[News] As Trump Visits India, Hindu Hooligans' Anti-Muslim Pogrom Ravages Delhi

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/As-Trump-Visits-India-Hindu-Anti-Muslim-Pogrom-Ravages-Delhi-20200227-0009.html 



  As Trump Visits India, Hindu Hooligans' Anti-Muslim Pogrom Ravages Delhi

Amir Malik - February 27, 2020
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While the president of the ‘world's oldest democracy’ still was a guest 
in the ‘world's largest democracy’, mosques and shrines were torched, 
and properties were either burned and looted.

Bullet-ridden bodies kept lining at hospitals' wards as Donald Trump 
applauded India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his “hard work to 
ensure religious freedom." The U.S. President's much-awaited visit to 
India on Feb. 24 coupled with anti-Muslim riots in the country's capital 
city where almost 40 people have been killed and over 300 are injured.

Soon after Trump left India, the U.S. issued level-two travel advisory 
and safety notice. "Exercise increased caution in India due to crime and 
terrorism. Some areas have increased risk."

While the president of the ‘world's oldest democracy’ still was a guest 
in the ‘world's largest democracy’, mosques and shrines were torched, 
and properties were either burned and looted. Two "democracies" together 
failed to control the riots which are still going on.

The goons assaulted Muslims on the streets while chanting "Jai Shri Ram" 
(Hail Lord Ram), the far-right Hindu slogan in India. Many said the 
police have been conniving with the rioters. "This is communal police,” 
said Vrinda Grover, the country's prominent lawyer. They were 
treacherous to their oath of upholding "peace', performing public 
"service" and ensuring a "just" approach towards citizens.

In 1969, when Richard Nixon visited India, he reportedly told the White 
House that Indians were "slippery, treacherous people 
<https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/29/india.usa>.” 
Nixon, a racist to his core, had to resign from the post of President of 
the U.S. following the Watergate Scandal. He hated the non-whites and 
even called Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, a witch. Nixon, a loathsome 
man said what he did about Indians out of his deep-entrenched racism. 
After half-a-decade since, a U.S. president visits India and rather than 
calling its current Prime Minister, a "mass murderer," as the Supreme 
Court of India once observed, he eulogized Narendra Modi, notorious for 
spearheading the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom. Modi is the man who the 
U.S. denied a diplomatic visa in 2005 citing his "failure" to halt the 
"Hindu-riot.”

Right-wing propaganda TV channels of India hailed the hand-shake and 
"bear-hug" of Trump and Modi when the country (particularly women of 
India), protested the amended Citizenship Bill since December 2019 after 
it was tabled in the parliament and quickly passed as an act. The 
Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, 
Buddhists, Jains, Christians, and Parsis, who the ministers of the 
ruling party say "faced religious persecutions" in neighboring Pakistan, 
Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

However, it excludes Muslims from everywhere including Myanmar (where 
Rohingyas are facing brute of Myanmar Army) and Hindus from Sri Lanka. 
It is evident that the act in question is discriminatory and despite 
that Trump only said, "I want to leave that (act in question) to India 
and hopefully they will make the right decision for their people." The 
act promising safety and happy life to the minority in the neighborhood, 
is setting a highway for killing minorities within India's border.

Seeking happiness, Melania Trump visited schools in Delhi to attend 
"happiness classes" run by the Union Territory government. The 
newly-formed government of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the capital and 
the chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who came to power recently 
maintained "strategic" silence. Probably, for the first time in Delhi, 
one could question what Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi said, "What you seek is 
seeking you." The Delhiites were seeking happiness, but they got death 
instead. Death, perhaps, is the only happiness for the Muslims.

As Delhi burnt in the anti-Muslim pogrom, Mr. Trump and Melania Trump 
walked the red carpet for the dinner hosted by the President of India. 
Such dinners need special lights; the great Roman Emperor, Nero used to 
hold giant feasts. Known for his "madness and cruelty", Nero would burn 
bodies of prisoners and poors to illuminate the feast he served in the 
night. In Delhi, as evening approached and sunlight got moved to the 
West, the flames from burning houses must have illuminated the duo's 
table as they dined. However, has India treaded Nero's path? We do not 
know. What we do know is that this is not the first time when India has 
burnt the poor minority of its country.

