Category: Editorial/Opinion

It is good that an official appeal is to be filed against the judgement of the Additional Sessions Judge in Kerala exonerating Bishop Franco of all charges of multiple rape of a nun who was his subordinate. Hopefully, the appeal will lead to a restoration of justice and dignity to not only the complainant in this case, but also to all survivors of rape.

Too often in the recent past have survivors of sexual assault found themselves repeatedly victimised by what can be termed a judicial default setting which sets a false and utterly bigoted standard of how a rape survivor is supposed to behave; if she conducts herself differently, her testimony is not considered credible. Why did she smile the day after she was raped? How could she travel in the same car as the accused? Why did she take so long to speak about it? We have heard these questions too many times.

According to case law and many more sensitive judgements, the sole testimony of a rape survivor must be given due weightage as often there are no direct witnesses. Special consideration to the statement of the survivor helps the processes of justice. However, this is also linked to the satisfaction of the court of the credibility of the statements and of the survivor herself.

This has led in case after case to the subversion of justice. It is open season for destroying the survivor’s credibility and her narration of the facts. It is not the rapist but the survivor who becomes the accused, having to prove herself credible. Thus a direction to give special consideration to a survivor’s testimony is turned into a legal instrument against her. The onus shifts to the survivor to prove that she is credible as a “sterling witness.” When the eyes and ears of the law are not tuned in to hear the survivor, or to understand her circumstances or how the world appears to her, when the law fails to see in her silences the power of the perpetrator, then you can be sure that justice will be a long time coming.

The 250-page judgement reads more like an investigation into the complainant rather than the accused and ends up a hit job against her. The judgement holds that she is a liar, that she is inconsistent, that she has ulterior motives, that she is part of a power play within the specific congregation to which she belongs; worst of all, there is the damning indictment of her character, in which the judgement finds “credibility” in the outright malicious libelous charges made by the accused against her of having an affair and fabricating the entire charge against the Bishop to conceal this. The judgement deserves to be taught in law schools as an example of a really bad judgement.

After decades of struggle, sacrifice and suffering by survivors of sexual assault, the laws concerning definition of and punishment for sexual assault were amended in 2013 to look at issues from the survivor’s point of view. For a woman, any invasion of her bodily integrity is equally horrific, and the narrow definition of rape as penile penetration disregarded and downplayed that horror. The amended laws recognised the different levels and forms of sexual assault, including forced oral sex, use of fingers, or any instrument without consent as rape.

But the judgement displays an extraordinary obsession with proving that the survivor never mentioned “penile penetration” – although she had on several occasions – and reams are devoted to this, while ignoring the detailed descriptions by the survivor of what she went through, all of which are clearly within the legal definition of rape. Going by the judgement, a survivor of rape has to use very precise language. On several occasions, the survivor had spoken about her fear that she would be forced to “sleep with him”, to “share his bed”, but the judgement, while bringing this on record, does not consider this evidence because the word “rape” is not mentioned. Presumably there are reasons other than sex as to why a Bishop would force a woman to “share his bed.” It is on such flawed grounds that a woman complainant is described as not being “credible.”

What is striking in the judgement are its double standards. It plays down glaring lies by the accused. For example, on the day that the first assault was made in May 2014, the accused denied that he was there at all. His alibi unravelled in the face of documentary and witness evidence which conclusively established his presence on that day in a room on the same floor where the complainant resided. It was also established that the other residents were on another floor.

Why did he concoct an alibi if he had nothing to hide? But there is no reference at all in the judgement’s conclusions that he had tried to build a false alibi, that he had lied. This is of no importance to the judgement. There is a charge made against the accused by another witness nun that he had tried to get physical with her. This is brushed aside as “behaviour of accused towards this witness is not relevant.

” There are sexually colored and vulgar messages sent by the accused which were printed out and are on record, but the judgement hardly gives credence to them. When the complainant warned him that she would leave the convent if he visited it again, he sent her the following message: “With heavy heart I am joining with your decision. I want to see you, I want to need you, call me.” Is it normal for a superior to send such an objectionable message to his subordinate? Doesn’t it raise questions at least about inappropriate behaviour and give an indication of something which requires answers? But the judgement finds nothing odd in this. On the contrary, it is quoted as proof in the judgement that there were no “threats” to the complainant.

