Global voices are monitoring and critiquing human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva. We present here fortnightly highlights of what a range of actors – from UN experts and civil society groups to international media and parliamentarians of many countries – are saying about the state of India’s democracy.
Here’s the round-up for August 15-31, 2024.
International media reports
The Saturday Paper, Australia, August 17
Mike Seccombe writes about India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) being exposed as operating a network of spies in Australia and Australian authorities’ reluctance to name India and call out its role. Mike Burgess, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), has gone so far to say that it is an “acutely serious matter” with the spies having “developed targeted relationships with current and former politicians, a foreign embassy and a state police service”. Much of their surveillance was directed towards intimidating members of the diaspora community, Sikh separatists in particular.
Ian Hall, Professor of International Relations at Griffith University and a specialist in Indian foreign policy, commented that India is not named because “India being India, if you make a public criticism, then it will blow up and become an enormous issue”. Another reason is trade. India was Australia’s “fifth-largest trading partner in 2023 and one of the fastest-growing trade relationships”. According to a recent Lowy Institute poll, the public agrees with the government to prioritise trade and investment with India, with 42 per cent ranking it as “the highest priority in the bilateral relationship, well ahead of human rights, at 32 per cent.” “Essentially, we care more about the money than about India’s harassment of its diaspora community,” concludes Seccombe.
The upshot, says David Shoebridge, the Greens Party MP “who maintains contacts within the Australian Sikh community” is that the ASIO and the federal police “have not taken complaints of Indian government-sanctioned interference in the Sikh diaspora in Australia seriously enough”. Shoebridge is not suggesting that there is any “directive” from the Australian government to go soft. “But they’ve seen the prime minister give Modi bear hugs and call him ‘the boss’ and travel to India and ride in a chariot with him. You know, those signals are powerful.”
BBC, UK, August 18
Jacqui Wakefield and Shruti Menon, along with Kumar Malhotra, Josh Cheetham, and Ahmed Nour report on the circulation of “false videos” by Hindu “far-right influencers” in India attributing violence against Hindus in Bangladesh, after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime, to “Islamist radicals”. The videos are also being shared by far right activists like Tommy Robinson from the UK, who was active in posting inflammatory messages about the recent riots there which targeted Muslims and immigrants. Verifying that many of the videos (some of which have nearly a million mentions), are false, the BBC says while there have been attacks on Hindus, the reasons “appear to be political rather than religious”. The “fear-mongering” by social media influencers is “inflaming the tension” said Professor Sayeed Al-Zaman, an expert in hate speech and disinformation in Bangladesh.
CNN, US, August 18
Gloria Pazmino and Sabrina Souza report on The Indian Muslims of North America’s (an organisation representing Indian American Muslims) withdrawing their float from New York’s annual India Day parade, which took place on August 18. Their float would have showcased the accomplishments of prominent Muslims in India’s history. The group decided to drop out because they felt “the integrity of the parade has been called into question” by including a float of a replica of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, regarded as a “symbol” of bias against Muslims. Explaining their decision to withdraw their float, the group’s president Imtiaz Siamwalla, recalled the demolition of the Babri Masjid and said, “When the mob broke down the mosque back in 1992, people lost their lives, their belongings, that was not something that Muslims took lightly”. Commenting on the float’s political symbolism, he said, “They want to show the minorities – look what we did in our country we can do it here too, this is all for intimidation.” Ajit Sahi, advocacy director for the Indian American Muslim Council, said, “There are Hindus in the United States and in India who oppose this temple and the politics that it brings this temple is politics. This temple is not culture; this temple is not faith”.
