Pro-Kashmir-Freedom Slogans Ring Across Indian University Campuses

Students across India are rallying against Modi government's attacks on academic freedoms. Massive protests were triggered when the Modi government arrested Kahaiya Kumar, the student union president at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Universities across India are ringing with the following slogans:

"Geelani bole azaadi, Afzal bole azaadi, jo tum na doge azaadi, toh chheen ke lenge azadi! (Geelani and Afzal demanded freedom. If freedom is denied, we will snatch it!)".

"Modi ka Hindutva nahin sahenge, Modi ke Brahmangiri nahin sahenge." (We will not tolerate Modi's Hindutva oppression. We reject upper caste Brahmin domination).

Geelani is the separatist leader demanding freedom of Jammu and Kashmir from illegal Indian occupation. Afzal refers to Afzal Guru who was executed by the Indian government on trumped up charges of terrorism.

Students also chanted in memory of Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old Muslim woman who was gunned down in Gujarat in June 2004 when the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran the state as its chief minister. In September 2009, Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate called encounter fake. CBI , India's federal investigating agency, did not find link between her and LeT as was alleged by Modi's government in Gujarat.

Afzal Guru was accused of carrying out an attack on Indian parliament in Dec, 2001. The Indian supreme court judgment acknowledged the evidence against Guru was circumstantial: "As is the case with most conspiracies, there is and could be no evidence amounting to criminal conspiracy." But then, it went on to say: "The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." This shameful Indian Supreme Court verdict to approve Guru's execution is a great miscarriage of justice with few precedents in legal annals.

Independent educators and academics in India feel they are under siege since Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Modi ascended to power. A concerted move is underway in many states across India to Hinduize education. RSS ideologues are being given key positions in India's educational and cultural institutions to realize a Hindu Nationalist vision of India.

Last year, Modi's BJP appointed  Gajendra Chauhan as head of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).  The staff and students protested the appointment describing Mr. Chauhan as grossly unqualified for the position. The Indian media have sharply criticized his work that includes films such as “Jungle Love,” “Vasna” (“Desire”), “Jungle Ka Beta” (“The Son of the Jungle”) and various other B-grade  movies. Aljazeera reported that his main qualification appears to be his affiliation with the Hindu Nationalist BJP as national convener for culture, responsible for promoting “the party’s ideology through cultural activities,” as he put it in an interview with The Indian Express.

In the Aug. 13, 2015 issue of The New York Review of Books, the economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen described how the government pressured him to step down from his position as chancellor of the newly formed Nalanda University — most likely because of his criticism of Modi before the elections, according to Aljazeera.

According to the Aljazeeera report, Mr. Sen has listed the ways in which the government has interfered in the management of many academic institutions — the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and the National Book Trust. It has proposed a bill that would give it direct control of the 13 Indian Institutes of Management. The caliber of two recent appointments is also alarmingly questionable: Lokesh Chandra, the newly selected head of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, which oversees India’s cultural relations with other countries, has said Modi is an incarnation of God, and Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, the new head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, has praised the caste system.

Massive student protests in India are the culmination of growing resentment against attempts by the Modi government to curb academic and intellectual freedoms and reshape educational and cultural institutions and the Indian society at large.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Dalit Death Shines Light on India's Caste Apartheid

Kashmiris Remain Defiant Against Indian Occupation

Hinduization of India Under Modi

Globalization of Hindutva

Hindutva Whitewash of Indian History

Hindu Nationalists Admire Hitler

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Comment by Riaz Haq on February 17, 2016 at 7:49am

BBC News - #India 'sedition' student beaten up in court by right-wing #Hindu lawyers. #JNU http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35593147 …

On Wednesday morning a group of lawyers outside New Delhi’s Patalia House court severely beat the student leader Kanhaiya Kumar from Jawahalal Nehru University (JNU) who is under arrest for sedition charges and was due to be presented at the court. (BBC, Guardian, Reuters). There are reports of media personnel also being attacked as well. A reporter for the newspaper First Post told the BBC he was beaten when he attempted to photograph the violence and forced to delete the captured images. Kumar was later remanded into custody and will be presented in court on March 2.