The survivor’s every word, gesture, smile is under the scanner. The judgement in the section on photographic evidence goes out of the way to mention how carefully the videos were studied to reach a conclusion. The day after the first sexual assault took place, the survivor and accused had to attend a function of first communion for the child of her elder sister where the accused was the chief priest. She puts up a brave face and yet the camera shows her “gloomy”, a word frequently favored in the judgement, to describe grief and sadness. The judgement says “she can be seeing crying sitting on the back bench of the church”…”victim looks gloomy, but the very next minute, the victim can be seen smiling.” So the counter to the charge that she behaved “normally”, which apparently proves she was not traumatized, is dismissed – because she smiled. On other occasions where her colleagues in the Convent noticed how upset she used to get when news of the Bishop coming to the convent was conveyed to her, the judgement finds fault with the survivor. It says “though she was asked repeatedly about her gloominess, her replies were evasive.”

In December 2014, six or seven months after she was first sexually assaulted, she narrated all that had happened to her spiritual mother. This was the first time she had spoken to another. The statement of how they “wept together” is part of the record, and gives an indication of the trauma. Soon after, she also spoke to a priest who heard her “confession.” Then she went on a retreat and there, too, she spoke of her ordeal to a priest. She was wrestling with the nightmare the best way she could. From her own statements, she was hoping the issue could be resolved within the church. For any woman, it is difficult enough to deal with repeated assault by a man who uses his power for sexual gratification. For a woman who had chosen to live her life as a nun with a vow of chastity, dealing with such a situation was even more difficult. Her younger sister was also in the same congregation. Her elder sister was concerned that if the sisters left the congregation as the complainant thought of doing, “parishioners would make fun of them…All the problems could be resolved within the Church itself.” In fact, she did write several letters to the authorities. These too are criticized by the judgement as not being explicit enough. The fear of social disapproval and acrimony is a heavy burden on the shoulders of a survivor. But these realities are ignored in the judgement.

Once she decided to file a police complaint, all statements of those to whom she had spoken were recorded. Shockingly, each of her witnesses was dismissed in the judgement as unreliable. The spiritual mother’s witness was dismissed as being “planted”, the statement to the priest was not followed up “as he can’t reveal what she said”, the statement at the retreat was similarly dismissed. The statements of her colleagues were also not considered reliable – and then the conclusion is reached that the inordinate delay in reporting the crime is inexplicable, and is held as a major finding against her testimony. In contrast, a statement admittedly manufactured by a relative, who herself retracted the charge, accusing her of having an affair with her husband, is taken as the basis for the entire case. In other words, if the judgement is to be believed, a woman starts building up her defence from 2014 to conceal an affair that she has three years later! Anything becomes possible except the facts narrated by the survivor.

The prosecution has expressed disbelief and shock at the outcome. The nuns who stood by her have issued similiar statements pledging to appeal against the judgement. There are those who would like to use the case to defame the Church. They should desist from doing so. This is a struggle for justice, and has little to do with religion. This is equally a fight against insensitive and patriarchal judicial blinkers that dehumanise a survivor of rape and expect her to abide by a preconceived code of conduct as a “sterling witness”. In the light of this judgement, the issue of educating the judiciary on amended laws concerning sexual assault also has an added urgency.

We mourn with the Afghan people their double tragedy. The first tragedy—the US’s illegal and utterly unjustified military invasion twenty years ago—helped prepare the ground for today’s tragedy, the accession to power of the Islamo-fanatical Taliban. Condemnation of the latter must not mean any softening of the criticism of US and Western imperialism or in shedding tears at its departure from the country.

The single most important democratic advance in the whole of the second half of the 20th century was the end of foreign colonial and imperialist rule even where this unfortunately resulted in the emergence of indigenous dictatorships. In a world where peoples are constituted as belonging to separate and multiple states, the fundamental moral-political principle to uphold (minus the rarest of exceptional cases) is respecting the freedom of agency of a people to overthrow their own tyrants. This is why it was the responsibility of Indians to overthrow British rule, of Indonesians the Dutch, of South Africans against Apartheid, and so on. Calling for external help of all kinds, even military aid, was one thing; calling for external military liberation, No!

