FACTS
Reuters has reported that Indian Prime Minister Modi’s party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates are organising a siege of Ayodhya on November 25 by 100,000 Hindu extremists. The siege is to put pressure on the government to introduce legislation to allow a new temple to be built on the site of the Babri Masjid. The mosque, built in 1528, was destroyed by a violent extremist Hindu mob in 1992. The 5000 Muslims living there fear a carnage and are moving out.
The dispute concerning the site is before the Supreme Court but the BJP is raising this issue now in the run up to the Indian general elections due in April 2019 in order to communalise the elections and win over the Hindu voters. This strategy worked well in the 2014 elections with the BJP winning overall majority seats in parliament. It also led to the lynching of Muslims and Dalits.
Since the 2014 elections, BJP has been losing support among the voters because of low farm prices, unemployment and difficulties faced by small businesses in obtaining credit. Polls over the last few months have largely predicted a hung parliament. Desperate to win over the voters, the BJP is whipping up Hindu fanaticism and hatred of Muslims, which must be condemned by all.
BJP is the political wing of the proto-fascist RSS. Founded in 1925 as a social organization, RSS has now grown into a powerful militant Hindu nationalist movement with numerous allied organizations, referred to as Sangh Parivar. Its tentacles have spread to schools, military colleges, charities, clubs and publications to purvey its fascist ideology. Sangh Parivar activists preach hatred against the minorities, instigate communal riots and mobilize support for BJP candidates during elections.
RSS has a pathological hatred of Muslims who are labeled foreign conquerors and their contribution to Indian culture and civilization denied. RSS ideological guru M.S Golwalkar, who died in 1973, wrote that the treatment of Jews by Hitler was ‘a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by. Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”
The RSS runs over 4000 schools where children’s minds are poisoned by teaching a fabricated version of Indian history, glorifying the Aryan contribution to Indian civilisation and demonising Muslims. It teaches Hindus “to empower themselves, transcend their effeteness, assert their masculinity and erase the painful history of past wrongs. The call to Hindu assertion here becomes a metaphor for a war against Muslims”. The BJP government is in the process of rewriting state school history textbooks to accommodate the Hindutva view.
The BJP state governments have changed the Muslim-sounding names of several cities to Hindu names in an attempt to wipe out the great contribution made by Muslims for over 500 years. Allahabad, the city founded by the Moghul Emperor Akbar more than 400 years ago, had its name changed to Prayagraj, a Hindu pilgrimage center and not a city. In Assam, the BJP controlled government is planning to amend the citizenship law to discriminate against Muslims.
We cannot stand by and watch the discrimination, persecution and violence perpetrated against Muslims and other minorities, and the inculcation of hatred towards them in schools and the media.
ACTION
- Write to the Indian Prime Minister Modi protesting the pending siege of Ayodhya and calling on him to take action to stop it.
- Call on your government,the United Nations Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council to take similar action.
- Call on UN Security Council to take effective action to prevent the hate-speech, persecution and violence against Dalits, Christians, Muslims, Tribals, secular critics of Sangh Parivar, and other minorities.
- Call on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHR) to direct the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues to investigate and report on the situation of minorities in India.
- Publicise the siege of Ayodhya and the feared carnage of Muslims in the print, electronic and social media.
Note
- Kindly send us copies of your letters to ci@citz.org
- Link to the Reuters report https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1NR039