Kumar was arrested on Friday last week, for allegedly organizing a rally against the 2013 hanging of a Kashmiri man, Afzal Guru, where anti-India slogans were used. Kumar has denied all charges. Guru was convicted for his involvement in a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament when a suicide squad of five attackers stormed India's parliament complex killing seven people but were shot before they could enter the main chamber. Guru was convicted of helping organize arms for the gunmen. On Tuesday police in New Delhi also arrested a former Delhi University professor SAR Geelani on sedition charges after authorities claimed that the request for the space for the rally against Guru’s hanging came through Geelani’s email address (BBC). Geelani was a co-accused in the parliament attack case, but the Supreme Court cleared him in 2003. 

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 17, 2016 at 8:22am

Top academics including Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler condemn #India's #Modi's action at #JNU http://scroll.in/latest/803722/top-academics-including-noam-chomsky... … via @scroll_in

Members of the Indian and international academic community have come together in solidarity with the students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University and condemned the Centre’s actions against them. Two separate statements are being circulated, with their lists of signatories including some of the biggest names in Western academia, including Noam Chomsky, Orhan Pamuk, Judith Butler, Arjun Appadurai, Partha Chatterjee and Homi Bhabha.

The statements decry the police action against the students as being illegal, and state that the university should be autonomous as “a non-militarised space for freedom of thought and expression.” The statements criticise the sedition charge brought against JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar, saying he was arrested without any evidence of wrongdoing. All the protests on campus have been peaceful, they said, and the law stipulates the necessity of a call to violence.

They go on to add that the Centre’s action betrays “the culture of authoritarian menace that the present government in India has generated.” The academics also state that “an open, tolerant, and democratic society is inextricably linked to critical thought and expression cultivated by universities in India and abroad.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 17, 2016 at 7:05pm

"We were attacked, called #Pakistan ke dalle (pimps)": #India SC panel on assault by #Modi supporters on #JNU. #BJP https://shar.es/14Oy4a 

Perturbed by reports of lawlessness at the Patiala House Courts complex when JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar was produced, the Supreme Court Wednesday made Delhi Police Commissioner B S Bassi “personally responsible” for the safety of the student leader who has been booked in a sedition case.
The bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Abhay M Sapre had to step in twice during the day to make sure “no harm is caused” to Kanhaiya, lawyers and journalists, and sought an explanation from the Delhi Police on reports that Kanhaiya was assaulted.
“It is reported today by the members of the (Supreme Court-appointed) committee that the accused was manhandled while he was produced before the (trial) court today. We, therefore, make it clear that the responsibility is exclusively that of the Commissioner of Police, Delhi to ensure the safety of the accused,” the bench ordered.

The committee told the bench that they too were abused and called “Pakistan ke dalle” (pimps of Pakistan), “beh……”, that flower pots, bottles and pebbles were thrown at them at Patiala House Courts.
The day began with the bench hearing a petition filed by JNU alumnus N D Jayaprakash, demanding safety of the accused, journalists and others, apart from directives to the Delhi Police to ensure that access to justice is available to Kanhaiya too. Senior lawyers K T S Tulsi, Rajeev Dhavan, Raju Ramachandran and advocate Prashant Bhushan appealed for intervention by the apex court.
Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, appearing for Delhi High Court, told the bench that the administrative committee of the High Court was looking into the matter and had also sought a report on Monday’s incident from the chief judge of the Patiala House Courts. “The committee is meeting at 2 pm again today to discuss the matter further,” Luthra said.
Representing Delhi Police, senior lawyer Ajit K Sinha described Monday’s incident as “unfortunate”, adding that it happened in a charged atmosphere. “CRPF has also been deployed now. There are six ACPs and women SHOs stationed at Patiala House courts. Investigation is on regarding the earlier incident,” Sinha said.
At this, the bench issued a string of directives to ensure a conducive atmosphere during the hearing at Patiala House Courts where Kanhaiya was to be produced before a magistrate following completion of his police custody.
Directing Delhi Police to “take control of the situation,” the bench ordered restricted entry of lawyers, visitors and journalists inside the magistrate’s court room after Sinha assured no law and order problem would arise anymore.
But less than two hours after this order, Kapil Sibal and Prashant Bhushan showed up before the bench again at 2 pm, informing it about fresh violence at the Patiala House Courts and the attack on Kanhaiya.
At this, the bench summoned Sinha and sought a report on the incident. He was told to convey to the Police Commissioner the “concerns” of the court on the situation. The bench action must be taken against everyone irrespective of profession. It turned down a plea to summon Bassi, saying he must be busy in monitoring the situation but asked Sinha to speak to him immediately.
Around 3 pm, the apex court also appointed a five-member team of lawyers — Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Dhavan, Haren P Raval, Dushyant Dave and A D N Rao — to visit Patiala House Courts, along with Sinha, and report back on the situation there. Sinha was asked to speak to Bassi over the phone to provide adequate security to the panel.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 17, 2016 at 9:23pm

