India @ 75: Reclaim DEMOCRACY & EQUALITY! Resist Hindu ethnonationalist fascism
Le dimanche 14 août 2022, à 18h00.
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[ Hindi translation: https://bit.ly/India75inHindi ]
**On the 75th anniversary of India’s independence – reclaim DEMOCRACY AND EQUALITY! Resist Hindu ethnonationalist fascism**
Sunday August 14
6pm EDT / 5pm CDT / 3pm PDT
By Zoom, Registration required: https://zoom.us/.../tJ0uf-qvrjMrGtC2NH58MqKt5Mov2J0bRfIW
6pm EDT / 5pm CDT / 3pm PDT
By Zoom, Registration required: https://zoom.us/.../tJ0uf-qvrjMrGtC2NH58MqKt5Mov2J0bRfIW
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/event/832058471505029
*Speakers and performers include:*
o Navsharan Singh, Farmers Protest
o Naseeruddin Shah, Actor and activist
o Sunita Viswanath, Hindus for Human Rights, USA
o Chinnaiah Jangam, historian
o Sonny Singh, musician
o Gaurav Sharma, playwright
o Kashmiri-Canadian Activist & academic
o Leena Manimekalai, Filmmaker; director of the film, Kali
o Vinod Mubayi, Activist & academic
o Sadiya, Justice for All Canada
o Ajay Bhardwaj, Filmmaker
o Others TBA
o Naseeruddin Shah, Actor and activist
o Sunita Viswanath, Hindus for Human Rights, USA
o Chinnaiah Jangam, historian
o Sonny Singh, musician
o Gaurav Sharma, playwright
o Kashmiri-Canadian Activist & academic
o Leena Manimekalai, Filmmaker; director of the film, Kali
o Vinod Mubayi, Activist & academic
o Sadiya, Justice for All Canada
o Ajay Bhardwaj, Filmmaker
o Others TBA
On August 15 2022, it will be 75 years since India declared independence from British colonialism. Perhaps never has this anniversary been so bleak: many of the hopes and promises of fraternity, equality, and liberty remain unfulfilled, and we are at a point when even the gains that were made are being reversed. India today is where Germany was in the 1930s – the violent destruction of democracy has become the order of the day. While the government uses the structures and institutions of democracy strategically to maintain the facade of a democratic state, they have in fact been captured by the violent, exclusionary, and anti-democratic ideology of Hindutva (Hindu ethnonationalism). Ironically, just recently Prime Minister Modi on the international stage reiterated India’s commitment to protecting and promoting all human rights! A blatant lie, as demonstrated by the continued arrests, detentions of many, and the murders and threats to silence people.
As we read the principles enshrined in the preamble to the Constitution of India, it is starkly apparent how the government of India has violated them with impunity: from the wholesale occupation of Kashmir; the citizenship amendment acts [Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA)/National Register of Citizens (NRC)]) designed to make Muslims second class citizens, and the lynchings, other forms of violence, and calls for genocide against them; the ongoing arrest of journalists, human rights defenders, and other dissenters under draconian laws like the UAPA [Unlawful Activities Prevention Act]; the failure to protect the people during the Covid pandemic in which 4 million Indians lost their lives and several millions lost their livelihoods; the dilution, in the interests of corporate exploitation, of laws protecting the forests, agricultural lands, and commons and the livelihoods of those dependent on them; the privatization and selling of public assets to crony capitalists; and the capture, through the use of massive money power, dirty tricks, and coercion, of the pillars of democracy - the media, the judiciary, the universities, and parliament itself. The promotion of the casteist, patriarchal, ethnonationalist, anti-Muslim and anti-science ideology of Hindutva has not confined itself to India’s borders, with academics, artists, human rights activists, and other critics and dissenters in the diaspora being subject to vicious threats and attacks when they speak out.
Recently, Afreen Fatima, an activist in the anti-CAA / NRC movement who has faced threats and attacks to herself and whose house was bulldozed, said: “It's high time that the Indian government is held accountable for all the hate crime [with impunity], all the human rights violations, all the wrong that it's doing against its own people. Consider this an SOS message.”
In the face of these attacks, the proud tradition of resistance in the fight for independence from colonial rule and in defense of truth, rights, and justice lives on. It was seen in the widespread mobilizations across India and the diaspora against the CAA / NRC legislation with the historic leadership of the women of Shaheen Bagh, and in the massive farmers’ and farm workers’ protest that mobilized thousands across India in historic alliances and forced the government to its knees.
In that spirit of resistance, and in response to Afreen’s urgent call, we invite you to an evening of resistance to fascism in India and the diaspora.
To echo the words of the JNU students when thugs affiliated to the ruling party attacked them: *Hum ladhenge! Hum jeetengey!* (We will fight! We will win!)
Organized by:
CERAS (South Asia Forum), Montreal
India Civil Watch International, Toronto
Punjabi Literary and Cultural Association, Winnipeg
South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC), Montreal
South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), Vancouver
Co-sponsored by: Justice For All, Canada
CERAS (South Asia Forum), Montreal
India Civil Watch International, Toronto
Punjabi Literary and Cultural Association, Winnipeg
South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC), Montreal
South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), Vancouver
Co-sponsored by: Justice For All, Canada
Photo credit, from left to right: CBC, 2021; Global Voices, 2022; Newsclick, 2022; Background image: ANI (videos at https://scroll.in/.../watch-rss-workers-march-with-sticks...)
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