In 1984, the anti-Sikh pogrom spearheaded by the then ruling Congress 
party shattered Delhi to the core and more than three thousand Sikhs 
were massacred within a week on the streets of India's capital. The 
then, newly elected Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had said, "When a big 
tree falls, the earth trembles," referring to the assassination of Prime 
Minister Indira Gandhi (by two of her Sikh bodyguards) and the bloodbath 
that the Indian state took recourse into.

In 2002, the anti-Muslim pogrom saw bloodbath on the streets of Gujarat. 
Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister. A coach of a train was burnt and 
over 50 right-wing people died. Till today, no one knows how that coach 
carrying Hindus caught fire, but Muslims were instantly blamed. When 
Hindu rioters assaulted Muslims, burnt their houses, raped Muslim women, 
cut womb of pregnant mothers and threw children in the burning fire, 
Modi told in a meeting with his officials, "Let the Hindus vent their 
anger." Sanjiv Bhatt, the officer who revealed this to the public has 
been languishing in prison soon after Modi became the Prime Minister of 
India.

In 2008, hell broke out in Kandhamal where about 50 Christians were 
killed, 250-300 churches were destroyed, 600 villages were ransacked, 
5,600 houses were looted, more than 50,000 were rendered homeless in a 
months-run riot by Hindu rioters. Statements filled with venom were 
spread to justify crimes against humanity. Similar voices echoed from 
the mouths of several leaders from the country’s current ruling party, 
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during the Delhi elections which ended 
recently.

The Home Minister of India, Mr. Amit Shah asked voters to "press” the 
Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) so hard that the "current" reaches out 
to Shaheen Bagh, where Muslim Women sat in protest against the CAA. The 
movement was considered Muslim women uprising in India and served as a 
model for other areas of the country to come out and assert themselves. 
They did come and said, "we would not be cowed down.”

They have been worrying that if clubbed with the nationwide register of 
citizens, the National Population Register (NPR) and the CAA would be 
“catastrophic." Protestors fear that the National Population Register 
(NPR), a precursor to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would ask 
the citizens of India to prove that they are Indians. The government 
said that it only wants to document citizens, a claim which stood 
redundant after the right-wing goons unleashed Hindu-terror echoing the 
Home Minister who had, several times in the past, said, "illegal 
immigrants" would be pushed out of the country and "termites" (a slang 
he fondly uses against Muslims) would not be tolerated.

India, a culturally diverse country and a heterogeneous one, would have 
people outside the frames of state, like Sadhus (Saints), vagabonds or 
people who do not believe in the concept of the nation-state. “They are 
most important for a democracy to survive as they fiercely criticize the 
state,” Varun Sahni, the Vice-Chancellor of the Goa University had said 
in a public talk by Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment 
Council (TIFAC), a think-tank body of the Indian state. They do not 
maintain a proof for showing the state who they are, not primarily 
because they simply rebel (as state portrays the non-state actors) but 
due to their ideological non-acquiescence towards a world imprisoned by 
boundaries. Above all, many "others" are forced to be stateless and are 
pushed into the Detention Camps (India is making new ones) because they 
are "undesirable,” a ready-made fuel to illuminate Nero's feast.

As happens in any anti-minority right, members of the majority community 
also pay the price, this time, in Delhi, a few among the dead are Hindus.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Trump that once India had about 40 
million Muslims and now it houses 200 million. The parameter to decide 
“religious freedom” is faulty as Trump was not told that Hindus as well 
grew to the tunes of 966.3 million in the last census from 303 million 
in 1951. Also, Jammu and Kashmir, the Muslim majority population which 
India later administered had been exempted from the 1951 Census of India.

By saying what he did, Narendra Modi once again fanned the fire of lies 
that the Muslim population is “exponentially growing.” The truth, 
however, is that it has been growing slower than it did in the last 
decades. The prestigious newspaper The Hindu was called a “minority 
appeasement newspaper” when it reported 
<https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thehindu.com/news/national/Muslim-population-growth-slows/article10336665.ece/amp/> 
otherwise, using the government census report. What Nixon and his 
security advisor Henry Kissinger said about Indians is something no 
Indian would like to listen to. Agreeing to Nixon's bigotry remark 
“slippery and treacherous,", Kissinger added that "the Indians are 
bastards anyway. They are the most aggressive goddamn people around." 
Whether Indians proved the imperial and the racist America correct can 
be understood by visiting the areas hit by an anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi.

-- 
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863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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