Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Notes from South Asia. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
Today, we will cover democratic decline in India, eviction of Afghans from Pakistan, and repression of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
India
Persecution Rising
India’s Hindu Supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s has been persecuting activists, journalists, and Muslims for the past few years. I am sure you know about it since I have shared stories here. Betwa Sharma writes for Article-14 about the persecution of one such well known activist, Harsh Mander, and through the story demonstrates India’s democratic decline.
After a decade of relentless criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the most powerful man in the country, Narendra Modi, peace activist and former Indian official Harsh Mander faces investigation by two union government agencies and a litany of allegations that have tarred his reputation and upended his humanitarian work. Bruised by a seemingly unending probe and an assault on his integrity, the 69-year-old has quietly soldiered on. In the first of a two-part story, we explain how his prosecution reflects the decline recorded by global freedom surveys in India's democracy and its rule of law.
Mander’s organisation has been targeted for “supposed” financial fraud, and that has been taking a toll on not just his work but personal relations.
As he leaned forward to share his breakfast of cut papaya, Mander said most of his employees had left since the government started accusing him of grave financial crimes, summoned him and them for questioning, and stopped the foreign funding that sustained the research they did to advocate policies for the poor and marginalised.
Domestic donors, too, had deserted him, and he had scrambled to arrange for other NGOs to step in and keep the humanitarian work going.
The one good thing that had happened to Mander was not getting kicked out of the serene office space in a leafy corner of the city. His landlord, whose grandfather was a soldier in Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, was unmoved by the litany of allegations that had succeeded in tarring and feathering Mander’s reputation, even though after months of investigation, the state did not have a case to take to court.
A relentless critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his government, and the Hindu nationalist vision of India, Mander was one of many detractors targeted by the police and federal agencies since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.
However, Mander said he could not help feeling that there were still officers who were not indifferent to his past as a civil servant, two decades of social service and that people believed him to be a favourite for the Nobel Peace Prize for many years.
The first thing Mander said about the raids by union government agencies on his home was that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers were far more courteous than those of the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The CBI officers followed procedure when they showed up at his doorstep on 2 February, inviting him to search them to rule out the possibility of planting evidence during the raid. They completed the search in a few hours and left, taking the ED's “seizure memo”—the list of things the ED seized in the raid two and a half years earlier.
“It is like a dark comedy at times,” said Mander. “My daughter jokes that the next agency that comes raiding will take the CBI's seizure memo.”
Suroor Mander called her father “Mr Mander” while discussing his legal cases.
Telling the story of an employee who was summoned for interrogation and shown dozens of videos of protests against a controversial citizenship law, Suroor Mander said, “They kept pointing to a bald man and saying isn’t that Harsh Mander. He replied, ‘not every bald person is Harsh Mander’”.
As father and daughter looked at each other, Suroor Mander said, “We have lived these black comedy moments.”
Interesting that Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had been more courteous. I wonder if that is because CBI has been a bit more independent than the Enforcement Directorate (ED) before this regime. Thanks to ED’s mandate (against corruption and money laundering), it is far more liable to be used in vendetta state politics.
As the BJP and Modi seek a third five-year term, the last two terms have been marked by a steep decline in civil liberties and press freedom, widespread Islamophobia, prosecution of critics under harsh counterterror and financial crimes laws, and deep antipathy for civil society organisations like think tanks and NGOs.
The BJP is running an explicit anti-Muslim campaign, with the prime minister giving his most Islamophobic speech yet. It was only after pressure from the public and opposition did the country’s election watchdog issue a warning that the speech violated the rules for contesting elections.
The delay underlined long-standing concerns about the waning autonomy of independent institutions and whether the Election Commission could deliver a free and fair election.
When India started falling in international surveys on civil liberties, the Modi government dismissed unfavourable studies as inaccurate and a result of propaganda.
In March 2024, V Dem, which has ranked India as an “electoral autocracy” since 2018, said India, among the worst offenders for censoring the media and Internet shutdowns, had “declined significantly on democracy”. In May 2024, Reporters Without Borders said the Indian media was in an “unofficial state of emergency” due to Modi’s closeness to families controlling the media. Even though India’s rank had improved from 161 to 159 due to poorer performances by other countries, the group said “its new position is still unworthy of a democracy”.
