Sept 24, 2021: Dozens of Indian origin Americans have gathered in Park Lafayette Square in front of the White House to protest Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States.
Slogans and placards reading “Save India from fascism” were chanted by Indian origin American protesters on Thursday against Modi’s alleged human rights abuses, persecution of Muslims and other minorities, new agricultural laws and India’s illegal occupation of and a crackdown on dissent in Kashmir.
Earlier this month, Indian soldiers seized the body of populist freedom advocate, Syed Ali Geelani, the face of muslim freedom movement in IIOJK, after his death and buried him without presence of family or observing muslim burial practices.
At home, in the Indian province of Punjab, the Modi regime is facing backlash from a set of draconian agricultural laws passed by the government last September.
Two months after the laws were passed, hundreds of thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh states marched on their tractors, motorbikes and on foot to New Delhi to put pressure on the government to repeal them.
When they were stopped from entering the capital, they decided to camp outside New Delhi, braving the region’s biting cold, extreme heat and monsoon rains for months now.
Hundreds of tents have been pitched along three key highways leading to Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh states – where they have set up makeshift kitchens, clinics, and even libraries – sending out a clear message to the government that they are ready for a long haul.
Despite the burgeoning protests, the government has repeatedly ruled out repealing the laws.
Since being elected Prime Minister of India in 2014, Modi has been accused of presiding over unprecedented religious polarization in his country, with many laws discriminating against minority groups, especially its 200 million Muslims.
Among the relatively high profile cases of religious persecution against the Muslim minority by the hidutva ideology based Modi regime happened in 2016 when Najeeb Ahmed went missing from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the national capital of New Delhi on October 15 of that year after a reported scuffle with members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student wing of the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Ahmed’s family still await his return.
Modi is currently in the United States to attend a quadrilateral security dialogue or quad summit with President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
The four-nation quad alliance aims to test China’s growing military and economic power globally. Modi will also address the UN General Assembly in New York on Saturday.
Later on Friday, Biden will host his first bilateral meeting with Modi since winning the presidential election. The two leaders are expected to discuss a range of issues, including corona virus and climate change, to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
Ahead of the scheduled Biden-Modi meeting, protesters outside the White House called on the US president to stick to his campaign promise to make human rights a central feature of US foreign policy.
Last year, during the presidential campaign, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris strongly condemned the crackdown by New Delhi in Indian-administered Kashmir, the implementation of a list of controversial citizenship laws in the state of Assam and the passage of an “anti-Muslim” citizenship law.
Nationwide protests and deadly riots erupted in the capital. Dozens of Muslim activists and students have been jailed for protesting against the 2019 citizenship law, which the United Nations has called “fundamentally discriminatory” because it prevents naturalization for Muslims.
In this regard, reporters from Al Jazeera network reached out to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s office to confirm if human rights and religious freedom were on the agenda during the Biden-Modi meeting, but the spokesperson declined to comment.
The activists raised their voices against the recent rise in attacks and killings of religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, by members of Hindu right-wing groups in various parts of India.
Farhana Kara Motala, an activist with the Chicago-based advocacy group Justice for All, expressed grave concern over the “ongoing state repression” in IIOJK and urged the Biden administration to stand up for the rights of Kashmiris.
The Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed by India and Pakistan, which governs parts of it. Indian-administered Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority area in the country where armed insurgency began in the 1990s to integrate into Pakistan or become an independent state.
Shortly after Modi’s re-election in 2019, his government took away the special status of the disputed area from the constitution and turned it into a federal territory. The move was followed by an unprecedented crackdown by Indian forces, which jailed hundreds of politicians, activists, separatists and youth, and a month-long security lockdown and communication disruption in the region.
As former chief minister of India’s Gujarat state, Modi was banned from travelling to the US for a decade after more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in 2002 in what critics describe as a pogrom.
Dalits, who fall at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy, have faced persecution and marginalisation at the hands of “upper-caste” Hindus for centuries.
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