Anti-India non-State actors are ganging up in the United States to paint India as a dangerous place. Islamists and Leftists have joined hands with Dr Gregory Stanton—the renowned professor on genocide—to say that India is inching closer to genocide. He warned a Congressional hearing on 12th January of an impending genocide of Muslims in India.
It may ring familiar since sometime back anti-India forces had roped in singer Rihanna and environmentalist sensation Greta Thunberg to tweet on farmers’ issue in India. While Indians did not take Rihanna or Thunberg seriously, one does not know if these two were victims of propaganda or greed.
I was aghast at this comment. What could be the motive for Stanton to stick his neck out? He has already predicted that India is on the eight stage which is just one step away from genocide. The basis of his immediate provocation is objectionable utterances by some participants at the Dharma Sansad in Haridwar against Muslims. The State has acted in terms of lodging an FIR and arresting the accused and the Supreme Court has been keeping an eye on the action by the State.
But nobody in India is losing sleep over what happened in Haridwar for the simple reason that India is too big and resilient to allow such incidents to disturb the social fabric. The same way the country had absorbed the statement of Akbaruddin Owaisi of the AIMIM who had said that if police is removed for 15 minutes, Muslims will finish 100 crore Hindus. Although the speech is used in debate to show communal polarisation, nobody takes the statement seriously.
Everyone in India knows that the sadhus at the so-called Dharam Sansad had no locus standi in terms of their affiliation with the BJP or even the Sangh Parivar. It is doubtful if they could be called a credible representative organisation of the Hindu angst. A similar incident had happened at Jantar Mantar where people had shouted anti-Muslim slogans and some arrests were made. But now that the Dharam Sansad has got into international prominence, it may also be inquired whether they became a victim of international conspiracy. There are a number of organisations working hand-in-glove to create such a situation and then to use that to defame the country.
Stanton’s argument is that the Prime Minister did not condemn the incident. Ridiculous to expect that Narendra Modi would go on issuing condemnation one after the other only to embolden such happenings. The law of the State should act and Stanton was not briefed properly to know that law and order in India is not the subject of the Prime Minister but of the various State governments. It is only when the States fail in the task that the Central government intervenes.
An average Indian who does not normally react to such international propaganda thinking this will subside, would be shocked to hear that Stanton’s ‘Genocide Watch’ has compared the situation to Rwanda in the 1990s and Myanmar (due to Rohingya Muslims). To speak in such derogatory terms for a thriving democracy which has robust institutions of checks and balances would be considered sacrilege by any Indian citizen worth his salt.
Stanton was proved wrong earlier so far as his prediction for India is concerned and he may be nursing his wounds because of that. While addressing an audience of Congressional and US Government officials at a briefing titled “Ground Reports on Kashmir and NRC” in Washington DC on 12 December 2019, he said: “Preparation for a genocide is definitely underway in India.” He claimed that Muslims were being persecuted in Assam and Kashmir and described this as the stage just before the genocidal stage in his famous “10-Stage Genocide Process”. These things never happened. In the Assembly elections last year, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won 75 of the 126 seats in Assam to the Congress’ 50 and formed the government for a second time.
The problem is that Stanton is in bad company. An independent research would give him a different picture about India. He has ganged up with the likes of Teesta Setalvad who tried her best to malign Narendra Modi but failed miserably. The might of Amnesty International, that was caught red-handed committing fraud in India, is now with these people along with other organisations that work for Muslim cause such as the Indian-American Muslim Council (IAMC). The IAMC has already asked Indian Muslims settled in different States of the US to influence their representative for Congressional hearings on the status of Muslims in India.
The Indian government has banned thousands of NGOs from taking foreign funds since they refused to comply with the Indian legal system. Some international NGOs thought they were powerful and they could bend the government but they have failed. Amnesty had imagined that the United Kingdom would come to its rescue but the UK, which is rule bound, would not do anything to ask India to bend its laws. All these NGOs, rubbed by the Modi government on the wrong side, have an axe to grind and are trying to show their power of mischief. They are likely to do similar things in the European Parliament in an attempt to defame the Modi government. Not that this would make much of a difference to either Modi or India, but the fangs of these organisations are getting exposed.