Mander has been one of the loudest voices opposing Hindu majoritarianism and anti-Muslim hate while running a campaign to help victims of hate crimes and communal violence with monetary assistance and legal aid.
His persistent criticism of Modi since the Gujarat riots in 2002, when the prime minister was chief minister of the state, has made him particularly annoying to the most powerful man in the country.
The first raid by a child rights body occurred in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic when Mander was very critical of the government lockdown that left millions of poor people stranded across the country. In the next three years and seven months, Mander was accused of mismanaging homeless shelters for children, misappropriation of funds, money laundering and breaking the rules for receiving foreign funds.
Mander has denied these allegations and moved the Delhi High Court for quashing these FIRs. No chargesheet has been filed yet. We will look more closely at how Mander has responded in a second piece.
Remember that these cases are made up stories and not true.
There is no paywall. You can read the rest.
Hate muslims, Mistrust Congress and Vote for Us
The BJP and its leading politicians, especially the Prime Minister and Home Minister continue to engage in hate speech. And the Election Commission is loathe to act. Ayush Tiwari reports for the Scroll about ECI’s failure to act against hate speech.
On April 21, Ankit Shukla came across a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an election rally in Banswara, Rajasthan. In his speech, Modi accused the Congress party of planning to collect gold from Hindu households and distributing it to Muslims, whom he called “infiltrators” and “those with more children”.
As Scroll pointed out, the prime minister’s speech was riddled with lies.
Shukla, a Pune-based software engineer, had never written to the Election Commission of India before. But later that night, he drafted an email to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, imploring him to take the “strictest action” against Modi. “No such person whose mind is filled with the poison of hate and bigotry against Indians should be allowed to continue to participate in the Indian elections,” said his email.
Shukla has not yet received a response to his email.
In this election season, the prime minister has led the charge against the Opposition by repeatedly pitting disadvantaged communities against Muslims. He has falsely claimed that the Congress manifesto promises to scrap reservation for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Classes and award it to Muslims. The Bharatiya Janata Party handles on social media have been accused of posting videos that “demonise Muslims”.
But the Election Commission’s neutrality in dealing with complaints of poll violations by the Hindutva party has come under intense scrutiny.
For instance, the Election Commission sent a notice to BJP chief JP Nadda eight days after Modi’s Banswara speech – without naming the prime minister. The poll panel also waited till the end of the Karnataka election to instruct Twitter to take down an offensive video posted by the BJP Karnataka handle on May 4 that caricatured Muslims as a parasitic bird that pushed other chicks – labelled SC, ST and OBC – out of the nest after being fed “funds” by Congress politician Rahul Gandhi.
Again, no reprimand was issued to the Hindutva party.
Ordinary citizens troubled by these instances of hate speech and violations of the model code of conduct have tried to push the Election Commission to act.
But, as Scroll found out, the Election Commission’s official channels to address complaints from ordinary voters about poll code violations – the CVigil app and the National Grievance Redressal System – either do not work or provide poor resolution.
It is hard to hope that INDIA (opposition alliance) will win when the ground is so tilted. So far, turnout has been lower than usual in many places. One reason could be heat since India is seeing a heat wave (as are other South Asian and East Asian countries). There are also reports of police intimidation of voters in Uttar Pradesh along with bogus votes in Gujarat.
But the voter dissatisfaction is there. So, let us hope.
Never Mind the Heat. Vote for Us
Aradhna Wal writes for Himal South Asian about the lack of accurate description and discussion of the soaring temperatures the country is seeing in India’s legacy media.
A recent report noted that India’s legacy media mostly does not establish the link between heatwaves and climate change in its coverage as accurately as available data now allows for. The report, co-authored by the research organisation Climate Trends and researchers at the Reuters Institute of Journalism at Oxford and the University of Queensland, studied print and digital media coverage after the lethal heatwaves that India experienced in 2022. The researchers found that, from March to May 2022, many Indian legacy media outlets did not report on the link between climate change and extreme heat, or did not report on it accurately. They surveyed articles and some videos in English, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu media, and found that only 14 percent of the English-language articles mentioned climate change in context of the heatwaves. That figure was 24 percent for English-language news videos, seven percent for Hindi articles, and six percent for articles in Marathi.
