Image Courtesy:freshheadline.com
For the first time ever on India’s Independence Day, the hashtag #ResignModi trended on Twitter on Sunday. This started soon after images of a massive ‘Resign Modi’ banner being unfurled from London’s iconic Westminster Bridge emerged on social media on August 15. The Westminster Bridge, like the Big Ben, is one of the most iconic landmarks of London and is recognised the world over. Images of the banner went viral as soon as they were posted on social media.
The unique public action was organised by “members of the diaspora and friends of India” who later released a media statement as well. According to the statement the group also held a candlelight vigil outside the Indian High Commission to “remember all the victims of the Modi regime”.
Mukti Shah from South Asia Solidarity Group, who was one of the organisers, explained the reasons for the action saying, “As India’s 75th Independence Day dawns, the country’s secular Constitution lies in tatters. Communal and caste violence stalk the land. Thousands of political prisoners languish in Covid-infected prisons, and hundreds of thousands of people are grieving the loss of their loved ones as a result of the callous negligence and mismanagement of the Coronavirus crisis. We, a group of diaspora members and friends standing in solidarity with the people of India, are demanding the resignation of Narendra Modi, the chief architect of this violence, injustice and criminal negligence”.
Diaspora in London marked the dawning of India’s #IndependenceDay2021 with a huge #ResignModi banner dropped from Westminster Bridge – after their midnight vigil at the Indian High Commission. https://t.co/E1heUccp0Y
— Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) August 15, 2021
In May this year as well, #resignmodi was trending on social media for days, as citizens felt abandoned by the government when the Covid-19 crisis was at its worst. Soon enough that week over four lakh citizens signed a Change.org petition demanding that Prime Minister Modi must resign, taking responsibility for what many citizens, and the world media, are calling a gross mismanagement of the Covid-19 emergency.
This year it was the international community of indian origin and others who have demanded the same citing various reasons inclusng the regimes silence over calls for “genocide of Muslims and normalization of mob lynching and pogroms”, agrigultual policies, Kashmir crisis and crimes against Dalit women and girls.
The August 15 statement issued by the diaspora in London also highlighted ten specific reasons why the groups had called for Prime Minister Modi’s resignation. The list they released may be read here:
1. Calls for genocide of Muslims and normalisation of mob lynching and pogroms 2. Rapes and murders of Dalit women and girls 3. The corporate takeover of agriculture 4. Incarceration of dissenters and human rights defenders 5. Settler colonialism in Kashmir 6. Modi’s Nuremberg Laws 7. Modi’s environmental crimes 8. Violation of the democratic electoral process 9. Criminal mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic 10. Far-right Hindu supremacists in the UK do not speak for us! Currently the right-wing UK government ministers Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak and Alok Sharma are all acolytes of Modi, and the HSS (the international wing of the openly fascist RSS, of which Modi is a lifelong member) and other Hindu-supremacist organisations are actively spreading hate in the UK. They claim Modi has the support of the diaspora. But they do not speak in our name. MODI MUST RESIGN! |
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