In the 1978 ‘Saur Revolution’ a secular and reform-minded pro-Soviet ‘Communist’ party, the PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) came to power but was bedevilled by internal armed faction-fighting and had no real social base beyond Kabul. The Soviet invasion in 1979 to support this government was morally unjustified and condemnable while politically disastrous, handing over as it did the mantle of ‘popular nationalist struggle’ against the foreign invader, to a host of ethno-tribal Islamist groups including Al Qaeda and Taliban. The primary military aiders, equippers and trainers of these were the US, its British/French allies along with Pakistan. The Soviets finally withdrew in 1989 with its factotum government collapsing three years later amidst a civil war waged by the various Islamists until the Taliban capturing  90% of the territory established its dominance in 1996.

In 2001 the US government deliberately refused to characterise the assault on Twin Towers and Pentagon as what it was, namely an international crime against humanity. For that would have meant going after the criminals and their network only. Instead, by declaring a ‘Global War on Terror’ and claiming that no distinction would be made between the guilt of the perpetrators and that of the governments of countries which the US declared to be ‘housing terrorists’—the way was cleared for the US to transform a conflict between itself and a non-state network into one against any number of countries in West and Central Asia in keeping with its wider geo-political ambitions of achieving global dominance. In the new millennium Afghanistan was the first of many to suffer such military assaults. The US foreign policy establishment had already identified China, Iran and Russia as the ones to watch out for and were accordingly well aware that Afghanistan, apart from Pakistan, abuts Iran, China and pro-Russia Central Asian Republics, the latter also a region having large relatively untapped sources of oil and gas.

In these 20 years the US military and its puppet regimes (themselves corrupt and internally fractious) have carried out massive bombings (‘daisy cutters’, cluster bombs), drone attacks (extending into Pakistan) and brutal and indiscriminate ‘search and destroy’ missions against unknown insurgents and their families. US deaths (soldiers and contractors) have been around 6500.

In contrast, by extremely conservative estimates, total Afghan deaths up to the end of 2019 (government soldiers/police, opposition fighters, civilians) were around 160,000. Other sources which try to take account of unreported deaths have estimates of civilian casualties alone running from a few hundred thousand to over a million in an overall population between 35-40 million. Four million Afghans have been internally displaced with another 2.7 million external refugees. As of now around 48% are below the national poverty line. Some progressive laws and reforms have taken place but they no more justify US presence and rule than the fact of the British building hospitals, schools and introducing some legislatures, elections and limited franchise would have justified the persistence of colonial rule in India.

That the 300,000 plus official Afghan forces (soldiers, police, special militias) numbering 5 to 6 times more than Taliban fighters and also equipped with the most advanced arsenal of weapons and having full mechanical control of airspace should have so dramatically collapsed, indicates that the Taliban did have a measure of ground support and public acquiescence (no doubt considerably fear-induced) beyond its predominantly Pushtun base. However, it is strongly hostile to the Persian-speaking Tajiks who make up 27% of the population as compared to the 42% of Pushtuns which means there is every reason to fear serious internal repression and even a possible civil war type situation in the future. Taliban may or may not have learnt something from its past international isolation and avoid some forms of social  and civic repression. But given its history and social/civic programme of religious sectarianism, anti-democratic, anti-women measures—it has declared it will impose Sharia Law—there is every reason to oppose it forthrightly and without equivocation.

Governments everywhere including India’s, will shed crocodile tears for the Afghan people, but are in fact (accompanied by respective bus loads of ‘strategic experts’) only motivated by the crude and amoral considerations of realpolitik. Claiming to pursue the ‘national interest’—standardised subterfuge for the actual pursuit of ruling class interests that these different states actually represent—they will decide whether or when to establish diplomatic relations of some kind with the new Taliban government; or else to join hands with other self-serving major powers and their cohorts be these the Western Alliance or the possible front of Russia, China and Pakistan that looks more favourably at the new dispensation in Afghanistan.

