Supporting bigotry, Islamophobia? Diaspora NGO opposes Australian MP's views on Yogi

Counterview Desk
Humanism Project, an Australian civil rights organisation with large number of India diaspora as its members, has a shot letter to letter Craig Kelly, member of Parliament from Member for Hughes, New South Wales (NSW), on his alleged effort to spread misinformation about Covid-19 and his “inadequately informed” views about Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Telling Kelly that his view comes even as Australia is struggling with the resurgence Covid-19 epidemic in NSW, the letter insists, it is “important that our parliamentarians do not support misinformation on Covid-19”, accusing him of siding with Adityanath, who has been a protagonist of “bigotry and Islamophobia.”

Text:

We are an Australian civil society organisation that represents the interests of the Indian diaspora in Australia. We write to you in relation to your tweet congratulating Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on his use of Ivermectin to control the Covid-19 pandemic. You can access your tweet here.
We are concerned that your views on Ivermectin, Chief Minister Adityanath and his management of Covid-19 pandemic in India have been inadequately informed. We detail our concerns below.
Your views on Ivermectin
The role of Ivermectin in eliminating Covid-19 in lab studies was first postulated in Monash University-led collaborative study. As evident from the link, Ivermectin was never deemed to be suitable for treating Covid-19 in humans.
The Australian Department of Health (DoH) notes that there is currently insufficient evidence to support the safe and effective use of ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of Covid-19. You can access the DoH recommendations here.
The DoH recommendations have been validated by the British Medical Journal of Evidence Based Medicine (accessible here) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommendations from US (accessible here).
As evident above, the current evidence based guidelines do not support the use of Ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of Covid-19.

Your views on Chief Minister Adityanath and his management of Covid -19
This BBC report (accessible here) reported that during the Covid-19 pandemic, India's holiest river, the Ganges was swollen with bodies. The Ganges flows through Uttar Pradesh - the state governed by Chief Minister Adityanath.
A journalist told the BBC said he believed that many of the bodies were either Covid patients who died at home without a test, or poor people who couldn't afford a cremation. Another journalist told the BBC the corpses were evidence of massive discrepancy between the Chief Minister Adityanath’s government’s official Covid-19 death figures and the actual numbers on the ground.
This was also covered in many large national and international news media outlets like ABC (accessible here), Reuters (accessible here) and Washington Post (accessible here).
Chief Minister Adityanath's gross mismanagement of Covid -19 therefore caused death and suffering for many Indians. Chief Minister Adityanath is also known to flaunt his bigotry like a badge of honour and does not disguise his hatred and contempt for Indian Muslims, Christians and other oppressed sections of the Indian society.
He actively promotes Islamophobia and has sought to annihilate the livelihoods of many poor Muslims through his weaponisation of law and the police for overtly majoritarian political ends. This is evident from the article on Chief Minister Adityanath here.
In addition, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's (USCIRF), in its recent briefing on June 21 2020, raised concerns about mosque demolitions, hate speech against minorities in Chief Minister Adityanath state of Uttar Pradesh. You can access the report here.
Your validation of Chief Minister Adityanath and his management of Covid-19 pandemic is therefore deeply hurtful and troubling to many Australian Indians. As we struggle with the resurgence Covid-19 epidemic in NSW, we do feel that it is important that we do not support misinformation on Covid-19.
It is also important that we don’t enable leaders who spread bigotry and Islamophobia. Consequent to the above, could we please ask that you

Reconsider your views on Ivermectin and Chief Minister Adityanath’s management of Covid-19 in India.
Reconsider your validation of Chief Minister Adityanath given his deeply troubling background of bigotry and Islamophobia.
Consider condemning Chief Minister Adityanath’s assault on religious freedoms in India with particular reference to mosque demolitions, hate speech against Christians, Muslims and his efforts to annihilate the livelihoods of many poor Muslims in his state. Many thanks for considering our concerns and request above.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

From protest to proof: Why civil society must rethink environmental resistance

By Shankar Sharma* As concerned environmentalists and informed citizens, many of us share deep unease about the way environmental governance in our country is being managed—or mismanaged. Our complaints range across sectors and regions, and most of them are legitimate. Yet a hard question confronts us: are complaints, by themselves, effective? Experience suggests they are not.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Kolkata event marks 100 years since first Communist conference in India

By Harsh Thakor* A public assembly was held in Kolkata on December 24, 2025, to mark the centenary of the First Communist Conference in India , originally convened in Kanpur from December 26 to 28, 1925. The programme was organised by CPI (ML) New Democracy at Subodh Mallik Square on Lenin Sarani. According to the organisers, around 2,000 people attended the assembly.

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Transgender Bill testimony of Govt of India's ‘contempt’ for marginalized community

Counterview Desk India’s civil society network, National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)* has said that the controversial transgender Bill, passed in the Rajya Sabha on November 26, which happened to be the 70th anniversary of the Indian Constitution, is a reflection on the way the Government of India looks at the marginalized community with utter contempt.

Search This Blog