Narendra Modi Looks the Other Way as New Delhi Burns

Giriraj Singh, Minister for Animal Husbandry and Fisheries in the Modi Government, said “It is the time to commit ourselves to the nation. Before 1947, [Muhammad Ali] Jinnah pushed for an Islamic nation. It was a big lapse by our ancestors that we’re paying the price for. If at that time Muslim brothers had been sent there and Hindus brought here, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Shortly after one lawmaker attempted to rewrite our history, another made a call to arms. A legislator in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Kapil Mishra, made a provocative speech in New Delhi standing next to a high-ranking police official, in which he condemned the Shaheen Bagh protestors demonstrating against the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Bill that threatens the existence of the 200 million strong Muslim population in India. Either the cops must clear them out, he said, or we will take things into our own hands.Within hours, many did. Mobs, some carrying saffron flags, vandalized mosques and set fire to properties belonging to Muslims. In one, an 85-year-old woman was burned alive while the mob outside chanted Jai Shri Ram, a Hindu devotional that has become a racist dog whistle against Muslims.As hate festered in the national capital, the Narendra Modi government that has ignored hate speech by countless legislators and ministers in the last six years was busy hosting United States President Donald Trump in Ahmedabad. As I write this, the official number of those killed has reached 42, a majority of them Muslims. It took three days for our Prime Minister to issue a statement while his backyard was burning.

This surprised nobody. As a journalist who has covered Modi’s political career since 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, I have witnessed his lust for power and his ease with bloodshed from close quarters.

In February 2002, as Gujarat burned in communal flames for days and a thousand Muslims were killed, leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, gave speeches provoking Hindus to teach Muslims a lesson. Modi himself gave the most incendiary speech mocking riot victims, calling relief camps set up for Muslims, child producing factories.

I was 19 when Modi made this speech, working as a relief worker during the anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat. In the dingy relief camps, young women raped by Hindu nationalists lay unattended with no help from the state. Their bodies marked with the scars of the sexual violence, flies sitting on their wounds, their young children making castles of mud nearby while Modi and his ministers demonized them.

Such was the intensity of the crime against Muslims in 2002 that the Supreme Court of India called the Modi government in Gujarat “Modern day Neros who looked the other way while young women and children were burnt alive.”

To this day, neither has Mr.Modi apologised for the loss of thousand lives under his watch nor addressed the press even once in the last eighteen years.

The carnage in Delhi this week took me back to those days in 2002. New Delhi’s GTB Hospital looked like a warzone with dead bodies and injured trickling in by the hour. The mortuary of the hospital with wailing mothers and children aimlessly staring at the cameras surrounding them is not a sight for the weak.

This did not take place overnight. It was a result of a sustained campaign of hate against Muslims in the six years since Modi assumed power.

The hatred is plain to see among Modi’s chief lieutenants. This week while Trump and Modi addressed a million strong audience in Ahmedabad, his minister for Corporate Affairs, Anurag Thakur sat in the front row along with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Four weeks ago, Thakur addressed a rally on the topic of the nationwide protests by Muslims. Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko, he said. (“Traitors of the country, shoot them”)

 
The Home Minister of India, Amit Shah, the man who is responsible for maintaining law order in the country made the most communal speeches during the recently concluded Delhi elections which the BJP lost to the Aam Aadmi Party. He asked the voters to press the voting button with such anger that the (Muslim) protestors at Shaheen Bagh felt the current.

Now, hundreds of Muslim families are leaving New Delhi for safer cities fearing another attack as Modi’s ministers continue to make hate speeches.

I write this piece knowing that there will be no closure for me and thousands of riot survivors in India because we are being led by a man whose political career has been marked by the blood of innocents. But the cost of Narendra Modi giving his blessing to bloodshed is being paid by the people of this country, who fear this democracy will never be the same again.

BY RANA AYYUB
 FEBRUARY 28, 2020

 

Which investor would want to put his money into a country whose capital is rocked by communal violence during a crucial foreign state visit, whose administrative machinery might collapse and whose ruling dispensation breeds promoters of hate politics?

Government aides and advisors are scrambling to find ways and means to contain the damage. Various departments, especially those who monitor the media, are busy in a daily flurry of meetings to discuss next steps. However, a plan of action is yet to emerge.

While the international fallout and its impact on foreign investment seems to be the top-of-the-mind worry, the government would be wise to look at the domestic implications as well. Sane voices in media columns and editorial pages reflect a growing concern over deepening social schisms as highlighted by the BJP’s vitriolic hate campaign during the Delhi elections and the riots that followed its defeat.

Editorials of leading newspapers, and these are by no means radical ones, have called for the government to rethink the controversial clauses of the amended citizenship Act and to clamp down on hate-mongers in their ranks.Hate Speech By BJP Leaders: Court Defers Order on Plea Seeking FIR
A Delhi Court deferred till 23 April the order on a complaint seeking registration of FIR against BJP leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma. The complaint was filed by CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat against the two BJP leaders for their alleged hate speeches during the Delhi assembly polls, reported ANI.

BY THE QUINT

 

New Delhi: The gazette notification effecting the transfer of Justice S. Muralidhar from the Delhi high court on Wednesday couldn’t have been more curiously timed.

On the day the judge held three key hearings on the Delhi riots and passed orders that annoyed the Modi government at the Centre, the law ministry issued a notification formally shifting him from the crucial Delhi high court to the Punjab and Haryana high court.

