Washington. Siyasat.net
In an extremely significant move, first crucial steps have been taken by the newly elected US President Joe Biden, to express his administration’s concerns over the disappearingd institutions in India. This was made possible during the visit of US Secretary of Defense Secretary Lloyd J Austin to India, the first by a member of the Biden administration.
Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, too has communicated to Lloyd that while the US India partnership is “critical to meet the challenges of the 21st century” the partnership “must rest on adherence to democratic values”.
The Senator from New Jersey, Menendez also pointed out that, “the Indian government’s ongoing crackdown on farmers peacefully protesting new farming laws and corresponding intimidation of journalists and government critics only underscores the deteriorating situation of democracy in India. Moreover, in recent years, rising anti-Muslim sentiment and related government actions like the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the suppression of political dialogue and arrest of political opponents following the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, and the use of sedition laws to persecute political opponents have resulted in the U.S. human rights group Freedom House stripping India of its ‘Free’ status in its yearly global survey”.
Speculations have been rife since January this year, when President Biden took his oath, whether he would express his concerns to the Indian government on the way it has been handling the farmer’s protests, besides the brutal lockdown in Kashmir since August 2019.
Meanwhile, the Indian government has on several occasions expressed its displeasure on any criticisms directed towards it, on the way it has dealt with the protests.
Following a tweet by popstar Rihanna, retweeted by several US leaders, foreign minister S Jaishankar, “while welcoming US
acknowledgment of steps taken by India in agricultural reform,’ also rebuked rather sharply that, “motivated campaigns targeting India will never succeed. We have the self-confidence today to hold our own. This India will push back”.
India also faced flak in the UK, when several Labour, Liberal Democrat and Scottish National Party MPs expressed concern over the safety of protesting farmers and the status of press freedom in India, early this week.
India, however, rebuked these MPs too, with India’s High Commission in London dismissing the parliamentary discussion as full of “false assertions”.
This move by the US comes at a time when earlier this month the leaders of the Quad nations, including the US, India, Australia and Japan had their first meeting where they agreed that all countries should be able take their own decisions free of coercion.
The present move by the US government comes on the heels of a report by the US-based `Freedom House’, which has declared India `partly free’, from ‘free’, in this year’s report, released a few days ago.
Earlier this month, in its annual report on global political rights and from a free democracy to a “partially free democracy”.
Last week, Sweden-based V-Dem Institute was harsher in its latest report on democracy. It said India had become an “electoral autocracy”. And last month, India, described as a “flawed democracy”, slipped two places to 53rd position in the latest Democracy Index published by The Economist Intelligence Unit
‘Freedom House’, is a non-profit organization which conducts research on political freedom and human rights in 210 countries worldwide. The report stated that the number of countries designated as “not free” is at its highest level since 2006.
It, however, added that India’s “fall from the upper ranks of free nations” could have a more damaging effect on the world’s democratic standards.
The report observes that since 2014, human rights violations have risen and the powers of human rights organizations curbed. Intimidation of journalists and activists, many of whom have been jailed on frivolous charges, under very serious sections of law and a spate of attacks especially against Muslims, has led to a deterioration of political and civil liberties in the country.
The report also observed that, “under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all”.
The report also takes into account the Indian government’s crackdown against the protesters of the CAA, which when enforced would lead to the disenfranchisement of millions, mostly Indian Muslims. These protests had grabbed international headlines at the beginning of last year. The year ended with the farmer’s grabbing fresh headlines with their protests, inevitable when faced with the government’s reticence. The protests, which have claimed over 250 deaths so far, have already lasted over 100 days, with no hopes of it ending anytime soon.
India’s fall in status is part of the global shift in the balance between democracy and authoritarianism. The Freedom Report titled `Democracy under Siege’. has also downgraded the freedom scores of 73 countries, representing 75% of the global population. It states that, “with India’s decline to its `Partly Free’ status, less than 20% of the world’s population now lives in a free country, the smallest percentage since 1995. Civil liberties in India have been in decline since PM Narendra Modi came to power in 2014”.
The Alliance to Save & Protect America from Infiltration by Religious Extremists (ASPAIRE) has welcomed this first step by the US government, hoping it would be the first of many to ensure that democratic processes are restored in the country, or “the undermining of democracy in the world’s largest Democracy will lead to a magnitude of human suffering rarely seen in the human history,” said the co-chair of ASPAIRE, Dr. Shaik Ubaid
Though the Indian government has been trying to counter the international pressure by dismissing charges against it as their “internal” matter, the world however, refuses to consider this as an internal mattershut up, but as human rights violations which is a universal problem and needs to be dealt with swiftly.
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