NEW YORK: An Indian researcher and author residing in the US has said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has weaponized religion, enabling Hindu nationalists to target Muslims and other minorities in India.
According to Dr. Angana Chatterji, a research scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, the BJP-led government has “amplified the ascent of political majoritarianism, weaponizing religion, law, and politics to incite Hindu nationalists to unparalleled, illiberal dominance” she said in an interview with Press TV, an Iranian international news network. Chatterji said the “consequences are calamitous” for India.
She was commenting on the response to the recent demolition of hundreds of homes, businesses, and shantytowns in the sole district in the state of Haryana with a plurality of Muslims, which prompted the Punjab and Haryana High Court to question whether or not it was “ethnic cleansing.”
The court stated: “The question also arises as to whether buildings belonging to a specific community are being demolished under the pretext of a law and order issue and an exercise of ethnic cleansing is being conducted by the state.” In the northeastern state of Manipur, “mass atrocities and land-grab targeted the indigenous Kuki,” Chatterji claimed, “while the police stand by, Hindu nationalists use bulldozers to raze the property and dispossess Muslims as a form of collective targeting.”
Muslims and other minority groups have been accused of discrimination against the ruling BJP administration, which has also been accused of permitting Hindu vigilantes to target members of minority populations.
The BJP government “incorporates populism, authoritarianism, and nationalism, and the grassroots avalanche of Hindu nationalists incite unparalleled havoc into the lives of minority Muslims, Christians, Adivasi, Dalits, and other vulnerable communities,” according to Ms. Chatterji, author of “Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India” (2019).
Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, was mentioned by her, and she referred to him as a “radical Hindu nationalist” who has “supported various campaigns to override the rights of Muslims.”
In recent years, there have been numerous instances of anti-Muslim hate crimes and murders in Uttar Pradesh.
Criticizing the current administration, Chatterji claimed that it had failed numerous times. Demonetization eliminated 1% of India’s GDP, and in 2023, press freedom in India was ranked 161 out of 180 nations.
The violence has increased since the BJP was re-elected in 2019, according to Chatterji, who co-founded the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir in 2008. She added that to fulfill long-standing vows to “unify” India, the BJP “sought to actualize forms of colonialism in Kashmir while violently seizing citizenship away from Bangla Muslims and other vulnerable communities in Assam.”
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which “enables special procedures to identify a person as a “terrorist” while denying them due judicial process and a trial,” was another issue made by Chatterji.
“Caste-oppressed people in India, people of minority heritage, and Muslims living in Kashmir face the greatest legal penalties. Khurram Parvez, a well-known (Kashmiri) human rights advocate, was detained arbitrarily on November 22, 2021, she said in an interview with Press TV. —APP
