ISLAMABAD, Nov 25 (APP):Senator Sherry Rehman has issued a strongly worded statement condemning the events unfolding in Ayodhya on Tuesday, calling them a grave escalation of majoritarian politics and state-backed religious exclusion.
Senator Rehman said, “As the PM of India strides into Ayodhya today for hoisting a saffron flag on the demolished Babri Masjid, he must know what he is doing: making India unequivocally unsafe for other religions, adding not just to the precipitous erosion of rights, but giving sanction to the daily peril that non-Hindus now face.
This is an extension of how he ran Gujrat as CM, when he was denied a visa to many countries for egregious rights crimes. This is how a mob gets impunity to spin out of control while the police looks the other way in Muslim lynchings. This is also the state sending out a potent message of identity politics embedded in a dangerous institutionalization of violence as the new abnormal. The police will now not only be encouraged to look the other way but understand that their role is that of a facilitator.”
Senator Rehman further added “To add insult to injury, closing the iron bubble of a seamless ecosystem of political communalism, the Godi media is dutifully trotting out the state project of violent exclusion by labelling this temple completion a “civilisational milestone”. The facts are an embarrassment. This is no ordinary temple built randomly by some bigoted planner on the site of a community mosque. No, the “milestone” stands exactly on the site of the historic 16th-century Babri Masjid, which was illegally demolished in December 1992 by RSS–VHP mobs, igniting nationwide riots that led to more than 2,000 deaths.
Despite the fact that India’s Supreme Court actually acknowledged in 2019 that the demolition violated its own status-quo orders, it still handed the disputed land to a state-created trust for constructing the Ram temple, giving Muslims and many international legal experts a message: mob violence is now to be rewarded if it privileges the rise of Hindutva majoritarianism. Who will protect religious minority rights in such a republic of fear is not a question for the new Bharat. The cycle is complete.”
Senator Rehman called on the international community to take urgent notice of the rising tide of majoritarian extremism in India and reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to upholding minority rights and constitutional protections.
