US Congressional Hearing on Human Rights was a Hinduphobic Witch-hunt

The United States House Foreign Affairs Committee held a US Congressional hearing – euphemism for ‘witch hunt’, a Hinduphobic witch hunt to be honest.  It was dishonestly termed as a hearing on “Human Rights in South Asia”.

In a region, where one country has been the fountainhead of terrorism, genocides, pogroms and continues to publicly lynch and kill its citizens – Pakistan – the ‘human rights in South Asia’ hearing, rather intriguingly centered around Kashmir.  And, that too with the predetermined idea of underlining the Pakistani narrative of the situation in Kashmir.

Like a senior Indian journalist who spoke before the Committee (Aarti Tikoo Singh) said, the hearing was prejudiced, biased and set up against India.  It was rigged in favor of Pakistan.

The bigotted participants in US Congressional Hearing on Human Rights attacked the Indian electorate and Hindus on the pretext of human rights in a shameful drama! @BradSherman @JacksonLeeTX18 @PramilaJayapal Click To Tweet

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In a world where regimes like Venezuela and Mauritiana are now members of the UN Human Rights Council along with China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, it is hardly surprising that the US Congressional hearing on Human Rights was usurped by the Pakistani narrative.  A narrative that has been at the root of the global terror network.

Let us look at the major charges and what they really mean.

‘Hindu Majoritarian rule’

Isn’t democracy a rule by a vote of every individual?  Whoever wins in a democracy wins by the majority votes.  Has anyone in the history of democracy ever won when their votes were in minority?  Whatever the classification, whatever the distribution and whatever the divisions – ultimately those who win do so because the votes they got were HIGHER than the votes for those in the opposition.  Their voters were in ‘majority’ and the losers’ voters were in minority.  Irrespective of the fact whether they voted as a block or in bits and pieces.

Admittedly, what these people who raise the “majoritarian” hype really mean is the majority of votes from the majority Hindu community.  Little realizing that there is no homogenous Hindu community out there.  Politicians and parties have divided the community into castes, languages, and denominations of various kinds.

In India, where many diverse categories of people have lived and existed together, and the political parties have, over the years, learned to divide and rule; divisions served the shrewd.  Creating divisions and fomenting chasms in the society have helped the parties to appease some and denounce the others.  Hindu community, for example, was broken up into castes and one caste was regularly played up against the others.  Even when the emphasis on a larger whole could have easily broken down the caste barriers and done away with the scourge of caste wars, the divides were kept alive.  For mere political machinations and games.

For the first time perhaps in independent India’s electoral history, people at large stood up and voted over and above their castes.  This was clearly visible in how Modi’s BJP was able to get a high vote share across all castes, specifically lower castes.  And, his appeal went across Urban and Rural masses.

So to call it a majoritarian rule and a “Hindu experiment” – as the US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the BJP and Modi government rule, is an outright abuse of the electorate.  Rural and Urban voters across the divide of caste, creed, and religion (Modi’s BJP made major gains in constituencies where Muslims are a sizeable percentage), voted for Modi as Indian PM.

Restrictions and human rights

India shares a 740 km long line of control – or de facto border – with Pakistan.  That is a lot of area to cover if the other side is motivated to send in terrorists to cause mayhem.  Something they have done for decades now in India.  With the Prime Minister, it’s Foreign Minister and others clearly threatening with ‘bloodshed’ once the curfew was lifted in Kashmir, the implications of not having controlled change in Kashmir was obvious.

To save those lives that the terror masters from across the border were targeting to get their point across – of creating mayhem and chaos in Kashmir – closing communications was a small price.  Besides, the restrictions have now been lifted – on October 14th to be precise.

Postpaid mobile services on all networks were restored in Kashmir Valley on Monday, 72 days after they were snapped following restrictions. Some 40 lakh postpaid mobile phones have become operational from Monday noon. (source)

So when the Congressional hearing drama was enacted on October 22nd, whatever they were saying in terms of restrictions was a blatant falsehood.  As for the markets being closed and shops not opening up completely, it has a lot to do with the threat of the terrorists.

Incidents of terrorists sealing shops and posters, both handwritten and typed, being pasted in markets, mosques and other areas with do and don’t diktats have become a regular feature in Kashmir Valley, say officials.

There have also been instances of armed militants walking into shops to warn owners to keep shutters down and barging into Jammu and Kashmir Bank branches in south Kashmir to ask employees to stay away from work, they said. (source)

Pakistan sponsored terror groups have been threating the people in order to stall the normal functioning of the businesses.  For the Congressional hearing aka Kangaroo court to completely ignore that is symptomatic of the extreme prejudice and bias that Aarti Tikoo Singh talked about.

Modi and BJP hate peddled in the US Congressional Hearing sham

Invasion of Assam with outsiders coming in to usurp tribal lands and economy is not a new one.  It has gone on for long.  For example, in 1931 census Superintendent C.S. Mullan had said:

Probably the most important event in the province during the last 25 years- an event, moreover, which seems likely to alter permanently the whole feature of Assam and to destroy the whole structure of Assamese culture and civilization has been the invasion of a vast horde of land-hungry immigrant.^[8] (Politics of Migration by Dr.Manju Singh, Anita Publications, Jaipur, 1990, Page 59)

So this attack on the Assamese culture has been there for a long time.  In fact there was a law that came into being in 1950 – called Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950 which mandated that illegal immigrants should be expelled from the state of Assam.

