Pakistan, Internet Freedoms and Digital Blasphemy

Pakistani Constitution guarantees freedom of religion (Article 20), freedom of speech (Article 19), freedom of assembly (Article 16), freedom of movement (Article 15), and the right of free trial (Article 10A) but throughout most of its history, these freedoms and rights have been unavailable to most of its citizens. No one expects much under a martial law government or when a general is "legally-elected" president. However, when there is a democratic government, like today, when the military is not formally controlling the government, one expects the constitution would be given importance. Unfortunately, this is not true. Minorities, particularly Ahmadis, face persecution and prosecution. To make things more horrible, the Government of Pakistan, is now attempting to silence Ahmadis overseas.  

Aysha Khan in her article, titled Pakistan attempts to prosecute Ahmadi US citizens for digital blasphemy, informs us about the legal notices issued to US citizens:

Pakistani authorities have asked leaders of the American Ahmadiyya Muslim community to take down its official website, claiming that the U.S.-based site violates Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws and new cybercrime regulations.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said in a legal notice issued on Dec. 24 to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA’s spokesmen, Amjad Mahmood Khan and Harris Zafar, that failure to remove the website TrueIslam.com would result in fines of up to $3.14 million or criminal sanctions, including possible 10-year-prison sentences.

“This is a new frontier in persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in the digital space,” said Khan, a lawyer in Los Angeles who has testified before Congress about blasphemy and religious freedom. “Pakistan wants to impose its abominable blasphemy laws on the whole world by targeting U.S. citizens and U.S. websites.”

Brad Adams, who heads Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, said “censoring Ahmadis and using blasphemy laws to airbrush them from Pakistani society” is part of the “widespread and rampant discrimination and social exclusion” Ahmadis face in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, home to about 4 million Ahmadis, the constitution and penal code declare members of the Ahmadiyya sect non-Muslims and impose harsh penalties — including death — for those who call themselves Muslims or publicly engage in religious activities. Ahmadis accepts the sect’s 19th-century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as the messiah and as a subordinate prophet to the Prophet Muhammad, a belief many Muslims consider blasphemous.

“This is a malicious attempt to chill free speech and expression by a Muslim American website,” attorney Brett Williamson of O’Melveny & Myers, which is representing TrueIslam.com pro bono, wrote in a letter to PTA on Monday (Jan. 11).

He described the takedown notice as “legally infirm, but also patently absurd in its reach.”

The website is registered and hosted in the U.S. and is aimed at an American audience. Zafar and Khan are both U.S. citizens and the threat of extradition is virtually nil, but both have relatives in Pakistan and say penalties would make it impossible to travel there.

Law professor Arturo Carrillo, who directs George Washington University Law School’s Global Internet Freedom Project, said this case shows that the Pakistan government is now using its controversial cybercrime laws in an effort “to repress online expression and content emanating from outside the country’s borders because the government has deemed it to be undesirable and unlawful.”

PTA officials did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2016, Pakistan enacted digital regulations that allowed authorities to block online content in the “interest of the glory of Islam.” Last year, the government passed blanket censorship laws that would allow authorities to order tech companies to remove digital pornography, blasphemy and anti-state content, drawing ire from Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

But human rights experts say the takedown notices also come amid increased targeting of Ahmadis’ online religious expression. 

One day after issuing the takedown notice to TrueIslam.com, PTA also sent notices to Google and Wikipedia, threatening penalties and prosecution if the platforms failed to remove “sacrilegious content” associated with the Ahmadi sect’s beliefs.

PTA said it was responding to complaints regarding an “unauthentic” Ahmadi translation of the Quran on the Google Play Store; “misleading” search results that returned the Ahmadi leader Mirza Masroor Ahmad’s name when the term “Khalifa (caliph) of Islam” was searched; and “deceitful” Wikipedia articles that suggested that the Ahmadi caliph is Muslim.

Officials also demanded that all internet service providers serving Pakistan block content from Ahmadi websites, including TrueIslam.com, the English-language magazine Al Hakam and the international satellite TV network MTA. 

Five of Pakistan’s top Ahmadi leaders have also had cases filed against them in recent weeks over religious activity on WhatsApp, Khan told Religion News Service.

Earlier in December, Khan told a hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that extremists in Pakistan were intent on using the country’s cyber crime statutes to initiate blasphemy cases against Ahmadis.

But this latest action, Khan told Religion News Service, is “a very slippery slope in terms of what this could mean for other minorities. We’re the canaries in the coal mine. This would mean any potential website or digital content that is quote-unquote blasphemous can be the subject of criminal prosecution.”

USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore described the takedown notices as “recklessly brazen” and said he expected fierce bipartisan condemnation from both the Trump and Biden administrations.

“Surely, the Pakistani government doesn’t intend on threatening American citizens within the United States?” Moore asked. “Surely, Prime Minister Imran Khan doesn’t want this controversy, now?”

 

Source: Battle for the internet

And if you thought that was the end of it. It is not. The Government of Pakistan intends to be more cruel as far as internet freedoms are concerned. The censorship will increase further and things will get worse. Asif Shehzad, in his Reuters story, explains what the government wants to do next (you can read the full story New internet rules to give Pakistan blanket powers of censorship):

Pakistan is all set to roll out new internet rules that critics say will give the government wide powers of censorship after rejecting requests from social media companies for consultation.

Muslim-majority Pakistan already has media regulations that adhere to conservative social customs. Last month, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked TikTok for failing to filter out “immoral and indecent” content.

The new rules were approved initially by Prime Minister Imran Khan’s cabinet in February.

They give the PTA “removal and blocking” powers of digital content that “harms, intimidates or excites disaffection” towards the government or poses a threat to the “integrity, security and defence of Pakistan”.

A service provider or social media company could face a fine up to 500 million rupees ($3.14 million) for non-compliance, which would in turn trigger a mechanism preventing the uploading and live streaming, particularly related to “terrorism, hate speech, pornography, incitement to violence and detrimental to national security”.

A platform has to act within 24 hours or, in case of an emergency, six hours to remove content. The rules also empower the telecom authority to block an entire online system.

PTA spokesman Khurram Mehran told Reuters the rules were meant for a better coordination with foreign-based social media companies, which usually “don’t respond to legal requirements”.

Any platform that has more than half a million users in the country will have to register with the PTA within nine months and establish a permanent office and database servers in Pakistan within 18 months.

The new rules shocked rights activists who complained that there had been no consultation.

“The expansion of these powers is just horrendous,” Nighat Dad, a digital rights activist, told Reuters.

“The consultation never occurred,” said Jeff Paine, managing director, Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a joint forum of social media platforms, urging the government to “work with industry on practical, clear rules”.

The AIC said in a statement: “The draconian data localisation requirements will damage the ability of people to access a free and open internet and shut Pakistan’s digital economy off from the rest of the world.

“It’s chilling to see the PTA’s powers expanded, allowing them to force social media companies to violate established human rights norms on privacy and freedom of expression.”

 

Role of non-religious parties in Islamization of Pakistan

Nadeem Farooq Piracha (NFP) has written a very detailed and excellent article on non-religious parties' role in Islamization of the government (Role of non-religious parties in fanning religious extremism). He calls it "fanning religious extremism" but the examples he gave and the speeches he cited cannot all be termed as religious extremism. NFP starts with the 1953 Ahmadi riots in Punjab that were covertly supported or encouraged by the then Chief Minister Mumtaz Daultana, who was not religious but wanted to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Others have argued that this instrumentalization of Islam for political ends in Pakistan much earlier than 1953. Some scholars point towards the passage of Objectives Resolution in March 1949 as the first instance of using Islam for political ends by non-religious parties and non-practicing leaders. Most Indian scholars, of course, term the whole independence movement of Pakistan as an example of using Islam to fan division, hatred, and communalism, all for mundane political objectives. 