There is ample scientific evidence from global attribution studies showing that extreme weather events are influenced, even amplified, by climate change. The 2022 heatwaves in India, which broke temperature records, was made 30 times more likely by climate change. Most English-language material studied for the report that did mention climate change did so in a scientifically precise or comprehensive manner: they established it as a significant but not primary cause of heatwaves. Most of the surveyed regional-language coverage however, fell into the trap of simply stating that climate change was the sole cause of heatwaves.
The researchers described this manner of reporting as buying into the idea of “direct binary causation”, which does not take into account the influence of local factors, local infrastructure and the lack of local interventions, which are all essential to understanding where and how heatwaves occur. Such coverage, researchers feared, does not hold local governance accountable for its part in the problem, or encourage communities to participate in collective interventions.
One reason seems to be a lack of availability of material in regional languages or languages other than English.
“PEOPLE IN VILLAGES want to know what’s happening because they can see the changes in weather,” Brijendra Dubey, a Hindi reporter from Mirzapur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, said. Dubey writes regularly for the independent news site Gaon Connection, which trains and platforms reporters from rural India. The report also pointed to the lack of training available for regional media journalists and the “difficulty of translating or transliterating scientific or quasi-technical terms into Hindi or other languages.” Dubey is an exception to the norm. “My editors taught me to understand climate science,” he explained. “A lot of reporters in villages and smaller towns don’t get this training, and TV journalism does not pay attention to narratives that are important.”
If journalists were to report thoroughly on predicted heat on each polling day once the necessary data is available, and communicate how devastating it can be, they could influence local administrations to ensure that adequate safety measures are in place. Dubey pointed out that local journalists can also make climate change an election issue by, for instance, reporting on pressing local climate-related issues that they are already acutely familiar with from working on the ground at different constituencies. He did not believe, however, that major Indian media houses would give space to such stories.
Blaming the heat only on global warming makes people think there is nothing they, or more importantly, their government can do. Which is why detailing how the heat is affected by local factors and how these can be mitigated is important. Reporters must always make local connections for any news to have an impact.
Pakistan
Afghan Refugees in Crisis
Jamaima Afridi writes for Himal South Asian that Pakistan’s deportation of Afghans have expanded to include registered migrants.
ZARA BIBI, a 29-year-old resident of Karachi Malir, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, is deeply frightened by the possibility of their family being deported. Bibi’s family, originally from Afghanistan, hold Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), issued by the Pakistan government in 2017 during a drive to provide documentation to unregistered Afghan migrants. As such, they hoped that they would not be forced to leave Sindh when Pakistan first announced its intention to deport all “undocumented” Afghan migrants by the end of October 2023. But those hopes were short-lived, as Zara’s husband was detained by the police in Karachi despite holding an ACC.
“My spouse was arrested unlawfully, and we had a difficult time getting him released,” Bibi recounted. While the family was eventually able to secure his release, news of a fresh wave of deportations shattered their illusions of safety. “We are so worried about what we are going to do in Afghanistan as we are born and raised here.”
Zara Bibi is not alone in her concerns. Last year, Pakistan carried out a first wave of deportations of Afghans living in the country, thought to number some 4 million in total. At least 515, 000 people returned to Afghanistan between September 2023 and February 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration. The fresh wave of deportations, set to begin after 15 April, will impact as many as 880,000 refugees who received ACCs in 2017. Of these, women are particularly at risk once they return to Afghanistan, where the Taliban government is imposing increasing restrictions on women’s freedoms, including their rights to work, receive an education and enter public spaces.
“The announcements of deportations in various phases worsen the existing unstable circumstances of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and risk their lives,” Moniza Kakar, a lawyer and refugee advocate, said. She added that journalists and musicians also face serious risks upon returning to Afghanistan given Taliban-imposed restrictions on press freedom and music, considered to be un-Islamic by the regime.
