Author: Rana Ayyub
Affiliation: Independent Journalist, Author of Gujarat Files
Organization/Publisher: Rana Ayyub’s Newsletter / Substack
Date/Place: October 20, 2021 / India
Type of Literature: Analysis
Word Count: 2100
Link: https://ranaayyub.substack.com/p/india-is-a-fascist-state
Keywords: India, Fascism, Hindu, Muslim, Modi, Sedition, Kashmir
Brief:
This analysis by author and celebrated journalist Rana Ayyub (based out of New Delhi), provides a bird’s eye view of what India is turning into and why it is happening: anything that seems to portray a Hindu-Muslim amity in the country of 1.3 billion is not welcome, rather it is punishable. She explains how mere Muslim identity has become a nightmare for the country’s second largest community. After the author’s publisher refused to use her months-long investigative report of Modi, she self-published the book which is now known as the Gujarat Files. The author is now using this newsletter platform to report how Modi’s government is systematically targeting Indian Muslims. She details that those who do not fall in line are ruthlessly punished while Modi’s police force is also found to be involved in anti-Muslim activities. When Narendra Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat, he was called a “modern day Nero” by India’s Supreme Court, after his government looked the other way in 2002 when over 1000 Muslims were massacred by mobs of Hindu pogroms in India’s western province of Gujarat. International proof of his complicity on the massacre was raised in a letter to the US Secretary of State by more than 20 US Congressmen who requested that the US deny him entry to the country when he was invited as speaker to a hotel conference in Florida. While India outwardly celebrates Gandhi by holding seminars, inside the country it is the same people who massacred Gandhi who are enjoying the murder of Muslim communities. The rise of Modi has been cemented by the criminal silence of India’s so-called liberal people who have maintained a pin-drop silence on what India is doing in Indian-occupied Kashmir. “When Muslims are not forcibly put in their place on public streets, they are maligned and demonised on the silver screen by the Hindi film industry, which depicts them as barbaric invaders,” the author writes, listing incidents of anti-Muslim practices that took place in September.
By: Riyaz ul Khaliq, CIGA Non-resident Research Associate