Bloomberg, US, August 22
Andy Mukherjee urges the “credibility crisis” engulfing Madhabi Puri Buch, chief of India’s market watchdog SEBI, triggered by Hindenburg Research’s findings published on August 10, requires “a response by an independent authority”. With Puri Buch, and SEBI, at the heart of a potential conflict of interest stifling SEBI-led investigations into the Adani Group, Mukherjee says that Puri Buch’s senior colleagues “rushed to her defense” to “protect” SEBI’s reputation, and “they don’t have the authority to ask questions of the chair”. Now that the Bharitya Janata Party (BJP) has lost its majority in Parliament, it is even “less likely” to risk setting up a joint parliamentary committee than after Hindenburg 1.0. The matter “should not be trusted to any arm of the political executive”. Rather, it is “best left to the judiciary or lawmakers”. The Supreme Court should consider bringing back the committee it set up last year.
BBC, UK, August 22
Umang Poddar reports on the continuing “decades-old” ban preventing transgender people and gay and bisexual men from donating blood, despite the Supreme Court legalising gay sex” in India in 2018. Indian law prohibits LGBT people from donating blood “on the ground that they are high-risk groups for HIV-Aids”. The LGBTQ community has challenged this in the Supreme Court as being “highly prejudicial and presumptive”. Campaigners say it “hampers their access to crucial medical care” as it prevents them from taking blood from their partners or “chosen families”. The petitioners argue that all blood donors, irrespective of their sexual or gender orientation, should be asked about relevant aspects of their recent sexual histories. They propose that India should have an “individual-centric system” that is based on “actual risk” and not “perceived risk””. This is followed in the US and UK. Poddar reports that Brazil, the Republic of Ireland, Canada, France and Greece are among the countries that have lifted bans or eased restrictions.
The Guardian, UK, August 23
Nilanjana Bhowmick writes about the relationship between working conditions and violence, for women in India, in the aftermath of the “brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata” in the very hospital where she worked. Bhowmick asks if this is “another watershed moment” recalling the mass protests in 2012 following the gangrape and death of a young woman in Delhi. She reminds us that “at just under 33% in 2023, women’s participation in the Indian workforce lags significantly behind the global average of 47%”. She argues that the scale of violence in India “with a rape occurring every 16 minutes” is one reason for this “alarmingly low” female workforce participation rate. The Women @ Work 2024 report by Deloitte reveals that 46% of Indian women worry about safety at work or on their commutes. Drawing upon research on the role of safety in women’s decision to work, she concludes that “for every additional crime per 1,000 women in a district, roughly 32 women are deterred from joining the workforce.” In order to get women back to work, violence against women in public spaces has to be addressed. Despite India’s “litany of laws aimed at protecting women” and several “response mechanisms”, the violence “continues unabated”. Bhowmick calls for a greater investment in women’s organisations in order to address the key factor underlying violence against women in India – “the entrenched misogyny in a patriarchal society”.
Alternatives International, Canada, August 23
Bangladeshi writer and journalist Ahmede Hussain critiques India’s support for Sheikh Hasina and the continuing implications. Hussain traces how “for one and a half decades, India unabashedly supported Sheikh Hasina’s brutal and dictatorial regime.” He laments that the Modi government “never tried to make friends with Bangladesh or its people”.
Hussain draws upon a Washington Post report that details how India lobbied with the U.S. to stop censuring Sheikh Hasina over the last one year. The US had publicly criticized her for jailing “thousands of her rivals and critics” and “threatened” to place visa restrictions on Bangladeshis suspected of committing human rights abuses. Reportedly, Indian officials “demanded that the US tone down its pro-democracy rhetoric” in meetings, arguing Islamist groups would rise posing a threat to India, if the Opposition gained seats in an “open election”. Ultimately, the Biden administration substantially softened its criticism, although it denies that it did this under “Indian pressure”.
The day after Hasina’s ouster, Hussain criticised India’s External Minister, S. Jaishankar as having “failed to see why the people of India’s next-door neighbour had risen in unison against India’s closest ally in South Asia”. He lambasts the Indian media for speculating that Pakistan, China and the US were behind the people’s uprising, as well as how it “exaggerated the scale of attacks on Hindus”. He comments that “coverage like this trivialises the bigger issue of the oppression of the minorities in the sub-continent as a whole.”