Pakistani authorities have justified the deportations by pointing to rising crossborder militant attacks, mostly linked to the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan has repeatedly attributed the attacks to Afghan nationals and complained that the TTP enjoys a safe haven in Afghanistan. There are also wider geopolitical factors in play, as Pakistan’s relationship with the Afghan Taliban continues to fray.
Deporting women and musicians to Afghanistan must be considered a crime and a violation of international law. :(
A Year from 9th of May
A year from May 9 when riots erupted in Pakistan after Imran Khan was arrested, the Dawn looks back on the riots and aftermath.
At least 10 people lost their lives and hundreds sustained injuries, while approximately 40 public buildings and military installations were damaged, including Lahore Corps Commander’s House (Jinnah House) and Askari Tower in Lahore, General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Office in Faisalabad, FC Fort in Chakdara, Radio Pakistan building in Peshawar, Toll Plaza at Swat Motorway and the Mianwali Air Base.
In total, 62 outbreaks of violence were documented, inflicting a loss of Rs2.5 billion on the country, of which, according to the State, Rs1.98 billion in losses were suffered by the army.
To this day, the military says the events were a coordinated attack by the PTI leadership.
“Nothing is hidden about May 9. The public, the army and we all have irrefutable evidence. All of us saw this incident unfolding, we all saw how everyone was [brainwashed] against the army, its leadership, agencies and institutions through lies and propaganda,” Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director general, Maj Gen Ahmed Sharif, said two days before the first anniversary of the May 9 riots.
He added that “some political leaders” had issued orders to their supporters on May 9 to selectively target military installations.
PTI, meanwhile, is demanding a judicial inquiry into May 9 for the “real culprits” while Imran Khan remains behind bars.
The police crack down was brutal. Many of the people arrested were then transferred to military custody.
All of the 10 families that Dawn.com spoke to said the same thing; after the arrest by police and subsequent transfer into military custody, there was silence on the whereabouts of the suspect for at least one or one-and-a-half months.
Tariq*, a resident of Lahore, was at work in Lahore’s Gulberg II area when television channels, almost in unison, broke the news of Imran’s arrest on May 9. He barely paid any attention to it though. “We all knew it was going to happen sooner or later.”
“But then,” he recalled to Dawn.com, “they started running footage of the protests; everything was burning and within a few minutes, we were told to go back home.”
The first thing Tariq did was call his younger brother. The duo, hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla, has been living at a hostel in Lahore for the past few years; one earns while the other studies. [...]
“But when I visited the prison the next day, the officials said he wasn’t there anymore. Upon my insistence, one of the jail officials retrieved a list from his pocket and said my brother had been handed into military custody,” he recalled. “They said he was implicated for attacking the Lahore Corps Commander’s House.”
This was the last time he heard about his brother for several days.
Salima*, another resident of Lahore, said her son was arrested by “Punjab Police officials and plain-clothed men” from a hospital on the night of May 18. “They said his call data record from May 9 showed he was near the Lahore Corps Commander’s House.
The Dawn editorial says that the stand off between Imran Khan’s PTI and the military is the cause of Pakistan’s political instability. The Dawn says Imran Khan was to blame for his narrative that instigated some of the people to riot but that the state is not without blame.
For example, in seeking ‘justice’ for PTI supporters’ defacement of various installations, the homes of countless civilian suspects were raided and vandalised and their residents allegedly harassed by personnel representing the state. Even women prisoners, who otherwise enjoy special protections and concessions under Pakistan’s legal system, were repeatedly denied their right to bail and kept incarcerated without trial in scores of dubious cases.
The PTI-military stand-off has been the root cause of Pakistan’s political instability. Since neither side seems interested in a resolution, perhaps the government should step in. It can offer its best resources to prosecute the May 9 cases in civilian courts, thereby ensuring a transparent judicial process.
Done fairly, this will prevent the two sides from engaging directly with each other, which only seems to be perpetuating the tensions between them. It is important that this chapter be closed satisfactorily so that the nation can move forward.