No Afghan government has ever accepted the Durand line and the Taliban with even stronger sympathies with Pushtuni nationalism is not as beholden to Pakistan as the Islamophobic Modi government (some of whose Hindutva prescriptions are as debased as those of radical Islam) would like to make out for the purpose of whipping up anti-Pakistan sentiment domestically which then pays dividends for deepening repression in Kashmir.

It is the good of the Afghan people not our supposed ‘national interest’  that must be our point of departure for reflecting on what we must support and oppose. There should be no economic sanctions against Afghanistan. These hurt the people much more than the elites that govern. Humanitarian aid on an appropriate scale routed through progressive international and civil society organisations to this war-torn country is a must. No recognition to the Taliban regime while political, diplomatic and cultural pressures of various kinds (but not military) can play a role in pushing it to be less repressive in its laws and actions against women and ethnic and religious minorities.

A basic test for the West and many other countries will come with regard to the posture they adopt towards the flow of Afghan refugees now and afterwards. There should be no restriction to those seeking refuge or asylum and adequate provision be made for them to stay or relocate to where they can. This holds for India as well. Even before the advent of Modi, India was and remains a non-party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol which among other things rejects refoulement (forcible return of refugees to their places of displacement/persecution).

The Modi government has carried this out to a number of Rohingyas simply because they are Muslims. This hostility to Muslims and Islam is also reflected in the Citizenship Amendment Act applicable to Afghanistan. While New Delhi may in current circumstances allow for selective refugee influx this is not enough. Free flow must be allowed even as there can be discussion among neighbouring states for sharing the responsibility. Moreover, those Afghans, students and otherwise who are already in the country and wish to remain must have their visas extended until such time as they feel confident of returning back or they can in due course apply for Indian citizenship. NO TO IMPERIALISM, NO TO THE TALIBAN

What is happening to the soul of Indian democracy? ‘The basis for democracy is Liberty,’ said Aristotle. However, today, the Institutions that were built to safeguard that principle are under duress. Laws like UAPA were used in colonial times to suppress the independence movement by suspending ordinary jurisprudence. Under these laws, jail is the rule, and bail is an exception.

“Many of the Desi civil rights organizations in this country would make loud protests, justifiably so, at the slightest discrimination or physical attack on an Indian but remain largely silent to any level of atrocities committed to vulnerable groups in India. Some of them act as if they are mouthpieces of the BJP regime, often defending actions that violate the fundamental values and principles of the democracy we all live in. As a minority, we demand equal opportunities and protection from the US government; however, we mostly remain reluctant to hold the Modi regime accountable to the same standard! It is quite a paradox!”

As I was sitting at a corner table in a conference room at the Indian Consulate in New York surveying the folks who were busy preparing for a curtain-raiser function to celebrate India’s 74th anniversary of Independence with a Parade in Long Island, I wondered whether anyone in that group truly cared whether India is still holding on to that promise of freedom to all its citizens! To some, that question is lost amidst the excitement and pageantry of the upcoming celebration, and to many others, the retrogressive trajectory of India’s current path is the real reason for joy and celebration!

As the Diaspora is about to celebrate Independence Day of India once again, one of the questions that arises in minds across the globe is whose freedom is being celebrated on August 15, 2021?

Obviously, it was not the freedom of Father Stan Swamy, who died recently in detention on trumped-up charges of terrorism. He was a man who had devoted his life fighting for the rights of Dalits and Adivasis from the onslaught of corporate interests. And it is not the freedom of Sudha Bharadwaj, who has been languishing in jail now for over three years for defending the rights of the workers and seeking justice for extrajudicial killings by police officers. Of course, it is not the freedom of Asif Iqbal Tanha, Devangana Kalita, and Natasha Narwal who were exercising their constitutional rights to protest CAA. For that alone, they were incarcerated under the draconian UAPA law.In the case of Stan Swamy, the authorities didn ‘t even show basic civility in providing the man with a straw as this frail 84-year-old with Parkinson’s disease had difficulty drinking water from a cup. Upon contacting Covid-19 in prison, it took a court intervention for him to get released to a hospital of his choice, a delay that may have cost him his life. What happened to his right to life and liberty? Why was Stan Swamy denied the freedom to have a presumption of innocence?

