Muhammad Ullah: The fate of religious pluralism in India hangs in the balance. In his zealotry, Modi may be well on his way to realising the foretelling of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who argued that Hindus and Muslims constituted two distinct nations, precluding coexistence. A video posted on Twitter showing a hijab-wearing Muslim student being harassed by a Hindu mob in Karnataka state has caused growing concerns amid protests over the ban on hijab. Brave Muskan Khan was surrounded by men wearing saffron scarves as she arrived at her college in Mandya, where she confronted the anti-Hijab protesters.

The cruelest part is someone leaked addresses and numbers of protesting Muslim girls and they have been getting abusive phone calls. Even their parents are receiving calls from unknown numbers. With the data leak from college, their lives have become even tougher. Ruthlessly, the Primary and Secondary Education Minister BC Nagesh blamed the girls, asking, “Why did she provoke?” He claimed that the burqa-clad college student standing up to a mob in saffron made the first move in her show of defiance, and questioned why she “provoked” them. “They did not want to gherao (surround) the girl. but when she was shouting...when she was shouting Allah-hu-Akbar, there was not a single student around her.” The state school education minister Inder Singh Parmar, hailing from ruling BJP, reacting to the hijab controversy in Karnataka said, the “hijab is not a part of uniform and it should be banned in Madhya Pradesh schools”. The BJP government is using non-issues and the personal likes and dislikes of eating and dressing of a person to gain popularity in the Hindu majority country in the name of democracy to win elections. This is a violation of basic human rights. Instead of democracy; right now, majoritarianism and authoritarianism are the true face of India. How bleak is the future of so-called shining India, where universities and colleges are not safe for minorities. On Twitter, Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, the newly appointed vice-chancellor of India’s JawaharlalNehruUniversity has supported calls for genocide, and attacks on students and farmers. A hardline protege of Modi, Yogi Adityanath, known for its strong Hindu supremacist tradition; founded a vigilante youth army named Hindu Yuva Vahini. Volunteers of the group regularly rough up Muslims accused of slaughtering cows or carrying out the “love jihad” in Uttar Pradesh. Adityanath himself has several criminal cases pending against him in various courts. The BJP is fueling religious intolerance for electoral gain, calling into question India’s long-cherished secular and democratic credentials.

The Human Rights Watch accused the Indian ruling party BJP government for its involvement in atrocities carried out against minorities in the country last year. In its latest report, the global rights body said that Indian authorities intensified their crackdown on activists, journalists, and other critics of the government using politically motivated prosecutions in 2021.

In its world report 2022, HRW said that tens of thousands of people died during a surge in Covid-19 cases, with the government failing to provide adequate healthcare to those in need. “The clampdown on dissent was facilitated by the draconian counterterrorism law, tax raids, foreign funding regulations, and charges of financial irregularities,” HRW said. “The clampdown on dissent was facilitated by the draconian counterterrorism law, tax raids, foreign funding regulations, and charges of financial irregularities,” HRW said. It added that attacks against religious minorities were carried out with impunity under the BJP government. “BJP supporters engaged in mob attacks or threatened violence, while several states adopted laws and policies to target minority communities, particularly Christians, Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis,” said the world rights body. “The Indian authorities have given up any appearance of tolerating dissent and are using the machinery of the state to silence critics,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Journalists in Kashmir faced increased harassment and some were arrested on terrorism charges. UN experts raised concerns over abuses in Kashmir, including arbitrary detention of journalists, alleged custodial killings, and a “broader pattern of systematic infringements of fundamental rights used against the local population,” it concluded. South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), a regional network of human rights defenders, said it was “deeply alarmed and concerned” by the “rising explicit intolerance” against minorities, especially Muslims in India, and the ongoing crackdown on human rights organisations. In a statement, SAHR said, “In recent times, India’s vibrant democracy has been seeing an alarming process of dilution by the rise of xenophobic nationalism and threats to religious minorities who are being pushed steadily and deliberately into becoming second-class citizens in their own country.”

UNHRC reports are not generated merely to fulfil the pages of newspaper; these must be serious concerns for the global community, Islamic countries and international bodies. These are wake up calls for the international community and so-called word human rights defenders who are providing only lip service to innocent victims. On the hijab row in Karnataka, social activists and women rights activists are sleeping. They did not protest on the road to show solidarity with Muskan Khan. She is the true symbol of women empowerment where she faced hundreds of saffron braggers courageously for her religious right. Unfortunately, the global community, especially western countries, might fail to address these atrocities of India and ignore the pains of millions of minorities suffering in India just because it can be global economic and strategic hub to counter China. They can criticise their rivals but cannot stop their ally from violating basic human rights. The US State Department’s “Religious Freedom Designations” listed 10 countries as CPC or in the Red List, including Pakistan, China, Iran, Russia, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. While despite USCIRF’s recommendations last year to list India as a CPC, the US State Department has turned down the recommendation to enlist India on its ‘Red List’ or (CPC). The burden will be always on the world’s conscience as a hypocritic and double standard world where there is no safety for Muslims in India because they are minority, where they cannot safeguard their basic human rights. This is the time for world to realise the terrorism in India. At least one resolution must be passed in the UNSC to expose the fascist policies of the current Indian government for historical record to prove that the United Nations is for all.