New Delhi: Every year, December 18 is observed as the Minorities Rights Day in India to uphold the right to freedom and equal opportunities for the minorities and create awareness about the respect and dignity of the religious and ethnic minorities.
In India, six religious communities have been notified as religious minorities. These include Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Zoroastrians or Parsis and Jains.
Indian government led by BJP promotes Hindu nationalist policies resulting in systematic and ongoing egregious violations of freedom which negatively impact religious communities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Dalits.
Modi government continues to indiscriminately target the minorities with over 300 attacks in last year against Christians, making the country one of the worst for the community to live. Be they are Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, or Dalits, Hindutva mindset is poised to the cleansing of all non-Hindu communities not only through policy measures but also the use of force through RSS goons.
In annual report for 2021, US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended India be placed on a religious freedom blacklist for the second year in a row. It also recommended to US president, US Congress, and Department of State, called for India to be designated as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for “egregious religious freedom violations”.
The report also recommended that US Secretary of State Blinken should impose targeted sanctions on Indian government, agencies and officials responsible for the “severe religious freedom violations” by freezing their assets, including barring their entry into US.
Violence against minorities is politically motivated and part of the electoral strategy of Hindu nationalist political parties such as BJP. BJPs’ agenda is to turn officially secular and pluralistic India into an ethnic Hindu nation.
Mumbai-based Centre for Study of Society and Secularism and UK-based Minority Rights Group International both have indicated that minority groups in India are increasingly encountering hate crimes, such as lynching, threats, attacks on places of worship and forced conversion.
The right-wing Hindus have become a threat to Muslims which is manifested in the killing of hundreds of Muslims on charges of eating/slaughtering beef, assaulting on charges of converting Hindus to Islam, tempting Hindu women to marry Muslims, opposing the veil Muslim students, banning the sale of halal meat, removing the Islamic names of cities, villages & streets and placing Hindu names instead. Purposefully, anti-Christian vigilantes are sweeping through villages, storming churches, burning Christian literature, attacking schools and assaulting worshipers.
The very act of worship has become dangerous despite constitutional protections for freedom of religion. The rising attacks on Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, are part of a broader shift in India, in which minorities feel less safe. Assam is Modi’s grand laboratory, where he is putting Muslims to the litmus test.
Hindu Groups continue to disrupt Muslim’s prayers in Gurgaon, UP. With rising hate crimes against Muslims all around India, it is important to understand incidents of hate crime are a part of the systematic genocide of Muslims in India which has only strengthened with Hindutva politicians holding offices of power.
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