A year ago this day, Dec 26, I got invited to meet Father Cedric Prakash, SJ, one of our most prominent of human rights activists, who was briefly in Bangalore and who said then that 2019 had been among the WORST years in the life of the Republic of India, given many negative developments such as the repeal of Article 370 of the Constitution re the special status of Kashmir, the dastardly CAA-NRC-NPR[1] project and several other horrific occurrences such as numerous lynching incidents targeting Muslims and Dalits — reported as well as those unreported by the now mostly supine media.
The following words are mine, not his: the current Hindu-fanatic, proto-fascist regime in India is inspired, perhaps over-inspired by both Nazi Germany’s Genocide ‘laws’ and Israeli Apartheid-cum-genocide project against the people of occupied Palestine.
Fr Prakash was right as regards 2019 having been among the worst years yet.
Alas, 2020 has been worse still, I submit (and parts of the following are a repeat of what I’d said in a post yesterday: ‘Celebrating Jesus Christ, Politician and Revolutionary walkerjay.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/celebrating-jesus-christ-politician-and-revolutionary/):
We’ve witnessed the violent crackdowns on the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests, more jailings of some of our best activists on trumped-up charges, the sudden lockdown announced with next to zero notice by PM Modi in late March citing Covid 19 and the inept handling of the consequences thereof, such as the exodus of migrant workers by the PM and his minions, the stupendous cynicism of the judiciary in handling Habeas Corpus cases – Habeas Corpus, mind you, which any judiciary worth its name would hear post-haste — such as those from Kashmiri politicians as well as the appeals from the unjustly jailed frail old Father Stan Swamy, SJ, and Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen, Hem Mishra, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira, Mahesh Raut, Dr Anand Teltumbde, and numerous other Prisoners of Conscience/Political Prisoners including those who simply ought not to be in jail but are merely because the cynical top member of the topmost Bench perhaps wondering whether he’ll get an ambassadorship or a governorship and if so where and with how much TA/DA…
For crying out loud, an 83-year-old and a 74-year-old being put through torture and near-blind Navlakha denied glasses (spectacles)… Mind you, these are all some of India’s most brilliant human rights activists who have zero connection with anything unlawful and in fact among those striving for the respecting, protecting and fulfilling of the rights enshrined in the Constitution of India.
Add to this Modi’s cynical farm laws — incidentally opposed by farmers of all over the land, although sections of the media beholden to the said PM pretend that only a small section of farmers oppose it and are trying every trick to besmirch the brave farmers! And his sidekick, Home Minister Modi’s equally cynical attempts at buying time.
Away from the subcontinent, the July 1 Murder of Hong Kong as we knew it by the Robber Baron Capitalist Party of China, the ongoing quiet — largely unnoticed by most of the world — cultural genocide (almost akin to actual genocide given the accounts of brainwashing in concentration camps that have been emerging) of the peoples of East Turkestan (Xinjiang in the Han majoritarian regime’s parlance) and Tibet and the spectacle of the Drumpf, i.e. POTUS = President of the US behaving as shamelessly in public as the above-mentioned Indian Mass Murderer), the continued rule of proto-fascists such as Putin, Netanyahu and his Egyptian and Turkish counterparts, Hungary’s Orban, Britain’s Johnson (so much for the “mother of parliaments”, ha!), the Brazilian genocidal maniac Bolsenaro… a long list, alas.
Enough!
However, as this year ends, though, in India we’ve been witnessing some major instances of resistance against the cynical Mo-Sha-Ad-Am project: the huge farmers’ protests and other expressions of solidarity from many more members of the working classes all across the land.
You might not get to read/see references to this resistance in India’s mostly bought ‘mainstream media’, though.
Hope Springs Eternal!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
[1] CAA = Citizenship Amendment Act
NPR = National Population Register
NRC = National Register of Citizens
(Please feel free to google the above terms.)
And in this context, please see this excellent work by Israeli academic, Dr Ornit Shani of the University of Haifa: How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/how-india-became-democratic/D8646E10606BD7A5662F45B0F29759FB
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