Mustafa Shameem

Originally, this piece was intended to be published January of this year. Due to the piece taking much longer to write and other events that intervened, I was unable to publish. Late February, for three days a Hindutva pogrom was unleashed in Delhi resulting in over 52 dead, hundreds injured, mosques burnt and desecrated, and general terror unleashed on the Muslim minority. The worst violence in decades in the city. This and other events give fresh urgency to what was written. Although the piece does not speak to more recent events past January of this year it’s insights still have currency and value. And some warnings have become deadly reality, and perhaps with action the others can be prevented yet.

December 19th, 12PM, outside the Chicago Tribune Tower.

I’m standing outside the Chicago Tribune Tower alongside a hundred or so protesters. The gathering is protesting against recent developments in India: the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which recently become law, the planned nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), and extreme state violence against protesters. India, a democracy of 1.4 billion people of whom 200 million are Muslim, has begun implementation of policies that will render the Muslim minority either, if lucky, third-class citizens or worse, stateless. The Muslim minority are already second-class citizens facing widespread discrimination, ghettoization, and brunt of violence in the form of lynchings or police action. The marginalization is reflected across a range of areas: socio-economic, educational attainment, employment, and representation in Parliament.^{1, 2}

Assam, a state in northeastern India, is the first to implement the NRC which has rendered an astonishing 1.9 million people on their way to statelessness. Concentration camps³ to house the dispossessed are under construction.⁴ Genocide Watch, an organization committed to prevention of genocide and mass murder, has placed the state of Assam on “Genocide Watch” on the basis “early warning signs indicate that a genocidal process is underway.”⁵ If these policies are more widely implemented in India they are likely to create a massive humanitarian crisis in the tens of millions: intense suffering, death, internal displacement, refugees generated, and concentration camps. In a country with history of genocidal violence, leaders who have called for a “Final Solution” of the Muslim population, such policies open the possibility for new waves of genocidal violence and at a scale not seen since Partition (separation of India and Pakistan).

An organizer calls out through a black megaphone to stay on the side-walk, which is public property. A few feet away, two Chicago Police Department (CPD) SUVs are parked next to the sidewalk to monitor the protest. Standing next to the SUV closest to the protest, the officers, hands folded, lookout at the crowd. Their highly-reflective, sport-styled glasses give no clue to whom they are watching, giving the effect all are being watched. It’s 35 or 36 degrees outside, but when the wind picks up speed and clouds shroud the sun it feels a whole ten or fifteen degrees colder. Knowing I’d be out in the cold, I wore extra layers; but there’s a weak link—my under-prepared feet. The thin socks inside my leather boots, and the numbing toes they cover would be a gnawing annoyance for the rest the protest.

Indians and allies of all varieties had shown up to protest: north Indians, south Indians, Assamese, Kashmiris, Black Lives Matters, and the University of Chicago Graduate Student Union. Inspiringly, most of the protesters are not Muslim; they’ve come in solidarity. Geographic and religious variety was matched by linguistic variety. Slogans were chanted in different languages starting first in English, then Urdu, Hindi, and Telugu while supplying translations in English. An organizer calls out through a megaphone, “What do we want!?” “Azadi!” (freedom in Urdu) responds the crowd in loud unison.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants those who arrived “on or before the 31st day of December 2014” citizenship to India “belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities”⁶, the significant exclusion Muslims. The CAA is a violation of the spirit of a secular India and its Constitution, which does not permit discrimination based on religion. Human Rights Watch called for the revocation of the CAA, pointing out it “violates India’s international obligations to prevent deprivation of citizenship on the basis of race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin.”⁷ An act which is being touted as a humanitarian one, makes no mention of refugees rather labeling all as “illegal migrant.”⁸

The CAA cannot be understood in isolation without the National Register of Citizens (NRC) or its architects. The CAA and NRC are initiatives of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu supremacist party whose overt mission is to remake India as a Hindu nation with all other minorities subjugated and in servile positions. A mission conducted by any means. Scholar Christophe Jaffrelot elaborates a revealing political strategy, “unavowed but easily reconstructed,”⁹ where BJP activists provoke anti-Muslim riots as election time approaches. Which leads “the Hindu majority, with a heightened sense of Hindu identity, to vote more in favor of the BJP.”¹⁰ Elections are not the only desired outcome, human suffering, economic ruin, and cleaving from the social fabric of the targeted minority is also a victory. CAA and NRC, similar to the means of riots, aim to polarize the electorate and cause suffering among the Muslim minority.

