There has been a farmer’s protest going on for over a year now around India’s capital, New Delhi. Since September 2020, when 3 farm acts were passed by the parliament (stayed since by the judiciary), 3 sites – Tikri, Ghazipur and Singhu – have become synonymous with this often tense, sometimes violent standoff.
These pictures from an eyewitness at Singhu is a slice of the everyday space there, for the substance of which see the following:
Extracts taken from the Democracy Report 2021:
Electoral autocracies continue to be the most common regime type. A major change is that India – formerly the world’s largest democracy with 1.37 billion inhabitants – turned into an electoral autocracy. With this, electoral and closed autocracies are home to 68% of the world’s population. Liberal democracies diminished from 41 countries in 2010 to 32 in 2020, with a population share of only 14%. Electoral democracies account for 60 nations and the remaining 19% of the population. (p13)
Yet, the diminishing of freedom of expression, the media, and civil society have gone the furthest. The Indian government rarely, if ever, used to exercise censorship as evidenced by its score of 3.5 out of 4 before Modi became Prime Minister. By 2020, this score is close to 1.5 meaning that censorship efforts are becoming routine and no longer even restricted to sensitive (to the government) issues. India is, in this aspect, now as autocratic as is Pakistan, and worse than both its neighbors Bangladesh and Nepal. In general, the Modi-led government in India has used laws on sedition, defamation, and counterterrorism to silence critics.1 For example, over 7,000 people have been charged with sedition after the BJP assumed power and most of the accused are critics of the ruling party. (p20)
Recently, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) from 1967 and amended in August 2019 is being used to harass, intimidate, and imprison political opponents, as well as people mobilizing to protest government policies.6 The UAPA has been used also to silence dissent in academia. Universities and authorities have also punished students and activists in universities engaging in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). (p20)
Democracy Report 2021 by V-Dem Institute
India has consistently been ranked amongst the lowest countries in the annual reports by Reporters without Borders in Press Freedom Index:
Read Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, ‘India complains about low press freedom rank – even as ministers talk of ‘neutralising’ journalists’ Scroll, 28 Mar 2021
Read the piece by Atikh Rashid on “What are democracy and autocracy waves? What’s behind the surge of autocratisation across the world?” Man Bites Dog, 18 Mar 2021
In my own piece written to coincide with 70 years of independence for India and Pakistan, I wrote the following:
Protests at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016 and Ramjas College at Delhi University in 2017, with chants of Azaadi (freedom), clearly showed that the idea of freedom is not merely an act of political freedom and is certainly not a freedom from thought in the increasingly mind-numbing and stealth homogenization of the millennial generation. It entails actual and real freedoms, freedoms which allow citizens to exist without fear of persecution, fear of raising critical voices, fear of consumption and cultural practices, fear from oppression and, above all, freedom from having a question mark at their very existence just for being.
The role of any democratic country, with a well-defined rule of law, is to protect all its citizens, ensuring that their rights and freedoms are safeguarded. This is especially true of countries where, as in the case of Pakistan, there is a significant minority; and in the case of India, though a majority Hindu state, secularism is enshrined in its constitution. It is in fact difficult to imagine these lands without the heterogeneity that forms the essence of being South Asian. It is this vibrancy and diversity that gives it character and strength. To move toward a homogenous culture is not only problematic but also dangerous because it is based on exclusivity.
Freedom and Fear: India and Pakistan at 70
All photos from Banksy’s temporary “bemusement” park installation in Weston-Super-Mare, 2015.
It appears that the new political landscape across the globe is colliding with old ideas of liberty, freedom and basic human rights. This is particularly palpable in the movement of people; what is heart wrenching is the curtailment of that freedom to flee from persecution, have the chance to live your life without fear and to seek sanctuary. Those who are forced to flee do not do this out of choice; they are forced to do so for a reason. Basic humanity means under the circumstance most of us would readily help those in need. But in a “globalised” world, it seems that goods and trade have more freedom to travel the world than humans. We want the benefits of living in an integrated global community but actually in reality we cannot cope with the consequences, which also bring cultures and people together. It brings about change and impacts local communities and threatens the very notions of what make a nation-state.
A few snippets that appeared in the last 12 hours to highlight the uncertainty of moving towards hard borders.
Banksy uses Steve Jobs to highlight the refugee crisis. Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant who came to America after the Second World War and Apple is number one brand that has connected people across borders with the revolutionary smart phones.
Precarious Trajectories: Understanding the human cost of the migrant crisis in the central Mediterranean. The film by Dr Simon Parker is set on location in Libya, Italy and Greece during 2015-2016, at the height of the Mediterranean migration crisis. It focuses on the perilous sea crossings that hundreds of thousands of refugees have undertaken in recent years in order to arrive at what they hope will be the safer shores of Europe through the eyes of Ruha from Syria and Ahmed from Somalia. See project website: https://precarioustrajectories.wordpress.com/
Equally compelling was the 3-part documentary by the BBC, Exodus. This is a compelling and powerful journey across the deadly Mediterranean Sea. Read a review of it in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/jul/12/exodus-our-journey-europe-review-bbc-documentary-bbc
Link to the programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07ky6ft
Pakistan’s Stepchildren – an in-depth and powerful analysis of the plight of millions of Afghans who sought sanctuary in Pakistan, but they remain “refugees” despite the vast majority who were born in Pakistan.
Citizenship for Afghan refugees and migrants, or their descendants has long been a contentious issue. According to the Pakistan Citizenship Act 1951, anyone born in Pakistan is a national by birth, except those whose parents are ‘aliens’ — someone “who is not citizen of Pakistan”.
Furthermore, Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, nor to its 1967 additional protocol. As such, according to the Pakistani government, it is not obligated to “facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees.”
Read the full article: http://www.dawn.com/in-depth/afghan-refugees/
Prisoner of war
‘The Chinese man trapped in India for half a century’ is the tragic story of Wang Qi who was a Chinese army surveyor in 1963 following the Sino-Indian war; but he ended up on the wrong side of the border by accident. The story highlights the plight of Wang Qi, who is now settled in India and has a family but he does not have any legal rights in India. He is caught up in the quagmire of legalities surrounding his rights and citizenship. [Read full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-38715056%5D The story is reminiscent of the many people who have been trapped for months and years on the wrong side of the border between the futile politics of India and Pakistan. Though more worrying is the current trend, in not just Trump’s America but in Modi’s India. India is also making discrimination against Muslims a key ingredient of its refugee and immigration policy. The following is a small extract from the article, ‘Indians Angry at Trump’s Ban on Muslim Refugees should look at what Modi is doing,’ highlights the current mood of India’s current government:
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill proposes a redefinition of “illegal immigrant”:
“Provided that persons belonging to minority communities, namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who have been exempted by the Central Government by or under clause (c) of sub-section (2) of section 3 of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 or from the application of the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 or any order made there under, shall not be treated as illegal migrants for the purposes of this Act.”
This effectively means that persons from minority religious communities from our neighbouring Muslim majority countries shall not be considered as illegal migrants and subjected to prosecution.
Trump’s executive order cleverly does not use the word ‘Muslim’ in the ban it imposes on those seeking to enter the US. India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, on the other hand, by identifying explicitly and arbitrarily the intended beneficiaries of its refugee policy, directly excludes Muslim communities which may or do face persecution in India’s Muslim-majority neighbours (eg. Ahmadis, Hazaras, Shias) as well as Muslims who are in a minority elsewhere, like Myanmar or China.
Read the full article:https://thewire.in/104236/indians-angry-trumps-new-travel-ban-muslims-look-modi/
BAGICHA 