News & events
Meeting: Unmasking Corporate Agenda and Hindutwa Fascism in india
The general elections in India in May last year returned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Indian People’s Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power with a clear majority. It is estimated that the BJP spent £500 million (Rupees 50,000 crores) on the election. This is a mind boggling sum in a country like India, home to one-fifth of the world’s children suffering from malnutrition. Backed and funded by the corporate sector Indians witnessed election extravaganza on a scale they have never seen before.
Barack Obama described Modi as “India’s reformer-in-chief” in an article he wrote for the TIME magazine. The US and UK governments had earlier declined travel visas to Modi because of his tacit role in the Gujarat riots in 2002 where members of his party unleashed horrific violence against Muslims under his watch as the state’s Chief Minister. The BJP’s corporate agenda has enthralled Western political establishments who have quickly forgiven the BJP’s track record of discrimination against Muslims, Christians, women and minorities. The increasing violations of human rights and suppression of democratic freedoms has alarmed civil liberties and human rights groups in India and elsewhere.
Chaired by Melanie Gingell, barrister, Doughty Street Chambers
Thursday, 2 July, 6-8pm
Doughty Chambers, 53-54 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LS
Dr. Shoma Sen is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj University, Nagpur, India. Sen has written and published on Women’s Movements, Gender Studies and Human Rights. Sen is a civil liberties and democratic rights campaigner. She has participated in civil society investigations on violations of human rights and in people’s tribunals including fact-finding investigations into atrocities of women during “Salwa Jusum” or repression against indigenous people in Central India, atrocities against dalits (marginalized castes) at Khairlanji, near Nagpur and worked with women activists in Nepal and Philippines. Sen was editor of Stree Garjana a magazine published by the radical women’s movement in India.
The event is hosted by CAMPACC in Association with Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers
For information contact:
CAMPACC: www.campacc.org.uk <http://www.campacc.org.uk> e-mail: estella24@tiscali.co.uk <mailto:estella24@tiscali.co.uk> tel 020 7586 5892 Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers: http://www.haldane.org
RSVP to: estella24@tiscali.co.uk