New Challenges for India
Posted on July 10th, 2014
By Afshain Afzal
Ten US Senators, led by Senator Barbara Boxer, recently wrote a letter to Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, calling on to take immediate action to combat gender based violence and improve the safety of women and girls in India. The letter demanded that more efforts needs to be put in to prevent violence against women, improve victim support services, bring perpetrators to justice, and address other forms of gender-based violence including child marriage.Washington wantsincreased engagement with the Government of India to ensure effective action to curb gender violence. To achieve this objective, beside other tools, International Violence against Women Act, which calls for the US in countries where it is extending foreign assistance, to address the issue of violence against women and girls by helping them to create programs to educate local populations about recognizing and preventing such violence. These clouds indicate that there would be a galaxy of foreign and foreign sponsored NGOs in India, which will leave no stone unturned to implicate Mr. Modi as perpetrator of violence against women.
Interestingly, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) Report for India , 2013, “for every woman who obtains a job, two women are killed at birth, abused in childhood, burnt over dowry, or sexually harassed at work.” Thousands of International and national as well as regional Non Governmental Organizations have joined hands and demanding from the countries like US, Britain and Canada financial support to civil society organizations that are defending the rights of marginalized women and campaigning against the perpetrators of violence before the Indian justice system. These organizations have pulled up their sleeves to campaign against Mr. Modi dubbing him as biggest supporter of violence against women. The basic reason of choosing Mr. Modi as prime target is his convection to highlight true face of India, which is not liked by many Indian parties and the West.
No doubt, India is great tourist attraction but New Delhi must reverse international image of India as safe haven for the sinner and drug addicts to enjoy daughters and mothers of India as cheapest sex recreation point in the world. The Western INGO and their local support organizations will never allow the purity of Eastern women to be restored. In the name of freedom and empowerment of women, an Indian woman has become a commodity for sale. Mr. Modi has a golden opportunity to prove that India is a peaceful country, which honours its people, especially the women folk. Ironically, people around the world come to see India as great land of civilization and culture but keeping aside old historic sites and some development projects, Indian masses prove themselves in worst state of humanity, where women are only seen as symbol of fulfilling desires of characterless locals and foreigners. One wonders why West wants to see Indian women out of their culture, working for others for exploitation.
West is projecting Mr. Modi as symbol of fundamentalism as well as enemy of minority, democracy and secularism. Keeping aside the negative propaganda against Mr. Modi and other Hindu fundamentalists, they proved better leaders in the past as compared to the so called the secularists and atheist. History will also prove in favour of these sons of the soil, if they are allowed to rule for a longer period. If we recall, US Department of State revoked Mr. Modi’s tourist/diplomatic/business visa due to violation of International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). In this regard, David C. Mulford, United States’ Ambassador to India declined permission to Mr. Modi to travel to the US. Nevertheless, Mr Modi’s landslide victory and becoming Prime Minister of India has compelled Washington to issue a waiver, surprisingly, US has extended an invitation to Mr. Modi to address a joint session of the US Congress at Washington. The Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has proposed Mr Modi’s meeting with American leadership on the sidelines of UN General Assembly session, to be held in New York in September 2014.
On one side Washington is expressing such a positive gesture but on the other millions of dollars have been recently awarded to anti-Modi leadership from back channels, especially Italian origin Ms Sonia Ghandhi, to start a new campaign to force Indian bureaucracy and general masses to voice against Mr. Modi’s Premiership. The US Embassy in New Delhi, had forwarded forecast back home that there were remote chances of Mr. Modi’s even winning provincial elections and would be voted out of power in Gujarat. Fareed Zakaria wrote an article, when campaigns for assembly elections just started in 2012, Modi is unlikely to become a national leader, by December he might not even be a regional leader”. This reflected what Western journalists viewed about an honest and dedicated person like Mr. Modi; his only crime was that he followed Hinduism and was not ready to dance on western themes secularism and hypocrisy. US intelligence agencies including Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and CIA had been closely working with Indian Military Intelligence (MI) and Indian DIA to plot against Hindu religious groups including BJP and RSS.
As a pawn of joint strategy backed by Indian and Western agencies, Ms Sonia Ghandhi has written a letter to Prime Minister Modi to execute Polavaram Irrigation Project, knowing well that it would be having negative environmental effects and will also spark hatred against Mr. Modi that would internationalize the issue. Despite strong opposition by major stakeholder i.e. Muslims, Indian Congress decided to go ahead with controversial bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two, with Hyderabad as temporary capital of State of Telangana for ten years. The sole purpose of this bifurcation was to divide India on religio-ethnic lines and prepare grounds for other minorities to demand their separate states. Ms Sonia Ghandhi demanded in the letter to resettle around 50,000 families, predominantly from the State of Telangana. It is pertinent to mention here that natives of Khammam and other districts have refused to agree on resettlement and have threatened to resist forcible relocation.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has been quoted to have said that US and India look forward to strengthening partnership based on common values, shared democratic traditions and the binding ties between peoples. One wonders can US’ Western values and Eastern values move together without serious clash? Mr. Modi will tough resistance from Washington to continue his office. He will face tough resistance to restore Eastern Values”, especially for the women, who were once respected as deities. Vigilance of the society will be another issue as West and so called Indian puppets, in the hands of Western agencies, would strongly resist enforcement of Eastern values. Relationship with Muslim and other minorities will be another irritating issue but if Mr. Modi acts wisely and take along Muslims and other minorities in decision making, the conspiracies of enemies of India will never bear fruit. The bitterness in relations with Pakistan has already sweetened up from the body language of Mr. Modi during meeting with Pak Premier at New Delhi. India must burry the past, identify its follies and come up as symbol of tolerance, non-violence and Eastern values so that people of India as well as nations in its neighbourhood could also get a chance to restore their own culture and traditions and live in peace for the larger cause of humanity. afshain@hotmail.com