The demand to expel the outsiders from Assam is as old as British India and was part of the first laws passed in independent India.

In what is considered to be the largest student movements in the world, the Assam Agitation led by  All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) left many dead and homeless.

The whole movement came to an end with the signing of the Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) – the Assam Accord, between these student bodies and the Indian Government, led by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on 15 August 1985.

It was finally in 2013, that the Supreme court took notice of this issue.  And, Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, in a landmark ruling mandated that the Union Government and the State Government should complete the updating of NRC (National Register of Citizenship), in accordance with Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, in all parts of Assam!  The justices gave the following directions.

We make it clear that complaints with regard to any obstruction in the matter of preparation/update of NRC by any person or authority may first be brought to the notice of the Court appointed Committee and the said Committee, upon due enquiry, will submit necessary report to the Registry of this Court where after the same will be brought to notice of the Bench.

We expect all authorities to act faithfully and diligently to carry out their assigned tasks to ensure smooth preparation of NRC and publication thereof within the schedule fixed by us. This is in reiteration of the mandate contained in Article 144 of the Constitution of India. It is not necessary for us to emphasise that any person found to be creating any obstruction or hindrance, in any manner, in the preparation of the NRC would be subjected to such orders as this Court would pass in such eventualities.

The process steps of the creation of NRC are very clear.  They are:

1. Publication of Legacy Data
2. Distribution & Receipt of Application Form
3. Verification Process
4. Publication of Part Draft NRC
5. Complete Publication of Draft NRC
6. Receipt and Disposal of Claims & Objections
7. Publication of Final NRC

It is after this process that the Final NRC was announced on 31 August 2019.  The appeals can be made to the Foreigners’ Tribunal.

It is this stringent procedure with the contingency for the people to go for an appeal that has led to the NRC.  The process or the whole action has nothing to do with Modi or BJP.  But when you listen to the US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, it seems that somehow Modi personally and BJP as the ruling party was responsible for this who NRC exercise.  When the truth is that the accord to institute NRC was done by Congress PM Rajiv Gandhi and later mandated by the Supreme Court.

Listen to this exchange during the US Congressional Hearing in the backdrop of the real context of NRC procedures and history and see why Omar is such a dangerous bigot.

You see, the whole argument from Hindu-hating Omar was targeted against Modi personally and BJP in general.  But behind that veneer, it was really targeted against the Hindus, when she prefaced it with the “Hindu experiment of BJP”.  There is no Hindu experiment or any experiment.  There is an India experiment where every person is valued equally as has been repeated by Modi ad nauseum.

The danger of Globally Institutionalizing Hinduphobia

For 30 years, Kashmiri Hindus have been denied a voice at every so-called Kashmiri Forum (How Kashmiri Pandits were systematically and forcefully thrown out of the Kashmir Dialog by the Secularists).  The Islamists have been at the forefront of this so-called Anti-Hindu campaign in the name of Secularism.  Which meant nothing more than creating a deck stacked against the Hindus no matter what.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has at best a questionable set of credentials and in reality, she is a sympathizer, apologist for radical Islamic terror groups like Al-Shadab.  Here is a very useful thread by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra who gives a good run down on who Ilhan Omar really is.

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What is extremely troubling is that many amongst the leftist democrats are now openly jumping on the Islamist bandwagon to target the Hindus.  Hindus are close to a billion and have been the most model citizens of any country contributing maximum while steering clear of unlawful activities.  Something that cannot be said of most other communities, specifically the Muslims.  For those who are on that Islamist bandwagon to target Hindus is a dog whistle to the terror groups to continue their mayhem across the world.  What the ISIS has done to the Yezidis and Islamist groups done to Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh is now being normalized.

Indian PM Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of India.  Not because he is a Hindu or from a higher caste (he is from lower caste) but because he has made a real difference in the lives of common citizens.  The entire campaign was fought on the basis of the accomplishments of his government.

To spin that into a ‘Hindu majoritarian experiment’ suits the Islamist narrative of Ilhan Omar and the Pakistani terror training Intelligence group, the ISI, but it has no real basis in facts.

Even after such a widespread and diverse mandate from across India, if Modi is a “Hindu experiment”, then India is inherently a Hindu experiment.  And, to rile against the mandate of Indian people is to abuse India’s democracy.  Something that cannot be allowed or normalized.

What happened in the Congressional hearing – ostensibly called for Human Rights in South Asia, while mischievously side-stepping the state sponsorship of Pakistan – was a Hinduphobic witch hunt.  The Democrats used the fig leaf of Human Rights to attack the Hindus and Indians who had voted across the board for their well-being and betterment that the Modi government has promised and delivered upon.

Indians and specifically Hindus should call their Democrat Congressmen and women and question them on the hearing and their stance on Hindus and Indian democracy!

This time when these Democrats come asking for votes from the Indian community and Hindus in specific, they should be asked to turn back this deeply troubling and bigoted track record.  Every Hindu and Indian should call upon their Democrat Congresspeople to come clean on what they are doing about the hate-filled vitriol of their colleagues during the US Congressional Hearing on Human Rights and their stance on what they think of India as a democracy and Hindus as a community.  Until then, the doors should be closed to these double-faced bigots!

Please watch the full hearing in this video.