The "selling of religion for political ends," as Pakistan's first President Iskander Mirza termed it while abrogating Pakistan's first (1956) constitution, continues unabated from 1953 onwards. General Ayub's tenure (1958-69) is considered by many as the apex of Islamic modernism. The article also hints at agreeing with this idea especially before 1965. However, digging a little deep, one can see that Ayub was not really against using Islam for his own political ends. Islamic modernism was employed by Ayub Khan to promote the development agenda of his regime. The fact that he included, not one (as in the 1956 Constitution) but two constitutional bodies to research on Islamic history, law, philosophy, etc., and to advise the government in the 1962 Constitution (articles 199 to 207) bespeaks of his willingness to instrumentalize Islam. We can agree that Ayub was not fanning extremism but he was also instrumentalizing Islam. Bengalis would also point out to his using of Islam to denigrate them and to deny them their political, democratic, and civil rights in Pakistan. Ayub infamously wrote in his book, Friends, Not Masters, "In addition, they [East Pakistanis] have been and still are under Hindu cultural and linguistic influence." Inferior Muslims (Bengalis) were, of course, not allowed to rule superior Muslims (West Pakistanis), even if the inferior ones are in majority. 

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's story of caving in to religious parties or his unfortunate attempt to steal their thunder is often told as a modern-day replication of a Greek tragedy. Bhutto is proclaimed as a non-religious hero, who started with a secular vision, but was eventually defeated by the nefarious Islamist forces. The reality is, as always, more complex. Bhutto did pay homage to religious sentiment from the start, much before he came to power. The slogan of "Islamic socialism" was used by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Bhutto himself during the 1970 election campaign. Furthermore, as NFP informs in his article, Bhutto was forced to adopt religious clauses in the new 1973 Constitution and later other Islamization measures, including declaring Ahmadis non-Muslim, not only by the religious parties but also by non-religious parties which allied with religious parties in order to dent Bhutto's popularity and defeat him.

Source: Role of non-religious parties in fanning religious extremism

The 1990s saw Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League led the charge towards Islamization. Islam was used to browbeat and defeat PPP. Not surprisingly, the name of the opposition alliance, cobbled together by the military and led by Sharif, was Islami Jamhori Ittihad (Islamic Democratic Alliance). Benazir was portrayed as Western and not truly Muslim. She was linked with India and Israel.

After the restoration of democracy in 2008, using Islam for political purposes by the non-religious parties declined a bit. However, this changed when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by Imran Khan, and many other parties decided to support religious parties protest against an amendment in the Finality of Prophethood declaration by the electoral candidates. The PTI continued to smear Sharif, even after the amendment was taken back and the law minister resigned, of not really believing in the finality of prophethood. In addition to the help of the military, this usage of Islam to defame its opponent was crucial in its win in Punjab.

Hence, NFP is right. Non-religious parties have been using Islam to get a political or electoral advantage. The million-dollar question is why they are doing it? And why they have succeeded at least in some cases? Is it because of Pakistan's religious nationalism?

Israel: More messianic and more religious

Akiva Eldar, the veteran Israeli journalist and best-selling author, has written an article for Al-Monitor, "Israel at 71, more religious, messianic and extreme." On Israeli Independence Day, May 8-9, Mr. Eldar reminds Israelis and others of the Declaration of Independence. He compares the language in the declaration with that in the newest Basic Law, the Nationality Law or the Nation-state Law, passed last year. The language in the declaration is liberal, inclusive and democratic, with only a hint of Jewish ascendency in the new state. This is a world apart from the language in the 2018 basic law, which is exclusive, supremacist and illiberal. It shamelessly informs the world and the Israeli non-Jewish citizens that only Jewish Israeli are the true citizens, rest of the Israelis should not expect equality. Mr. Eldar writes:

What will a civics teacher answer a student who asks how the values of justice promised in the Declaration of Independence to all citizens — irrespective of religion, race and sex — square with a law stipulating “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”? What will the teacher tell a student who asks how the promise of equality and the call to Israel’s Arabs to fulfill their role in state-building based on full and equal citizenship go hand-in-hand with a law stipulating “the State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation”? 

These questions relate, of course, to the Nationality Law, anchoring the Jewish nature of the State of Israel, adopted in 2018 by the previous Knesset and received by the incoming Knesset as a fait accompli. The alienation of Israel’s 21% Arab minority that is inherent in the legislation gives off a stench of nationalism, if not outright racism, and contradicts the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. The clause on self-determination, while hurtful to the feelings of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens and undermining their affinity for the state, does not have practical meaning. On the other hand, the clause stipulating that the state will only develop Jewish settlement constitutes a direct blow to the property rights of millions of Palestinians and undermines their affinity for the land of their forefathers. The previous Knesset translated this clause into action when it legislated the so-called Regularization Law, which retroactively legalized all buildings erected in West Bank settlements in contravention of the law.

President  Rivlin, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Supreme Court president Esther Hayut on Israel’s 71st Independence Day, on May 9, 2019

Source: The Times of Israel

Mr. Eldar then compares the views of Mr. Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, with present-day Israel. While Mr. Herzl was against any role of rabbis in the state affairs, the current government depends on clerics for its existence (as almost all Israeli governments of the past decade) and, therefore, no important policy question can be decided without their approval:

The Declaration of Independence extols the visionary of the modern-day Jewish state, Theodor Herzl, who declared the right of the Jewish people to national revival in their land. Herzl also envisioned that clerics would seek to control institutions of the Jewish state. In his road map “The Jewish State,” Herzl wrote, “We shall therefore prevent any theocratic tendencies from coming to the fore on the part of our priesthood. We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the confines of their barracks. Army and priesthood shall receive honors as high as their valuable functions deserve. But they must not interfere in the administration of the state which confers distinction on them, else they will conjure up difficulties without and within.” 

Israel’s next government will depend more than ever on ultra-Orthodox clerics, among them eight members of Yahadut HaTorah and eight of the Shas Party, as well as an identical number of national religious lawmakers who will all serve in the newly sworn-in 21st Knesset. As Shuki Friedman, director of the Center for Religion, Nation and State at the Israel Democracy Institute notes, religion dictates all facets of life in Israel of 2019. It controls how we shall be schooled and how we will marry; whether we will have public transportation on the Sabbath (usually not) and how we will spend our day of rest; what level of Kosher certification we consume; and will we be stuck in endless traffic because road and rail works cannot be carried out on the Sabbath, only during the work week. For the ultra-Orthodox parties, Jewish law is above state law. They are against the drafting of young ultra-Orthodox to the army, they discriminate against women and they incite against the progressive Judaism stream. All that, in complete contrast to the commitment made by the founders of Israel (in the Declaration of Independence) on equal rights to all citizens; religion, race or gender making no difference.

The article brilliantly details the differences between the 1948 and 2019 Israel but most of these differences existed only on paper. The declaration neither stopped the Nabka from happening, nor it could save the Israeli Arabs from the 70-year discrimination and the Palestinians from occupation. Since its independence in 1948, the Israeli state has never treated Israeli Arabs or Palestinians fairly, irrespective of what was written in the Declaration of Independence. The only difference between the 1948 Israel and 2019 Israel is that the mask is now off.

Israel is not a country of all its citizens

Religious nationalism in Israel or Zionism achieved a new high on March 10, 2019. A sitting Prime Minister, who many expect to be sworn in again after the Knesset elections and become the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister in history, publicly declared, " Israel is not a country of all its citizens." He was denying equal citizenship or full citizenship of Arab Israelis who make almost one-fifth of the Israeli population. Many would argue that most countries in the world do prioritize one religious, ethnic, or linguistic community over other communities so the statement was not something rare or surprising. Others would argue that Israel has never given equal rights to its Arab citizens in its 71-year history so the only people baffled by Benjamin Netanyahu's statement were the ignorant morons. Bibi's critics would point to his statement on the previous election day in March 2015 when he appealed to the rightwing voter by demonizing Arabs. He said that “the rule of the right is in danger” because "Arab voters were coming out in droves to the polls," bused by the left-wing NGOs. This appeal was decisive in winning him the last Knesset elections.

