India’s Religious Freedom and Voting Rights Under Pressure, Columnist Argues

In May 2014, Narendra Modi climbed the steps of Parliament for the first time as the nation’s leader. According to the report, he knelt and touched his forehead to the step before entering, and he called the building the temple of democracy. The writer says Modi was right to bow, since a man from a humble backward-caste background had reached the country’s highest office under a Constitution that guarantees equality under law and free and fair elections.

The writer traces the democratic inheritance to the early years of independence. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the chief architect of the Constitution, B. R. Ambedkar, helped establish the principle that every adult, of every caste and faith, had the right to vote. The writer describes Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Dalits standing in the same queue, and argues that this inheritance is now being undermined by the BJP government.

The writer states that Muslims were targeted first. He points to cow protection laws, which he says were tightened and turned into weapons, and to lynchings that followed. He also cites what he calls propaganda about Muslim infiltrators, a new citizenship law and an amended Waqf law, and says Muslims increasingly felt like second-class citizens. He says Christians were next, describing anti-conversion laws that he calls draconian in state after state.

In the state of Bengal, the writer says, Christian gatherings are being attacked and false cases are being registered by right-wing groups, which he describes as fanatical. He reports that Bishop Anil Bhowmick was beaten, his clothes were torn, and a false case was registered against him. These are the writer’s accounts, and the source does not include an independent record of the cases.

The writer also addresses the FCRA Amendment Bill, which Christians are contesting. He says it would allow the government to take over the assets of institutions whose licences are not renewed, and that tens of millions of Indians served by Christian schools and hospitals would feel the effect. He reports that the all-India Christian council leaders gave testimony before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, rejecting the new amendments and explaining how they would create problems for recipients of Christian charity. Their concern for those who depend on such care is a matter of protecting the vulnerable (Psalm 82:3).

The writer next turns to the electoral system. In 2023, he says, the government removed the Chief Justice of India from the panel that chooses election commissioners and replaced him with a Union minister, leaving the Leader of the Opposition as a minority of one on that panel. A Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls then began. The stated reason was that illegal immigrants had entered the system, but the writer says no evidence of that on any serious scale has been produced. By the opposition’s count, close to 140 million names have been struck off. The Commission disputes that figure, but, as the writer notes, no one disputes that the number runs into the tens of millions. The opposition says most of those removed are poor Dalits, Adivasis, backward-caste members and migrant workers, and that young voters were hit hardest.

On 23 September, The Indian Express published an investigation by Ritika Chopra. According to the investigation, two of the three election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had objected in writing for ten months to how the revision was being conducted, and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had been taking decisions on his own. The report says a national storm followed.

On 10 October, the youth protest movement Cockroach Janta Party tried to hold a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The source reports that more than 50,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed to the city, that the movement’s founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was taken off his plane when it landed, and that young people were taken off trains before reaching the capital. It also reports that thousands were detained without due process and that lawyers were not spared. Within a couple of days, Jantar Mantar was removed from the list of places where citizens may protest.

Evidence that eligible voters had been wrongly removed from the rolls had been placed before the Supreme Court for months, the writer says, without relief. On 10 October, Kapil Sibal, one of India’s most senior lawyers, said he was tired of approaching the court and had little hope left. The next day, Sunday 11 October, he appeared at a special hearing on the police restrictions and detentions around the protest. The court directed authorities to ensure normal transport services and lawful freedom of movement, and said it wanted to restore his faith in the institution. On 12 October, Rahul Gandhi led tens of thousands of protesters through New Delhi to the Supreme Court, where petitions were presented challenging the electoral roll revision and the conduct of Gyanesh Kumar.

Source: Read the original report