Last February 13, 2021, marks the civil rights lawyer and activist Sudha Bharadwaj’s 900 days in detention under the UAPA law.

Last February 13, 2021, marks the civil rights lawyer and activist Sudha Bharadwaj’s 900 days in detention under the UAPA law.  She took cases that many other attorneys refused to touch and represented workers wrongfully dismissed by companies, illegally evicted villagers from their land, and women who alleged sexual assault by security forces. Born in Boston to a distinguished economist, she went to IIT Kanpur to study Mathematics. Later, she moved to an iron mining ore town in Chhattisgarh and supported worker’s rights and safety while challenging land acquisition by major corporations and seeking justice for extrajudicial killings by police officers. Bharadwaj has denied the charges and said it was “totally concocted. Obviously, these arrests appear to be an affront to the rule of law and infringing on the citizen’s constitutional rights.

It has been said that a right without a remedy is no right at all. According to press reports, Sudha’s health situation continues to deteriorate in prison. The 59-year-old suffers from diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, making her susceptible to Covid-19 in the cramped prison. Her bail plea is being rejected, and she has been denied books and Newspapers in jail. Michele Bachelet, the UNHCHR commissioner, has expressed concern over using ‘vaguely defined laws’ to silence activists and government critics. Doesn’t Sudha Bharadwaj deserve the freedom to have a hearing on her case without indefinite detention?

According to press reports, the most bizarre incident took place on March 19, 2021, in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, when four Nuns from the Delhi province of the Sacred Heart Society were arrested while on the way to Odisha from Delhi. The incident occurred while the train they were traveling stopped at 6.30 PM at Jhansi railway station. A group of religious extremists returning from a pilgrimage accused them of religious conversion and raised religious slogans. Subsequently, police arrived at the spot and arrested the Nuns without paying any heed to their side of the story. Around 150 religious radicals accompanied the women in procession to the police station. The terrified nuns were finally released at 11.30 PM after the intervention of some advocacy groups. Don’t these Nuns deserve the freedom of unimpeded travel without harassment anywhere in India?

Mohammed Munazir arrived in Delhi decades ago, escaping poverty in his native Bihar, where his landless father worked on other people’s farms for a pittance. In the beginning, like poor migrants, he lived in a tarped hovel on the fringes of sprawling Capital, working in a bookbinding shop. Finally, when the bookbinding shop folded, he started selling home-cooked biryani on a cart. Ultimately, he saved enough money to buy a home, a nondescript building in a narrow lane. “It was a nest I finally built for my wife and six children after a lifetime of struggle,” says Mr. Munazir. “It was the only thing I wanted in life; it was my dream come true.” It is that dream that ended in flames on a bright sunny Tuesday when the Capital’s worst religious riots in decades took place in 2020, leaving 53 people dead and hundreds of wounded languishing in understaffed medical facilities, and corpses were still being discovered in drainage ditches. Doesn’t Mr. Munazir have the freedom to dream of building his own nest?

Born to a Dalit family in the slums of Indora, an Ambedkarite hub in Nagpur, fifty-four-year-old Sudhir Dhawale is an activist, editor, and writer. Dhawale was arrested alongside five other activists and professors on June 6, 2018, due to their connection to Elgar Parishad, which was blamed for the violence at Bhima Koregaon, which took place on January 1, 2018. The 1818 Battle of Koregaon is an important milestone for Dalits. On January 1818, eight hundred troops of the East India company’s Bombay Presidency army with a large number of Mahars defeated a numerically superior force of the Peshwa Baji Rao II. A victory pillar was erected in Koregaon by the British, and in 1928 B. R. Ambedkar led the first commemoration ceremony there. Since then, on January 1, every year, Ambedkarites gather at Bhima Koregaon to celebrate the victory against the upper castes and highlight the historical oppression they have suffered under the caste system. However, to the powerful establishment, these daring Dalits needed to be taught a lesson! They may have finally succeeded in putting a damper on Edgar Parishad’s luster through defamation, linking it to the Maoist and anti-national movements. Doesn’t Sudhir Dhawale and other Dalits have a right to celebrate a historical event without interference from the upper castes?

