India a "weak proponent" of human rights in 2015 at UN, world leaders didn't raise "concerns publicly" with Modi

Back cover photograph on HRW report

By Our Representative
The Human Rights Watch (HRW), of the world’s most influential advocacy groups, has said that India was “a weak proponent of human rights at the UN in 2015.” Quoting examples, it says, “In March, India voted in support of a Russian-backed resolution to remove benefits for same-sex partners of UN staff” and “abstained on Human Rights Council resolutions on Syria, North Korea, and Ukraine, and voted against resolutions on Iran and Belarus.”
Giving more instances, its new report says, “In July, India abstained on a UN Human Rights Council resolution that called for Israeli accountability in the 2014 Gaza War.” In fact, it adds, “The Indian government said it had abstained from voting because the resolution included a reference to bringing Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC), which India considered ‘intrusive’.”
The report notes, with the exception of USA’s Barack Obama, most other world leaders who visited India in 2015, or hosted Prime Minster Narendra Modi in their capitals “showed any willingness to raise human rights concerns publicly, deferring all too readily to India’s sensitivity to perceived intervention in its domestic affairs.”
The report wonders why, “despite its democratic traditions, India has not yet emerged as an effective proponent of human rights.” It adds, “For instance, in October, when India invited all 54 leaders of the African Union to a summit in New Delhi, it ignored calls by the ICC to arrest Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who faces charges of war crimes and genocide in Darfur.”
The report says, India is in the company of China, Ethiopia and Russia in setting the ball running for “a less recognized but disturbing and destructive global trend: the adoption by many countries of repressive new non-governmental organization (NGO) laws and policies targeting individuals and groups that try to hold governments to account, including social media users, civil society groups, and the funders who back them.”
Further, the report says, India is in the company of Cambodia, Egypt, and Tajikistan for justifying “restrictions on foreign contributions to civic groups as necessary to fight terrorism”. Titled “World Report 2016: Facts of 2015”, the report was released in New York on Tuesday.
Taking strong exception to laws that provide immunity to security forces and authorities, the report notes how Indian authorities ignored a May report by the UN special rapporteur on “extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions”, even as expressing “regret that India had not repealed or at least radically amended Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).”
“Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, environmental groups have been particularly victimized because of perceived challenges to official development plans”, the report says, adding, at the same time, Modi did little “to improve respect for religious freedom, protect the rights of women and children, and end abuses against marginalized communities.”
“Even as the prime minister celebrated Indian democracy abroad, back home civil society groups faced increased harassment and government critics faced intimidation and lawsuits”, the report says, pointing to how “dozens of writers protested against sectarianism and the silencing of dissent by returning prestigious literary awards bestowed by the Sahitya Akademi.”
“Artists, academics, filmmakers, and scientists also added their voices to the protest. Economists and business leaders warned that the Modi government risked losing domestic and global credibility if it failed to control Hindu extremism and restrictions on freedom of expression”, the report states.

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Download HRW report HERE

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Girl child education: 20 major states 'score' better than Gujarat, says GoI report

By Rajiv Shah
A Government of India report, released last month, has suggested that “model” Gujarat has failed to make any progress vis-à-vis other states in ensuring that girls continue to remain enrolled after they leave primary schools. The report finds that, in the age group 14-17, Gujarat’s 71% girls are enrolled at the secondary and higher secondary level, which is worse than 20 out of 22 major states for which data have been made available.

Savarkar in Ahmedabad "declared support" to two-nation theory in 1937, followed by Jinnah three years later

By Our Representative
One of the top freedom fighters whom BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi revere the most, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, was also a great supporter of the two nation theory for India, one for Hindus another for Muslims, claims a new expose on the man who is also known to be the original proponent of the concept of Hindutva.

Congress 'promises' cancellation of Adani power project: Jharkhand elections

Counterview Desk
Pointing out that people's issues take a backseat in Jharkhand's 2019 assembly elections, the state's civil rights organization, the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, a coalition of activists and people’s organisations, has said that political parties have largely ignored in their electoral manifestos the need to implement the fifth schedule of the Constitution in a predominantly tribal district.

Hindutva founders 'borrowed' Nazi, fascist idea of one flag, one leader, one ideology

By Shamsul Islam*
With the unleashing of the reign of terror by the RSS/BJP rulers against working-class, peasant organizations, women organizations, student movements, intellectuals, writers, poets and progressive social/political activists, India also witnessed a series of resistance programmes organized by the pro-people cultural organizations in different parts of the country. My address in some of these programmes is reproduced here...
*** Before sharing my views on the tasks of artists-writers-intellectuals in the times of fascism, let me briefly define fascism and how it is different from totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is political concept, a dictatorship of an individual, family or group which prohibits opposition in any form, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is also described as authoritarianism.
Whereas fascism, while retaining all these repressive characteristics, also believes in god-ordained superiority of race, cultur…

Ex-World Bank chief economist doubts spurt in India's ease of doing business rank

By Rajiv Shah
This is in continuation of my previous blog where I had quoted from a commentary which top economist Prof Kaushik Basu had written in the New York Times (NYT) a little less than a month ago, on November 6, to be exact. He recalled this article through a tweet on November 29, soon after it was made known that India's growth rate had slumped (officially!) to 4.5%.

With RSS around, does India need foreign enemy to undo its democratic-secular fabric?

By Shamsul Islam*
Many well-meaning liberal and secular political analysts are highly perturbed by sectarian policy decisions of RSS/BJP rulers led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially after starting his second inning. They are vocal in red-flagging lynching incidents, policies of the Modi government on Kashmir, the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the demand for 'Bharat Ratna' to Savarkar who submitted 6-7 mercy petitions to the British masters (getting remission of 40 years out of 50 years' sentence), and the murder of constitutional norms in Goa, Karnataka and now in Maharashtra.

Post-Balakot, danger that events might spiral out of control is 'greater, not less'

By Tapan Bose*
The fear of war in South Asia is increasing. Tensions are escalating between India and Pakistan after the Indian defence minister's announcement in August this year that India may revoke its current commitment to only use nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear attack, known as ‘no first use’. According to some experts who are watching the situation the risk of a conflict between the two countries has never been greater since they both tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

Rushdie, Pamuk, 260 writers tell Modi: Aatish episode casts chill on public discourse

Counterview Desk
As many as 260 writers, journalists, artists, academics and activists across the world, including Salman Rushdie, British Indian novelist, Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature, and Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet and novelist, have called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to review the decision to strip British Indian writer Aatish Taseer of his overseas Indian citizenship.

Worrying signs in BJP: Modi, Shah begin 'cold-shouldering' Gujarat CM, party chief

By RK Misra*
The political developments in neighbouring Maharashtra where a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government assumed office has had a trickle down effect in Gujarat with both the ruling BJP and the Congress opposition going into revamp mode.

Ships recycling Bill 'allows' India to be turned into a landfill for foreign hazardous waste

Counterview Desk
In a letter to M Venkaiah Naidu, chairman, Rajya Sabha, senior activist Gopal Krishna of the Toxics Watch Alliance has said that the Recycling of Ships Bill, 2019 should be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change to "safeguard country’s maritime environment from harmful and hazardous wastes and materials".

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