Campaign mode keeps communities cowering in fear
Modi’s 3 year rule and Minorities
John Dayal, in LifeSiteNews.com – Wednesday May 24 2017
(Note: John Dayal a well known writer and friend of CCV sent us his views and comments on: Three years of Modi government for the benefit of our readers.
What is most important is he provides ever so many instances to substantiate what he says. It is strange that Modiji who is very prompt in expressing his sympathies for those suffering from terrorists attacks in foreign countries(Manchester attack) keeps his mouth shut about similar incidents at home – lynching of Dalits and vandalizing of churches — when he lectures to the nation regularly in his ‘Man ki bath’.
Silence on happening, when a leader should express his views is taken as approval. This betrays his much publicized principle of ‘sab ka sat, sab ka vikas.’ The thinking public should raise their voice against and the voting public decidedly do their duty when their time to act comes. In a democracy government is your sbusiness. Only the crying child ges the milk. james kottoor, editor)
The seeming perpetual-motion election campaign mode of the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, and the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s translating it into an aggressive hate rhetoric have kept religious minorities under deep stress across the country as the NDA-II government completes three years in office.
The acridity of the 2013-14 “high-voltage campaigns and aggressive social media push”, as India.com calls it, that propelled Mr. Modi to power seems not to have abated one whit, going by the incidents of targeted violence against Muslims and Christians in 2016-2017 [till April 30]. The BJP has won elections in 11 states since it formed the government at the Centre in May 2014. It won in six states and formed alliances in the rest. It won Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Haryana, Maharashtra and Sikkim in 2014, Assam in 2016 and Goa, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in 2017. Each victory has left a trail of tears, and often of blood, in its wake.
Christian documentations by the Evangelical Fellowship of India and others recorded 37 cases in the first four months of 2017, with the 2016 figures estimated at over 300. On an average, at least one documented case is recorded every day. Typical cases include a Panchayat resolution passed under section 129G banning entry of non-Hindu religions in Binje village in Kondagaon district of Chhattisgarh. Sunday worship disrupted and worshippers were attacked by Hindutva forces, 5 Christians were hospitalized with severe injuries in Kondagaon district of Chhattisgarh. Pastor Basanna and the Church was attacked, Bibles burned, pastor and believers brutally beaten up by the RSS in Chitradurga.
The Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad and panchayat expulsions of the first two years was overtaken by the aftermath of the ban on cow slaughter and the transport of beef, a wildfire that has seen lynch mobs chase cattle traders, buffalo breeders, carcass scavengers, meat sellers and small hostelries and restaurants attacked. While official figures of the total number of deaths is not known, half a dozen well documented lynching’s have been recorded, specially in Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Beef is consumed by Christians, Muslims, Dalits of all religions, tribals and other communities in India.
Cow protection Hindutva vigilante groups called gau rakshaks, many of them paid local thugs, implement the policy by publicly humiliating, attacking and occasionally lynching those suspected of possessing or consuming beef or slaughtering cow’s cattle, now not only cows but often also buffalos whose slaughter is legal. A case in point is of 50-year-old Mohammad Akola who was lynched in Dadri town and his son Danish (22) was brutally assaulted as a punishment for allegedly eating beef on Eid. On 11 July 2016, seven members of a Dalit family in Gujarat's Una town, involved in leather trading, were attacked and brutally assaulted, as a ‘punishment’ for skinning the carcass of a cow brought from a neighboring village by the self-proclaimed gau rakshaks.
Retaliating against the oppression, protests by Dalits, including Christian Dalits, broke out throughout Gujarat. Although most such attacks have largely targeted the Muslim community, the Christian community, including Dalit Christians, also face a persistent threat of being or killed.
Mr. Modi has never focused on these during his frequent Radio talks, Man Ki Baat, or elsewhere. India faced a sharp scrutiny at the United Nations Human Rights Council this May when its record of human rights violations in the 2012-16 Universal Period Review cycle came up for discussion in Geneva.