#India's culture wars holding country back #caste, #colonialism, #Sedition . #JNU #dalitvirodhimodi #Modi #Facebook http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/indias-culture-wars-are-h...

In just seven weeks, the new year seems to have become troublingly old for India. Three old issues with all their upsetting associations – caste, colonialism and potentially seditious dissent – are back on the news agenda. They’ve restarted some very unpleasant conversations and in such a corrosive way that there is a sense of a country deeply polarised and almost at war with itself.

In January, the suicide of a lower caste Hindu doctoral student triggered nationwide protests as well as knee-jerk official defensiveness. Last week, India’s rejection of Facebook’s free, basic internet service raised questions about the implications of its ingrained fear of foreign dominance. And a row over the right to public dissent is rumbling on. It started just days ago with a police crackdown on the campus of a leading university in the capital New Delhi.

All three events are linked in a way that goes beyond being newsworthy. They have the same pathology. All are deeply embedded in the Indian psyche, sickening the body politic and rendering debate unfit for purpose. It may be fair to say that the hold of these three issues has never really been meaningfully discussed with complete candour, in any way that would acknowledge the real difficulties of laying them to rest.

Consider the snowballing controversy over allegedly seditious activity, especially on university campuses. Last week, the head of the student union of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University was arrested for sedition, under a law that dates to British rule. This university is sometimes described as an Indian Berkeley, with a proud tradition of left-wing debate on a range of issues such as communalism, social marginalisation, market forces, nuclear disarmament and the role of religion in politics.

The student leader’s alleged offence was to organise a protest against the hanging three years ago of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri separatist who was convicted and put to the death over a 2001 plot to attack India’s parliament. Guru always denied plotting the attack and his execution triggered protests in Jammu and Kashmir.
---
Some Indian commentators criticised the government’s response as “disproportionate” and far more insidious than an attempt to crush dissent; it “wants to crush thinking”. JNU research scholar Saib Bilaval wrote that it was “the othering of liberalism”, making it “unpatriotic” to profess liberal views. Students on other campuses have since spoken up about the right to free expression and an editorial headlined “Do not disagree” in the Indian Express newspaper thundered that the message of the JNU arrest sits uneasily with India’s overwhelmingly youthful demographic.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of sedition cases pointing to lower tolerance of dissent. More damagingly, it indicates an incomplete examination of the nature and mechanics of nation-building. In the 69th year of its independence from British rule, some might justifiably say that India seems less confident about the limits – and merits – of democratic criticism and the role this plays in citizens’ compact with the state. The JNU row will subside, but the issue won’t go away.
-----

Finally, colonialism. There are differing views worldwide on net neutrality, the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source. But when Indian regulators banned Facebook’s “Free Basics”, a programme controversially providing free mobile internet in poor countries, it was hard not to see it as a sign of a general anxiety about unfair foreign competition with the intention to dominate.

Software billionaire Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Bangalore-based IT group Infosys, recently admitted as much. “There is this real rising fear in India about digital colonialism,” he said.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 18, 2016 at 9:54am

Protests Against #India Student Leader's Arrest Spread - ABC News - #JNU #Modi #BJP http://abcn.ws/1mJeN15 via @ABC

A protest that rocked a New Delhi university this week spread across India on Thursday, with students and teachers in at least 10 cities demanding the release of a student leader arrested on sedition charges and accused of being anti-Indian.

