New Delhi: More and more women from different walks of life and corners of India and the rest of the world are raising their voices against the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities in the Asian country.
“The unity and security of citizens is the first and foremost condition for the security of a country,” Roop Rekha Varma, former vice-chancellor of Lucknow University in the multicultural and multi-religious capital city of Uttath Pradesh state in north-central India, told IPS.
Together with Ramesh Dixit, a former professor at the same academic institution, Varma filed a complaint with a local police station against hate speech by those who have literally threatened to kill Muslims in India.
In a recent case, provocative speeches allegedly calling for the genocide of Muslims were delivered at a conclave held in December 2021 in Haridwar, a city in the north of the country, located in the Indian side of the Himalayas and 200 kilometres north of the Indian capital, New Delhi.
“If 100 of us become soldiers and are willing to kill two million (Muslims), then we will win… we will protect India and make it a Hindu nation,” Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha Party, said at the meeting, according to a video recording.
Pandey, Wasim Rizvi alias Jitendra Narayan Tyagi, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati and Sagar Sindhu Maharaj are facing hate speech charges for their statements in similar terms.
Varma told IPS that she is shocked by the recent increase in unprovoked incidents against Muslims, including Muslim women.
Sunita Viswanath, founder and executive director of Hindus for Human Rights, a U.S.-based civil society organisation, is equally alarmed.
“Muslim women in India are banned from entering university for wearing the hijab. This is a country where the prime minister (Hindu nationalist Nerendra Modi) came to power promising equal rights for women,” Viswanath said.
He added: “It is clear that not all are equal. If this is not apartheid, please tell us what is.
She was referring to the controversy that erupted in January when a public university in the Udupi district of Karnataka state banned women students from attending classes for wearing headscarves. The matter is now in the hands of the judiciary.
Along with 16 other US civil society organisations, Viswanath organised two briefings to the US Congress on India’s treatment of Muslims.
“We are US citizens of Indian origin and we have the power to influence and move US lawmakers and the (Joe) Biden administration to speak out,” Viswanath said on social media.
For the activist, the world has to understand that something is wrong in India, that this South Asian nation is going down a dangerous path with the momentum of Hindu nationalism that has gone beyond discrimination against other faiths, especially Muslims and Christians, to move towards direct hate practices, encouraged from different sectors.
In this country of over 1.3 billion people, the predominant religion is Hinduism, and it is also considered a holy land for Buddhism, Yainism and Sikhism.
The Muslim religion is second in number of adherents, 13.5 percent of the population, but also the historical and strategic rival of the Hindu majority and its ruling elites, who, along with a new-found nationalism, have been driving a growing Islamophobia.
“India’s encounter with hatred is about to explode. The only way to fight systematic hatred is to defend the tried and tested Indian secular fabric,” Saumya Bajaj told IPS by phone.
Bajaj is associated with Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch (GNEM), a New Delhi-based group that advocates unity among citizens, irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
Bajaj is associated with Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch (GNEM), a New Delhi-based group that advocates unity among citizens, irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
“Terrorising Muslims and Christians on a daily basis seems to be the new norm. We, as citizens, can no longer afford to be silent spectators to this macabre celebration of hatred that engulfs us,” reads a circular inviting citizens to say NO to hate-mongers.
The GNEM demands that the police investigate all cases of violence against fellow citizens, including online abuse.
Nayantara Sahgal, 94, an award-winning and revered Indian woman, says she does not recognise the new India.
“Today, that India is disappearing. My country is unrecognisable. It looks like a foreign country full of hatred and exclusion. There is a profound slippage of democracy. It is utterly hopeless. However, we cannot be silent. A writer has to speak out loud and clear,” said the former Vice President of PEN International in an interview.
British Booker Prize-winning writer and essayist Arundhati Roy fears that Hindu nationalism could break India into small pieces like Yugoslavia and Russia.
The hope, she argues, is that in the end the Indian people will resist what she calls “the fascism of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)”.
Sahgal is pinning her hopes on elections to be held in five Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, by 7 March.
In that state, inter-faith marriages have been restricted in recent times. Muslim men married to Hindu women have been harassed by ‘vigilante’ mobs and often detained by police. Attempts to humiliate and terrorise Muslim women through the Internet continue.
Sahgal is the daughter of Vijay Laxmi Pandit, sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of independent India. She is also the widow of the late Edward Nirmal Mangat Rai, an Indian Christian. Today she is worried about the safety of her Christian relatives and Muslim friends, as incidents of wholesale hatred against minorities are at an all-time high.
Sabika Naqvi, community and advocacy officer of The Fearless Collective, says Muslim women have woken up in India and are making their voices heard.
“The call to rape and kill Muslim women is routine, and efforts to dehumanise Muslim women are on the rise,” she said.
For Naqvi, “they fear our ability to write, to speak, to journal, to dream, to articulate, to assert, to organise and to fight fiercely against oppressors.”
“They sexualise us, try to pose as our messiahs or conspire to kill us. But we are here to conquer the world. We are lawyers, poets, journalists, actresses, activists, businesswomen, academics and much more,” said the Indian Muslim activist.
She stressed that what Muslim women are experiencing is not a “joke” or mere individual “harassment”, but a collective and daily harassment.
The Fearless Collective is a movement that helps citizens move from fear to love by creating participatory art in public space.
Naqvi believes that the time has come to speak out and make the voices of solidarity louder than those that support hatred, overtly or covertly.pressenza.com