Source: Jerusalem Post

But the statement was stupefying because we live in a world where microaggressions are frowned upon and Israel claims to be a democracy. In fact, it prides itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. A former Prime Minister and Chief of Staff Ehud Barak said Israel was "a villa in the jungle," i.e. an outpost of civilization amidst the barbarism of the Middle East. Do other democratic leaders use Netanyahu's kind of rhetoric to win elections? No. Even dictators would not use this rhetoric today. So, it was astonishing for Netanyahu to write it and then he doubled down it and defended his statement before a cabinet meeting. 

Here is what prompted Netanyahu to proudly declare that Israeli Arabs are second-class citizens. Rotem Sela, a popular Israeli model and TV host, watching Miri Regev, the Israeli Culture Minister being interviewed by Rina Matsliah. Rotem became upset by Miri's racist attitude and wrote on her Instagram: “Miri Regev is sitting and explaining to Rina Matsliah that the public needs to beware, because if Benny Gantz is elected he will have to create a government with the Arabs. Rina Matsliah is silent. And I ask myself: why doesn’t Rina ask her in shock: ‘And what’s the problem with the Arabs???’ Dear God, there are also Arab citizens in this country. When will anyone in this government tell the public that this is a country of all its citizens, and all people are born equal.” The actress said that “the Arabs are also human beings. And also the Druze, and the gays, and the lesbians and... gasp... leftists.” 

Netanyahu responded on Facebook, "Dear Rotem, an important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and its alone. As you wrote, there is no problem with the Arab Israeli citizens – they have equal rights like everybody and the Likud government has invested in the Arab sector more than any other government."

Israeli President Rivlin criticized Netanyahu's “entirely unacceptable remarks about the Arab citizens of Israel” without naming him and added, "“There are no first-class citizens, and there are no second-class voters. We are all equal in the voting booth. We are all represented at the Knesset.” 

But Bibi was unapologetic and reaffirmed his anti-Arab stance before Sunday's Cabinet's meeting as Guardian reported:

As the comments caused waves in Israel, Netanyahu again spoke of the issue at the start of a cabinet meeting. He called Israel a “Jewish, democratic state” with equal rights, but “the nation state not of all its citizens but only of the Jewish people”.

Netanyahu has been accused of demonising Israeli Arabs, who make up about 17% of the population, in an attempt to boost rightwing turnout in elections due on 9 April. He has continually warned that his opponents will receive the support of Arab parties and that they will make significant concessions to the Palestinians.

Wonder woman star, Gal Gadot, supported her friend Rotem Sela:

“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Gadot wrote in Hebrew on her own Instagram account in response. “It is not a matter of right or left, Jewish or Arab, religious or secular. It’s a matter of dialogue for peace, equality and tolerance for one another. It is our responsibility to plant hope and light for a better future for our children. Rotem, you are an inspiration for us all.” (See ynet news)

Atif Main, Imran Khan and Pakistan

The newly minted government in Pakistan removed Professor Atif Mian, an eminent economist belonging to the Ahmadi minority, from its Economic Advisory Council (EAC) on September 7th. This news was heard by many with profound disbelief. Pakistan is facing a balance of payment crisis and Princeton Professor Atif Mian, who was included in the list of the top 25 young economists in the world by the IMF, could have helped plan a fast recovery. But it was not to be. Religious nationalism and the fear of the other prevented not only Professor Atif Mian but also Harvard Professor Asim Khwaja and University College London Professor Imran Rasul, both of whom resigned from the EAC in protest over the removal of Professor Atif Mian. 

Pakistan became an independent state in 1947 but after more than seventy years and one bloody and traumatic separation (when East Pakistan became Bangladesh), the debate over whether Pakistan was created for Muslims to live their lives freely without persecution or for implementing Islamic Shariah goes on. However, almost everyone agrees that Islam’s contribution to Pakistani nationalism is significant and instrumental. Muslims, living in different parts of British India, did not have much else in common except the fear of Hindu persecution after independence. The marker of difference was Islam even if the desire for implementation of Islamic Shariah was not universal.

Professor Atif Mian

Source: Princeton University

Pakistan is not known for ensuring equal rights for its religious minorities. In fact, it is known to be one of the countries where religious minorities regularly face official and social discrimination. So, Pakistanis and others should not have been surprised by Professor Atif Mian’s expulsion but it was a shock for a number of reasons. First, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which won the 25th July elections, claimed to be the harbinger of a more inclusive Pakistan. Its election slogan was Do Nahi Aik Pakistan (translation: Not two, but one Pakistan). Second, Prime Minister Imran Khan, the charismatic cricketer-turned politician that led Pakistan the PTI to victory, does not subscribe to conservative religious views, though he has not refrained from using Islam to gain an edge over his political rivals.  Imran Khan lived in the United Kingdom for almost twenty years and his children are British citizens, living, with his former wife, Jemima Goldsmith, a rich journalist and heiress of Jewish descent, near London.,

Finally, the PTI government knew that Professor Atif Mian was an Ahmadi and not only still appointed him to the EAC but also forcefully defended his appointment when the backlash started. Fawad Chaudhry, the Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, called those protesting against the appointment extremists and said that the government would not bow to the extremists. He also announced ‘Protecting minorities is our responsibility. It is the religious duty of each Muslim, not just the government, to protect minorities and respect those that they live with.’ However, two days after this statement, the PTI government capitulated and removed Professor Atif Main from the EAC. 

What contributed to this capitulation? Many analysts would blame religious nationalism but that is not the whole truth. Besides religious nationalism, weak political institutions and the lack of a democratic culture also contributes to surrender before the religious hardliners. Prime Minister Imran Khan is socially a liberal but joined an onslaught of religious groups last year to weaken the previous government. The issue was again related to Ahmadis. The Ahmadis or Ahmadiyyah consider themselves Muslim but do not consider Prophet Muhammad as the last and final prophet. They were initially considered a Muslim sect but gradually many Muslim-majority countries and societies have come to regard them as heretic and non-Muslim. They are persecuted not only in Pakistan but also in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Gulf sheikhdoms, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia. Pakistan declared Ahmadis non-Muslim is 1974 and then placed additional restrictions on their freedom of religion in the 1980s. The last government, while working on electoral reforms, proposed an inconsequential change in the oath of major office holders that contained an assertion that there was no prophet after Prophet Muhammad. This proposal was approved by the opposition parties, including the PTI, after lengthy deliberations. However, when some religious groups started protesting against the change and claimed that the government had made the change on the demand of the Ahmadis, all the opposition parties joined them. The Pakistan military, which because of four successful coups has ruled Pakistan for more than thirty years and is the strongest political player, also not so clandestinely supported the religious groups to weaken the civilian government. The media, under pressure of the military, also bolstered the opposition and in the end, the change was dropped and the law minister had to resign. The issue did not end even after that and the PTI and other opposition parties portrayed the previous government as a supporter of Ahmadis and this contributed to the loss of its support – and defeat –  in the July national elections.

The succumbing to the religious groups by the current PTI government is thus linked to religious nationalism and a political landscape where democratic governments cannot assert themselves because the religious groups and the military constantly harass them. Sometimes, media groups, opposition parties and the judiciary also join them in keeping civilian democratic governments weak and ineffective. Three different political parties have ruled Pakistan since 2008. Each one of them has faced opposition from the same quarters and each one of them has yielded to pressure from the religious right because the religious right is not alone. 

India: Religious Freedom Issues. A CRS Report on Hindutva

The Congressional Research Service, a bi-partisan research wing of the US Congress, published a report on rising Hindu nationalism and its threat to minorities and human rights in India. Below are some of the key excerpts. The whole report can be read or downloaded from here.

For roughly 500 years before British rule became direct in 1857, the Asian Subcontinent had been dominated by Muslims politically. Many Hindu nationalists, along with some historians, assert that Hindu traditions and institutions were suppressed during this period. As the Indian independence movement grew in the early 20th century, some were energized to "correct" this historic trend. Secularism became a more-or-less enshrined value for the independent Indian state, although its conception in both theory and practice varies widely. 

