Frontlines of resistance to authoritarianism, caste supremacy and Islamophobia

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage India, exacerbated by its highly inequitable national public health policies and discriminatory access to medical infrastructure. Across the country, islamophobic and caste-based atrocities and gender-based violence have increased dramatically as the dominant caste perpetrators of violence are allowed to continue their brutality with impunity. Many Dalit and Muslim activists and progressive intellectuals have been incarcerated without trial with the brazen and unrelenting misuse of India's draconian anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). In response to the anti-labor, anti-farmer, and exclusionary citizenship laws proposed by the current authoritarian and Hindu supremacist government, the country has also seen some of the largest mobilizations in the history of Independent India. These movements, led by youth, farmers, Muslim and Dalit women, have faced tremendous repression and criminalization from the government that has labeled them as anti-national, curtailed free speech, attacked digital security rights, and detained people arbitrarily. Across the country, social movements and civil society groups are also rising to the challenges in the face of increasingly restrictive regulations that repress their right to freedom of speech, leading to further marginalization of already vulnerable groups.

The popularity of these movements in the current moment brings into sharp focus the fact that while fascistic forces have taken over the state the people will not easily bend to their will and the international civil society must respond in support. This session will provide an overview of the current context of the pandemic crisis and vaccine-apartheid in India through the framework of understanding its roots in the anti-Muslim, Hindu supremacist, and casteist nature of its authoritarian rule. We explore how donors can strategize to provide support to movements and organizations led by Dalit-Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, and other historically marginalized communities that are at the forefront of struggles for democracy and human rights in India.