Ghadar Alliance

New York: Alliance for Justice and Accountability, a broad coalition of organizations and individuals, announced that the rally this morning in New York City during Prime Minister Modi’s event at Madison Square Garden, was a huge success. Hundreds of people, including human rights activists, professionals, students and people from all walks of life attended the rally. Protesters were a large and spirited group of Indian Americans comprising of people of all faiths and ideological persuasions, with one thing in common: they were demanding justice and accountability in the case of Mr. Modi, and an end to repression of minorities and crony capitalism in India.

“The protests have demonstrated the rejection of a leader who represents a hateful and divisive agenda, ” said Robindra Deb, a key AJA organizer of protest on September 28. “We represent the 70% of Indians that did not vote for Mr. Modi,” added Mr. Deb.

AJA protesters were required by law to share protest space with all other groups protesting at MSG. “While we share human rights concerns, AJA does not endorse separatist calls by other groups protesting outside of MSG. These groups were not part of the Alliance” said Shaik Ubaid, a spokesperson for the Alliance.

The first 100 days of Mr. Modi’s tenure as PM have shown to the world the grave dangers posed by the Hindu nationalist ideology to pluralism and the rule of law. Since the national elections that brought Modi’s party to power, the northern state of Uttar Pradesh alone has witnessed over 600 incidents against the Muslim minority. Mr. Modi has imposed severe restrictions on civil society institutions including world-renowned organizations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and is using India’s Intelligence Bureau to tarnish reputed NGOs in India and the diaspora as “anti-national groups.”

Placards could be seen in the large crowd, demanding that Mr. Modi himself be brought to justice and demanding an end to the sectarian agenda of the Hindutva ideology he espouses. Protesters also expressed determination that they would not let the victims of the Gujarat pogroms of 2002, or the subsequent extra-judicial killings and illegal detentions in Gujarat be forgotten. The anti-conversion agenda espoused by Modi’s party has now spiraled into major polarization campaigns led by Hindu nationalist militias to restrict the religious freedoms of minority communities.

Mr. Modi was banned from entering the US by the State Department, under the International Religious Freedom Act for his “egregious violations of religious freedom.” With his election to the post of Prime Minister, the US decided to lift the travel ban, an exemption often given to heads of state.

Protesters also referred to the report released by The Ghadar Alliance (a constituent of AJA) that evaluated Mr. Modi’s first 100 days in office. The meticulously researched report details the ways in which the new government has increased repression of minorities through brazen violations of human rights and religious freedom, dismantled democratic protections, while increasing corporate giveaways. The full report can be found at: http://www.modifacts.org/

“The protests have sent a clear message. The so-called ’welcome’ given to Mr. Modi by the Indian diaspora is far from being uniform,” said Sonia Joseph, an organizer with SASI in NYC. “On the contrary, a large section of the diaspora has decided its time to stand up and be counted among those who will defend secularism and pluralism in India against the onslaught of Hindutva.” she further added.

“Economic development on the graveyard of human rights and rule of law can never go right” said Parchi Patankar, another spokesperson for the Alliance.

Protesters came from all over the US, with the majority having arrived through chartered buses from New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington DC, Boston and Philadelphia.

The Alliance for Justice and Accountability is a US-based coalition of a diverse range of Indian/South Asian organizations and individuals.

– by Ghadar Alliance

The Ghadar Alliance, a US-based educational/watchdog coalition created by concerned citizens in the wake of the BJP victory, today released a comprehensive ‘100-day report’ evaluating the performance of the Modi government’s first 100 days in office. The report, titled “Fast Track to Troubling Times,” is being released as Modi prepares for his first visit to the US as India’s Prime Minister. Modi’s US tour begins on September 26th.

The report is the first independent ‘people’s’ report to be published since Modi came into office, and identifies the economy, religious extremism and human rights as grave areas of concern. “We have been very careful and meticulous in collecting data only from public sources to build an evidence-based and fully data-driven report,” said Raja Swamy, economic anthropologist and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes to the economy, our report shows that the new administration wants to eliminate all democratic protections in favor of corporate giveaways and ripoffs. One example of this are the amendments that the Modi regime has proposed to the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 that do away with meaningful safeguards for those losing land, especially for India’s poor, marginal peasantry and indigenous peoples. The proposed amendments accept in-toto all corporate demands and eliminate existing safeguards. From the evidence available, can we not conclude that the minimal protections for ordinary people are being wiped out to favor corporations?” he added. The report is replete with such detail as it compares the Modi budget with the previous United Progressive Alliance budget, and points to such facts as the BJP government’s plan to raise four times more money through the ‘sale of State assets’ than the previous government did.

The report highlights the empowerment of violent gangs of the supremacist Hindu Right under the Modi dispensation. In the three months since Modi took charge, there have been over 600 cases of anti-minority violence in one single state, Uttar Pradesh (a state in the North), and several cases of forced ‘reconversion’ of Dalits (India’s so-called untouchable castes) to Hinduism. “If there is one thing that is clear already it is that under Modi, Hindu supremacist gangs will virtually rule the streets. There is a palpable sense of insecurity today among minorities, Dalits and women as non-state actors have turned hyper-aggressive, and Modi, through his consistent silence and refusal to hold offenders accountable, has given tacit approval” said Anu Mandavilli of the San Jose Peace and Justice Center and a co-founder of the Ghadar Alliance. “The privileging of economic growth as the primary goal functions to dictate an amnesia about Modi’s Gujarat record with US investors eager to capitalize on the Indian market,” added Professor Snehal Shingavi, also a co-founder of the Ghadar Alliance. “And for many of us born and raised in a racialized US context, the targeting of minorities in India by Hindu reactionaries uncomfortably corresponds to our own experiences with anti-immigrant racism here.”

The report compares the first 100 days of the new government with Modi’s 12 years of rule in Gujarat. “Examining Modi’s first 100 days in the context of his record in Gujarat reveals a number of disturbing parallels, and these parallels legitimize the report’s predictive capacity,” said Mandavilli. The report is the first in a series of actions that the Ghadar Alliance is initiating to keep a consistent and critical focus on the BJP/RSS from outside India. The Founding Committee of the Alliance is intergenerational, of multiple faiths, of diverse professions and geography. “We represent the true diversity of India rather than the narrow homogeneity of Modi supporters lining up to welcome him here in the US,” said Dr. Swamy.

New York protesters to PM Modi: End suppression of minorities and desist from clamping down on civil society institutions

100 days of Modi points to emergent disaster – An independent report released in the US

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