TLTP
NEW YORK
Leading US publications have lashed out at Indian celebrities’ hypocrisy in crying out loud over George Floyd’s killing, after remaining silent over Muslims’ massacre by police-backed Hindu fanatics in India.
Rana Ayyub, an Indian journalist and an author, wrote in The Washington Post that many Indians found that voicing outrage over Floyd’s murder is a safe cause, and referred to Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra’s Instagram expressing her pain and anger while sharing the victim’s last words, “Please, I can’t breathe”. “But where have these celebrities been when Indian Muslims have been systematically targeted by a majoritarian regime and a prejudiced legal system,” she pointedly asked.
She said, “In Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, Modi revoked the special autonomous status, leaving the valley in a state of military lockdown and isolation that has generated multiple human rights abuses.”
Another Indian journalist, Raksha Kumar, wrote in Foreign Policy, about the targeting of Muslims and other minorities as well as frequent cases of police brutality in India that evoke no response from public figures.
After seven decades of independence, India has yet to conclusively address the inequities within its society, the article said.
“Some recent police activity seems vengeful. In the past six weeks, Delhi’s police have arrested several student union leaders and other dissidents who legally protested anti-Muslim government laws in January and February demonstrations that came to a halt primarily because of the coronavirus lockdown. Since there is limited access to courts in this period, the arrests effectively thwart the potential for renewed protests once lockdown restrictions are lifted,” said the article. At the outset of her article, journalist Rana Ayyub also highlighted the lack of any reaction among public figures to the denial by an Indian court of the bail application of Safoora Zargar, a 27-year-old Kashmiri student activist who is five months pregnant and has been in jail while suffering complications due to polycystic ovary syndrome.
“Doctors fear a possible miscarriage that could endanger Zargar’s life. She has been in the dreaded Tihar Jail in New Delhi for two months for allegedly conspiring to obstruct law enforcement during February’s nationwide student protests against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Bill, which brazenly excludes Muslim migrants,” Ayyub wrote.
“A country that rose in solidarity for a dead elephant looks the other way as Zargar waits in an overcrowded prison during a pandemic. (Many Indian celebrities voiced sorrow over the recent death of a pregnant elephant that had accidentally consumed a pineapple with firecrackers in it.),” she added.