Sri Lanka
Disappearance of Tamils
The International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) released a report saying that Sri Lankan security forces continue to disappear Tamils. The link has both the report and the press release in English, Sinhala and Tamil. The press release, excerpted below, contains the summary.
Johannesburg: Sri Lankan security forces continue to abduct and disappear young Tamil men and women, and subject them to serious physical and sexual torture, 15 years after the end of the country’s civil war, a new report by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) reveals.
The report, “Disappearance, Torture and Sexual Violence of Tamils, 2015-2022” analysed statements of 123 Tamils, 109 males and 14 females, with most aged between 20-39 years, who in this seven year period were unlawfully picked up and detained by Sri Lanka security forces a total of 139 times. The detentions lasted between one day to as long as one and a half years. The Tamil victims now all live in exile outside Sri Lanka.
The new report, which expands on the ITJP’s previous reports on the detention and torture of Tamils since the war ended in 2009, shows that many of the same methods and practises of abduction, disappearance and torture conducted against the surrendering LTTE fighters and the Tamil civilian population by security forces in the years immediately after the end of the war continue to this day.
The political solution seems far away.
Foreign Currency Crisis
Gayantha Dehiwatte writes for Colombo Telegraph about the roots of Sri Lanka’s foreign currency crisis. He traces the crisis to liberalisation of 1978.
Pre-1978, Sri Lanka upheld economic independence through stringent controls on trade and capital, fostering a production-based economy and eschewing foreign indebtedness. However, the victory of the United National Party in 1978 marked a pivotal shift, embracing free market ideology and neoliberal policies. This shift has brought forth a multitude of economic challenges. Certain individuals often labeled as economic parasites have taken advantage of free market ideology to infiltrate critical sectors such as finance, health, education, energy, media, agriculture, and land. Their primary focus is personal gain, disregarding the nation’s overall welfare. Through regulatory manipulation, this elite class exploits both public and private wealth, masking their actions as societal advancement while prioritizing their own interests.
The liberalization of trade policies during this period sparked rapid deindustrialization, which was compounded by subsequent financial sector liberalization. This fueled a surge in consumerism and led to the accumulation of foreign debt. Consequently, the country’s debt burdens have intensified, exacerbating income inequality. Industries have dwindled, and agriculture has faced challenges, as there’s been a growing dependence on trading for immediate profits, further destabilizing the economy. During this period of economic upheaval, Sri Lanka has experienced a substantial trade deficit and witnessed the depreciation of the Sri Lankan rupee.
The sudden devaluation of the rupee by 100% in 2022 marked a pivotal moment, seen as a move towards seeking assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, amidst this economic turmoil, the majority of Sri Lankans struggle to make ends meet, earning less than $1.35 a day, depriving them of basic necessities and worsening poverty. Economic elites have ensnared Sri Lanka in a cycle of debt servitude, exacerbating inequality and impoverishment. With over 60% of the population burdened by debt, the once vibrant middle class is disappearing. Recent data highlights a stark increase in poverty and income inequality, challenging earlier claims of progress.
Solar Power
Newswire reports that two floating solar projects are set to be complete in July 2024. Not much information on their output, or the larger domain of solar and renewable power in Sri Lanka though.
Two floating solar pilot projects implemented with the financial & technical assistance of the Republic of Korea & in partnership with the Ministry of Power & Energy & The Sustainable Energy Authority is nearing completion, Minister Kanchana Wijesekara said.
The two projects of 1 MW each in Chandrika Wewa in Embilipitiya & Kiriibban Wewa in Sewanagala is constructed with a financial grant from The Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology of Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and implemented with the technical assistance & construction by Yooshing Engineering (Pvt) Ltd, Bosung Powertec Co Ltd & Scotra Company Ltd.
The two projects commenced in 2023 and will be competed by July 2024.
Still, I thought it an important snippet to close with given the state of our climate.
That is it for today. Until next Friday, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Take care.
May we have the power, will and freedom to elect decent and effective representatives and leaders. And may those leaders lead us through the crises we face with minimum loss of life and well beings.