IAMC Weekly News Digest, 26th November 2021

November 26, 2021

IAMC Weekly News Digest, 26th November 2021

U.S. NGO Names Modi Among World’s Seven Worst Persecutors, Clubs RSS With Taliban

Photo: IAMC

A reputed global Christian organization has named Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi among the world’s seven biggest persecutors of religious minorities and called for the U.S. government to impose visa and economic sanctions on India to pressure it to end that persecution.

In a report, “2021 Persecutor of the Year Awards,” released here this month, the International Christian Concern (ICC) clubbed the “Sangh Parivar,” India’s Hindu extremist movement that informs Modi’s ideology and policies, with the Taliban and the Boko Haram, and named India as one of the world’s seven biggest persecutors….

“The U.S. and its allies should consider economic and visa sanctions against key decision-makers in the Modi administration,” the report said. Also, the U.S. Congress should designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations,” and also “emphasize improving religious freedom conditions at the national level with India in any future strategic or economic partnerships.”…

MP: Labourer’s Hand Chopped off for Asking for Pending Wages; Three Held

Photo: Anand Dwivedi/Rail Info

A 45-year-old labourer’s hand was chopped off allegedly by his employer when he asked for his pending wages in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa district, an official said on Sunday, adding three persons were arrested.

The incident occurred at Dolmau village under the Sirmaur police station, about 40 km away from the Rewa district headquarters, on Saturday, police said.

The victim, Ashok Saket, who belongs to a scheduled caste, had earlier worked as a labourer in construction work for one Ganesh Mishra in Dolmau village, assistant superintendent of police (ASP) Shiv Kumar Verma said, adding that Mishra was allegedly dilly-dallying paying the pending wages…. The accused tried to hide the severed arm nearby, which was traced later, the ASP said….

India’s Farmers Have Forced Modi to Retreat But He Will Be BACK, With More Religious Polarization – By Debasish Roy Chowdhury

Photo: Ian Forsyth/Time

India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister isn’t given to apologizing. For years, hoping for some sign of remorse, the media kept asking Narendra Modi if he ever regretted the 2002 pogrom against Muslims in the western state of Gujarat, when he was its top elected official. The closest they ever got was when he said – more than a decade later – that it was natural for anybody to feel bad if a “puppy comes under the wheels” of a car.

So, when Modi made an apology of sorts on Nov. 19, promising to repeal agrarian laws that had triggered an unprecedented, year-long farmers’ protest, it was met with joy, surprise and skepticism in equal measure. While the opposition can’t stop exulting at Modi’s about face, it is also warning that it could be a ploy to revive the laws later. Pointedly, Modi said sorry for failing to persuade the farmers of the necessity of the laws, not for the measures themselves.

The farmers, whose protests attracted global attention, have been celebrating the climbdown. But they are not calling off the protests until the formal repeal of the three contentious farm laws – which were, in essence, a bid to replace the government-controlled agrarian sector with the free market – and the introduction of guaranteed minimum prices for crops. That they won’t take the prime minister at his word is a function of the level of animosity between the two sides….