Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club, 2nd June 2020
* Lord Ahmed of Rotherham (Member of the House of Lords)
Annexation of Kashmir by India
** Phillip Bennion (former Member of European Parliament)
India’s controversial Nationality Law
*** Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd (Academic)
India-Israel relations under BJ
India, the largest democracy, one of the fastest growing economies and the cradle of one of the oldest civilisations in the world, has long attracted public attention for its natural riches and strategic location. The loss of the jewel in the crown in 1948 by the “oldest democracy” signalled the end of the empire. It was ruled by the Rajas, the Mughals and the British, but it never lost its cultural identity. The land that produced great men like Mahatma Ghandi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Dr.B.R Ambedkar, a former untouchable, who wrote the largest constitution in the world, and Mohammad Iqbal was able to have two Muslim presidents while maintaining its Hindu heritage. It may have been weakened by the split of Pakistan in 1948 but it would soon stand back on its feet and rebuild itself as a major regional power. So what has forced it to renounce its recent progressive past and start welcoming politicians like Trump and Netanyahu? Why does India forfeit its moral duty to uphold the right of self-determination in Kashmir or treat Muslims on an equal footing as native citizens?
Chairman: A belated Eid Mubarak a week after Ramadan. Condolences to the family of Floyd George who was killed in America and also tomorrow (3rd June) is the anniversary of Imam Khomeini’s demise twenty years ago. So we have a lot of landmarks.
However today the topic is what is happening in India. India is the largest democracy and is being tainted by extremist accesses. We have four guest speakers. In the last ten years India has been taking a journey which has saddened many Indians and people of Indian origin like myself.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed: Thank you very much for asking me to join you today. This is a very important topic and the reason it is important is because the chairman says it is the largest democracy. It is a so-called largest democracy. I don’t say it is the largest democracy in the world. It is an interesting place. We have seen the rise of fascism the RSS and the BJP party and Mr Modi and the riots in Gujarat when thousands of people were killed and many others were injured. Since the demolition of the Barbari mosque we have this rise of Hindu extremism.
Even today there is a viral video of Muslim men who are alleged to have slaughtered a cow and were burned alive in front of 200 people. And the police were walking around. There was a huge pile of hay and it was lit up.
Mr Modi and the BJP government thrive on hate against the Muslims. Please forgive me if there are any Indian friends here. I do not want them to be offended but it is a very similar situation to European fascism and the Nazis; the way they rose to power in the 40s and how they played on the Jewish people and how they demonised them and targeted them. Gangs of Nazis went round targeting the Jews and then nobody really took any notice because it was not them, it was somebody else. And then they went round intimidating the media and the journalists and then people stopped writing anything about them. And then they started targeting minorities.
In India the campaign against the Muslims started to take momentum and now you see abuses of human rights whether they are in Kashmir or in the whole of India. Under the Citizens Amendment Act entire Muslim communities in India have become second class citizens, their rights have been withdrawn.
I will touch on the way in which mosques have been attacked after the Citizens Amendment Act. In a democracy you would expect that people have the right to oppose that horrible law where you have to prove you are an Indian. You have to have documents. And even if you prove you are an Indian your rights are not the same as those of everyone else.
Just to remind you that Gandhi was a great man. But he was killed by an RSS member. Modi is from RSS. He was a member of RSS. Many of his cabinet members were members of RSS and they have come out of RSS. I compare them with the Nazi movement in the 1940s just to see who they are.
I originally come from Kashmir. What is happening in Kashmir? I am not trying to insult anyone but just look at the people who drink cow’s urine. Mr Modi himself had a plate of cow poo. I really don’t want to go down that route, but we are going down that route. People who are following him have very similar beliefs.
I was told to say a few words about Kashmir. On ‘August 5th the special status of Kashmir was withdrawn – article 273 and also 35 and Kashmir was annexed. There you have the Indian regime which is taking its advice from Netanyahu in Israel so whatever he and the Israelis have done in the Occupied Territories the Hindutva Brigade are trying to do in Kashmir.
But they are a little bit worse because even though I hate what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians one thing I have not seen is rape. Here the Hiinduva soldiers have been raping Muslims in India. They are using rape as a weapon of war.
