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In a scathing letter addressed to the Indian government, Noam Chomsky along with 637 academics expressed their "deep anger and anguish" over the Indian government's inability to tackle the issues of rampant sexual assaults and rapes in the country.
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India's Darkest Hour': Ex-senior Officials Condemn Indian Gov't over Muslim Girl Rape Case
Despite the Indian government's recent monumental decision of introducing capital punishment for rape of girls under the age of 12, some of the underlying issues around sexual assault remain unaddressed. The letter mentioned some of the issues which the ruling right-wing Indian government has failed to respond to.
The academics expressed outrage and disappointment over the prime minister's "own prolonged (and by now familiar) silence that was broken only recently with wholly inadequate, platitudinous, and non-specific assurances of justice for the victims."
The open letter penned by academics and independent scholars from India and abroad also expressed solidarity with the 49 former Indian high ranking officials who wrote a letter last week to the prime minister which called the recent rape cases, 'India's Darkest Hour.'
The latest letter noted the recent rape cases in Kathua and Unnao were not isolated cases and instead reflected a "pattern of repeated targeted attacks on minority religious communities, Dalits, tribals and women, in which rape and lynching have been employed as instruments of violence by gau rakshaks (cow-protectors), and others, in a sequence of events.."
The abduction, gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl, Asifa Bano, in January, by Hindus in the northern most state of Jammu and Kashmir, also shed light on how religious animosity played a role in Bano's rape. According to activists Through raping a Muslim child, the Hindu rapists along with other members of the Hindu dominant neighborhood wanted to drive the Muslim community away.
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India: Rape, Murder of 8-Year-Old Asifa Bano Sparks Outrage, 'Religious Riots'
The Bhartiya Janta Party, BJP-led Narendra Modi government has faced severe criticism of promulgating religious fundamentalism and a Hindu nationalist sentiment throughout its leadership, as the country has also seen a rise in hate crimes against minorities.
The letter pointed out there is "an undeniable association with the ruling dispensation."
"Many of these events have occurred in States with BJP Governments, and all of them after the BJP assumed power at the Centre. This is not to associate violence exclusively with your party and with State governments presided over by your party. But there is an undeniable association with the ruling dispensation."
In Bano's case, two BJP ministers in the provincial government were forced to resign for supporting the accused rapists. Nearly 40 percent of India’s rape victims are children and in 2016, the South Asian country recorded nearly 40,000 rape cases.
"We send you this letter because it is our duty; so that we are not guilty of silence, and so that callousness and cowardice might draw the line at the broken body of a little girl and the rape of a young woman," the letter concluded.
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