The NRC aims to have all Indians produce documents to verify their citizenship. In a country where a large part of the population lives under the poverty line, corruption is high, little documentation is kept, births are often not registered, and high illiteracy rates make verification no easy matter. How are the poor who struggle to feed themselves or the uneducated supposed to defend their rights? The people to be terrorized, lives made even more precarious will be those already suffering enormously. In its current form the NRC would disenfranchise Muslim and others alike. But the CAA is the key providing citizenship to those excluded by the NRC if they are not Muslim. In October, Amit Shah reassured non-Muslims they would not be impacted, “I want to assure all Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Christian refugees, that you will not be forced to leave India by the Centre…Before NRC, we will bring Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will ensure these people get Indian citizenship.”¹¹ The end result: India re-engineered as a Hindu supremacist nation with the Muslim minority under siege.

An estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees, largely Muslim, are thought to be in India. These refugees fled a genocidal campaign of mass murder, weaponized rape, and other crimes in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, and now face with CAA the prospect of being sent back to Myanmar. The RSS, BJP, and it’s communalist allies have been stirring intense hatred against the persecuted Rohingya, who the UN describes as the “most persecuted minority in the world.”¹² Union Home Minister Amit Shah, second to the Prime Minister in India, has made repeated statements that there would be no refuge for the Rohingya in India. He stated in a recent session of Parliament “Rohingyas will never be accepted.”¹³ The CAA would clear a path to force Rohingya refugees to return to Myanmar, some have already been forced to do so in the past. The historical analog would be those receiving Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, rather than offering them refuge or material assistance, begin a campaign of demonization labeling victims as “termites,” “illegal immigrants,” and “terrorists,” and in a final grisly act return them to Nazi hands.

Understanding the gravity of the CAA and NRC, students at Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh University began protesting early December. The BJP government responded with swift terror, or “maximum restraint”¹⁴ in their Orwellian doublespeak. Police burst into the universities beating up students, sexually assaulting women, destroying property, and using military grade equipment, including stun grenades, on defenseless protesters and the larger student body. Police were heard using anti-Muslim slurs while perpetrating the violence. Hundreds were injured, some in serious condition, and one student lost his hand in the police violence.

The violence deployed against students was merely the prelude to more extreme violence which has transpired since then. State action has resulted in at least 27 people dead, including an eight year old. The BJP controlled state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India with nearly 200 million people, has unleashed violence to terrorize the Muslim community into silence. In action reminiscent of Kristallnacht, police are seen in videos smashing up Muslim shops and robbing homes. Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of the state, gloated on Twitter “the action the government is taking against rioters has become an exemplar for the whole country.”¹⁵ Adityanath’s government action goes beyond peaceful protesters and extends to anyone who is Muslim. Police abducted children from a Muslim orphanage, who range from the ages of 14 to 21, torturing and sexually abusing them.¹⁶ Sexual violence is intricately linked with the Hindu supremacist project. It’s a form of terrorism to intimidate the Muslim and other minority populations into submission and silence, so they won’t express themselves through democratic norms such as dissent, voting, and protest. The action gives insight into the state of the police and army: internalized Hindu supremacist ideology and willing participants to repression.

The BJP, the party in power in India, is the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). What they share in common is the ideology of Hindutva. Arundhati Roy, award-winning novelist and activist, observed that Hindutva is “inspired by the likes of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler— openly proposes Nazi-style purges of Indian Muslims. In RSS doctrine…the three main enemies obstructing the path to the Hindu Rashtra are Muslims, Christians, and Communists. And now, as the RSS races towards that goal, although what’s happening around us may look like chaos, everything is actually going strictly by the book.”¹⁷ The chaos of the CAA and NRC, the suffering it will cause Muslims, the poor, and other groups, is part of the plan. The RSS and its family of organizations, also known as Sangh Parivar, have methodically poisoned India with its ideology of hate against Muslims, Christians, lower caste Hindus, and other minorities. The pervasiveness of hatred means violent repression is met with wide support, as in the case of Kashmir. They are always building for the next “victory”, or catastrophe for the victims, on which their Hindu nation will be built. Insight into the core of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar can be gained through one major “victory”: the 2002 Gujarat Genocide.

