Further anti-Muslim Pogroms in India

‘As Trump embraces Modi, communal violence convulses India’s capital’, Keith Jones, 25 February 2020, wsws.org

“US President Donald Trump has been feting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a two-day visit to India, even as the vile consequences of the fascistic, communalist policies pursued by Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government are being bloodily spelled out on the streets of Delhi.
Just hours before Trump arrived in India’s capital Monday, local BJP leaders instigated anti-Muslim violence in northeast Delhi that has continued today and at the time of writing (8 p.m. local Delhi time) has resulted in at least 10 deaths.” [snip]

The CAA is itself only the latest in an ever-escalating series of anti-democratic, communalist actions taken by the Modi government. In August, it stripped Jammu and Kashmir, India’s lone Muslim majority state, of its semi-autonomous constitutional status and has placed the region under a massive security lockdown ever-since.

During the just completed campaign for the Delhi National Capital Territory assembly election, BJP leaders celebrated the violent suppression of anti-CAA protests in Uttar Pradesh and other BJP-led states and led crowds in calling for the shooting down of “traitors” and “anti-nationals.” (See: “Shoot them down”—India’s government incites violence against opponents of its anti-Muslim citizenship law)” [snip]

“Trump began his trip to India with a speech before a 100,000-strong crowd of Modi supporters in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s state capital. He hailed the “Indo-US global strategic partnership,” and lavished praise on Modi, calling him “an exceptional leader, a great champion of India, a man who works night and day for his country, and a man I am proud to call my true friend.”

The Pentagon and the US political establishment (Democrat and Republican) alike, view India as crucial to American imperialism’s military-strategic offensive against China. Under Modi, India has integrated itself ever more completely into this offensive, transforming India into a veritable frontline state in Washington’s war drive against Beijing.

Trump’s effusive praise for Modi is also rooted in the profound political affinity between the fascistic billionaire anti-immigrant US president and the Hindu supremacist Modi.

At their joint Delhi press conference early Tuesday evening, Trump said he had not discussed with Modi the communal violence raging in the streets of India’s capital, then quickly came to his host’s defence. “We did talk about religious freedom,” said Trump, who has imposed discriminatory travel bans on more than a half-dozen predominantly Muslim countries. “The prime minister said he wants people to have religious freedom. They have worked really hard on it.”

‘The Guardian view on Delhi’s violence: Modi stoked this fire; Two dozen people have died and hundreds have been injured in India’s capital. The prime minister talks of peace and brotherhood, but he has led his country here’, Feb. 26, 2020

“s shocking as the outburst of hatred in Delhi has been, with the deadliest religious violence the capital has seen in decades, it cannot be understood either as an unforeseen eruption, nor as the ineluctable expression of centuries-old intercommunal hostility. Instead, the 24 deaths and hundreds of injuries seen as mobs set fire to mosques and businesses and invaded Muslim homes result from the slow accretion of loathing, indulged and fostered by political leaders. They are the latest step along India’s path away from its founding ideals of pluralism and equality, towards intolerance and hate.

The immediate causes of events are the fallout from Narendra Modi’s unjust Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the dangerous rhetoric employed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata party in Delhi’s city elections this month, and the mob incitement by BJP leaders like Kapil Mishra, to violently remove a group of Muslims who were blocking a road in the capital’s north-west to protest against the legislation. Scuffles quickly escalated. But it is clear that many defenceless Muslims were the primary targets and victims. Witnesses described the police simply standing by, joining crowds chanting nationalist slogans, or firing indiscriminately. BJP leaders were reportedly recorded encouraging crowds to chant “shoot the traitors” and accusing the peaceful protestors of being “rapists and murderers”. This is awful but unsurprising.” [snip]

“Mr Modi’s very belated call for “peace and brotherhood” does nothing to compensate for days of silence, nor to veil a career built upon stoking division. He was previously barred from the US over the 2002 pogrom which killed around 1,000 Muslims in Gujarat while he was chief minister there. Though the supreme court cleared him of deliberately failing to protect Muslims, his international rehabilitation is mostly due to his subsequent election as prime minister. It is no surprise that Donald Trump, visiting India for the first time as the violence flared, should embrace an authoritarian and nationalist leader. But plenty of others have essentially accepted Mr Modi’s dangerous rightwing populism too.

He has accelerated his agenda since his re-election by a landslide last year. He revoked the special status of Kashmir, the only Muslim majority state, and placed it under lockdown. He pushed through the citizenship act and the National Register of Citizens in Assam, which excluded almost 2 million people.”

India: Death toll in BJP-instigated violence in Delhi rises to 38’, Wasantha Rupasinghe,  28 February 2020, wsws.org

“Evidence, including from CCTV footage, photographs and cell-phone videos, has begun to emerge that depicts not only vicious communalist attacks on Muslims and the torching of Muslim-owned homes and businesses, but also the connivance of the Delhi police in Hindu supremacist violence. There are numerous eyewitness accounts of police officers allowing Hindu thugs to attack Muslims unimpeded and even joining in their attacks.

Although the Delhi National Capital Territory (NCT) is governed by a rival party, the Delhi police are under the control of the national BJP government, not the NCT administration, and directly answerable to Home Minister Amit Shah, the chief henchman of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shah, like Modi, is a notorious Hindu supremacist.” [snip]

“In response to a sharp downturn in India’s economy and the growth of social opposition, above al,l from the working class, the BJP government has accelerated implementation of its Hindu supremacist agenda over the past year.

By ramming through measures that repudiate in all but name India’s claim to be a secular state and assert Hindu primacy, Modi, the BJP and their ideological mentors in the fascistic RSS aim to embolden their Hindu chauvinist supporters, and disorient and split the working class.

Since last December, Delhi has been at the centre of the wave of anti-CAA protests that has engulfed the country, uniting workers, students and professionals across ethnic, religious and caste lines.”

‘Maybe, one day they’ll be in detention camps’, Arundhati Roy takes a dig at BJP;

Arundhati Roy also hit out at the BJP government saying ‘maybe, one day they might land in a detention centre’, newindiaexpress, Jan. 12, 2020

“NEW DELHI: Booker Prize winner and activist, Arundhati Roy joined protesters outside the Jamia Millia Islamia on Saturday extending her support to the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), anti-National Population Register (NPR) and anti-National Register of Citizens (NRC) movement.

Roy also hit out at the BJP government saying “maybe, one day they might land in a detention centre”.

“I have come to tell you that I am with you. When we all are together there won’t be a detention centre big enough to keep us. One day might come that this government that wants to divide this nation would themselves land into a detention centre and we would be azaad (free),” Roy said while addressing the gathering on Saturday afternoon.”

kolkata students protest citizenship law

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)