But before 5 August if you go back about ten days the governor of Kashmir and the Home Ministry held a press conference and said that there was an imminent threat to the Hindu pilgrims who had gone to Kashmir. The pilgrims were told to return to Srinagar or to return back to India because there was an imminent threat and there was real evidence that some Kashmiris had come over from Pakistan to attack them.
This was not the case but because of 9/11 and 7/7 people do not really want to base their judgment on any potential threat or attack. Nobody said anything. So that gave an excuse to the Indian authorities to send an extra 10,000 troops to the Kashmir Valley and then they sent another 10,000 then another 28,000 until they had an extra 50,000 on top of the 750,000 soldiers they had in Indian-occupied Kashmir already.
So here you have a state that tells lies to the international community and nobody has challenged them. Terrible things have happened in America in the last week or so. Terrible things are happening there now. But at least they are saying they want to make the police officers accountable. Give them a break and they will do something.
In India this did not happen. You saw people demolishing mosques. You saw them burning Qurans, you saw them burning people’s houses and their livelihoods, you saw them abusing women and old people and children but not a single word from Mr Modi or Mr Shah his interior minister.
That is why the Religious Freedom Committee in America has very clearly made a statement that they do not class India as a country which has religious freedom. The European Parliament’s report says that the Indian government – Modi’s government is persecuting religious minorities. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a fascist regime. The extremists, the fascists the RSS and the BJP are one.. They thrive on attacking minorities and neighbours.
My very last point is about India’s neighbours. India is not at peace with China. You saw the clashes in Ladakh. They have clashes with Pakistan and Bangladesh because of the CAA law. This is a democracy which is not at peace with its neighbours.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd: Thank you very much for this invitation. The question of Indian-Israeli relations in the present context is certainly different from what Indian-Israeli relations were when the UPA headed by the Congress was in power.
After BJP came to power the Indian administration has come closer to the Israeli system and also to the American political system. The BJP/RSS government and Modi as the prime minister of India consistently believe that Islam is against the interests of India. That is not the view of the Indian people and many political parties. It is the strong view of RSS /BJP ever since RSS was formed in 1925. They believe that Islam is the enemy of India.
This is very close to the Israeli understanding of Islam. The Israeli state was up in 1948 with American-Euro support after WW2. There was the Palestinian question that was involved in the broad land mass of the Israeli state.
What happened now is that the BJP security system is dependent on the Israeli intelligence force. In fact the prime minister’s personal security is overseen by the Israeli intelligence network. Apart from that, Israel gives a lot of technological and military support to India and since Israel has acquired quite a lot science and technology and agricultural technology India heavily borrows from Israeli technology.
Not only that. In the context of the constant conflict between Pakistan and India the RSS/ BJP sees this conflict as more serious because the BJP was against the division of India into Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. The BJP’s view is that Pakistan is sending terrorists every time to India through Kashmir.
India is being projected by the Hindutva people and by the West as a vegetarian country. It is not true. The Indian people are 95 percent meat eaters. Quite a lot of them do not eat beef but fish is a regular food of the people. But only 5 – the BJP RSS people and what we call the Brahamanic network in south India – are vegetarians.
After the BJP came to power the Indian administration and the Indian state has been taken very close to the American system. Now Trump and the BJP work very closely hand in hand. The reason is that there is a definite problem with China. China is the biggest force in the eastern part and it is also a neighbour of India.
Now given this relationship between India, Israel and America and particularly the Trump regime after Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel naturally Indian moved very closely into that network. America is a nation distinguishes very clearly between Islam as a culture, a history and a civilisation and terrorism. But that differentiation is not made by the Hindutva people. They equate Islam with terrorist ideology itself. And a consistent campaign has been going around India.
Particularly after the Covid problem, there was a Muslim conference allowed by the central government in Delhi, called the Tablighi Jamaat conference. People from 22 countries participated. They were given visas. And then because of the lockdown by giving just four hours notice to a nation of 130 people they could not go back. Now there is a view that the Muslims who came to this conference spread Covid in India. This has gone down into the villages and into the streets and the life of Muslims in general has become very difficult because of this conference in Delhi. They spread over the entire country and created more problems.
