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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/As-Trump-Visits-India-Hindu-Anti-Muslim-Pogrom-Ravages-Delhi-20200227-0009.html">https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/As-Trump-Visits-India-Hindu-Anti-Muslim-Pogrom-Ravages-Delhi-20200227-0009.html</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">As Trump Visits India, Hindu Hooligans'
Anti-Muslim Pogrom Ravages Delhi</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Amir Malik - February 27,
2020<br>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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. </p>
<p>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." </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In 1969, when Richard Nixon visited India, he
reportedly told the White House that Indians were "<a
href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/29/india.usa"
target="_blank">slippery, treacherous people</a>.”
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.” </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.” </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thehindu.com/news/national/Muslim-population-growth-slows/article10336665.ece/amp/"
target="_blank">reported</a> 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.</p>
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