It should also be noted that Milind Ekbote, President of Dharmaveer Sambhaji Maharaj Pratishthan, and Sambhaji Bhide, a man associated with RSS and Shiv Pratishthan, who was accused of causing the violence, never faced any serious action.

Mr. Rajesh Tikait from Uttar Pradesh, a farm leader and spokesperson of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, could be seen in a video distressed and wailing so loudly that his sobbing drowned out his words. Mr. Tikait said that the BJP was trying to “destroy” farmers and that he would not let it happen. He was indeed referring to how goons have infiltrated the January 26 protests by farmers to discredit their movement that has legitimate grievances against the farm laws passed by the Government in 2020. Harsimrat Kaur Badal, a former Union Minister and erstwhile ally of the BJP government, said, “This anti-farmer attitude of the NDA government is responsible for the plight of farmers who are not only been stonewalled for eight months but even their dead are not being recognized.” Why this farming community that is ‘annadaata’ to the country is being humiliated in this manner and called anti-nationals for exercising freedom to air their grievances?

The alleged snooping by the Indian Government using Israeli spyware Pegasus on opposition politicians, media personnel, and private citizens indicates that individual freedom and the right to privacy have become a thing of the past. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, one of the victims of the phone tapping issue, asked, “we want to ask just one question. Has the Government of India bought Pegasus? Yes or No. Did the Government use Pegasus weapon against its own people?” The Indians in the snooping database include over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, and one constitutional authority. What happened to the freedom of the opposition parties to hold the Government accountable and the freedom of the fourth estate to keep Government, legislators, and big business in check by keeping society or the public informed?

What is happening to the soul of Indian democracy? ‘The basis for democracy is Liberty,’ said Aristotle. However, today, the Institutions that were built to safeguard that principle are under duress. Laws like UAPA were used in colonial times to suppress the independence movement by suspending ordinary jurisprudence. Under these laws, jail is the rule, and bail is an exception. A polis project statement says ‘political prisoner’ is a category of criminal offense that sits most egregiously in any civilized society, especially in countries that call themselves liberal democracies. It is a thought crime: the crime of thinking, acting, speaking, probing, reporting, questioning, demanding rights, and, more importantly, exercising one’s citizenship. The assault on the fundamental rights has been consistent and ongoing at a global level, and rights-bearing citizens are transformed into consuming subjects of a surveillance state”.

Freedom of Conscience is fundamental to all other liberties. It is innate and God-given. It is guaranteed under the Indian Constitution. However, it is open season for those who freely exercise it. Academia has become another favorite target of the Modi Government. BJP and its ilk have always hated Institutions like JNU, where the free flow of ideas flourished, and lively debates on the pros and cons of contemporary issues were the order of the day. Today, the students and faculty in these revered institutions are intimidated, harassed, and called anti-national for failing to toe their Hindutva agenda line and are often charged with sedition. Modi Government has been openly hostile to civil society groups. It repeatedly denounces human rights and environmental activism as “anti-national” – a phrase that carries connotations of treason.

There is also quite an irony in the fact that today’s BJP leaders, who mostly come from the RSS ranks, are vocal on the issue of nationalism. The words and deeds of the founders of that organization, from Hedgewar to Veer Savarkar, clearly indicated that they were not only non-participants in the freedom struggle where hundreds of people were risking their lives daily but also collaborators who supported the British on critical occasions. The British acknowledged that RSS has “scrupulously kept itself within the law and refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942.” Sardar Patel, writing on the assassination of Gandhiji by Nathuram Godse, said, “As regards to RSS and Hindu Mahasabha…our reports do confirm that as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former (RSS), an atmosphere was created in the country in which such ghastly tragedy became possible.”

“Religious freedom in India is taking a drastic turn downward, with national and various state governments tolerating widespread harassment and violence against religious minorities” said United States Commission for International Religious Freedom in its 2020 report. The BJP-led Government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which potentially exposes millions of Muslims to detention, deportation, and statelessness when the Government completes its planned nationwide National Registry of Citizens”. USCIRF also recommended to the State Department that India be designated as a ‘Country of Particular Concern.’ India also slipped into 53rd position in the 2020 Democracy Index’s global ranking, dubbed a flawed democracy. The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) said that in India, democratic backsliding by the authorities and crackdown on civil liberties led to a further decline in their global rankings.