The protesters were outraged by nationally televised scenes of Kanhaiya Kumar, the student union president at Jawaharlal Nehru University, being kicked and punched while he was escorted to a court hearing Wednesday, renewing allegations that the Hindu nationalist governing party is intolerant.

He was arrested last Friday over his participation in events where anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted. A New Delhi court has ordered him to stay in custody for two weeks. The court will hear his bail plea on Friday.

The demands for the student's freedom in the Indian capital were met by mobs of Hindu nationalists, including many lawyers, attacking students and accusing them of being anti-Indian.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party and other Hindu groups accuse left-wing student groups of anti-nationalism because of their criticism of the 2013 execution of a Kashmiri separatist convicted of an attack on Parliament.

Kumar's treatment and attacks on teachers who supported him have triggered allegations that the Modi government and the BJP are cracking down on political dissent in the name of patriotism.

Soon after the protests began, India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted that anyone shouting anti-India slogans "will not be tolerated or spared."

The violence by lawyers occurred despite the Supreme Court ordering the police to ensure security in the court and has drawn wide criticism of the lawyers and police.

"Such a deliberate obstruction of justice amounts to constitutional contempt and cannot go unpunished," said Maja Daruwala of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

The Bar Council of India said it had appointed a three-member panel to investigate the violence by lawyers.

"We are going to take a strong action against them," Council president Manan Kumar Mishra said. "We are going to punish the lawyers if they are found guilty," he said before apologizing on behalf of the lawyer community.

On Thursday, students in at least 10 Indian cities marched through the streets and denounced Kumar's arrest.

In New Delhi, thousands of students, professors and journalists gathered in the center of the city. They carried flowers as a sign of peace, Indian flags and placards saying, "Free Speech under attack" and "Just because I don't agree, doesn't mean I am an anti-national."

Police said the rally was not authorized, but allowed the march to proceed to a central space used frequently for public protests.

In the southern city of Chennai, 40 students were arrested after they clashed with police.

In Kolkata, police were on alert as two groups of students held rival rallies in the Jadavpur University campus. Student groups affiliated with the BJP demanded strict action against Kumar and others who they accused of being anti-Indian.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 18, 2016 at 9:20pm

#Kashmir was never integral part of #India: Arundhati Roy. #Pakistan http://m.thehindu.com/news/national/kashmir-was-never-integral-part... …\

Activist Arundhati Roy, who created a controversy by questioning Jammu and Kashmir's accession to the Union, on Sunday said the State was never an integral part of India.

“Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. It is a historical fact. Even the Indian government has accepted this,” the Booker Prize winner said.

Ms. Roy alleged that India became “colonising power” soon after its Independence from the British rule.

She was speaking at a seminar on the theme ‘Wither Kashmir: Freedom or enslavement' organised by the Coalition of Civil Societies (CCS) here.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 19, 2016 at 8:10am

#Modi's siege on #JNU: #Hindutva's battle for #India's classrooms is out in the open http://qz.com/619185 via @qzindia

The clusterfuck that is the current row over Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is not really about Kanhaiya Kumar’s alleged sedition. It is merely one episode in a colossal tussle between the Left and Right over a prize catch: education, the shaping of the future citizen.

And there is apparently no place too low to go in pursuit of that quest.
The Indian state has criminally neglected education for decades. Despite plenty of primary schools, a Right to Education Act, and all the right policy noises, our education system is abysmal. Schools are often just empty rooms; teachers are absent or barely more literate than their students; a lack of infrastructure—from toilets to educational materials—hinders both enrolment and learning outcomes. Kids suffer the same social discrimination inside classrooms as they do outside.
Higher education has gotten more attention, and islands of excellence such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and JNU regularly produce people who do India proud. But in general, the absolutely crucial role of education in nation-building has suffered from an inexplicable lack of political backing.
Today’s central government, for all its dull-witted devotion to Vedic flying machines and cow urine, is sharply cognizant of the power of the classroom. And it will do all it can to capture it and cast it in its image. The Sangh Parivar is very clear about what kind of Indians it wants in India, and much more driven and organised in the pursuit of that aim.