Because Hinduism does not have a specific sacred text to which conformity can be demanded, "Hindu fundamentalist" is not an accurate term to describe a purveyor of "Hindutva" or "Hindu-ness." Moreover, as conveyed by one scholar, "India's diversity along linguistic, regional, and caste line means defining a 'Hindu culture' is problematic." For political parties such as the BJP and its antecedents, Hinduism as a concept is almost always concurrent with nationalism, the core belief being that India is an inherently Hindu nation, even if establishment of a strictly Hindu state is not a goal. In this regard, it is the proselytizing religions—Islam and Christianity, in particular—that can be characterized as representing a threat to the "Hindu nation." 

In simple terms, the key tenets of the Hindutva ideology are three: (1) Hindus are the rightful rulers of India, which is a Hindu nation; (2) the Christian and, especially, Muslim minorities are viewed with ambivalence because their religious allegiances are not indigenous to India (in a way that those of Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains are); and (3) caste divisions undermine Hindu unity. 

According to close observers, despite fronting an overtly Hindu nationalist party, Modi's 2014 national political campaign touched upon these Hindutva themes only minimally, and instead stressed development and good governance as its guiding lights. Yet Modi himself repeatedly has emphasized his view that "Hinduism is a way of life and not a religion." According to USCIRF, Hindutva "forms the basis of an exclusionary national narrative focused exclusively on the rights of Hindus." In commenting on the role of nationalism in Indian politics, a group of Australian academics offers that, "The Hindu nationalists seek not so much to preserve existing social hierarchies in Hindu cultures as they do to rewrite social order fascistically to the benefit of Hindu populations.".... 

The report provides a brief overview of the RSS and BJP's violent and controversial history and their aversion to Muslims.

The RSS has had a controversial history in India, including connections to the 1948 assassination of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi.45 The organization has since been directly implicated in domestic terrorism. RSS members have been implicated in several incidents of "Saffron" (Hindu extremist) terrorism in India, including the 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings that killed 68 people on a train that runs between Delhi and Lahore, Pakistan. In 2011, former RSS activist Swami Aseemanand confessed to involvement in this and other attacks, contending that some high-level RSS leaders had prior knowledge and were complicit.46 In 2016, Maharashtra's former senior-most police official reportedly called for banning the RSS as "the country's largest terror organization."...

The BJP (along with its 1951-1977 antecedent, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) has been a primary political purveyor of Hindutva in Indian society. Narendra Modi and current BJP President Amit Shah are credited with orchestrating the party's national surge after 2013.56 Throughout the country's history, India's Muslims have consistently favored the Congress Party over the BJP. While at least one-third of Muslim votes nationwide were cast for the Congress in the 21st century, the BJP's share of the Muslim vote dropped from 7% in 2004 to 3% in the 2009 cycle. Some surveys suggest that Modi's party and its electoral allies received up to 8% of the Muslim vote in 2014, with the main opposition Congress Party and its allies garnering 38%.57 Of 1,400 BJP members serving in various Indian state assemblies in 2017, 4 were Muslim. Muslims comprise about 19% of Uttar Pradesh's population, but 6% of its state assembly.58 Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha peaked at 10% in 1980 and lingered at about 6% until dropping to 4% in 2014.59 A 2016 assessment found that Muslims were vastly underrepresented in the legislative assemblies of BJP-controlled states, an imbalance only exacerbated by subsequent state-level wins for the party. The problem was starker when examining state ministers: at the time, only a single Muslim was among the 151 in BJP-controlled states.

A study by India's daily Hindustan Times found that, although only a small proportion of the more than 50,000 national and state-level politicians assessed were facing criminal charges for inciting religious violence or hatred (less than one-half of one percent), the BJP had the highest proportion (1.3%) of any party, more than triple that of the Congress Party. Moreover, the politicians facing such charges—including such high-profile figures as a federal cabinet minister and Uttar Pradesh's chief minister—were nearly five times more likely to win their elections than those not facing them....

 Religious Demographics in India

Source: CRS Report

The report explains that most of the political goals of the Hindu nationalists are about restricting minority rights, especially rights of the Muslim minority:

Hindu nationalists have a relatively short, but long-standing list of political goals. Many of these are found in the BJP's 2014 election manifesto.62 RSS leaders were mostly disappointed by the BJP-led government that ruled India from 1999 to 2004, in large part because then-Prime Minister Vajpayee and his lieutenants were not seen to be taking up core RSS issues. While out of power in the latter half of the 2000s, the RSS and BJP suffered a degree of mutual alienation; at one point in 2010 the then-RSS chief suggested that the BJP be dissolved and replaced by a new party. Yet the organization's leaders appeared to view the BJP victory in 2014 as crucial to the very existence of the RSS. Its leaders thus threw the full weight of their organization behind Modi's campaign while enjoying a correlate spike in participation in 2014.63 Leading Hindutva and widely-held RSS aspirations include

• scaling back laws and government programs designed to benefit the religious minorities, Muslims in particular;

• establishing a Uniform Civil Code (to replace current personal law based on religious customs and thus standardizing all national laws regarding such topics as marriage, divorce, and inheritance);

• repealing Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants limited autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir (a step that would, if implemented, allow citizens from other states to buy property in Jammu and Kashmir, see "The Kashmir Dispute," below);

• redrafting public school textbooks to remove what are alleged to be insults to Hindu gods and excessive praise of the subcontinent's past Muslim rulers;

• constructing a Ram temple on the Ayodhya site of the Babri Mosque that was razed in 1992; and

• preventing cow slaughter through legislation (cows are revered animals in Hinduism)....

Overall restrictions on freedom of expression are also on the rise in Modi's India according to the report:

 A major 2016 HRW report, "Stifling Dissent: The Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in India," contended that, "Indian authorities routinely use vaguely worded, overly broad laws"—a colonial-era sedition law perhaps the most abused among them—"as political tools to silence and harass critics." More recently, HRW warned that, "Journalists faced increasing pressure to self-censor due to threat of legal action, smear campaigns and threats on social media, and even threats of physical attacks."101 In September 2017, unidentified gunmen shot dead publisher and editor Gauri Lankesh, a vocal critic of militant Hindu nationalism, outside her home in Bengaluru. Evidence suggests the existence of organized campaigns to silence critics of the Hindutva movement, sometimes called "rationalists" for their opposition to the insertion of religion into politics.102 Indian journalists report coming under increasing pressure and bullying to remove stories critical of the Hindu nationalist government, and self-censorship by media organizations is seen to be a worsening problem by many.

Even before Modi's national elevation, his supporters were known for bellicose social media activity; in 2012, one former senior Indian intelligence officer wrote, "The style of the online blitzkrieg adopted by [Modi's] die-hard followers in India and abroad are reminiscent of the methods of the Nazi stormtroopers."104 The BJP has since been accused of cultivating "an army of cyber warriors to propagate its message of Hindu chauvinism and hyper-nationalism, and to launch vicious attacks on its opponents." "Modi's troll army" is, by some accounts, an orchestrated effort by the BJP to target critics on social media. Whether officially sanctioned or not, some of the most notable offenders—who openly celebrate the murder of critics for the mere act of exercising their right to free speech—are followed by Modi on Twitter.105 One U.S.-based commentator opined that, earlier in his prime ministership, Modi could afford to associate himself with "foul-mouthed trolls on Twitter," but his 2017 choice to allow Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister "makes it much harder to argue that power will moderate the [BJP's] more feral instincts.

BJP government's committee to write a revisionist history of India

A Reuter's report last month, for the first time, revealed the existence of a committee of scholars appointed by the BJP government "to rewrite the history of the nation." The investigations for the report reveal that the revisionist history would be based on Hindutva ideology. Some excerpts from the report are reproduced below:

Minutes of the meeting, reviewed by Reuters, and interviews with committee members set out its aims: to use evidence such as archaeological finds and DNA to prove that today’s Hindus are directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants many thousands of years ago, and make the case that ancient Hindu scriptures are fact not myth. 

Interviews with members of the 14-person committee and ministers in Modi’s government suggest the ambitions of Hindu nationalists extend beyond holding political power in this nation of 1.3 billion people - a kaleidoscope of religions. They want ultimately to shape the national identity to match their religious views, that India is a nation of and for Hindus. 

