presents itself, US officials, citizens, members of Congress, should forcefully communicate concerns about these deterioration’s to the Indian government,” he added.
Rights activist Harsh Mander, on the other hand, said India’s “immense tragedy” was that people “steeped deeply in the Hindu supremacist ideology that spurred Gandhi’s killing are in fact ruling India today. India’s leaders are more determined than ever to push the country down this horrific path of hate, fear, and blood.”