Is it a crime to fight for human rights?
Two incidents occurred on Thursday have somewhat provided an indication about which way the country is headed. An eight year old boy has been lynched by a mob. This is another addition to the mass hate crime that is engulfing the nation. No one has been arrested yet in connection with this inhuman and gruesome act. Media and governments have turned a blind eye towards this as usual. Another incident is that of a sponsored raid on Amnesty India which is known for its fights on human rights. All the bank accounts of the international NGO have been sealed and confiscated rendering the organization paralysed. The government which has to take punitive action against the criminals has been nourishing them under the guise of them being protectors of culture, and the ones that are creating trouble are being arrested and put into jails. After having illegally detained a few human rights activists under the guise of ‘naxals’, this is the next state-sponsored attack on the human rights efforts in the country. Another NGO GreenPeace accounts were also frozen sometime early during the term of this government.
One aspect was very clear for the joint ‘Corporate-RSS’ government led by Modi after last Lok Sabha elections. There is no opposition party that exists which would oppose the implementation of agenda of Sangh Parivar and the corporates. The only opposing forces that can see through their design is human rights organisations. Mega industrialists fear the voice raised by human rights NGOs when large swathes of lands, encroached forests are being leased out to them to set up industries by the government. Many organisations were already exposing big companies and their agendas to the people. Green Peace is in the forefront of such efforts. Hence soon as the government assumed power, it attacked GreenPeace and put it under the surveillance radar starting from the origin of their funds and disrupting works. The bank accounts of this NGO were frozen last month.
At the same time, Modi government is not too comfortable with the human rights NGOs which speak against the RSS ideologies which are deemed irrational, unscientific, anti-human and against the spirit of the constitution. The opposition of such NGOs unsettles the government and hence such organisations have been rattled by the government time and again to push them into silence through various means of torture.
On one hand as the mob violence increased, efforts to silence the voices that spoke against this increase in new kind of mob hysteria had also gone up. Fake Gau Rakshaks have been ruling the roost on the streets of the country yet no legal system would act against them. Even the cops work in favour of such evil forces. The human rights activists who were out to expose the inability of the government to safeguard the interests of innocent people are seeming like anti-national elements to them. Which is why fake cases are being registered against them under the leadership of government. Further, the government is acting against those websites and news channels that publish/air reports that expose the claims of the government.
Amnesty International has been working for the protection of human rights and dignity within all strata in the country. They are the conscience keepers of the society who ensure the politicians and governments don’t cross a line in their priorities ignoring the people. Not only that; such organisations practice total transparency in their works. They have shared all their documents and records on their website with access open for all to see. Yet, with all this, what’s the reason for the government to launch an attack on Amnesty? Are they telling the people of India that one should never question the attempts to usurp human rights in this country? Is the government party to this entire silencing operation?
Government should actually conduct raids on Sanatan Sanstha, Abhinava Bharat and other organisations which have been named in various attacks, murders and bomb blast cases. Cases have been registered against Sanatan Sanstha activists. Yet, why are those organisations not being raided and their fund sources are not being questioned? RSS is collecting huge funds from NRIs. Why no investigation agencies have raided the Nagpur office? One need not even explain the agenda of this government. Hindutva in the garb of culture will have goondas ruling us in the future. Just as the government attempts to silence the voices, dissidence will explode from unexpected corners. When all democratic channels are closed, it may even result in counter violence. Anarchy may be the order of the day then. The government may even want this to happen and is pushing the situation towards that point. The citizens of this country are watching all this, rather helplessly.
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NDA sweeps bypolls to four assembly segments in Bihar
Patna (PTI): The ruling NDA in Bihar on Saturday swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj, receiving a boost ahead of the assembly elections due next year.
Candidates of the Jan Suraaj, floated recently by former political strategist Prashant Kishor with much fanfare, lost deposits in all but one seat, in a clear indication that the fledgling party, despite claims of taking the political landscape in the state by storm, needs to cover much ground.
The biggest setback for the INDIA bloc, helmed by the RJD, came in Belaganj, a seat the party had been winning since its inception in the 1990s, but this time lost to the JD(U) headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of its founding president Lalu Prasad.
The JD(U) candidate Manorama Devi, a former MLC, defeated by a margin of more than 21,000 votes RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh who made his debut from a seat that fell vacant upon election to Lok Sabha of his father Surendra Prasad Yadav, a multiple term MLA.
The margin of victory was greater than the 17,285 votes polled by Mohd Amjad of Jan Suraaj, whom the RJD may have liked to blame for its defeat by causing a split in Muslim votes.
JD(U) national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, "The people of Bihar deserve kudos for rejecting the negativity of the opposition and reposing their trust in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Under his leadership, the NDA will win more than 200 seats of the 243-strong assembly in 2025."
The RJD also suffered an embarrassing defeat in Ramgarh, where Prashant Kishor’s prediction of the party “finishing third or fourth” came true. The forecast had caused Sudhakar Singh, son of state RJD president Jagadanand Singh, the MP from Buxar who had won the assembly seat in 2020, to threaten that Jan Suraaj cadres in the constituency will be “beaten up with sticks”.
Singh’s younger brother Ajit finished a distant third after BJP winner Ashok Kumar Singh, a former MLA, and Satish Kumar Singh Yadav who fought on a ticket of the BSP, which has little foothold in Bihar.
Jan Suraaj, though, was hardly a factor in Ramgarh, where its candidate Sushil Kumar Singh polled less than four per cent votes.
The BJP also pulled off a stunning victory in Tarari, which falls under the Arrah Lok Sabha seat, currently represented by CPI(ML)’s Sudama Prasad, who had won the assembly segment for two consecutive terms.
CPI(ML) candidate Raju Yadav lost, by a margin of a little over 10,000 votes, to BJP debutant Vishal Prashant, better known as the son of local strongman Sunil Pandey, who was formerly with the JD(U) and had joined the saffron party a few months ago.
Jan Suraaj had initially announced that it was fielding a former Vice Chief of the Army in Tarari but later disclosed that he could not contest because of technical reasons. Its candidate Kiran Singh got less than four per cent votes.
The most respectable performance from Jan Suraaj came in the reserved Imamganj seat where its candidate Jitendra Paswan stood third, polling well over 20 per cent votes.
The seat, however, went to Deepa Kumari, daughter-in-law of Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who defeated RJD’s Raushan Kumar by a slender margin of less than 6,000 votes.
Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha, vacated Imamganj earlier this year upon getting elected to Lok Sabha from Gaya.
With the exception of Ashok Singh in Ramgarh, the winners in all the seats shall be making their debut in the state assembly.