In doing so, they are challenging a more multicultural narrative that has dominated since the time of British rule, that modern-day India is a tapestry born of migrations, invasions and conversions. That view is rooted in demographic fact. While the majority of Indians are Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths account for some 240 million, or a fifth, of the populace. 

The committee’s chairman, K.N. Dikshit, told Reuters, “I have been asked to present a report that will help the government rewrite certain aspects of ancient history.” The committee’s creator, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, confirmed in an interview that the group’s work was part of larger plans to revise India’s history...

 Source: Reuters Investigates: By Rewriting History, Hindu Nationalists Aim to Assert Their       Dominance Over India

Referring to the emblematic colour of the Hindu nationalist movement, RSS spokesman Manmohan Vaidya told Reuters that “the true colour of Indian history is saffron and to bring about cultural changes we have to rewrite history.”

Balmukund Pandey, the head of the historical research wing of the RSS, said he meets regularly with Culture Minister Sharma. “The time is now,” Pandey said, to restore India’s past glory by establishing that ancient Hindu texts are fact not myth. 

Sharma told Reuters he expects the conclusions of the committee to find their way into school textbooks and academic research. The panel is referred to in government documents as the committee for “holistic study of origin and evolution of Indian culture since 12,000 years before present and its interface with other cultures of the world.” 

Sharma said this “Hindu first” version of Indian history will be added to a school curriculum which has long taught that people from central Asia arrived in India much more recently, some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, and transformed the population. 

Hindu nationalists and senior figures in Modi’s party reject the idea that India was forged from a mass migration. They believe that today’s Hindu population is directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants. Historian Romila Thapar said the question of who first stood on the soil was important to nationalists because “if the Hindus are to have primacy as citizens in a Hindu Rashtra (kingdom), their foundational religion cannot be an imported one.” To assert that primacy, nationalists need to claim descent from ancestors and a religion that were indigenous, said Thapar, 86, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for decades and has authored books on ancient Indian history. 

The theory of an influx of people from central Asia 3,000 to 4,000 years ago was embraced during British rule...

 According to the minutes of the history committee’s first meeting, Dikshit, the chairman, said it was “essential to establish a correlation” between ancient Hindu scriptures and evidence that Indian civilization stretches back many thousands of years. Doing so would help bolster both conclusions the committee wants to reach: that events described in Hindu texts are real, and today’s Hindus are descendants of those times... 

Culture Minister Sharma told Reuters he wants to establish that Hindu scriptures are factual accounts. Speaking of the Ramayana, the epic that follows the journey of a Hindu deity in human form, Sharma said: “I worship Ramayana and I think it is a historical document. People who think it is fiction are absolutely wrong.”  The epic tells how the god Rama rescues his wife from a demon king. It still informs many Indians’ sense of gender roles and duty. 

Sharma said it was a priority to prove through archaeological research the existence of a mystical river, the Saraswati, that is mentioned in another ancient scripture, the Vedas. Other projects include examining artifacts from locations in scriptures, mapping the dates of astrological events mentioned in these texts and excavating the sites of battles in another epic, the Mahabharata, according to Sharma and minutes of the committee’s meeting... 

Modi did not order the committee’s creation - it was instigated by Sharma, government documents show - but its mission is in keeping with his outlook. During the 2014 inauguration of a hospital in Mumbai, Modi pointed to the scientific achievements documented by ancient religious texts and spoke of Ganesha, a Hindu deity with an elephant’s head: “We worship Lord Ganesha, and maybe there was a plastic surgeon at that time who kept the head of an elephant on the torso of a human. There are many areas where our ancestors made large contributions.” Modi did not respond to a request from Reuters that he expand on this remark. 

Nine of 12 history committee members interviewed by Reuters said they have been tasked with matching archaeological and other evidence with ancient Indian scriptures, or establishing that Indian civilization is much older than is widely known. The others confirmed their membership but declined to discuss the group’s activities. The committee includes a geologist, archaeologists, scholars of the ancient Sanskrit language and two bureaucrats... 

After he was named culture minister in 2014 following Modi’s victory, Sharma, a doctor and chairman of a chain of hospitals, said he received guidance from the RSS. Sharma, a genial man with a wide smile, has a portrait of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, hanging above the doorway of a meeting room in his bungalow in central Delhi. Below it are portraits of past RSS leaders.

During the last three years, Sharma said, his ministry has organized hundreds of workshops and seminars across the country “to prove the supremacy of our glorious past.” The aim, he said, is to build a fresh narrative to balance the liberal and secular philosophy espoused by India’s first prime minister, Nehru, and furthered by successive governments for most of the nation’s post-independence history. 

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, now controlled by Sharma’s ministry, these days mixes in sessions about right wing Hindu leaders and causes. At one such event in 2016, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Amit Shah, took the opportunity to lambast Nehru as a man influenced by the western world. “We have always believed that our policies should have the smell of Indian soil,” Shah said. It was time for a history of India that concentrates on “facts about our great past.”

Trump, Merry Christmas and White Christian Nationalism

Here are few articles on President Trump's focus on Christmas and "war on Christmas."

Independent informed the readers about Trump's ending the "war on Christmas":

For those who felt they needed the President's permission, Donald Trump has declared: "We can say Merry Christmas again."

Mr Trump repeatedly vowed during his campaign to end the so-called “war on Christmas", a commonly held belief among many of the President’s Christian supporters.
His comment came during a speech celebrating the passage of the tax reform bill.

Some of Mr Trump's supporters have felt that saying the more neutral and inclusive “happy holidays” to mark celebrations of Hannukah, Eid, or other holidays taking place around the same time, has undermined the Christian majority in the country.
The "war" extends to some feeling as if political correctness is a forced and unnecessary social practice as well. 

Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University told CNN that Mr Trump “is no one's idea as an evangelical Christian, but he is very much using the same rhetoric as the war on Christmas...And it fits very much into his worldview that the people he's representing have been left behind by this liberal society".

Mr Trump claimed on the campaign trail that Americans would say “Merry Christmas in every store” during his presidency, implying that the phrase had gone out of use. (read the article Donald Trump announces 'we can say Merry Christmas again')

The CNN informed its readers that almost one in three adult Americans are bothered by at least some degree by the declining emphasis on religion in the way Americans celebrate Christmas:

Did President Donald Trump live up to his promise to end the "war on Christmas"? Depends on who you ask.
While some would quibble with the very idea that a war on the holiday exists, recent polling does suggest that the Christian nature of Christmas is less culturally prevalent than in the past.

A Pew Research Center survey, published last week, found that most US adults believe the religious aspects of the holiday are emphasized less now than they used to be. But overall, just 31% of adults said "they are bothered at least 'some' by the declining emphasis on religion in the way the U.S. commemorates Christmas."
Meanwhile, the "remaining two-thirds of the U.S. public either is not bothered by a perceived decline in religion in Christmas or does not believe that the emphasis on the religious elements of Christmas is waning," according to the Pew poll.

Throughout his presidential campaign -- and during his first year in office -- Trump emphasized he would "make Christmas great again" by ending the "war on Christmas," a concept that is the revival of a quintessential conservative culture war.
"If I become president, we're going to be saying Merry Christmas at every store," he promised supporters in 2015, among the many times he made such a yuletide pledge.
Fast-forward to October 2017 -- two months ahead of the annual holiday -- and Trump repeated such rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit. "Guess what?" the President told those gathered. "We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again."

His Christmas rhetoric -- and interest in making speeches in front of Christmas trees -- has inspired everything from "Saturday Night Live" sketches to merchandise (there is an official "Make Christmas Merry" hat sold on the Trump campaign website, and dozens of Trump-inspired Christmas-themed sweaters on websites such as Etsy and Amazon).
The Pew survey suggests that while most Americans still celebrate Christmas, the way they think about and commemorate the holiday appears to be moving in a more secular direction.
About 55% of US adults "say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, including 46% who see it as more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday and 9% who celebrate Christmas as both a religious and a cultural occasion." That's slightly down 4 percentage points from 2013, when 59% of Americans said they celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, including 51% who saw it as more religious than cultural.