In 2002, a train carrying Hindu nationalist activists caught on fire resulting in 59 deaths. Several investigations have still not clarified whether it was set on fire or caught on fire due to an accident. The Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi who is currently Prime Minister, claimed the fire was a terrorist attack by Muslims. This despite the facts of the fire being unclear. The narrative propagated by the government combined with calls for revenge would create the environment for a Hindu backlash. The backlash was formulated by the RSS and Sangh Parivar, according to the Concerned Citizens Tribunal run by former Supreme Court Justice VR Krishna Iyer.¹⁸ According to the Tribunal, “BJP, leaders of the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS and even cabinet ministers”¹⁹ organized a premeditated campaign of genocidal mass murder and ethnic cleansing targeting the Muslim population. Groups of attackers often thousands of men would deploy to Muslim neighborhoods wearing RSS khaki shorts and saffron headbands (the uniform itself was inspired by the fascists of Europe).

Carnage was unleashed for days. Victims were dismembered before being finally killed. Children were forced to drink kerosene and set on fire. Swords were used to cut fetuses out of stomachs of pregnant women. Infants were impaled on trishuls (a spear like weapon with three spikes at the end) and thrown into the fire.²⁰ The most bestial violence was exacted on women; mass rape was ubiquitous. Hundreds of young girls and women were gang-raped, sexually tortured in grotesque ways, and set on fire. Muslim businesses, homes, places of worship, and cultural value were systematically targeted and destroyed. Even the Bohra Muslim community who had financially supported Modi were not spared. Those pleading to the police for help were met with responses of “we don’t have any orders to save you.”²¹

An estimated 2,000 people were killed and 150,000 people were displaced into refugee camps—the victims largely Muslim. Despite the mass-suffering caused by the genocide, Modi’s government obstructed investigations and protected the perpetrators, while demonizing the victims. His public words on the matter deftly combined crass demonization and dog-whistle incitements of violence and discrimination. During a rally, Modi called genocide victims “child-making factories” who should to be “taught a lesson.”²² A wide spectrum of Gujarati society internalized the message. They “taught a lesson” to their former neighbors, now refugees: setting up social boycotts of Muslims, preventing them from returning to their homes and jobs. The relief efforts to aid the victims were conducted primarily by Muslim NGOs.²³ Further injury, Modi’s government promoted leaders who orchestrated the violence.

The BJP hold power in the executive branch along with a dominant position in Parliament. The Supreme Court of India with recent decisions appears to be operating in complicity with the Hindutva project. Hindutva activists are highly active across the country lynching minorities and conducting other crimes against minorities with impunity, the police are now instruments of terror, and the army is operating on similar lines in Kashmir—with the risk of it being deployed in other states to the same effect. Should a party and its allies who have conducted a genocide in the past be allowed to open and populate concentration camps? Who will protect the vulnerable if violence is orchestrated? If genocide or ethnic cleansing is conducted there will be little protection for Muslims or any other minority group. There was little protection during the Gujarat Genocide when the BJP was in a much weaker relative position politically.

Despite the grim reality, there are lights in the darkness. In Shaheen Bagh an area in New Delhi, despite the harsh winter, thousands of protesters have gathered daily since the passing of CAA. The protesters range from children to octogenarians. An elderly woman explains, “we are on the road to protest against this new law that Modi government has brought. It is to target Muslims and send our children to detention camps.”²⁴ The leaders are visibly Muslim, hijab-wearing women. Breaking racist stereotypes of the servile, oppressed Muslim women. Protesters chant “‘Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isaai – aapas mein hain bhaai bhaai’ (Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians are brothers).”²⁵ The protests are significant developments inspiring more protests and resistance across the country.

