ISLAMABAD, Mar 3 (APP):Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib on Thursday said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was using the Hindutva ideology to turn his country into an ‘autocracy’.
“The minorities do not feel safe in India due to the policies and laws adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government that systemically discriminate against the Muslims and other vulnerable communities such as the Citizenship Law, revoking the constitutional autonomy in the Muslim majority Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK),” he said.
He was speaking here at a panel discussion on ‘India: A Largest Democracy or a Fake Union?’ organized by the Institute of Regional Studies.
Commenting on the Indian government’s discriminatory attitude towards the minorities, he said it was the very reason that the Sikh community was demanding separation from India. Referendum by the Sikhs, in that regard, clearly demonstrated the community’s resolve to have a separate state, where they could enjoy religious, political and social freedom, he added.
Even the pro-India Kashmiri leadership in the IIOJK, Farrukh said, had expressed their anger over New Delhi’s unilateral action of abolishing Kashmir’s autonomy.
He said the Muslim girls in India, especially in Gujrat, Rajasthan, and Karnataka, were not feeling secure after the incidents of harassment cases of Hijab wearing girls.
India’s official news agency, he said, had now become a mouthpiece of the BJP that was consistently spreading false and misleading information about Pakistan.
He said the EU Disinfo Lab had exposed a vast Indian network of 750 fake media outlets based in 116 countries running a global campaign for the past 15 years to discredit Pakistan internationally.
Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said, had played the role of an advocate and courageous ambassador of the hapless Kashmiri people by highlighting the issue at various international forums.
He reiterated the prime minister’s commitment to continue exposing India’s belligerent designs towards Pakistan and the Modi government’s fascism at every international key forum.
He urged the Pakistani youth, academicians, journalists and people from all walks of life to work in tandem to dislodge Indian propaganda against Pakistan.
Ambassador Asif Ali Khan Durrani said, “Article 25 to 28 of Indian Constitution provides a right to all the citizens to practice his or her own religion.”
He argued that it was India’s constitution that kept the people of India united for a very long time but today the situation had changed altogether. The Babri Mosque was the symbol of religious freedom and equality in India that was unfortunately succumbed to hyper-nationalist forces.
Durrani warned that rising racism in India would further enhance polarization in Indian polity and society, which would ultimately affect the whole region considerably. “India can be everything but not a democracy, it is an autocracy,” he added.
Assistant Professor Dr Salma Malik of Quaid-e-Azam University said,”India as a union has undergone many changes since the rise of Modi, who has challenged the very basis of Indian democracy.”
Associate Professor and Head of Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at National Defense University, Dr Arshi Saleem Hashmi, argued that a kind of autonomy that Indian states were enjoying, had significantly gone down in the recent years.
“Today, the Centre is overstepping the unions’ authority by passing resolutions that constitutionally come under the latter’s jurisdiction,” she added.
Dr Hashmi warned that the unprecedented rise of corporate-Hindutva alliance that was basically engineered to prevent indigenous revolts against India’s racist policies, was bringing a major shift in political discourse wherein the opposition parties were finding it hard to promote their traditional ideological manifestations.
“India does not have a positive peace and thus cannot claim to be a democracy,” she noted.
She emphasized that the sharp decline in India’s ranking in religious and press freedom, judiciary, and human rights indexes spoke volumes about polarization in Indian polity and society.
Director Strategic Defence, Security and Policy at Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Syed Muhammad Ali, said India’s massive investment in building a global information network in the last 15 years, had made it able to not only hide but also justify its racist policies to the world.
It was also because of India’s information rampage the US was compelled to realize the Chinese threat to Indian soil which ultimately resulted in enhance military cooperation between Washington and the New Delhi, he added.
Highlighting the importance of information as a powerful tool of modern statecraft, Ali stressed the need to invest more in building information infrastructure in Pakistan not only to counter Indian propaganda but also to project and promote the right narrative of Pakistan.
