AMP Report – May 17, 2019
Berkeley University study of Islamophobia in India highlights plight of Muslims
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
The last decade has witnesses intensified attacks on Muslim, Christian, Sikh and ‘lower castes’ in India, according to a study released recently by the University of California, Berkeley.
This first of its kind report on the status of Islamophobia in India is meant to provide a groundbreaking collection of evidence and provide a reference point for all future work on the subject.
“Within the past decade, the level of targeted violence against Muslim, Christian, Sikh and ‘lower castes’ has intensified in India and with the arrival of the BJP into national office facilitating its deployment through all structures of the state against demonized and vulnerable groups,” the report said adding:
“This strategy is familiar to observers of the political dynamics in the U.S. and Europe against the backdrop of the rising tide of Islamophobia that has been stoked and deployed by extreme right-wing groups to gain legitimacy and it has been monetized into votes at the ballot box.”
According to Dr. Hatem Bazian, a co-author of the report with Paula Thompson and Rhonda Itaoui,
till now there has been no reliable evidence, academic engagements or scholarly reports that documents this rising tide of Islamophobia in the Indian context. “This lack of documentation both complicates and hinders the ability of those advocating against and countering Islamophobia.”
Dr. Hatem Bazian, was keynote speaker at the Annual Iftar dinner 2019, on Saturday (May 12, 2019) where he spoke about the salient features of the study.
The report, titled Islamophobia in India: Stoking Bigotry, was published through the Center for Race and Gender’s Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
Here are Key Findings of the study:
Leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been implicated in “communal violence” and hate. Further, the BJP has the greatest number of lawmakers in the country with declared cases of hate speech against them. The provision of tickets to those charged with hate speech has been associated with driving the conditions that lead to Islamophobia and politically-stoked violence.
Polarizing politics are lucrative at the ballot box where individuals affiliated with stoking ‘communal’ hate and violence are actually four times more likely to win than others. This report has documented several Islamophobic statements from leading BJP members from across the political spectrum beginning with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself who says: “Congress leaders are speaking in a language that is not acceptable in a democracy...This is insulting. This is nothing but a mindset of the Mughals.”
BJP Legislator Subramanian Swamy says: “Muslims should take an oath declaring that their ancestors were Hindu if they want to prove their citizenship.”
BJP Baiiria MLA Surendra Singh says: “There are a very few Muslims who are patriotic. Once India becomes a Hindu rashtra, Muslims who assimilate into our culture will stay in India. Those who will not are free to take asylum in any other country.”
BJP Union Minister Giriraj Singh says: “The growing population of the country, especially Muslims, is a threat to the social fabric, social harmony, and development of the country.”
BJP Lawmaker Sanjay Patil says: “This election is not about roads, water or other issues. This election is about Hindus vs. Muslims, Ram Mandir vs. Babri Masjid.”
BJP leader, Yogi Adityanath, has praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’ and stated that “similar action is needed to contain terror activities in this country (India).”
These statements by officials demonstrate in part, systematic otherization and Islamophobia. The statements clear the way for discriminatory legislation, policies and actions toward this vulnerable population. As a result, people may face discrimination, harassment, acts of physical violence, criminalization, imprisonment, deportation, and death.
It has been reported that India is experiencing and aggressive form of McCarthyism to silent dissent against the BJP. Media personnel and reporters are being tracked by BJP headed ‘war rooms’ that gather data on both traditional and new media, rating and categorizing it in relation to its position on the ruling BJP government, which has caused concern for many.
The Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index has revealed that mainstream media and journalists are “increasingly the targets of online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals.” The co-founder of India’s first private news channel NDTV Prannoy Roy claimed that “India is going through an aggressive variant of McCarthyism against the media.” The company is presently under investigation by the federal police for fraud, which the company considers “a witch-hunt.” The Wire’s Siddharth Varadarajan said that government ministers created the word “presstitute” in order to “describe journalists who are unfriendly to them or who don’t do their bidding.”
Some journalists have claimed that they face intimidation if they are critical of Modi or his administration. It was reported that “three senior editors have left their jobs at various influential media outlets in the past six months after publishing reports that angered the government or supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).” Reporters and others also face the threat of prosecution for ‘sedition’ which is punishable by life imprisonment if they are “overly critical.”
Female journalists report being threatened with gangrape against themselves and family members. Recently, the United Nations intervened and called upon the government of India to protect Muslim journalist Rana Ayyub, whose life they deemed “is at serious risk.” In 2016, Ayyub published a book entitled the ‘Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover-Up’ which uncovers “government complicity in anti- Muslim violence during the 2002 riots when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat.” Since then, she has faced harassment and threats both online and offline by Hindu nationalists. In an Al Jazeera article entitled “The Perils of Being a Journalist in Modi’s India,” Ayyub claimed that because she is a Muslim reporting on the Hindu nationalist government, this has brought on abuse related to her Muslim identity.
Media under ruthless pressure
In 2017 four reporters were murdered and in 2018, four journalists were murdered at the time of report compilation
.
A recent India Today article stated that the 2017 murder of female reporter Gauri Lankesh was planned a year in advance. Her murderer Parashuram Waghmare was affiliated with members of a “nameless underground organization that has members from Sanathan Sanstha, Hindu Janjagruthi Samithi, and many other right-wing organisations, according to the Special Investigation Team (SIT).” The article also reports that Waghmore was ordered to execute her “for the sake of saving Hindu dharam.” Additionally, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), report that three journalists were murdered in India in 2017 and four in 2018. Since 2014, when Modi took office 12 reporters have been killed.
In an effort to promote a Hindutva agenda and “polarize voters in the run-up to the 2019 election,” a recent media exposé entitled Operation 136 (named after the ranking India received from the World Press Freedom Index of 2017) was undertaken by Cobrapost.” The exposé revealed that payments were offered to over two dozen various media companies to promote a Hindutva agenda in order to “polarize voters in the run-up to the 2019 election.” All but two media outlets reportedly accepted, including major media houses. A series of undercover exposes revealed that “news organizations were willing to not only cause communal disharmony among the citizens but also tilt the electoral outcome in favour of a particular party.” This included “newspapers, radio stations, TV channels and websites” as well as “advertorials and events.”
India’s powerful corporate media houses were set to “mobilise the electorate on communal lines” by promoting the hate speech of Hindu extremists such as “Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti and Mohan Bhagwat,” while targeting certain opposition leaders. The exposé also revealed that “the arrangement included running the campaign on all platforms – print, electronic, radio or digital including, e-news portals, websites and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.”237 Operation 136 uncovered that several media houses are actually owned or patronized by politicians, especially regional media, and that “it was natural for them to become their master’s voice.”238 RSS and Hindutva ideology have become embedded within the “newsrooms and boardrooms of Indian media houses.”
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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