By Iftikhar Ali and Muhammad Luqman
The coronavirus may be scuttling world economies and posing one of the gravest challenges to humanity since the WWII. But New Delhi is not showing any sign of abating in its discriminatory policies against Indian Muslims and people of Kashmir.
In a space of just one week, Indian government’s measures clearly indicate that New Delhi is not relenting in its policies that are widely seen as anti-Muslim within India and the outside world.
New Delhi has officially moved to change the demographics of the disputed Kashmir territory, by allowing flooding in of citizens from the Indian union. The ruling BJP government, which is led by ultranationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pressured workers on denying citizenship to Muslims in Assam, according to The New York Times. Since late March, extremist voices have stepped up the campaign to stigmatize Muslims for spread of coronavirus, as reported by The Time magazine.
And to leave no ambiguity in their intentions members of official tribunals, set up in Assam to decide citizenship question said they felt pressured to declare Muslims non-citizens, according to a dispatch published in The New York Times Saturday.
It’s widely believed that New Delhi wants to expel illegal migrants come what may and Muslims have long been a ready target for the BJP ideologues of Hindutva – an exclusionary ideology that seeks domination of the majority Hindu population.
Piling up evidence on the continued discrimination against Muslims, the Times reports that it interviewed one current and five former members of the Assam tribunals that review suspected foreigners.
An Indian Muslim violently attacked on aNew Delhi street in February 2020 Image: Screenshot/AlJazeera
The five former members said they were coerced by the government to declare Muslims to be non-citizens, with three of them saying that they were fired because they did not do so, the report sys
“I was punished,’’ Mamoni Rajkumari, a 54-year-old lawyer who spent nearly two years on the tribunal and was among the dismissed members, was quoted as saying by the Times.
Assam has also recently completed a broader, separate review of every resident’s paperwork to determine if they were citizens.
That review found that nearly two million of Assam’s 33 million residents, many of them desperately poor, were possibly foreigners. Now this group — which is disproportionately Muslim — is potentially stateless, the dispatch says.
Modi’s Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party has its roots in a Hindu worldview, and during last year’s national elections, party leaders vowed to apply the same type of citizenship checks used in Assam to the rest of India, the Times notes. The Modi government continues to deny these developments as allegations.
The Indian government whipped up anti-Muslim hysteria when it enforced a new immigration law in December 2019, which effectively blunts Muslims from seeking Indian citizenship and allows followers of all other major religious from regional countries to apply for Indian citizenship.
The reactions to the Citizenship Amendment Act triggered widespread opposition with major political parties expressing support for Muslims. During President Trump’s visit to New Delhi, Indian Muslims protested in New Delhi, only to be attacked by gangs of Hindu radicals.
The images and media accounts of violence against Muslims drew international condemnation including from US Commission for International Religious Freedom.
In the latest episode, Indian officials are targeting Muslims under the pretext of stopping the spread of coronavirus, which is feared to hit the country of over one billion people.
As noted by the international media including the Time Magazine, several BJP followers have tried blame new cases of COVID-19 to a Muslim congregation held in the capital last month.
The campaign includes videos that falsely claim to show members of the missionary group spitting on police.
“Islamophobia has been transposed onto the coronavirus issue,” says Amir Ali, an assistant professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
According to the Time magazine, since March 28, tweets with the hashtag #CoronaJihad have appeared nearly 300,000 times and potentially seen by 165 million people on Twitter.
The data comes from Equality Labs, a digital human rights group. Equality Labs activists complain that many of the posts are in clear violation of Twitter’s rules on hate speech and coronavirus, but have yet to be taken down.
“We are committed to protect and serve the public conversation as we navigate this unprecedented global public healthcare crisis,” reads a statement Twitter provided to TIME. “We continue to remain vigilant.”
In Kashmir, where basic freedom have still not been restored since August 5 2019 gag orders that came with revocation of the region’s autonomy, India moved to facilitate citizenship of Indians through a variety of ways. The government is now under pressure to reverse the order after biting criticism from Kashmiri political leaders.
The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Order 2020 would grant non-Kashmiris the right to become permanent residents of the valley.
Pakistan, which partly control Jammu and Kashmir, has reacted furiously to New Delhi’s move, calling it part of “fascist Modi government” agenda to change demographics of the UN-recognized disputed territory, which is the only Muslim majority area under Indian control.
“We strongly condemn the racist Hindutva supremacist Modi government’s continuing attempts to illegally alter the demography of the IOJK in violation of all international laws & treaties.
“The new Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Order 2020 is a clear violation of the 4th Geneva Convention,” reacted Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in a series of tweets.
Meanwhile, India’s daily wagers, who have been compelled to move out of cities in millions, have no idea where the lockdown against coronavirus, will take them to.