With respect to the future, Hussain cautions against letting Hasina stay on in India, particularly given the “slew of charges” she is facing. He starkly states that “thanks” to India’s “years of support for Sheikh Hasina, ordinary Bangladeshis are finding it difficult to separate India from the Awami League”. Hussein advises that India “needs to change the way it sees Bangladesh” and its “high time India engages with the people of Bangladesh”. Thinking back to the second world war, he says although “the US liberated half of Europe but the EU isn’t the US’s colony”. Similarly, the India’s help towards Bangladesh’s independence 54 years ago “isn’t enough to make Bangladesh feel indebted forever”. Hussain concludes that “If India wants to become a regional superpower, its foreign policy actors have to work like one.”
Experts say
Anuradha Sajjanhar, politics lecturer at the University of East Anglia, describes in The Conversation on August 19, how the Narendra Modi government “invents its own kind of ‘experts’ to legitimise its policies”. She says “an important part of the BJP’s strategy over the past 15 years has been to discredit established intellectuals as irrelevant, elite and detached, while at the same time building alternative forms of “credible” knowledge and expertise.” There has been a systematic replacement of existing experts with “appointed loyalists by dismantling or co-opting advisory committees, universities and established research institutions.” This has served to “normalise ideas that may otherwise have appeared to be ideologically biased”. For instance, in a campaign speech in Banswara, Rajasthan in April 2024, Modi claimed the Congress party will distribute people’s wealth to “infiltrators”, widely seen as a veiled reference to Muslims. This was followed by Modi’s Economic Advisory Council publishing a “questionable research paper in May arguing that Muslim birthrates are rising much faster than any other demographic.” Sajjanhar also argues that such appointed experts are needed because the BJP needs support on both “technocratic efficiency and Hindu nationalism”.
Nik Sunil Williams, policy and campaigns officer at Index on Censorship, writes on August 19 that the recent withdrawal of India’s proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2024 “does not mark the end of the government’s ambition to control online speech”. The Bill sought to unduly expand government’s powers to control and restrict content of both individuals and platforms. It was compelled to be withdrawn after heavy criticism of features such as applying globally beyond citizens of India; and control over “every type of online content” and over “all broadcasters or network operators” including individual Youtubers and others. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has said that stakeholders can submit feedback on the Bill by October, but has “not confirmed the version being used and has not opened it up to consultation by the public”. Williams concludes this only indicates that “these particular bills were imperfect vehicles” for the government’s “plan to censor and control online speech”.
Sushant Singh, lecturer at Yale University, analyses on August 22 the failures of the Modi government’s “Neighbourhood First” foreign policy, with “New Delhi” having “undermined its liberal credentials among the people of South Asia”. Singh says the BJP’s “adherence to Hindu nationalist ideology has played a major role in harming India’s regional interest.”
The Modi government’s treatment of Muslims in India has “fuelled criticism of Modi abroad”. In Bangladesh, people angered by India’s 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act and anti-Muslim actions responded to Modi’s 2021 visit to Bangladesh with violent riots.
India’s “over-securitised” approach has led to its ignoring “larger public sentiment in the region”. In Myanmar, India “shunned pro-democracy protesters in favor of the military junta”. In Afghanistan “it has established friendly ties with the Taliban rulers, neglecting longstanding relationships with nationalist Afghans”. “Modi’s strongman politics” have spurred India to impose a “trade blockade on Nepal when the latter declared itself a secular republic”.
Christophe Jaffrelot (Senior Fellow – India at Institute Montaigne among other affiliations), Hemal Thakker (Environment policy expert) and Vignesh Rajahmani (Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) draw from their detailed study on India’s food security challenges. In a context in which India’s population will “continue to grow for at least another quarter of a century”, the study asks under what conditions the country can feed millions of additional people and fight against the “mass undernutrition that prevails in today’s India”. In 2023, India ranked 111th out of the 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index. India suffers from “chronic undernutrition” (expected to remain a chronic ailment in 21st-century India), as well as challenges related to “long-term food security”, in the midst of “macroeconomic successes and a remarkable increase in agricultural production”.
