Renowned writer Arundhati Roy has echoed another warning about the perilous state of Indian Muslims, saying India has created a genocidal climate for its Muslim population.
In her latest comments, the novelist says India is carrying out crimes against humanity under the garb of Islamophobia.
The writer of the God of Small Things told Open Democracy magazine that Prime Minister Narendra Modi government’s “overt Islamophobia has been amplified by a shameless, irresponsible mainstream Indian media – that overtly blamed Muslims for being spreaders of (COVID-19) disease.”
“All this came off the back of the unconstitutional dismantling of Kashmir’s special status (leading to a 10-month on-and-off lockdown and internet siege of 6 million people in the Kashmir valley – a mass human rights violation by any standards), the new anti-Muslim citizenship law, and the pogrom against Muslims in North East Delhi in which the Delhi Police were seen actively participating,” Roy said.
Roy is not the only one to have sound alarm over inhuman attitude toward Muslims. An organization that studies genocidal situation and conditions that classify a situation as genocidal, warned the world of systemic annihilation of Indian Muslims.
In addition to Muslims, who are said to be more than 200 million in a majority Hindu population of over one billion people, Christians and Dalits are often victims of Indian violent terror groups like RSS and Bajrangdal and live in perpetual fear of the majority.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has chastened New Delhi for violence against minority communities.
In reaction, the Indian government has denied visas to USCIR mission members, who planned to visit India as part of its assessment of the ground realities.
USCIRF Vice Chair @nadinemaenza explains that religious freedom conditions in India took a drastic turn downward this past year, with religious minorities under increasing assault.
Read more in the #USCIRFAnnualReport2020: https://t.co/95B9IUsHNv pic.twitter.com/CcI0zyjoyx
— USCIRF (@USCIRF) June 9, 2020
In her unreserved condemnation of trends in part of the media, Roy says the language being used by the mainstream media against Muslims is designed to dehumanize them.
“To paint an entire community as “corona jihadis” during this pandemic, when there is a pre-existing atmosphere of violence against Muslims is to create a genocidal climate,” she said.
“Over the last couple of years, we have had so many instances of mob lynchings and George Floyd-type killings – the difference in India being that Hindu vigilante mobs do the killing and the police, the legal system, and the political climate help them to get away with it.”
She detailed a pattern of violence against Muslims in the last two decades, beginning with massacres in Gujarat.
“These episodes of violence and massacres against the Muslim minority in India are nothing new. Think of the pogrom that continued for months in 2002 in Gujarat, when Narendra Modi was Chief Minister of that State. Muslims were slaughtered in broad daylight. Modi looked away and has never expressed regret. Quite the contrary. He has ridden to power on that legacy. He and his ministers are members of the Hindu supremacist RSS, the most powerful organization in India whose founding ideologues were inspired by Mussolini and Italian fascism.”
Indian Prime Minister Modi and his allies have denied such allegations and claim that the recent policies do not discriminate against India.
Muslims, she said, are being denied admission to hospitals and local BJP leaders and politicians were calling for Muslim fruit and vegetable sellers to be boycotted.
“It was terrifyingly similar to how, during the rise of the Third Reich, Nazis began accusing Jews of being spreaders of disease, carriers of typhus.”