Want a Hindutva nation that purges itself of “westernised”, “socialist” thinking? Catch ’em young and mould them.
Campuses are rich sources of leadership. You just have to take the campus as a place where people are exposed to new ideas and learn to think for themselves, and recast it as a boot camp. And if you can’t corral them into your way of thinking, intimidate them with the threat of violence.
The patriotism bogey

That project of re-educating India along Hindutva lines has been underway for much longer than two years. The RSS shakha is a potent classroom, and there are Hindu groups that enthusiastically train armies of children in the use of weapons and rhetoric to “fight ISIS” (read Muslims). This project has only picked up momentum since May 2014.
Narendra Modi’s right-leaning Hindutva government is deeply anti-intellectual, obscurantist, and regressive. Its ministers are comically incompetent, its public relations tone-deaf, and its instincts stone age.
Smriti Irani, India’s human resources development minister, wasn’t chosen for her progressive educational views. From the cultural chaperoning of Indian cinema-goers by the censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani to the ruckus at the Film and Television Institute of India over the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan to the mess at JNU, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is going for the jugular of Indian education.
When, crying sedition, the home ministry waded into what should have been an internal university matter at JNU, it did so with naked strategy, wearing only a bikini of incompetence.
But however stupid and embarrassing this government may be, it is very good at replicating its thinking by stoking rage and hatred.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 1, 2016 at 5:20pm

Controversial student activists of #Hindu #RSS #ABVP turn #India's universities into ideological battlegrounds. #BJP http://fw.to/YKln0HJ 

They have disrupted movie screenings, scuffled with fellow students and briefly held a liberal journalist hostage.

And in recent weeks, the political activism of the student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad has become even more controversial in India.

Activists with the ABVP – which springs from the same Hindu nationalist organization as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party – complained about a campus event at the University of New Delhi where students condemned the hanging of a convicted terrorist.

Top government officials launched an investigation. Students who organized the Feb. 9 event were charged with sedition and the president of the student union was jailed.

That followed an episode at a university in the southern city of Hyderabad, where ABVP members complained to federal education officials about a student protest against the execution of a man convicted for his role in serial bombings in 1993. One student targeted in the complaint committed suicide.

The agitations have turned India’s university campuses into a battleground between liberal, secular voices and supporters of Modi’s conservative government – of which ABVP has become among the most prominent. The group’s leaders say they are fighting an ideological battle against professors and others they accuse of downplaying the traditions of India’s Hindu majority to appease minorities.

“There is a myth called secularism, which believes in denying Indian culture and tradition,” said Sunil Ambekar, national organizing secretary for the ABVP. “And these so-called intellectuals propagated this myth for all these years…. Instead of teaching patriotism, they encourage anti-national activities.”

Secularism is enshrined in India’s constitution, and professors who have clashed with ABVP say that India’s right-wing establishment sees an opportunity to promote a pro-Hindu agenda at universities. Professors worry that the group’s rising influence is shrinking the space for free debate.

“The government is using ABVP as its foot soldiers because to bring about ideological change in society, it is better to start with students,” said Milind Awad, assistant professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where the February incident occurred.

ABVP maintains it is independent of the BJP, although many party leaders, including government ministers Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad, were members.

The group claims to be India’s largest student organization, with 9,800 chapters nationwide. Its membership doubled from 1.1 million in 2003 to 2.2 million a decade later. In 2014, the year Modi took office, the group said it added more than 900,000 members.

The group traces its roots to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a hard-line Hindu nationalist organization that was temporarily banned after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 for spreading hatred against the independence leader. The organization, which also spawned the BJP, formed the student group to attract young followers.

Yadunath Deshpande, secretary of the ABVP in Mumbai, organized symposiums across universities last year with the aim of getting students to think “pro-nation.” One topic focused on “Indianizing” the subjects that students are taught.

“There are many aspects of our rich history ignored in India’s education curriculum,” Deshpande said.

Deshpande vigorously denied that the BJP had any say in its functioning.

“Students are gravitating towards ABVP because we take up student issues,” he said. “We will not hesitate in standing up to this government either if the situation arises.”

