U.S. is Casting a Nelson’s Eye on India’s Human Rights Abuses With Sights Set on Business and Strategic Interests

While we sit in the comfort and safety of our adopted home across the Atlantic, the recent State Department human rights report on India only reinforces what those of us who migrated from “the world’s largest democracy” already know. 

India is being disemboweled as we speak and the United States report simply states facts, not once attributing what has caused this country with a population of just over 1.4 billion people to implode on most indices that are indicators of a country’s overall health. How the State Department’s report manages to gloss over the ruling government’s culpability, in the birthplace of India’s Mahatma, is actually more eye-popping than the report itself.

According to the report, there has been significant abuse of human rights issues at the hands of the government or its agents which include conducting extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by police and prison officials; political prisoners or detainees; and unwarranted arrests and or prosecution of journalists.

The numbers are staggering and the victims are predominantly either Muslim, Christian, or Dalit, soft targets with only a few making it to the news. Others interestingly enough are journalists, activists, or lawyers who dared to get in the crosshairs of the ruling government.

What is even more striking is the deafening silence from the U.S. President when it comes to all things Narendra Modi. While Muslims and Christians, Dalits are lynched and “othered” and activists, journalists and ordinary people who dared to speak out are tortured, killed, or go missing, in the thousands while the beacon of democracy, the United States, looks the other way. 

To add insult to injury, Reuters reports: President Joe Biden is eager to deepen ties with the world’s largest democracy by inviting India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, on a state visit to the U.S., as part of his bid to win what he has framed as a contest between free and autocratic societies, especially China.

Imagine the fear psychosis the government machinery has created that I, living over 8,000 miles from India, conscientiously censor myself because I fear big brother is listening.

Free? I don’t know about that.  Free for whom? The sycophants who sit by and marvel at the glory of an India that is on the path to erasing what was most magical about it… its rich tapestry of religion and cultures…replacing it with a narrow, distorted vision of what India should be like?

Surely America’s superior intelligence sees the writing on the wall. 

Only last year Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the U.S. is monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some government, police and prison officials.

But the writing is a little bit blurred. “Some government, police and prison officials?”

Perhaps this is because economic profit outweighs the reprisal that is sure to follow if one were to call a spade a spade. 

Now for me, this is where it gets personal. 

Imagine the fear psychosis the government machinery has created that I, living over 8,000 miles from India, conscientiously censor myself because I fear big brother is listening. That the repercussions of a quick well-meaning phone call could cause harm to my loved ones or even have their homes demolished overnight, which recently seems to be the weapon of choice of the ruling government for those that have crossed the proverbial Lakshman Rekha.

It doesn’t help that in the past two national elections the BJP has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that it can win majorities in Parliament without the Muslim vote. It’s why Muslims in India feel completely left out, without a voice or recourse, to address feelings of being disenfranchised and targeted simply because of their religion. It is why, except for a handful, they choose to stay silent.

Perhaps it’s why one community that has been vilified and attacked consistently has chosen a new coping mechanism to deal with Hindutva. Despite being targets of violence and discrimination, Dalits in Modi’s state of Gujarat are choosing to join the ranks of the BJP-RSS combine. 

As for the report, it echoes a time past, when a brutal dictator systematically and methodically erased over 6 million Jews and the world watched silently. There are eerie similarities. The Holocaust didn’t happen overnight.

India today is in a pre-Holocaust stage. Narendra Modi’s absolute domination is proceeding much faster than Hitler’s Nazi regime ever did. Ruled by the BJP-RSS whose founding fathers were greatly influenced by Hitler and a Prime Minister that feeds off the Hindutva frenzy, India is now on the brink of genocide.

It’s time for the U.S. State Department to not just speak up loudly but act decisively before it’s too late. Start by disinviting Modi.

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The author, an Indian American from the Midwest, has requested to remain anonymous fearing reprisals from Hindu extremists here in the U.S. and violence against her extended family in India.