Prime Minister Imran Khan has reiterated that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideology is the biggest threat to Muslims and other minorities in India. He urged the international community to look into the situation and warn Prime Minister Narendra Modi of dire consequences.
PM Imran addressing a conference in Islamabad on Thursday evening, said that “India is committing atrocities against the people of Kashmir to make them submit to its illegal acts in Occupied Kashmir”. The premier further stated that millions of people have been under siege in Occupied Kashmir for over one hundred days.
Every now and then, PM Khan tries to bring the worsening situation of the region to the world’s attention. Recently, the premier underscored that the real ideology of India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was that of the RSS. Elaborating on the RSS ideology, PM Imran said it was centred on hatred for Muslims. “The founding fathers of the RSS believed in fascist, racist ideologies and killed Mahatma Gandhi after independence. After seeing this ideology, Quaid-e-Azam took part in the Pakistan movement,” the PM said, adding that it was the RSS ideology that ruled over India now.
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Earlier, the Prime Minister tweeted, “This is the RSS ideology that threatens not just Kashmiris or Pakistan or even just Indian Muslims, Christians & Dalits but India itself as envisaged by its Founding Fathers,” wrote the PM in the tweet. The tweet was linked to a story explaining India’s propensity towards Neo-Nazism.
This is the RSS ideology that threatens not just Kashmiris or Pakistan or even just Indian Muslims, Christians & Dalits but India itself as envisaged by its Founding Fathers. https://t.co/Xn1ctcBrWJ
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) August 14, 2019
Muslims Vulnerable in PM Modi’s India
Since the electoral win of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, the country has been undergoing a massive socio-political change and moving towards an extremist Hindu state. Media reports suggest that freedom is under threat in India where secular values are being replaced with extremist Hindu ideologies. In PM Modi’s India, religious minorities enjoy little space to practice their religion freely.
Muslims are the most vulnerable target for the extremists in India who offer them two options; become Hindu or leave the country. “First, a campaign was launched to convert religious minorities to Hinduism. The right-wing groups called it ‘home-coming.’ Now, they are demanding bans on certain books and beef-eating. Those who don’t listen to these groups are being targeted every now and then,” Rakesh Batabyal, an associate professor at the Centre for Media Studies in New Delhi, told an international media outlet.
https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1193899920954187783
Senior leader of Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Muzaffar Hussain, last year expressed his anger and warned Indian leadership of one more partition if atrocities against Muslims are not halted. “I want to tell Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he should put an end to the killing of Muslims in the name of cow slaughter. This country has once been partitioned into two, and there can be more partitions if killings of Muslims are not stopped immediately,” Mr. Hussain stated.
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Markandey Katju, a former Indian Judge, has recently stated that Indian democracy is under threat not because of Muslims or Pakistan but solely because of the sitting Indian Prime Minister who is transforming secular India into an extremist Hindu state.
Hindu Taliban Rule India
PM Modi before his election focused on economic development and re-imagination of Hinduism. Previously, India was theoretically a secular multi-nation state but Modi’s induction to power exposed ground realties of Indian society. Now political analysts are convinced that it might be a democracy on paper but the reality is totally different and largely disappointing. Anish Kapoor, a sculptor, wrote an insightful piece back in 2015 when Modi was first elected to power. He maintained that social cohesion of India would soon be challenged since there was going to be a Hindu Nation with an imaginative glorious past.
Hence, the BJP is, if anything, a revivalist Hindu nationalist party following a fascist political ideology to implement a religiously dominated idea of Hindu culture. “The country’s openness to social and religious minorities (more than 500 million people) and regional differences is at serious risk. Of late, Modi’s regime has effectively tolerated – if not encouraged – a saffron-clad army of Hindu activists who monitor and violently discipline those suspected of eating beef, disobeying caste rules or betraying the “Hindu nation”, wrote Kapoor.
He further feared: “This alarming erosion of democracy is a slippery slope that may end up targeting not just minorities and “outsiders” but any dissenting “insiders”. What I’ve seen happening is a spirit of fear taking hold, which threatens to silence activists, artists and intellectuals alike. We’ve never known that before. A Hindu version of the Taliban is asserting itself, in which Indians are being told: “It’s either this view – or else.” A friend told me: “There is huge oppression of anyone who’s different.”
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It is yet to be seen how the world and international civil society react to the rise of religious extremism and gross violation of human rights taking place in India. Sir Anish Kapoor fairly urged the liberals living outside India that “In Britain we have a responsibility to speak out against it”. Pakistani PM has informed the International community of the dangerous situation that is brewing up in the region. He said that if the international community does not step in to solve this grave issue, the world would have to experience negative repercussions.