Christians who constitute around 3% of the population are also under severe stress with many of their places of worship under attack, increased re-conversion efforts by Hindu fundamentalist organizations, removal of Christmas Day and Easter Day from the National Calendar, and the cancellation of FCRA of thousands of Christian charities effectively putting them out of business, the Saffron brigade appears to be questioning the very Indian ness of every Christian in India. In addition, they are engaged in a scathing campaign to link Christianity in India, which has a two-thousand-year history, with the colonial legacy.

Agencies such as India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate of the Finance Ministry, the Tax authorities, and even local police forces are often accused of doing the Government’s bidding. The opposition has charged that their leaders have often been targeted for harassment which they consider a political vendetta for expressing their opinions critical of the Government.

In this week, we may witness widespread celebrations of India’s Independence that will be held in many cities across the U.S. However, one may hear very little regarding whether the hard-fought freedom won by the founding fathers of modern India is in danger of being extinguished! The Cultural and Religious organizations that provide forums for these events appear not to be concerned about the ever-diminishing freedom of India’s citizens or the weakening of its institutions. The current dispensation favors singing Vande Mataram in place of Jana Gana Mana as parts of that national song are replete with Hindu symbolism that is more gratifying, albeit not the communities in their entirety.

Indians have done well with the open electoral process in the US, having elected four of their own to the House of Representatives and another one as the Vice-President. Although most of them ascribe to policies considered far left of the center and often very strident on issues dealing with Civil Rights, Social Policies, or Immigration, they rarely criticize the Government of India for any similar wrongdoings such as violations of human rights or religious freedom.  They seem reluctant even to raise these issues when meeting with the Prime Minister or other Embassy officials.

Many of the Desi civil rights organizations in this country would make loud protests, justifiably so, at the slightest discrimination or physical attack on an Indian but remain largely silent to any level of atrocities committed to vulnerable groups in India. Some of them act as if they are mouthpieces of the BJP regime, often defending actions that violate the fundamental values and principles of the democracy we all live in. As a minority, we demand equal opportunities and protection from the US government; however, we mostly remain reluctant to hold the Modi regime accountable to the same standard! It is quite a paradox!

The Bhartiya Janata Party’s victory in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019 has ushered in an unprecedented attack on India’s democracy and injected new elements of intolerance and authoritarianism into the lives of people living in the country. The anti-democratic actions by the Government have sullied international reputation. Therefore, it is time to ask exactly whose freedom are we celebrating on this 74th anniversary? Is it the hard-fought freedom won under the long struggle by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and Maulana Azad from the British to the benefit of all its citizens in India or the diminishing freedom at the expense of the minorities and Dalits solely to the delight of the feudalists/upper castes elites? Nevertheless, from a vantage point, this celebration may be all about the genuine freedom we enjoy in this land of the free and home of the brave, which includes the right to hold a foreign national flag and walk in a parade under a religious banner of our choice!

(The author is a former Chief Technology Officer of the United Nations and Vice-Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, USA)

The breach of security on Jan. 6 at the ‘Capitol Building’ in Washington, D.C. while certification of Mr. Joe Biden as the next President of U.S. was under way, wasn’t just an incidence of one more demonstration of violent protest that besieged Yr.2020 … It was a total failure of our nation’s security apparatus, triggered by our own enragedly egotist President Trump. This day will remain as one of the darkest days in the history of U.S. It was a defining moment as an attempt to hijack the democratic values of this great nation in a coup by intimidating Congressional body to overturn the election results. Let’s not forget that the out-of-control mob of hoodlums, anarchists, white-supremist and false conspiracy theorists who converged on the Capitol were, incited earlier by none other than deranged Trump himself who exhorted them to take the matter in their own hand. It exposed how fragile our nation is, not only to the wide-spread barrage of venomed falsehood and divisiveness, but also, how vulnerable it is to anti-national militia & terrorist attacks.

