Response to the Highly Biased Op-Ed on Canada-India Relations Published by Toronto Star
December 21st, 2021
In an article dated December 20th 2021, the Toronto Star published a highly biased opinion piece encouraging Canada to increase bilateral relations with India, overlooking India’s proven track record of human rights violations against minorities:
“Unlike authoritarian China, India represents a partner that shares Canadian values and interests. A vibrant multicultural federation with a strong and professional military that has faced intense Chinese aggression, India should be key to Canada’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific.
Canada should refocus its foreign policy in Asia by prioritizing ties with India. Specifically, a ministerial dialogue needs to be renewed between our respective foreign and defence ministers.”
Justice for All Canada is disappointed in the Toronto Star’s publication of an op-ed titled “Rejuvenating the Relationship between Canada and India will Help us Address Global Challenges”. The article completely disregards the astronomical rise in state-sponsored human rights abuses inflicted by the “largest global democracy”, as India calls itself.
In their painstaking effort to influence Canada into strengthening its bilateral and regional security partnership with India on shared “values”, the authors have completely obscured well-known facts about India’s rapid transformation into an authoritarian state, under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Prime Minister Narender Modi.
Since the election of the BJP government in 2014, Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva, has become mainstream politics. With a sense of impunity under the BJP government, Hindutva groups are openly and frequently engaging in hate speech and violence against minorities, including Indian Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Sikhs and Adivasis.
BJP leaders such as Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP’s star campaigner and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, including other prominent leaders, routinely make provocative statements against minorities while addressing millions of people on television, media outlets and at political rallies. This has no doubt led to escalation of violence against minorities through shocking mob lynchings and pogroms.
Prime Minister Modi once declared that anti-government protesters could be “identified by their clothes”–hinting at traditional Muslim attire. Prior to the 2019 general election, BJP President Amit Shah called Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants “termites” and pledged that a BJP government would “pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.”
Another BJP leader and Minister, Anurag Thakur, raised the slogan “shoot the traitors”, used as a code for Muslims, during a rally in India’s capital city Delhi. BJP “IT cells” run organized campaigns to push Islamophobic propaganda on social media and WhatsApp groups.
According to internal Facebook documents, the company chose not to ban anti-Muslim pages run by Hindu nationalist groups close to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP has led India into a communal abyss that poses an existential threat to millions of minorities, especially Indian Muslims. Of particular concern are the situations in Kashmir and Assam, the institution of anti-Muslim citizenship laws, and cow protection law, anti-conversion law, and love jihad law that are used as pretexts for lynching.
The United Nations’ Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, expressed concern over the increase in hate speech and discrimination against minorities in India ever since the Citizenship Amendment Act was adopted in December 2019.
Genocide Watch, a coordinator of the Alliance Against Genocide made up of over 90 organizations from around the world, considers India’s violent conflict in Kashmir, preparations to deport Bengali Muslims in Assam, anti-Muslim violence in north India, and continuing caste oppression across the region, to be indicators of stages 6 (polarization), 7 (preparation), and 8 (persecution) in the Ten Stages of Genocide.
Canada has taken bold steps against China for persecuting Uighur Muslims. It is only natural that Canada speaks out against the persecution of minorities in India. Failing to do so, poses a serious question on Canada’s global stance on human rights. It is time Canada prioritized human rights in the relationship with India, as it did with China.
In an article dated December 20th 2021, the Toronto Star published a highly biased opinion piece encouraging Canada to increase bilateral relations with India, overlooking India’s proven track record of human rights violations against minorities:
“Unlike authoritarian China, India represents a partner that shares Canadian values and interests. A vibrant multicultural federation with a strong and professional military that has faced intense Chinese aggression, India should be key to Canada’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific.
Canada should refocus its foreign policy in Asia by prioritizing ties with India. Specifically, a ministerial dialogue needs to be renewed between our respective foreign and defence ministers.”
Justice for All Canada is disappointed in the Toronto Star’s publication of an op-ed titled “Rejuvenating the Relationship between Canada and India will Help us Address Global Challenges”. The article completely disregards the astronomical rise in state-sponsored human rights abuses inflicted by the “largest global democracy”, as India calls itself.
In their painstaking effort to influence Canada into strengthening its bilateral and regional security partnership with India on shared “values”, the authors have completely obscured well-known facts about India’s rapid transformation into an authoritarian state, under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Prime Minister Narender Modi.
Since the election of the BJP government in 2014, Hindu nationalism, also known as Hindutva, has become mainstream politics. With a sense of impunity under the BJP government, Hindutva groups are openly and frequently engaging in hate speech and violence against minorities, including Indian Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Sikhs and Adivasis.
BJP leaders such as Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP’s star campaigner and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, including other prominent leaders, routinely make provocative statements against minorities while addressing millions of people on television, media outlets and at political rallies. This has no doubt led to escalation of violence against minorities through shocking mob lynchings and pogroms.
Prime Minister Modi once declared that anti-government protesters could be “identified by their clothes”–hinting at traditional Muslim attire. Prior to the 2019 general election, BJP President Amit Shah called Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants “termites” and pledged that a BJP government would “pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.”
Another BJP leader and Minister, Anurag Thakur, raised the slogan “shoot the traitors”, used as a code for Muslims, during a rally in India’s capital city Delhi. BJP “IT cells” run organized campaigns to push Islamophobic propaganda on social media and WhatsApp groups.
According to internal Facebook documents, the company chose not to ban anti-Muslim pages run by Hindu nationalist groups close to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP has led India into a communal abyss that poses an existential threat to millions of minorities, especially Indian Muslims. Of particular concern are the situations in Kashmir and Assam, the institution of anti-Muslim citizenship laws, and cow protection law, anti-conversion law, and love jihad law that are used as pretexts for lynching.
The United Nations’ Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, expressed concern over the increase in hate speech and discrimination against minorities in India ever since the Citizenship Amendment Act was adopted in December 2019.
Genocide Watch, a coordinator of the Alliance Against Genocide made up of over 90 organizations from around the world, considers India’s violent conflict in Kashmir, preparations to deport Bengali Muslims in Assam, anti-Muslim violence in north India, and continuing caste oppression across the region, to be indicators of stages 6 (polarization), 7 (preparation), and 8 (persecution) in the Ten Stages of Genocide.
Canada has taken bold steps against China for persecuting Uighur Muslims. It is only natural that Canada speaks out against the persecution of minorities in India. Failing to do so, poses a serious question on Canada’s global stance on human rights. It is time Canada prioritized human rights in the relationship with India, as it did with China.
- We call on the Toronto Star editorial team to be wary of stories and opinion pieces that whitewash India’s crimes against humanity, and to exercise responsible journalism on critical issues of human rights where the lives of millions of people are at stake.
- We ask the Toronto Star to dedicate an opinion piece to present the current Human rights crisis in the world's largest democracy India, which has been conveniently ignored by the authors of the op-ed in question. The Media is a powerful tool that can and should be used to impress upon the Canadian government that 'no interests or values can ever be greater than Human rights' when engaging in bilateral relations with economic powerhouses like India or China.