The notification is dated February 26, 2020, and comes 14 days after the Supreme court collegium decided to recommend Justice Muralidhar’s transfer. The collegium took two other transfer decisions on February 12 as part of the same resolution: to move Justice Ranjit More from the Bombay high court to Meghalaya, and Justice R.K. Malimath from Karnataka to Uttarakhand.

Separate notifications for the transfers of Justice More and Malimath were also issued by the law ministry on Wednesday night.

Earlier in the day, Justice Muralidhar presided over three sittings where urgent pleas relating to police inaction in the Delhi riots came up.

Order directing police to protect riot injured and ensure transfer to hospital

Justice Muralidhar and Justice A.J. Bhambhani held an emergency sitting at 1 a.m. on Wednesday following an urgent plea from counsel representing the Al Hind Hospital in Mustafabad, North East Delhi.

The hospital asked the court to direct the Delhi Police to help it shift over 20 persons injured in the riots to the government-run GTB hospital where they could receive proper treatment. The police did not respond to its call for help and only escorted the patients out when the high court bench ordered them to do so.

Hearing on police failure to file FIRs against BJP leaders for hate speech

Also on Wednesday, Justice Muralidhar pulled up the Delhi police and solicitor general Tushar Mehta for not following the Lalita Kumari guidelines on registering an FIR when complaints were brought to it about inflammatory speeches made by BJP leaders Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Varma and others. These guidelines mandate the registering of an FIR if a cognisable offence is disclosed, or else a time-bound enquiry.

The hearing was on an urgent petition filed by social activists Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi.

Despite a strong protest by Mehta, the judge ordered the police to respond by Thursday on whether they intend to file FIRs or not.

Hearing compares 2020 riots to Delhi in 1984

Justice Muralidhar’s third hearing on the riots – a continuation of the early morning one – saw the police confirming that all the patients of Al Hind Hospital had been shifted to safety.

“This shows that a lot can happen when the authorities are willing to take action. It’s an actual demonstration of how police officers are waiting for the orders to act”, he said.

In his final  order, he directed the government to ensure displaced riot victims are provided temporary shelter and that medical treatment and counselling are also ensured for them.

Chief Justice was on leave, returns Thursday

These matters landed on Justice Muralidhar’s docket by happenstance as the chief justice of the Delhi high court, Justice D.N. Patel was on leave. The second senior judge, acting on behalf of the chief in his absence, handed the hospital’s late night writ to Justice Muralidhar.

Mander and Naqvi’s plea for registration of FIRs against BJP leaders was taken up by Justice Muralidhar in the chief justice’s absence as the petitioners sought an urgent hearing. Solicitor general Mehta contested the urgency and wanted the matter deferred till Thursday, when he said the chief justice would return, but Justice Muralidhar would not agree.

It is not clear if Chief Justice Patel is cutting short his leave to return to court on Thursday or was scheduled to return that day anyway.

Time taken from collegium decision to gazette notification

The Centre’s decision to transfer Justice Muralidhar on Wednesday is bound to raise questions about whether his orders in the Delhi riots matters hastened his exit.

While there is no fixed time for the Centre to act on a collegium recommendation for  the transfer of high court judges or even the appointment of new ones it is not unusual for several weeks to elapse.

An immediate transfer is unusual

Advocate Sanjoy Ghose also pointed out that transfer notices usually give a date – about two weeks from when the notification is issued – for the transfer to take place. The notice on Justice Muralidhar, however, mentions no date, which suggests his transfer is effective immediately.

A few transfer notifications of recent times would demonstrate that always the judge is given reasonable time to assume office in the transferred posting. The language of Justice Muralidhar’s transfer notification transferring him with immediate effect is unprecedented! pic.twitter.com/TV6Z8iDLRK

— sanjoy ghose (@advsanjoy) February 27, 2020
 

The high court bar association had protested Justice Muralidhar’s transfer last week.

The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) said the “rushed manner” in which the transfer notification was issued by the Centre “cannot be ignored”, saying the transfer has nothing to do with “public interest” and “everything to do with punishing an honest and courageous judicial officer for simply carrying out his constitutional duties”.

The statement says the move seems to have been influenced by Justice Muralidhar raising “tough questions about the conduct of sitting Ministers of the Union Government, MLAs and other high officials”.

According to LiveLaw, the statement compares the transfer of Justice Muralidhar to the “punitive transfers undertaken during Emergency by the then Congress government, against High Court judges who had simply done their constitutional duty. It resembles the petty vindictiveness of a government which superseded Justice HR Khanna for Chief Justiceship for authoring a dissent in ADM Jabalpur v Shiv Kant Shukla.”

Supreme Court Bar Association president Dushyant Dave also expressed concerns at “the manner and haste” in which the transfer was done, calling it “absolutely malafide and punitive”.

Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde told LiveLaw that while it is “technically correct” that the Centre acted upon the Collegium’s recommendation, the timing of the transfer order, coming immediately after his hearing into the Delhi riots, “coupled with the request from SG to defer the hearing of matter by a day makes the govt action look suspect”.

BY THE WIRE

Legislative power is constitutionally vested in the Parliament of India of which the president is the head, to facilitate the law-making process as per the Constitution (Article 78, Article 86, etc.). The President summons both the Houses (the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha) of the Parliament and prorogues them. He can dissolve the Lok Sabha under Article 85 (2) (b)

If you want to read more here is a link:-

https://time.com/5586415/india-election-narendra-modi-2019/

Peace.