There was also the issue of Kashmir on the one hand and the ISS/BJP Hindutva ideology vis a vis the Islamic civilisation. Unfortunately in my view no Muslim country has grown in science and technology as much as Israel and the BJP uses this to its advantage and it has moved very close to Israel overshadowing any relationship that was existing with any other Muslim country including Iran.
The BJP tried to maintain some sort of relationship with Saudi Arabia but during the time of Covid this has become very tense because BJP members made all kinds of statements about the Saudi people.
The whole Islamic world which consists of 56 countries did not develop stable democracies they did not advance scientific and technological research independent of the West. BJP could use that authoritarianism in the Muslim world in its favour. BJP/RSS do not believe in democracy but they are using this against the Muslim countries which are not democratic to advance Indian science and technology.
They are aligned with Israel because Israel is a democracy and the Palestinian nation has not come out with democratic practices as of now. And also America because America is the oldest democracy in the world. Democracy is used by the BJP to oppose Muslim civilisation and Islamic culture and I could see this becoming a kind of issue more and more if the BJP continues in power. As Huntingon has predicted, the clash of civilisations is likely to happen because the Muslim world has to talk more about democratic rights and civil rights and then there must be a global campaign about how to expand the democratic space even in the Muslim world and increase the science and technology.
My view is that the BJP will use this situation more and more to its advantage and we will have to see what happens in the post -Covid world. I don’t know what kind of economies will emerge in future and what kind of crisis we are going to face. We will have to see in future.
Phillip Bennion: I was asked to join this conference because of two things. Firstly my very long standing support for autonomy in Kashmir which I forwarded in the European parliament and secondly because of my very last speech – I did actually return to the European parliament last year until January – on the 29th or 30th of January I spoke about the Citizens Amendment Act concerning registration.
Our group had been trying to push forward an urgency resolution on this legislation going through in India. We tried to push this forward twice but were blocked by the conservative groups and of course our conservatives are not in the main conservative group but we were also blocked by other political groups from pushing this forward largely because the Indian lobby in the European Parliament is very strong – much stronger than the lobby for Kashmir and Pakistan and Bangladesh and the countries that surround India.
I was a member of the South Asian delegation which deals with all of those countries around India and of course the issue of Kashmir is always there. I was speaking in the European Parliament in a very heated debate because I think there was a danger with pieces of legislation worked together they could be used to force Muslims off the electoral roll in India.
What we are seeing in India is not yet a fascist government. It is a government that certainly has got fascist directions. The way that I believe it could be used to alter the electoral roll is that the amendment act which is simply on applicants for asylum in India or people wanting to move to India is basically discriminatory. India is basically and constitutionally a secular democracy but the present government was shown contempt for the supreme court and tried to pack the supreme court with its own followers. Others have said that India is following the American approach and the American approach is to pack your supreme court with your own political people.
We had a situation where an act was brought forward which discriminates against Muslims. How practical that is is a difficult question but as a matter of principle you should not be passing acts which discriminate particularly against religions and that one certainly did. It was probably put forward to allow Hindus from Bangladesh to move into West Bengal but alongside the registration act it could be used for nefarious purposes.
Now when it comes to the registration act there are just as many Hindus who have not got the correct documents as there are Muslims. In fact it discriminates against the poor as much as it discriminates against religion because the poor in India, hundreds of millions of them, do not have documentation.
With the Citizens Amendment Act the Hindus who have not got documentation if they were born in India will be given nationality. A Muslim with the same problem, the same lack of documentation, would be rendered stateless
And the reason I thought this might become a problem was that it was already becoming a problem in Assam where the pilot scheme was being tried out and something like 900,000 Muslims found they did not the correct documentation.
Now there are a lot of ways in which this is being sorted out. It is a good idea to get regularisation but the government needs to make it easy for people of all religions to get regularised. The government is saying that somebody born in India was not Indian because they haven’t got papers but this can be overlooked if they were a Hindu. We can see where that is heading.
The undermining of democracy is really important because at the moment as it stands it has been undermined and the best way to get rid of the egregious government is through the ballot box at the next election. Congress has been weakened. Everybody calls it a landslide but if you look at it the system it is first past the post as we have in Britain. You can have a landslide with a lot less than 50 percent of the vote and I think that Modi’s people got 38 – 39% of the vote and they got a landslide.
