By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: Shabnam Hashmi, a noted social activist in the national capital, on June 27 returned an award given to her by the National Commission for Minorities for outstanding service for communal harmony.
“I am returning it in the memory of the innumerable innocent victims lynched by marauding mobs,” Hashmi wrote in a letter addressed to the members of the federal commission.
The 60-year-old activist says the commission has “lost all its credibility” especially after its chairperson made some “condemnable statements” recently.
Commission chairperson Gayorul Hasan Rizvi courted controversy saying those who cheered Pakistan’s victory in the Champions Trophy final against India should be “deported” to that country.
Hashmi bemoans that India has been taken over by mob lynching of Muslims and Islamophobia.
“Even before the community can mourn its dead, the next incident takes place,” adds the founder of Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD), a socio-cultural organization established in March 2003, as a response to 2002 Gujarat riots. She stepped down as the trustee of the NGO in early June.
The latest mob lynching took place on June 22 when a 16-year-old boy, Junaid, was attacked along with three other young men in a train. Some co-passengers attacked them and then threw them out as the train pulled into Asavati station, just 20 km southwest of New Delhi. The attackers abused them with religious slurs and accused them of carrying beef.
“There is an atmosphere of fear and terror. Under the present government, the marginalization of minority groups has become the norm,” Hashmi notes in her letter.
Hashmi received the award in 2008 from the minority commission that the federal government set up in 1992 to safeguard the interest of religious, ethnic, cultural and linguistic minority communities in the country.
“I return the National Minority Rights Award, which has lost all its credibility, in protest against the consistent attacks and killings of the members of the minority communities and total inaction, apathy and tacit support to the violent gangs by the government,” Hashmi wrote in a letter to the commission.
Hashmi action remind similar gestures two years ago by a number of authors, filmmakers and scientists who returned national awards in the wake of the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri over rumors of beef consumption.
Hashmi visited the commission to hand over the award and the citation to its director TM Skaria. Hashmi said she tried contacting Rizvi as well but he was not available.
The award is given to an individual or an organization every year on Minorities Rights Day on December 18 for outstanding contribution to promote and protect the rights of minorities over a period of time.
The award carried no cash component until 2011 when the Minority Affairs Ministry approved a proposal to attach a cash component 200,000 rupees to individuals and 500,000 rupees to organizations.
The citation that Hashmi received lauded her work in Gujarat after the 2002 riots and in Kashmir. It also mentioned that her work invoked the “wrath of divisive forces,” leading to physical attacks as well.
In 2013, there was a controversy when the award was given to Father Ajay Kumar Singh for his campaign against the 2002 Kandhamal riots in Odisha. The state government had objected to the decision.
The federal Home Ministry in December 2016 canceled ANHAD’S foreign funding license citing “undesirable activities against the public interest.”
Given below is Hashmi’s letter to the commission:
I return today the National Minority Rights Award conferred on me in 2008 by the National Commission for Minorities.
I am returning it in the memory of the innumerable innocent victims lynched by marauding mobs. Mob Lynching of Muslims and Islamophobia have taken over India. Even before the community can mourn its dead, the next incidents takes place. There is an atmosphere of fear and terror. Under the present Government, the marginalization of minority groups has become the norm.
The design of turning India into a Hindu Rashtra, which began decades ago with calling Muslims dirty, having too many children and being illiterate moved on to excluding them from residential spaces, targeting them as terrorists, has now reached its pinnacle where all public spaces and all means of livelihood are becoming unsafe for the Muslim community.
Similar to Hitler’s Germany, Muslims are being projected as the biggest enemy of the state and the people of the country. There is legitimization of the communal ideology by the State and the media, has led to acceptance of prejudices and stereotyping without questioning them in popular consciousness, deep infiltration of hate in the minds and hearts of ordinary people and apathy on the part of a large section of the society especially ‘educated’ middle classes.
While UP Dharm Jagran Samiti’s head Rajeshwar Singh declares “Our target is to make India a Hindu Rashtra by 2021. The Muslims and Christians don’t have any right to stay here. So they would either be converted to Hinduism or forced to run away from here” , the Hindu Mahasabha, announces the launch of its “Islam-free India” campaign.
Sadhvi Deva Thakur gives a call to declare emergency and sterilise Muslims and Christians to control their population and Sadhvi Sarawati gives the call to hang the ‘beef eaters’ and attack all secular people. 150 Hindu outfits openly hold a 4 day convention in Goa calling for turning India into a Hindu Rashtra by 2023.
With over 4500 communities and over 400 living languages, dietary restrictions are forced on the people. The cow, and animal, has become a major tool to spread hatred, attack and kill innocent people.
While a man was lynched to death by a mob near Delhi on a rumor that he had cow meat in his house, the whole state machinery was busy in getting the meat tested, instead of nabbing the culprits. A 16-year-old child is lynched and killed on a train for being a Muslim or a techie killed for having a beard, two young boys killed and hanged from trees in Jharkhand, a cattle trader paraded naked in Chittorgarh, a man assaulted in Anand, Gujarat for transporting calves, a 50 years old man lynched for transporting cows, or two boys lynched on suspicion of stealing cows, a boy dragged against SUV and later his head smashed against water tanker, then ran over under the SUV in full public view, another burnt alive in Nandurbar, an activist beaten to death allegedly by staffers of municipality in Rajasthan, for objecting to their photographing women defecating in the open. The Hindu Talibans are killing with impunity.
There is not only a deafening silence from this government but it also openly connives in encouraging the mob lynching and attacks on minorities. Lynching has become the unaccountable way of outsourcing state violence to strike fear in minds of minorities.
The National Commission for Minorities should have played an active part in ensuring the dignity, security and constitutional rights of the minority communities. Instead of providing any security and standing with the prosecuted minorities the Chairperson based on false accusations and concocted stories by the police has given highly questionable and condemnable statement (https://scroll.in/…/i-was-scared-police-made-me-sign-false-…) asking Muslims to go to Pakistan towing the line of the non-state actors who have been unleashed on the minorities by the present government.
Indian democracy, secularism, pluralism and diversity have their roots in centuries of intermingling of different cultures, philosophical debates, and the legacy of the long struggle for India’s Independence. Democracy and secular thought are built and safeguarded consciously. The divisive politics, interference of religion in the state has to be confronted at every step.
National Commission for Minorities and the present Government has failed in providing even a semblance of dignity and security to the minority communities.
I return the National Minority Rights award given by the National Commission for Minorities, which has lost all its credibility, in protest against consistent attacks and killings of the members of the minority communities and total inaction, apathy and tacit support to the violent gangs by the government.
Sincerely
Shabnam Hashmi