India’s National Food Security Act, 2013 guarantees subsidised food grains to certain populations, but despite some successes, government policies “tend to reproduce pitfalls without providing lasting remedies.” For instance, a lasting impact of the Green Revolution is over-reliance on cereals and sugarcane, over pulses which are a “primary” source of protein. The study states that it is “mainly” due to insufficient protein in diets that “India is slipping in international rankings”. To meet the future challenge of food security, the study advises “the country must either increase productivity or expand cultivated areas – or, better yet, do both at the same time.”
A study by Shaily Desai and Joyojeet Pal from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, published around August 25 finds that among social media influencers active in 2020-2023, those who were pro-BJP got more engagement than those who were pro-Opposition. It attributed the BJP’s success on social media to “its well-organised IT cell, strong community of dedicated followers, and effective engagement with social media influencers who share similar ideologies”. It notes that mainstream celebrities and public figures, who initially spoke out against the BJP, have largely stopped commenting on political issues online. It also found that criticisms of politicians, particularly Rahul Gandhi, go more viral than praise for Narendra Modi; and that “influencers who posted content popular among Opposition circles gradually reduced their messaging over time”. The study describes the phenomena of individuals refraining from expressing their opinions publicly due to “a combination of a fear of backlash or social media isolation on one hand, and a more successful and organised social media approach of the ruling party on another” as the “Spiral of Silence.”
Parliamentarians and public officials advocate
Greens Party Member of the Legislative Council, Cate Faehrmann, raised questions related to caste and faith-based discrimination at the New South Wales (NSW) Parliament session on August 20. One of the key questions related to caste being taught as a “beneficial construct” in the Special Religious Education Syllabus in the NSW public school system “as a result of which” children from caste oppressed communities were being subjected to “caste-based racism”. She also notes that a “discrimination complaint” has been lodged in the Australian Human Rights Commission against Multicultural New South Wales (MNSW) – the lead government agency implementing policies and legislation that support diverse communities. The complaint relates to MNSW “platforming diasporic “far-right Hindu extremist groups that have contributed to the ongoing vilification of Muslim and Sikh communities.” The Minister replied that he is aware of the complaint and it is a matter left to the Human Rights Commission.
Indian diaspora and other civil society groups
South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC) and CERAS (Centre sur l’asie du sud) released a statement on August 20 recalling the disruption of an event they had organised on August 15, which was to take place at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The event, titled, “The Struggle Must Continue! Hindutva Fascism in India and in the Diaspora, and its Impacts on Minorities”, was to “better understand the Indian election” in the context of “rampant human rights violations against Muslims, caste-oppressed peoples” and human rights defenders in India. A “smear” campaign by a group called Hindu on Campus, and other larger North American Hindu nationalist groups, claiming the event was “Hinduphobic” and objecting to “Hindutva fascism” led to the University venue cancelling less than 24 hours before, citing an “administrative” reason. The organizers hurriedly relocated to an alternate location. At the event, a mob gathered, shouting slogans claiming Hinduphobia and trying to block participants from entering. Once inside, the disruptors pulled fire alarms and heckled and shouted down attendees. The disrupters had to be moved outside the building after firefighters and the police were called. SADAC and CERAS said that this is a “reminder that Hindu supremacist fascists are organising in Montreal to silence opposing narratives”.
Justice for All Canada and the Indian American Muslim Council released statements (see here and here) condemning the disruption of the event in solidarity with the organisers. IAMC said that “it forms part of a longer Hindu nationalist campaign to silence overseas critics, which in the past has included sending countless death, rape, and bomb threats to U.S. academics.” The statement by Justice for All Canada held the Concordia University accountable. It said that the cancellation and the disruption “constitutes an attack on the principles of free speech and academic freedom in Canada”.
