A BROKEN IMAGE, A SQUANDERED LEGACY.

The writing has been on the wall for quite some time, for all to see except perhaps the acolytes of the NDA government. India's falling governance parameters over the last decade ( Press Freedom, Rule of Law, Inequality, Human Rights, Religious Freedom, Environmental Performance, Academic Freedom) all indicate a gradual structural collapse of the institutions of government, and growing contempt for international covenants. A global pushback was inevitable, and the first sign of it came post 2021when bodies like V-DEM, EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) and Freedom House downgraded India's democratic status to "Partly Free" ,"Electoral Autocracy" and "Flawed Democracy" . In 2025,  the country's NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) was downgraded to B category by GANHRI (Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions) for its perceived lack of independence and failure to address human rights violations. 

The USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) has demanded of its Congress that India be designated as a country of particular concern and a source of transnational oppression. It has also asked for sanctions to be imposed on Chief Ministers of UP, Uttarakhand and Assam, the RSS and Bajrang Dal-all for their persecution of minorities. It has demanded investigations against firms whose equipments have been used to target minorities and for opening hearings against on-line tech platforms for spreading hate and abuse against them.

Earlier this month Amnesty International has written to the Indian government accusing it of violating the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Convention, and of being complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza,  by allowing the export of almost 800 shipments of Indian made  weapons, munitions and ordnance to Israel which has been held guilty of war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. It has identified at least seven Indian companies, including (astonishingly) public sector companies. By doing so we are exposing ourselves to moral and legal consequences internationally. 

But the biggest blow has been struck last month by the release of a damning report by the United Nations, no less, which virtually amounts to a show-cause notice. In a letter to GOI three rapporteurs of the United Nations dealing with religious freedom, human rights and minorities have expressed grave doubts about the manner in which SIR (Special Intensive Revision) has been/ is being carried out by the ECI (Election Commission of India) in Bihar, Bengal and in the rest of India. They have questioned the opacity, methodology, selective nature, need and purpose of this arbitrary exercise. The notice does not do so in a vacuum but quotes facts and figures from the government's own sources and what is available in the public domain. It expresses alarm at the massive exclusion of voters, especially of those in West Bengal and those from the minority communities. It tellingly notes that all these actions of the ECI/Government appears to be in violation of international covenants and resolutions of which India is a signatory. The rapporteurs have requested the government for comments/ clarifications in a time bound manner before they submit their final  report to the UN Human Rights Council.     As I write this, the government is yet to reply to the UN  but the MEA has issued a brief statement terming these charges as "baseless" and "unwarranted", and that the SIR exercise has the approval of the country's Supreme Court. In a reply to a question in Parliament on 30th July, a Minister more or less repeated this, adding that deletion of names of those who have demitted or migrated or changed residence is a regular exercise. This statement carries no conviction because it is the default template of the Ministry against any criticism of this thick skinned regime. Additionally, the Minister made no mention of the deletions in Bengal on account of the mysterious and opaque "logical discrepancy" clause, the 2.7 million who were not allowed to vote even though their appeals were pending,  the lack of transparency in the use of untested and secret algorithms used by the ECI, or the reasons for the disproportionate deletions of Muslims from the rolls.

The letters by the UN rapporteurs are not just an arraignment of the ECI but are also an indictment of our Supreme Court. The Court had innumerable opportunities to rein in the rampaging ECI but failed to do so. Instead of examining its legality, modus operandi, necessity, impact on citizenship, it nibbled at the edges of the issue for a year till the SIR became a fait accompli. It allowed the ECI to hold two elections on the basis of this patently defective exercise, and remained silent even when the Commission extended it to the rest of the country! It has now given its final seal of  approval to the SIR, paving the way for even more millions to be deleted from the voters' rolls. The Court has failed the citizens of the country, and this is implicit in the letter of the UN.

The UN letter is also a stricture against our NHRC, which is already in the dog-house as explained earlier, and our totally ineffective and vestigious Minority Commission. I can't remember the last time either of these institutions ever spoke up for the people in exercise of their mandates and in justification of the tens of crores of rupees spent on them. By their deafening silence on the SIR- the disenfranchisement of millions of voters, especially minorities, the dangerous uncertainties created over their citizenship, the subsequent denial of state welfare benefits to them by many states- both these Commissions have turned a blind eye to this unholy exercise and have betrayed their mandate.

The international opprobrium against India is mounting by the day and our government cannot keep stonewalling it indefinitely. We have forfeited our moral stature, the traditional championing of human rights and freedoms, our leadership of the global South , of SAARC and perhaps even BRICS by our highly questionable human rights record and the puzzling embrace of Israel, an international pariah. We continue to  provide ammunition to countries inimical to us (like Pakistan, which, significantly, is the President of the UN Human Rights Council), to initiate action against us, including sanctions, warrants from the ICC or ICJ. We have torpedoed any chances we had for a seat in the UN Security Council. We have isolated ourselves on all global matters of importance and have become a vassal of the USA and Israel. The BJP's religious bigotry and lust for power internally is proving too high a cost to bear globally. Surely, the India of Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, Kabir and Vivekananda deserves better?