‘Dangers of Hindutva’ discussed at HRF event

NIZAMABAD : India took an unnatural trajectory after 2014, which has profoundly affected the country’s economy, said human rights activist and author Aakar Patel during the two-day ninth biennial conference of the Human Rights Forum (HRF) in Nizamabad on Saturday.

The conference was based on the theme ‘Save Democracy - Resist Fascism.’ Aakar Patel, the former chief of the international human rights body Amnesty International India, said there had been a continuous assault on the country’s democracy by Hindutva forces since 2014. “Our economy has fallen behind Bangladesh in per capita GDP for the first time, unemployment has increased, and our labour force participation rate is the worst in South Asia,” he said.

He also pointed out the ominous absence of Muslim representatives in the corridors of power. “Today, the BJP-led government has completely excluded the largest minority community in the country. There is not even a single Muslim Union minister or even an elected representative from the community in the ruling party,” he said.

Highlighting the criminalisation of several aspects of the lives of Indian Muslims, such as the marital laws and food choices, he said that Hindutva was a stark and dangerous departure from our core constitutional values. During the conference, Akash Poyam, a faculty member of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), Chennai, spoke about the destruction of Adivasi culture.