Let’s stop the charade or pretend that what happened on Jan.6 was ‘totally shocking’. It was 4 years in making with the support of misguided supporters. Trump’s core support comes from numerous splinter ‘anti-groups’ – anti-immigrant, anti-nonwhites, anti-govt, anti-women’s rights, anti-establishment, anti-environment, anti-media, anti-rules & regulations for good governance etc. He systematically tapped into these lot’s insecurities and nurtured them to his selfish ends. President John Kennedy from the same ‘Capitol’ steps had motivated the Americans to work in harmony for the collective bright future with a historic proclamation – “Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country”. Trump, on the other hand put Americans against each other. Though this had been a country of immigrants, he made ‘immigrant’ an exclusionary word in the life of this country by equating it to only the ‘white people’, and making ‘non-white people’, the root-cause of all U.S. problems. Never in the history of U.S., there had been so many violent acts of bullying and infamous pogrom-style vengeful killings that ultimately resulted into global movement of ‘Black Lives Matter’. In spite of losing all court cases for lack of even a shred of evidence, except his own mere psycho-rhetoric to boot, all the way to the Supreme Court & ‘Electoral College’, Mr. Trump, in his delusional alternative world kept on spreading the falsehood just to satisfy his own whimper. The Republicans, right-wing media, and the so-called conservatives – all bear the responsibility for this greatest historic American tragedy.

He bullied them and this spineless lot caved in. They fully knew that the words have consequences, but intentionally kept mum as long as he did not turn against them. They did not stand with Sen John McCann, decorated Generals, experienced career Diplomats when he insulted them nor objected to his hundreds of lies, each month. They did not do a thing when he refused to take any action against Covid-19 epidemic or Russia’s cyber-attacks on vital components of U.S. government. They, in fact, stroked his outlandish conspiracy theories and went against the constitution they had pledged to upheld, to confirm their loyalty to him. When Trump was stroking his goons with hateful speeches, no republican or conservative protested that to be ‘unamerican’, then.  In short, the responsibility of creating this self-centered, self-absorbed monster rests solely with them. Some of the ardent supporters rallied around him even after his disgraceful fall simply because the reality was too painful and bruising for their own ego. It is worth noting the ‘double standards’ of some of the nationalist Indians who were Trump supporters. This cadre, had unequivocally lambasted outrageous accusations of the Indian Congress and its allies against Hon. N. Modi and BJP as ‘mere allegations without any shred of proof or merit’ but readily accepted Trump’s whimsical personal allegations against the electioneering process as the truth, when he lost the second term. The enthusiasm of some of them overflowed so much so that they even attached the word ‘Hindu’ to their support groups. This was outright blasphemy of what ‘Hinduism’ stands for. Trump had never ever exhibited any trait that ANY religion – leave alone just Hindu – could take pride in. All his life, Trump had cheated people & the government, ruined thousands of businesses, taken advantage of vulnerable women, spread hatred and never ever repented or regretted any of his unscrupulous actions.

Trump has been universally condemned after what happened on Ja.6. He personally has no political future, in my opinion. He lost his year 2024 chance to get elected when he refused to gallantly accept his loss in November elections. A Lot has been lost during four tumultuous years of Trump presidency. As a nation, our Democracy not only been disgraced, but also, lost clout or the power to make the things happen in our interest. Trump had already isolated U.S. from the rest of the world by going against all our allies. Jan.6, proved that we cannot manage our own affairs, peacefully and according to the ‘law of the land’. How different was Trump-era than the era of third world country dictators like ‘Mugabe’, ‘Idi Amin’ or ‘Gaddafi’. Like them he refused to relinquish the power when the time came. This was disgraceful, despicable and shameful to be played out on the world stage.

At such junctures, it is always customary to stress that the goodness in U.S. outweighs all negativity, lapses or bad episodes etc., put together … I say – not so fast … Make no mistake; Trump and his hateful twisted ideology is not going to go away, at least in near future, unless people and the lawmakers are vigilant about the future of this country. He and his humiliated surrogates in the Congress are likely to create hurdles for Biden administration, every which way they can, every step of the way for the next 4 years. Also, there is plenty of room to wonder whether challenging election results, is going to be the future ‘norm’? If it does, then it will be the beginning of U.S. becoming a ‘Banana Republic’.