Tensions between the right and left wings have long roiled Indian university campuses. The difference now, many observers say, is that ABVP’s links to the governing party are prompting top officials to become involved in the disputes.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 3, 2016 at 9:44pm

Cultural event at #India's Jadavpur University defends #Kashmir’s right to #Azadi #FreeKashmir via @htTweets http://www.hindustantimes.com/kolkata/cultural-event-at-jadavpur-un...

Jadavpur University (JU) students defended Kashmiri people’s ‘right to seek Azadi’ during a cultural event held on the campus on Tuesday, setting the stage for another confrontation with members of right-wing parties who have recently equated such views as anti-national.
Singer-turned-politician and former Trinamool Congress MP Kabir Suman performed at the event that was attended by more than 500 students and faculty members.
Recently a section of JU students put up alleged anti-national posters and chanted slogans in support of Afzal Guru and Yakub Menon, both of whom were hanged for their involvement in separate terror attacks.
The event was organised to protest the arrest of Jawahar Lal Nehru students Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. Filmmaker Aniket Chattopadhyay and human rights activist Sujato Bhadra were among those who participated.
“India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had promised to hold plebiscite in Kashmir. That has not been fulfilled yet. The people are still being bombarded and killed. What else would they do other than seek ‘Azadi’ from the miserable lives they have been forced to live?”, said Sushil Mandi, a spokesperson of Leftwing student outfit Radical, which organised the programme.
He also defended certain JNU students who raised slogans demanding ‘azadi for Kashmir’ and eulogising Afzal Guru, the Parliament attack convict who was hanged.
“A lot of people in Kashmir consider Afzal Guru a martyr. Even the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) considers him a martyr. What’s wrong if JNU students, or any other person in this country, felt Afzal was a martyr?” Mandi asked.
Kabir Suman, a JU alumnus, performed a number of songs, including those that he composed protesting the killing of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines, encounter deaths of Ishrat Jahan and Fulmoni Tudu and the suicide of Rohith Vemula. One of his songs, “Afzal Guru shono, Srinagar-a hobe dekha,” roughly translates to “See you in Srinagar, Afzal.” Suman also said that he is sympathetic to the Maoists’ cause.

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 13, 2016 at 11:02pm

#Christian persecution by #Hindus rises in #India, say humanitarian groups | Fox News. #Modi #BJP http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/03/14/christian-persecution-by-hi...

According to various news reports, there have been 26 documented incidents of religiously motivated violence against Christians spread across the subcontinent since Jan. 1. Incidents of violence against Christians have always existed in one form or another, but were usually limited to a particular region or issue.

However, the violence has begun to spread with Hindu radicals enjoying near complete impunity for their actions.

“They are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” Jeff King, president of the International Christian Concern, told FoxNews.com. “There has been an increase in attacks because these nationalists feel emboldened with [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi in power.

Local police officials took no action against the aggressors in many of the incidents. One such was Jan. 29 in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu when a mob of over 30 radicals in the village of Ettimadai ruthlessly attacked, beat, and dragged a Catholic priest and three church officials from their car.

All four men tried to flee from the mob but were eventually caught. The mob then dragged and beat them for a mile and a half. Despite pleas for help during the incident, police stood idly by.

All four men were hospitalized as a result, with the priest requiring treatment in the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital.

The group was first approached by the mob while they were waiting in their car outside the police station to speak with authorities regarding the arrest of a priest and two others from an AIDS/HIV clinic run by the church.

Just two weeks earlier, in the Nizamabad District of Telangana State, a local pastor and members of his congregation were savagely beaten by a mob of 40 Hindu radicals after they falsely accused him of trying to convert Hindus to Christianity.

According to locals, the attack occurred during a Christian prayer gathering and resulted in the hospitalization of six, including a four-year-old girl whose leg was broken during the attack.

----

The rash of outbreaks led humanitarian groups like the ICC to campaign in Washington to put pressure on Modi and the BDP to stop the wave of extreme nationalism.

“His silence is tacit approval,” King of the ICC said. “Push came to shove once before and he [Modi] had to come out and say that India is tolerant and the nationalists backed down.

“And the most of the populace is very tolerant, but he needs to come out again and rein in his party.”

Late last month, a bipartisan letter was sent to Modi by eight U.S. senators and 26 members of Congress, requesting that he strongly and publicly condemn the acts of persecution.

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