Islamophobia has taken a most lethal form in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a persecuted minority. The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — [but] it is taking its most lethal form in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist regime has sharply escalated crimes in Indian Illegally-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK). The crimes in Kashmir have a long history and the state is now a brutally occupied territory and its military control in some ways is similar to occupied Palestine. The situation in South Asia is painful in particular not because of what is happening but because of what is not happening. There is, however, hope and opportunities to solve South Asian torment but not for long. The international community should 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 as journalists — especially women — have been exposed to all kinds of reprisals including harassment, illegal detention, police violence and sedition charges. The situation in IOJK is even direr, where journalists routinely face police questioning, ban on reporting, suspension of internet services and financial constraints in line with BJP’s recent media policy. The family of award-winning Srinagar-based photojournalist Masrat Zahra was subjected to harassment and intimidation by Indian police as the crackdown on the press in Indian-occupied Kashmir continues to escalate. Fahad Shah, a renowned Kashmiri journalist who is the founder and 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 February 2022. The greatest threat to the Indian constitution is the promotion of majority religion by the Indian government at the expense of minorities.
The BJP and its affiliates are making hateful remarks against Muslims to gain Hindu votes around elections. The BJP government has adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against religious minorities and other groups and it also stigmatises its critics, the HRW official said. The government enacted the ‘Citizenship Act’ to target minorities. Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok, had failed to control hatred spread through their platforms. The US Congress must weigh on the Indian government to convey their concerns vis-a-vis the violation of human and minority rights in India. The prejudices embedded in the government of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP have infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass and attack religious minorities with impunity.
Hindu spiritual leaders are involved in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and BJP leaders and affiliated groups have long portrayed minority communities, especially Muslims, as a threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life. Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam, labelled Muslim immigrants as extremists and accused them of hurting Hindu sentiments over cow slaughter. The culture of violence and impunity has taken root, pointing out that UP police have carried out hundreds of extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals belonging to minorities, particularly Muslims. By the time protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill spilt out on the streets of UP in December 2019, the police manhandled protestors, behaved in a vulgar manner with women, arrested whomsoever it wanted and framed prominent activists in criminal cases.