A vast majority of Americans — including 56% of Republicans — say the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate is "made up" and not a "real issue," according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. (Read the article In his 1st year in office, did Trump end the 'war on Christmas'?)

Newsweek article reminds the readers that Nazis also used Christmas to promote a divisive nationalism, albeit Trump does not promote genocide or violence against minorities like Nazis:

Trump isn’t the first political figure in history to co-opt Christmas. In fact, some see parallels between Trump’s speeches in front of Christmas trees and attempts by authoritarian regimes like the Nazis to manipulate popular celebrations to promote a political ideology. But by weaponizing Christmas in this way, Trump is bringing a dangerous tradition of politicizing religious holidays into the United States, one expert says.  

“Because Americans have enjoyed a relatively stable political system, Christmas in the U.S. has been relatively immune to the overt politicization of the holiday,” Joe Perry told Newsweek. He is the author of the book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History, which examines the way Nazis used Christmas to spread fascism.

“But not completely immune. The far right’s engagement in the ‘war on Christmas’ explicitly posits that there is one single true or correct Christmas. The holiday’s true nature is somehow under threat from outsiders and liberals who act as forces of degradation, multiculturalism and secularization,” Perry continued.

In this context, Trump has been using the so-called war on Christmas to wage a culture war that pits multicultural liberals against Christian conservatives. He began doing this long before Christmas. Meanwhile, some members of the religious right support Trump’s most nationalist, race-baiting form of political rhetoric, including his reclaiming of Christmas.
Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism. They rewrote the lyrics of Christmas carols, promoted Nazified holiday traditions and launched numerous Christmas charity events for poor Germans. The ultimate goal was to draw a clear line between those who belonged and those who should be excluded and not benefit from the joys of Christmas.

Trump’s rhetoric differs from that of Nazi Germany’s, most notably because he has never advocated genocide. But Trump’s talk about Christmas coexists with re-emerging white identity politics, Randy Blazak, a sociology professor who studies white nationalism, told Newsweek.

“Committed white nationalists love Trump’s bring back Christmas campaign almost as much as evangelicals,” he said. “His followers see this as gospel and a rebuking of multiculturalism and political correctness, and the growing influence of Jews, Muslims, atheists and other non-WASPs.”

President Donald Trump signs a proclamation in front of a Christmas tree, as Vice President Mike Pence stands behind him

Source: How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism

Perry said that Trump hasn’t gone nearly as far as the Nazis in promoting his vision of the holidays, and he sees major flaws in describing Trump as a Nazi-like figure. But there are some clear parallels.

“Trump and the Nazis share aspects of race baiting and perhaps broader aspects of extreme conservatism—many political ideologies do,” Perry said.

“Frankly, I’m not sure how far Trump himself is willing to go to use the holiday to promote anti-Muslim or anti-minority visions of America, or if he even really understands what he is doing with his ‘merry Christmas’ tirades.” (Read the article How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism)

The "othering" of Israeli-Arabs continues

Two articles detailing how Israeli-Arabs face racism in the Israeli society and how many officials of Israeli state encourages this racism. A recent statement by the Israeli Defense Minister demonstrates how Israeli-Arab are not considered part of the Israeli nation and how Isreali politicians, working at the highest level, have no moral or political compunctions in helping propagate and promote the 'othering' of around 20% of Israeli citizens (Israeli-Arabs) and brazenly working for an exclusive Jewish nationalism.

Akiva Eldar's article Israeli defense minister's comments highlight 'plague of racism' gives a general overview of racism and bigotry in the Israeli society and state's promotion of it:

In a Dec. 12 interview with my colleague Mazal Mualem, Liberman proudly held up a poll indicating that 93% of Israelis who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union in recent decades (one of his party’s main constituent groups) support his call to boycott businesses in Wadi Ara. 

If this poll is really accurate, the migrants are not alone. According to a comprehensive study conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, the cancer of racism has spread to Israelis of all stripes. The poll found that almost half the Jews in Israel, 48%, think Israel should expel its Arab citizens, who constitute some 20% of the country’s population. Eight out of ten Arab Israelis (79%) said there was widespread discrimination of Muslims by Israeli society. 

A study presented in July to Knesset members indicates that academia, one of the institutions expected to uphold democratic values, is not immune to racism, either. About half the Arab students said they encounter manifestations of racism and discrimination in colleges and universities they attend, and 40% reported expressions of racism by faculty members. One-third of the students reported that the institutions in which they were enrolled did not give them any leeway to help their integration — not even taking into consideration Muslim holidays and fasts, and 30% said they could not apply for scholarships they wanted because they had not served in the military (unlike Israeli Jews who are required to perform military service). 

In a September 2016 report, State Comptroller Josef Shapira wrote, “We have been experiencing the harsh phenomena of hatred, racism, violence, factionalism and intolerance.” The chief government watchdog went on to cite the disastrous results of historic racism against the Jewish people. “Human society, wherever and whenever it is, has no guarantee that the underbrush of racism will not turn into a dense forest,” he warned. Shapira upbraided the Education Ministry — the state arm tasked with eradicating racism, xenophobia and factionalism — for failing to turn education into a bridge between the various segments of Israeli society. The ministry only addresses these issues sporadically, on a case-by-case basis, and then only following extreme displays of racism, Shapira wrote. 

President Reuven Rivlin said in response that the report reflects the extent to which racism had become an acute and strategic issue for Israeli society. He complained that “the state is not doing enough to uproot severe phenomena of racism and hatred among youth.” Several months prior to the report, Education Minister Naftali Bennett derailed a program for the development of a “racism index” initiated by the ministry’s chief scientist, professor Ami Volansky, after the July 2014 murder by Jews of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The index was designed to allow schools to assess the level of racism among its students and to seek appropriate remedies. 

Bennett subsequently ordered his office to sever ties with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which runs programs for the prevention of racism, among its other activities. This week, his ministry ordered a high school in the northern town of Nesher to cancel a planned annual event with members of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, the Parents Circle Family Forum. The ministry forced the mayor, himself a bereaved father, and the school’s frightened teachers to prevent the students from meeting with six Jews and Palestinians who devote their lives to the struggle for peace and against racism. 

A Knesset committee is currently deliberating an article that would officially allow segregation, part of a proposed law that would define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. It authorizes the state to “permit a community, including the members of a single religion or the members of a single nationality, to establish separate localities.” In an editorial titled “Israel’s Attempts to Preserve a Racist Heritage," the liberal Haaretz newspaper wrote: “It would be interesting to see Israel’s response if some other country passed a constitutional amendment letting communities that exclude Jews be established.… ‘Judaism’ isn’t a synonym for racism and elitism.”

Source: Liberman: 'Joint Arab List is a fifth column'

Mazal Mualem's article Liberman intensifies campaign against Israeli Arabs focuses on Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. He is determined to become the next Prime Minister of Israel and is willing to throw Israeli-Arabs and Israel's peace and stability under the bus to fulfil his dream. 

At the request of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, his associates prepared for him several lists concerning Israeli Arab Knesset members. These lists, containing details of past comments made by those members condemning Israel and also data on terrorist attacks perpetrated by Israeli Arabs, appeared on his desk in the Knesset on Dec. 11. He used this information in a speech to the Knesset attacking the Joint Arab List, even calling them "war criminals.” 

Among the people featured in Liberman's lists was former Knesset member Azmi Bishara. Appearing beside his name was the charge against him: "Accused of high espionage: making contact with a Hezbollah agent." There was Knesset member Jamal Zahalka who "while in the 12th grade was arrested and sent to prison for two years for membership in an illegal PLO group.'' Then there was former Knesset member Basel Ghattas, "a cousin of Bishara, who smuggled 12 cell phones to prisoners." Chairman of the Joint Arab List and Knesset member Ayman Odeh was listed as having "refused to attend the funeral of President Shimon Peres, calling Peres 'the murderer from Kafr Kanna.'" There were also quotes such as "within us, we Arabs refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state," which was attributed to a speech delivered by Knesset member Zahalka in December 2007 and later quoted by the website Checkpoint. 

