indica News Bureau-
Delhi riots are being condemned all across the world including America. Hundreds of Indian Americans of different faiths rallied outside Indian consulates in major American cities to protest against the recent violence in Delhi that has killed at least 46 people, and injured hundreds,
On the night of February 23, 2020, a series of riots and violent incidents began in the Jaffrabad area of North East Delhi in which 46 people were killed and more than 200 people were injured.
Aljazeera reported, outside the Indian consulate in New York, protesters gathered chanting “Shame!” at officials as they tried to exit or enter the building.
“We are exhausted,” Sana Qutubuddin, an activist with Alliance for Justice and Accountability – a coalition of South Asian groups that organized Friday’s rally alongside the Indian American Muslim Council, South Asia Solidarity Initiative, and Equality Labs – said during her speech at the rally.
Other civil society organizations such as the Alliance for South Asians Taking Action, Chicago Against Hindu Fascism and Bay Area Against Hindu Fascism also protested against the worst violence in Delhi since 1984, when more than 3,000 Sikh minority were killed following the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
At the New York rally, protesters played music, and rallied around the block “to let the neighbors of the consulate know that their silence makes them a party to genocide,” said one of the organizers.
“I was there to have an opportunity to grieve with a community that understands how egregious the genocidal violence that occurred in Delhi was,” Qutubuddin said, “and to be in a space that recognizes what this moment means in modern Indian history.”
Organizers estimated nearly 300 people turned up at the New York rally where they chanted slogans to repeal the CAA, and highlight the current BJP government’s “fascist” ideologies that target lower-caste Hindus and other religious minorities.
“I grew up in an idyllic idea of a secular India and I’m completely devastated to see everything that I thought would happen in India is happening under the Modi government,” Ishita Srivastava, who has been living in New York for 12 years.
“Being here is all that I can do,” she added. “I think it’s a very systematically fuelled bigotry and state-sponsored and supported violence and there’s clearly an appetite for rabid divisiveness and bigotry and it’s exacerbated by the fact that we have a deeply unequal society.”
Earlier in the week, an estimated 50 people gathered at Harvard University in Boston, immediately after the Delhi violence began.
In Chicago, organizers said teachers, IT professionals, senior citizens were among the hundred protesters who came out.
“Attendees were reminded that this state-sanctioned violence is consistent with Indian history – citing the murders of Muslims in Gujarat [in 2002] and the Sikh genocide in 1984, as well the constant violence enacted on Dalits [the former untouchables] within caste oppression,” Jihan, one of the organizers in San Francisco said. They estimated about 100 people showed up for the protest.
An estimated 80 people showed up at protest in Atlanta, organizers said. A protester with “Atlanta Rejects CAA”, who did not wish to be named.
One of the organizers criticized Trump, who has been accused of endorsing white supremacists in the US, for backing Modi’s “fascist” agenda.
Many expressed their concern that the violence has been normalized into the fabric of Indian society, especially under Modi.
Qutubuddin from Alliance for Justice and Accountability said that many of the attackers in the recent violence were “everyday Hindu extremists”.
