INDIA'S PAINFULLY-EVIL INVERSE

THE US, EU and India's trading partners - many of whom are self-proclaimed standard bearers of  human rights - must openly consider and review and condemn Delhi's Islamophobic behaviour.

The proposed citizenship register has sent a chill through India's Muslim community.

PM Narendra Modi and his Hindutva-infused dispensation, by singling out India's Muslims and laying the groundwork for legal discrimination against the community are playing with fire.

A new law - the Citizenship Amendment Act - passed by the Indian parliament last week, has sparked a storm of protest across India. As per the law, non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh will now be put on the fast track to Indian citizenship if they face  'persecution' in their countries of origin.

Coupled with this clearly prejudicial legislation is another, equally sinister scheme up the Modi  regime's sleeve : the National Register of Citizens.

This is basically a plan designed to make India's people prove their nationality, through a documentary evidence or otherwise, or else be left off the citizenship rolls.

This dubious experiment has already been tried in the state of Assam, and nearly 2 million people  have been stripped off their citizenship. As critics point out, this is a weapon - disguised in legal language - to permanently disenfranchise India's Muslims.

But it is not just India's Muslims that are up in arms over the BJP's moves. Hindus in Assam, for example, have taken to the streets, as they fear the new citizenship law will open floodgates for Bangladeshi Hindus to enter their state and alter the demographic balance.

Protests have roiled over north-eastern states for similar reasons, and several people have reportedly been killed.

PM Modi had called for calm on Monday, yet this appeal rings hollow as the Indian prime minister and his ideological comrades are primarily responsible for this mess.
 
Though claiming to be a secular democracy, India's rulers many of them card-carrying RSS members, are actually aping the grim methodologies of The Third Reich.

But is this surprising, considering that the leading lights of the Sangh Parivar were unabashed admirers of European fascism?

The World Students Society thanks Dawn's editorial work and analysis.