Stanton is a Modi hater. Even in his speech released on various social media platforms, he minces no words to demonstrate his hatred. He intentionally referred to Gujarat riots of 2002 and said that Modi as the Chief Minister did nothing. He even said that “Modi encouraged those massacres”. The facts are to the contrary. Army was called within 24 hours, the shortest span in the history of riots in India, and no inquiry has found Modi not doing anything. Stanton is cocking a snook at the Indian judiciary since Modi has been held not-guilty by Indian courts.
Let us see another statement of Stanton. He criticised Modi for revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 and for passing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). To him, the revocation was intended at restoring Hindu domination. He found that the CAA was aimed at targeting Muslims. Both are false. Revoking Article 370 has been one of the core ideological issues of the BJP since the party considered it divisive and had been advocating complete integration of the State with India. And the CAA is intended to grant citizenship rights to those persecuted minorities that had come to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Clearly Stanton has been bought over by the Islamist narrative. He claimed that 200 million Muslims would be victims of the CAA.
Stanton’s real pain is visible when he says that the Indian Constitution was devised to make India a secular country and not a country based on Hindutva. He complements the Congress for maintaining the secular character of India in the initial years after Independence.
“What we have now though, an actual member of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) — this extremist, Hindutva-oriented group — Mr Modi as [the] prime minister of India. So, what we have here is an extremist who has taken over the government,” he said. Batting for Congress and attacking Modi is an old trick adopted by many RSS-BJP haters.
Now we know why he is in a bad company. This is because he is suffering from Modi phobia. Calling the Indian Prime Minister an ‘extremist’ would not be appreciated by any world leader who has interacted with Modi. He has earned friends and has impressed them with his commitment to democracy and development. Stanton’s utterances are an affront to the honour and dignity of an average Indian who sees hope in their Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
There are some people and vested interests that always wanted the Indian poor to suffer. Health card for the poor, a bank account for them where they get direct benefits through electronic transfer of funds and a free ration so that they don’t die of hunger have helped Modi emerge as the messiah of the poor. His schemes do not discriminate between Hindus and Muslims. These things don’t suit the Western narrative.
He has reined in corruption and given a level playing field to people who want to take the country forward. India is now home to the third largest number of Startup Unicorns after the United States and China. It will soon have 100 such unicorns each valued with a minimum value of USD 1 billion.
The pain of anti-India forces is the country is progressing despite being an area of potential conflict. The prophets of doom are being proved wrong. The incidents of terrorism have come down and Hindus and Muslims are trying to settle their issues through intellectual discourse. Genocide Watch also intends to influence the decision of MNCs which may be planning big investment in India now that the honeymoon with China appears to be almost over. India under Modi is a very attractive destination for these investors. FDI inflow during the last seven years (2014-21) was USD 440.27 billion which was 58 per cent of the total FDI inflow of USD 763.83 billion in the last 21 years. This is despite the pandemic.
Where does this leave Stanton and his likes? The West and Europe are shy of facing the charge of being Islamophobic. They have not been able to work out a full-proof mosaic society, where Muslims, a miniscule minority there, do not face discrimination. India is working well despite having a Muslim minority that has more population than any caste Hindu group. So, it makes sense for people like Stanton to take up the cause of some Muslims in the US who may be charged up by the motivated narrative that goes out from India. This would at least save Stanton from not being labelled Islamophobic. But they have to be wary of Modi phobia too. This blinds your vision and forces you to go wrong.
The writer is the author of ‘Narendra Modi: the GameChanger’. A former journalist, he is a member of BJP’s media relations department and represents the party as spokesperson while participating in television debates. The views expressed are personal.
