Human Rights Situation in India

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for securing this important debate. Partition of the subcontinent on the fallacy of irreconcilable religious difference gave a green light to religious bigots in India and Pakistan. In 1984, Indira Gandhi’s mass appeal to bigotry led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Sikhs, in what former PM David Cameron described as the greatest blot on post-partition history.

In 2001, Narendra Modi, a member of the RSS, a paramilitary Hindu fascist group, was elected Chief Minister of Gujarat. He was considered to be implicated in the killing of thousands of Muslims throughout the state and for some years barred from entry to the UK and the USA. Years earlier, the paramilitary RSS, modelled on the Hitler Youth, had demolished the centuries-old Muslim Babri Masjid. A compliant Supreme Court has now given permission for a Hindu temple to be built on the site.

Narendra Modi went on to become Prime Minister in 2014 and was re-elected in 2019. Backed by the growing power of the paramilitary RSS, he has never made any secret of his desire to turn India into a Hindu state—a view echoed by other Hindu leaders. The Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, openly refers to Muslims as “termites”. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 denies citizenship to thousands of Muslims. Christian worship is under constant threat in a supposedly secular state. Dalits, the lowest of the low in the Hindu caste system, are treated with brutality and contempt, and their women frequently raped.

Attempts are made by threat and flattery to absorb Sikhs into the Hindu fold, despite clear Sikh teachings repudiating the caste system, idol worship and discrimination against women. Some years back, I wrote to the Foreign Office about a young Sikh from Glasgow who was arrested and tortured by the Indian police for supposedly questioning the government line. He is still incarcerated.

Religious minorities are not the only targets of India’s arrogant new rulers. For more than a year, farmers from across India have been camped on the outskirts of New Delhi in the largest and longest mass demonstration ever seen, to protest against the Government’s unconstitutional rigging of the market to enrich their supporters. Water and power are routinely cut off, and demonstrating farmers savagely beaten by the RSS, under the watchful eyes of the police. Effigies of human rights activists, such as singer Rihanna, have been burnt by mobs for interfering. Amnesty International has been barred from India.

Judges who dare to call out this criminal behaviour are routinely moved. University lecturers and students who protest against India’s growing intolerance are subjected to police brutality. Such brave people are India’s best hope for the future. They deserve our support. They deserve more than the usual Foreign Office response—either “India is the world’s largest democracy”, or “We take these matters extremely seriously, and are in touch with our counterparts in India”.