Liberman's assertive speech came just a day after he used interviews with Army Radio and Reshet Bet radio to call for a consumer boycott of Arab businesses in the northern Israeli-Arab Wadi Ara region. Actually, this was a new stage in his longstanding campaign against the Israeli Arab community over the past few election cycles. This time, his attack was triggered by the violent demonstrations in Wadi Ara, which broke out in response to US President Donald Trump's Jerusalem proclamation on Dec. 6. During the course of these protests, Arab youths hurled rocks at police cars, private vehicles and buses throughout the Sabbath on Dec. 9. 

"Simply impose a consumers' boycott and don't go in there. Don't enter their restaurants or their businesses. Don't get your cars fixed there. The residents of Wadi Ara must understand that they're unwanted and that they're not part of us. They’re working from within to harm the State of Israel," said Liberman, adding fuel to the flames in an already tense atmosphere. 

All at once, Liberman removed the mantle of formality that he had donned upon entering the office of the minister of defense in May 2016. He went back to being chairman of a right-wing nationalist party Yisrael Beitenu who would rather exacerbate tensions instead of restoring calm. Politicians on both the left and right expressed their reservations about his remarks, including co-leader of the Zionist Camp Tzipi Livni, Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan of Likud and Education Minister Naftali Bennett. It was exactly what Liberman expected. It was what he had hoped to achieve.

Is Rahul Gandhi a Hindu? And is this important?

There is currently a debate going on India about whether Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the soon-to-be President of the Congress Party, is a Hindu or not. The debate started during the campaign for the Gujarat state elections. It was reported that Rahul signed the register for non-Hindus while visiting the Somnath Temple. The BJP is now accusing Rahul of not being a Hindu and falsely posing as a Hindu while the Congress is trying to prove that Rahul is a Hindu. 

Robin David, the resident editor of The Times of India's Chandigarh edition, has written an enlightening article on what this debate about Rahul's Hinduness means for Indians who are not Hindus.

An excerpt of the article is reproduced below. Rest can be read Disturbing debate on Rahul Gandhi’s Hindu-ness: India’s top national parties are reducing the importance of being Indian:

The loud and coarse debate over which register Rahul Gandhi signed when he visited Somnath temple has led to politicians of both Congress and BJP using an awkward hyphenation – the ‘non-Hindu’. With campaigning peaking in Gujarat, no one has bothered about how this ‘Hindu vs non-Hindu’ debate has marginalised those who are not Hindus. It has erased the many unique distinctions among different groups and reduced them to one broad, generalised category – the non-Hindu.

You are not a Christian or a Parsi or a Muslim or a Jew. You are a non-Hindu. Sit on the sidelines and watch us fight over who the real Hindu is, is the message BJP and Congress have driven home.

Given the manner in which both parties are fighting over the issue, it seems that the ‘Hindu’ is an exclusive club for the privileged. To become a member, you have to meet the stiff criteria set by the club management and be ready for a rejection.

By questioning Rahul’s Hindu identity, the BJP has challenged his membership to the club and asked him to establish his credentials. Although BJP leaders haven’t said it in as many words, the implicit message is that Rahul does not deserve to ask for the votes of Hindus in Gujarat because his Hindu credentials are questionable. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra even demanded that Rahul “must say who he actually is”.

Rahul Gandhi in the Somnath Temple

Source: Disturbing debate on Rahul Gandhi’s Hindu-ness: India’s top national parties are reducing the importance of being Indian

The Indian Express has noted the same phenomenon but has ignored its implications for the minorities and the future of secularism in India. In their article, Gujarat assembly elections 2017: Rahul Gandhi’s devotion to temple politics catches BJP off guard, they point out that Rahul has visited 25 temples so far and it is the first time that party leadership of both major parties is trying to outdo each other in visiting temples. A excerpt from the article is reproduced below:

There is a new facet emerging in the Gujarat Assembly elections, the first phase of voting for which ended on Friday. Never before have temples played such a major role in politics of the state, since it was formed in 1960. The individual Hindu candidates used to launch their campaigning and election exercises by paying obeisance at their local temples or to their family deities, but the party top brass leading the campaign have never bothered to visit practically all important temples in their areas or on the route of their campaign.
This time, both the major political parties — the Congress and the BJP — have made it a point that their star campaigners visit important local temples wherever they go to address public meetings. While it was quite obvious for Prime Minister Narendra Modi or BJP national president Amit Shah to do so because of their religious background and RSS connections, it is quite new for Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to visit temples.
If it is a matter of prestige for the BJP and particularly, Modi, to ensure that his party retains the political power in the state as this election is being viewed as a precursor to the outcome in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress is doing everything available at its disposal to ensure that it wrests Gujarat from BJP after 22 years, to improve its prospects in 2019 general elections and come back to power at the Centre.

Gau rakshaks' (cow protectors) rise under Modi/BJP: Is there a more sinister agenda?

In November 2017, Reuters published an investigative report Cash Cows: Emboldened by Modi's ascent, India's cow vigilantes deny Muslims their livelihood by Zeba Siddiqui, Krishna N. Das, Tommy Wilkes and Tom Lasseter. This report explains that, along with the physical threat, cow protection movement is also an economic threat to the Muslim minority. Due to the Hindus' aversion to the killing of cattle, the slaughtering, animal transport and hides businesses had been primarily in the hands of Muslims. These businesses are now all under threat. The slaughterhouses are being closed. The cow vigilantes not only beat and kill Muslims but also take away the cattle and these cattle are later sold to Hindus. So, assets are transferred from the poor indigent Muslim minority to Hundi majority, making Muslims more destitute.

Some excerpts of the report are reproduced below (full report can be accessed here):

The beating that ended Pehlu Khan’s life was televised nationwide. Cell phone video captured a group of men punching and slinging Khan around the middle of a road in north India, stomping on him and then slamming the 55-year-old farmer down on concrete as he begged for mercy. 

Khan had been stopped by the lynch mob of right-wing Hindus as he rode home from a market in April with two cows and two calves in the back of a truck. The crowd was furious at the sight of a Muslim transporting animals held sacred by Hindus, according to the accounts of his sons and two fellow villagers who were also attacked. Before the men beat Khan so badly that he later died, breaking his ribs in multiple places, they screamed that he was planning to slaughter the cattle for beef. 

Outside the frame of the video, something else was happening: Pehlu Khan’s cows were seized. They were hauled off to a nearby Hindu-run shelter that takes in cattle snatched from Muslims and sells them. 

Assaults meted out in broad daylight against India’s Muslim population, some 14 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion people, have sparked concern about the direction the country is taking under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There has been another, less noted dimension to the violence: The theft from Muslims and redistribution to Hindus of cows that provide crucial income in the Indian countryside. 

Such scenes clash with India’s image as an investor darling in Asia and the pro-business message Modi broadcasts to foreign investors. But three and a half years after his electoral victory, the cow seizures illustrate how the nation’s right-wing Hindu factions that propelled Modi to power are now shaping India and stirring religious upheaval. 

Having stoked Hindu nationalist passions in his bid for the highest office, it’s unclear to what extent Modi can now control them. The bands of right-wing Hindus who seize the cows are operating essentially as private militias. They are undeterred by the prime minister’s public calls on them to end the violence. States governed by Modi’s party have seen a marked increase in cow theft from Muslims as well as funding for cow shelters that in many cases take in the stolen cattle. 

Interviews with nationalist Hindu leaders and militia members across the country reveal an impatience for Muslims to demonstrate obeisance to the Hindu majority. 

There are no official statistics for how many cows have been stolen from Muslims in incidents involving such groups since Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to national power in 2014. Reuters’ reporting across India, though, puts actual numbers on the extent of the cow theft. It also provides the first in-depth look at how the actions of cow vigilantes are leading to further economic marginalization of the country’s Muslim minority. 

In northern India, the leadership of just two of the main organizations of “gau rakshaks” – right-wing Hindu cow vigilantes, or literally “cow protectors” – said they have taken about 190,000 cows since the year of Modi’s election, some in the presence of police and almost every single one of them from Muslims, the reporting shows. 

