By all accounts, the Hindutva-committed Modi regime is out to Hinduize India, a state that is also homeland to 200 million Muslims. It is a two-pronged strategy. One, New Delhi has set in motion a process to change the demography of Occupied Jammu and Kashmir where Muslims are in clear majority. For this to happen, it abrogated Articles 370 and 35-A last year, and as its follow-up granted domicile status to some 300,000 non-residents, all Hindus, in the occupied state. Additionally, as a part of this sinister move, the Indian government has also rewritten the law concerning slums by deleting reference to "permanent residents". Of course, the entire exercise is an atrocious violation of the Indian constitution that had protected Kashmiris' right to refuse any change of their land's demography. But now the Hindutva is calling the shots. Two, the efforts have been stepped up to force Muslims' conversion to Hinduism - not by force of argument but under the shadow of sword. The anti-minorities Citizenship Act was passed, which offers the Muslim minority an option either to become stateless or become Hindu. And the protesting Muslims were subjected to severe punishment. In the month of February, anti-Muslim riots erupted in New Delhi and as a nonchalant wider world watched the Hindu extremists, fully supported by police, killed dozens of Muslims and vandalized their shops and put on fire their residences. Now Muslims are under attack again as Indian government blamed a mass gathering of Muslims last month in New Delhi for helping spread the coronavirus. The Hindu media has joined hands with the BJP goons in branding that Tableeghi gathering as "corona terrorism". How this anti-Muslim Hindutva plan would play out in times to come, the only plausible conjecture is that as long as RSS-progeny is in power in India it would continue.

But should Indian government be immune to international persuasion and pressure, it should not. There are a number of UN conventions and world human rights organisations' calls that stoutly reject justification for such inhuman plans and plots under the guise of 'it's an internal matter'. But, unfortunately, in case of India the political world is silent. If there is any protest it is too feeble to provoke tangible restrictions on the Modi government. Unmistakably, the conscience of world governments remains undisturbed. For that let us look into the actionable potentiality of positions taken by two world bodies on the unceasing persecution of India's Muslim minority. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has re-listed India as a "Country of Particular Concern". "Perhaps, the steepest, and most alarming deterioration in religious freedom conditions is in India," it says. But let us see if its recommendation to US government "to impose targeted sanctions on Indian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals' assets and/or barring their entry into the United States" come into force. Is it that Narendra Modi, fountainhead of anti-Muslim violence, too would be re-listed for no-entry ban? On this the USCIRF owes an answer. The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) has also been called upon by Pakistan and Kuwait to take urgent measures to preserve rights of Indian Muslims. Will members of OIC remain silent over crimes committed against Muslims in India and move "politically, legally, and economically" against it, Kuwait has asked the Muslim world leadership. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi too has urged the OIC members to "unite in global condemnation of these inhuman attacks. We cannot stand by and let another Gujarat happen" in the wake of Covid-19. But if past is any history, particularly since the rise of Narendra Modi to power, neither the United States nor the OIC is going to go beyond some pious statements. Ultimately, ball is in India's court and it is India's 200 million Muslims who are going to play. If they are subdued and downcast today tomorrow they are going to burst into a violent revolt. "Lambi hai ghum ki ye sham magar sham he tuo hai" - that's how legendary poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz predicted end to the lingering reigns of terror and persecution.