The protests have elicited another kind of response from Indian society. On the evening of January 5th, a mob of masked assailants thought to be from the ABVP (the student wing of the RSS) entered prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), unleashing violence against students and teachers while the police watched.²⁶ A pattern when violence has state sanction as in the case of the Gujarat Genocide. Iron rods were used to beat victims, including a blind student. The mob was heard yelling “Jai Shri Ram” (Glory to Lord Rama) a Hindutva battle cry.²⁷

Returning to Shaheen Bagh, the protesters can be found chanting, delivering speeches, reading aloud the Indian Constitution, and having discussions. Different voices speaking without reservation, critiquing, and condemning injustice. The educator Paulo Freire would have called this moment the breaking of a “culture of silence.” The protests are fires keeping the prospects for a more humane and decent India alive. The flag-bearers of democracy, plurality in India are visibly Muslim women, while forces of anti-democracy, hate, and genocide gather behind the Modi government.

The RSS and its family of organizations receive significant political and financial support outside of India from non-resident Indians (NRIs). In 2014 New York Madison Square Garden, an approximate 22,000 supporters gathered to celebrate the election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. Modi had been previously banned from the US due to his culpability in the Gujarat Genocide. Recently, Prime Minister Modi visited the US to headline the “Howdy, Modi! Shared Dreams, Bright Futures.” event. President Trump was also in attendance offering profuse praise of Modi. The praise came despite the Modi led government having recently stripped the autonomy of Kashmir, the only Muslim majority region in India, placed Kashmiri leaders under arrest, and intensified the brutal military occupation there. Corporate sponsors included the likes of Walmart.

Illinois Congressman Raja Krinshnamoorthi keynoted a RSS event celebrating its founding. Arvin Valmuci of Organization for Minorities of India stated “Congressman Krishnamoorthi has planted his flag firmly in the camp of India’s fascist movement,” he continued “During his short time in office, he has consistently demonstrated an unrelenting commitment to the groups most directly responsible for massacring minorities in India. Krishnamoorthi’s associations indicate he rejects American doctrines of liberty and equality in favor of the RSS’s ideology of hate and supremacy.”²⁸ Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who has received substantial campaign contributions from RSS and BJP members, has gone on the record defending the Gujarat Genocide.²⁹ While Indian minorities in the US enjoy generous immigration policies and civil rights protections, hypocritically large sections openly support parties advocating racist and genocidal policies in India.³⁰

It’s a dire time. If the RSS and its Sangh Parivar are not opposed mass suffering will be unleashed in India. The destruction of Muslim and other minority holy sites, revocation of semi-autonomy and intensification of military occupation of Kashmir, and now the CAA and NRC, will be followed in short order by concentration camps, expulsions, and terror. Society is always more fragile than it seems, especially when hate circulates through the major currents of society. In 2017 observing the ongoing genocide in Myanmar of the Rohingya, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights remarked “it was important to recognize the fact that the Rohingya community had endured progressive intensification of discrimination over the past 55 years. Myanmar’s Citizenship Law denied the Rohingya equal access to citizenship, rendering the vast majority stateless, while the Rohingya children had not been issued birth certificates since at least 1990.”³¹ Similar patterns are present in India.

The intellectual and moral questions juxtaposed against the facts requires action “to prevent.” The International Court of Justice called on all states having the “capacity to influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing genocide” even if outside its own borders, is under the obligation “to employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible.”³²

We face a moment of truth. Preventing a cascade of potential mass violence, mass displacement, and suffering, which NRC and CAA would set off, is necessary. A concerted international coalition effort must bring pressure to demand:

1. Restoration of Democratic Norms – Demand restoration of democratic norms across India including Kashmir, which include right to protest, peaceful gatherings, and access to the Internet and mobile service.
2. Revocation of CAA and suspending NRC – The NRC must not be implemented throughout India. The NRC in Assam must be revoked along with the CAA.
3. Action Against Abusers of Civil and Human Rights – individuals in the government, paramilitary, police, and army must be held accountable for all human rights abuses against protesters and the larger population.
4. Suspend Construction of “Detention Centers” – Halt construction of “detention centers” and suspend plans to make any operational.