At the next Indian general election they can still be overturned and remember there are an awful lot of Hindus in India who do not support what Modi is doing. The noisy ones might support him and they are making a lot of noise. But remember there are a lot of reasonable people there who can and have in the past voted a different way. It is more of a challenge in India because Congress is so weak and the regional parties do not always align with Congress. So we need some kind of electoral pact when it comes to elections.
I would encourage the forces for democracy in India to pull together and do the right thing and put forward the best anti-Modi candidate in each constituency and deprive Modi of a majority. If he continues in the way that he is I think the parallels that are being drawn with Nazi Germany are largely accurate. It hasn’t gone that far but it is largely accurate. You can certainly see that in the 1930s the Nazis were demonising groups even before they had taken over. So you can see the progression.
I would also like to draw attention to what is happening in terms of inter global power relations with what was going on in the 1890s. A lot of people see WW2 as a continuation of the first with a fascist regime in charge rather than the Kaisers in charge. At the end of the 19th century Germany was newly unified under a single government. It did not have the global reach and the power that it thought it ought to have.
Now we have a similar situation. After WW2 the United Nations was set up. We have Xi Jinping in China and Modi in India as superpowers who do not have the influence they think they ought to have. And just as Germany did in the 1890s, they try to act outside the accepted world order. India is obsessed with China. One reason why they are so reluctant to meet and talk about Kashmir is their obsession with the threat of China. If Xi Jinping builds a dam then India will want to built a bigger one and then China will build a bigger one.
If China is throwing its weight around in Cambodia and in the South China Sea then India has got to throw its weight around so basically it is who is losing face if you are not as authoritarian as the other one. I think this is an unfortunate point of history. And you can bring in the American situation with Trump and you can also bring in Brexit and it is much of the same problem.
We have to be hopeful that democracy can save the day because it is very very unlikely that the forces of the United Nations and others can bring enough power to bear on India to stop this misbehaviour.
With Kashmir the usurpation of power on August 5th was clearly illegal. It is right to say that the agreements prevented any unilateral action by either side. It was a unilateral action. Modi’s claim that having abolished the government by putting a governor in who can speak for the Kashmiris is absolute nonsense. It is a circular argument. His treatment of the supreme court is appalling and the supreme court, unfortunately did not have the courage and guts to make a clear judgement.
I think we still have to be hopeful that his can be resolved through the democratic process. I have said we should not step back from sanctions on India if that is the only way. We put sanctions on Russia when they annexed Crimea. Russia is as powerful in the global network as India is but unfortunately now that Britain is outside of the European Union the mostly likely sanctions would come from the European Union but with Britain out of it that is almost impossible because the Indian lobby is so strong in the European parliament and no one is interested in taking the Kashmir issue forward. It was largely the British MEP’s who were doing it.
So we have a very tough problem on our hands. I am not absolutely sure how we can deal with it. I am now only a private citizen. Till January I had four members of staff and the full support of the external action service and the EU’s foreign office. I could be effective. And now I am sitting on a farm in the middle of England talking to you guys and I am largely powerless. But we must try and get our allies to win the election in India. That would be the best way to sort it out.
*Lord Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed (born 24 April 1957) is a member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom. He was created a life peer on the recommendation of Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998. Many of his political activities relate to the Muslim community both in the UK and abroad.
Phillip Bennion (born 7 October 1954) is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands from 2012 to 2014, and then from 2019 to 2020. He studied agriculture and agronomy at Aberdeen and Newcastle. After returning to Staffordshire to run his family farm, he gained a second degree, in history and economic history, from the University of Birmingham. He sat on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Sub-Committee on Human Rights, and also acted as a substitute on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, as a member of the 9th Parliament from July 2019 to January 2020.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd was born 5 October 1952 in Telangana State, in India. He is a political theorist, writer and activist for Dalit rights. He writes in both English and Telugu. He is director of The Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. Ilaiah has an M.A. in political science, MPhil in Land Reform in Andhra Pradesh and a PhD. His thesis was the ‘Political Thought of Gautama Buddha’. He has been a recipient of the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Award and was a Nehru Fellow between 1994-97.