The August 18 issue of the New York War Crimes, a protest newspaper brought out by a collective parallelly with Writers Against the War on Gaza, which has been co-written with members of SALAM (South Asian Left Activist Movement) explores different aspects of the relationship between India and Israel. It includes a detailed visual mapping of the collaboration from 1947 to the present. Also included in the issue are articles, an interview, and a poem covering different aspects of the collaboration between the two countries, including “supremacist ideologies- namely Islamophobia, Brahmanism/casteism, and regional dominance”. “Settler colonialism” related similarities are drawn out between Palestine and Kashmir at the level of policies as well as the shared experience and vocabulary of ‘zulm’ and the common internationalisation of the “sense of inevitability”. The protest newspaper also covers expressions of solidarity for Palestine trade unions in India for Palestine as well by Kashmiris who are “painfully familiar with the loss, dispossession, and suffering of Palestinians.”
Samee Ahmad writes for Hostile Homelands (a newsletter about “How India and Israel are strengthening ties to secure an authoritarian future”, edited by Azad Essa, a South African journalist). On the India Day Parade (in its 42nd year) in New York City on August 18. Ahmad foregrounded the controversial inclusion of the Ram temple float tied to the anti-Muslim symbolism of the temple having been constructed at the site of the razed Babri Masjid. At the parade, Ahmad pointed out how “right behind the float”, amidst “Jai Sree Ram” slogans, people held banners that read “Jews of India”, along with Israeli and American flags and chants of “Aim Yisrael Chai” (“The Jewish people lives”), a cry that has also been appropriated by Jewish Israelis”. He writes that the “open celebration of this symbol of hate surrounded by Israeli flags highlights the new normal in India and its diaspora–a total embrace of hateful, ethnonationalist politics on a transnational level. It also underscored the extent to which Hindu nationalists have embraced the Zionist project as a model and roadmap for action in Kashmir and other restive regions.” A small group of protesters followed these marchers, chanting anti-Modi and pro-Palestinian slogans, handing out the special India-Israel edition of The New York War Crimes. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has been present in parades in years past, did not attend the rally this year.
Savera-United Against Supremacy (a global multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of organizations and activists) presents audio-visual slides on August 21 showing the links that helped the main instigators of the recent UK riots, such as the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson, use Hindu supremacist platforms to spread disinformation. In one slide, in an interview with BJP politician Nupur Sharma, Robinson called “Pakistani Muslims” “the aggressors” and Hindus the “peace-loving migrant community” and “victims of oppression”, talking about the September 2022 riots in Leicester. The slides point to the mutual benefit between Hindu supremacists in the diaspora and figures like Tommy Robinson. The former are able to claim a personification of the “right type of immigrant” in contrast to the Muslim. Tommy Robinson’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views gain a form of political cover to “point to brown people supporting them and claim they are not racist.”
Lotika Singha, co-founding member of International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF), recently gave a talk on Gautam Adani’s manifold corporate interests and how they play out similarly across contexts, from militarily in Palestine, to India’s indigenous-majority regions, to the UK’s Science Museum. Singha was on a panel entitled “Our Struggles Are United – Palestine and Climate Justice” at the “Divest for Palestine” conference in London organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
One interlinkage Singha shared was the weapons manufactured by the Adani group used against Palestinians and indigenous communities in India. Hermes drones manufactured in an Adani India-based factory are used in the takeover of community lands for corporate interests like Adani’s coal mines. Israeli assault rifles” are used by security forces in India “implicated in the extrajudicial killings of Adivasis.” Indigenous communities in India are subjected to “militarized police camps at every 2 to 5 kilometres” like Israeli checkpoints in Palestine. A third instance relates to what Singha describes as “cultural genocide” as part of which the Adani group supports educational interventions in which “Adivasi children are taught that their families’ ways are primitive and uncivilized” and to break the connection with their land. This is in line with “Zionism’s claim to bring civilization to Palestine.”
Despite the Adani group’s appalling human rights record and climate justice record, it is a sponsor of the Science Museum. This collaboration is being opposed by the Fossil Free Science Museum Campaign comprising 14 organizations, including 3 Indian diaspora groups. At the same time, the spirit of solidarity with Palestine is “alive in India” inspired by which, in February 2024, “workers at a port in India from where the weapons for Israel were being shipped stood in strike and refused to load the ships.”
Read the previous round-up here.