Separately, Reuters surveyed 110 cow shelters or farms, known as “gaushalas,” across six Indian states that were led by BJP chief ministers from before or just after Modi’s 2014 election win. The survey found an increase of 50 percent in their cattle holdings - from about 84,000 head before Modi came to power in 2014 to more than 126,000 today.
The survey, conducted by phone and in person, covered a fraction of the thousands of cow sheds nationwide.It was not possible to determine how much of the 50 percent increase was due to cow vigilantes, because record-keeping in many cases is non-existent. But of the 110 cattle facilities surveyed, all but 14 said they receive cows from the Hindu vigilante groups. About a third said they sell or give cows away, nearly all to Hindu farmers and households.

In a separate survey, Reuters found that only three of 24 cow facilities in four states not ruled by a BJP chief minister said they sold or gave away cattle - mainly to Hindus - after receiving them. While cattle stock has risen about 40 percent in these gaushalas since Modi took office, only a small part of the increase was due to vigilantes. In many of the cases, cows were donated to the shelters for religious reasons or purchased from cattle markets for fear they would be slaughtered.... 

Cow slaughter is illegal in most of India, while committing cruelty to cattle by transporting them crammed into small spaces is outlawed across the country. Slaughtering buffalo, an animal not considered holy, is allowed, fueling a multi-billion dollar meat export industry that is dominated by Muslims. Penalties for killing a cow differ from state to state, with most ranging from six months to five years in prison....
People involved in snatching cattle from Muslims speak with a triumphant sense that their moment in history has arrived. “Everyone in this world is born Hindu. They are turned into Muslims when they are circumcised and Christians when they are baptized,” said Dinesh Patil, a district head of the Bajrang Dal group in the southwestern state of Maharashtra.

The Bajrang Dal organization is closely linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the nation’s umbrella right-wing Hindu organization. The RSS argues the purity of India was soiled by the foreign intervention of Muslims and then Christians beginning in the 8th century. The RSS helped create Modi’s political party, and the prime minister himself first attended the group’s meetings as a child.

At the complex he manages, Patil said that almost every one of the 1,700 cows grazing outside was “rescued by the Bajrang Dal” from “these Muslim slaughterers.” Patil described how a degree of law enforcement sanction is conferred on the cattle seizures: His group takes the cows and hands them over to the police, who then deliver the cattle to his facility. “The entire investigation and catching of the culprits is done by us,” Patil said.
The police, he added, “have to listen to us because the BJP is in power.” 

Told of Patil’s comments, Bipin Bihari, second-in-command of police for Maharashtra, said: “In a way their work supports the police. It eases our work. If they have some information on some illegal activities, they can share it with us, and we act on it. But they are not allowed to take the law into their hands.”.... 

Reuters found no evidence of a formal plan by the BJP to use cow vigilante groups to engineer the seizure and transfer of cows from Muslims to Hindus.

But in states where the BJP has taken power, cow seizures have ramped up. In the absence of official data on the number of cows taken, Reuters reporting and a review of past incidents show that the largest vigilante groups and the cattle seizures are concentrated in BJP-led states.

One organization of cow vigilantes in the northern state of Haryana has a golden cow with crossed swords and two AK-47s beneath it as its logo. The leaders of the Gau Raksha Dal, or cow protection group, say they have captured up to 120,000 across the country since beginning their campaign in 2013. Most of that activity was carried out after Modi’s victory in 2014, which was followed by a BJP chief minister taking office in Haryana later in the year.





Source: Cash Cows: Emboldened by Modi's ascent, India's cow vigilantes deny Muslims their livelihood

Dinesh Arya, state head of the Gau Raksha Dal, acknowledged his group is breaking the law. Arya produced a list of 27 criminal complaints lodged by cattle traders against his members that he said were still pending. “Seizing cattle is not legal and we know that well. We are not authorized to do this, it’s the police department’s work,” Arya said.

But he claims a higher calling: “Our religion has given us the right to stop our mother being butchered,” he said, referring to “gau mata,” or mother cow. “We have forcefully taken that right.” 

Outside his office, a truck converted into a “mobile cow ambulance” used to transport seized cattle bore a bullet hole – the aftermath of a recent gun battle with Muslim “cattle smugglers,” Arya said. 

Modi has at least twice publicly criticized cow vigilantism. “Do we get the right to kill a human being in the name of cow? Is this ‘gau bhakti’? Is this ‘gau raksha’?” he declared in a speech in June, using the Hindi phrases for cow devotion and cow protection. “Violence is not the solution to any problem,” he added. 

The Supreme Court has also addressed the issue. In September, the court ruled that central and state governments must deploy police officers to prevent cow vigilante violence.

On the ground, some Hindu activists aren’t heeding Modi’s calls. The leader of a group of cow vigilantes, which claims 10,000 members concentrated mostly in western and northern Indian states, said they were unmoved by the prime minister’s condemnation of what he called the vigilantes’ “anti-social activities.” 

“The cow protection movement totally belonged to the BJP before 2014,” said the group’s leader, Pawan Pandit, a part-time software engineer. “Now groups like ours have the momentum.” 

Pandit said networks of vigilantes operating under his Bhartiya Gau Raksha Dal – or Indian cow protection group – captured as many as 60,000 cows in the three years before Modi came to office. Since 2014, Pandit said, the group has grabbed more than 100,000 cows, often working with police.....

This lawlessness extends beyond the 18 states Modi’s BJP now controls directly or with coalition partners. In the southern state of Telangana, one of 11 states where the BJP is not in power, a man named Purushottam Gupta was arrested shortly after Modi gave a speech in August last year condemning cow vigilantes. Gupta had refused a court order to hand back 20 cattle seized by cow vigilantes and kept them with some 5,000 other cows at a facility next to the ashram where he is the de facto deputy head. Gupta said he was released the same day he was arrested and that the cows have yet to be returned to their Muslim owners.

India’s laws against cow slaughter predate Modi’s administration, and cow vigilantes were operating in India before Modi came to power. At the federal level, the BJP’s predecessor, the relatively liberal Congress party, funded the cow sheds via a federal animal welfare association at higher levels than Modi. Spending from the association’s four main gaushala grants, the primary source of federal funding for the facilities, was about 150 million rupees for the 2010-11 fiscal year, compared with some 58 million for 2015-16, the most recent period available. 

But at the state level, BJP politicians have in many cases sharply increased funding for the cattle shed facilities through government bodies. In Haryana, the state where Pehlu Khan lived, the Gau Seva Aayog, or cow protection commission, went from allotting 18.5 million rupees to cow sheds in the 2014-15 fiscal year, when a BJP chief minister took over, to more than 37 million for 2016-17. In Rajasthan, the state where Khan was killed, funding doubled from about one billion rupees in 2013-14, as the BJP captured the state, to more than 2.3 billion rupees in 2016-17, according to a state official... 

For Hindus, the cow has long been holy. In ancient scriptures, it is celebrated for its ability to nurture humanity and is compared to deities.  

During Modi’s Hindu nationalist administration, the cow has taken on additional political significance. In his campaign for office, Modi referred to the danger of a “pink revolution” under the relatively liberal Congress party, the domain of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. 

It was a play on Congress’ “green revolution,” under which agricultural output increased, suggesting the party had allowed the production and export of meat including beef to surge. 

Those in hardline Hindu groups supporting Modi frequently complain that Congress and its allies looked the other way when it came to illegal cow slaughter operations run by Muslims to gain favor with that community at the polls. Two spokespeople for Congress did not respond to questions from Reuters.

In May, Modi’s government banned the trade of cattle for slaughter. The measure mostly affected the buffalo industry, as killing cows for meat was already forbidden in most states. But the move was seen by many Muslims as a ploy to further squeeze them out of the multibillion dollar beef and leather industry, which employs millions in India. India’s Supreme Court in July suspended the government measure, effectively lifting the ban on the trade of buffalo for slaughter.

The list of cow rakshak attacks from September 2015 to June 2017 that caught media attention can be read in the article Una, Alwar and Delhi cow vigilantism: A list of 'gau rakshak' attacks since 2015 Dadri lynching.