Yet to decide on Karnataka’s recommendation on Lingayat religion: Centre tells HC

Thiruvananthapuram, May 22: Kerala reported its highest rise of COVID-19 cases in a single day with 42 new cases on Friday of which 23 returned from other states and 17 from abroad.

Addressing media persons, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that of the new cases, 23 have come back from other States (Maharashtra-21, Tamil Nadu-1 and Andhra Pradesh-1) and 17 have returned from abroad (Kuwait-7, UAE-5, Saudi Arabia-2 and Qatar-2). Two are cases of local transmission including one health worker in Kasargod.

"A total of 12 persons from Kannur district, seven in Kasargod district, five each from Kozhikode and Palakkad districts, four each in Thrissur and Malappuram districts, two from Kottayam district, and one each in Kollam, Pathanamthitta and Wayanad districts are those who have tested positive, " he said.

Meanwhile, two patients under treatment for Coronavirus in Malappuram district have tested negative today. The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Kerala is 732 and 216 patients are now under treatment in different hospitals. Kannur and Malappuram districts have 36 patients each, followed by 26 in Palakkad district, 21 in Kasargod district, 19 in Kozhikode district and 16 in Thrissur district.

The Chief Minister said that a 73-year-old woman had died in Thrissur district. She had recently returned from Mumbai.

There are 84,258 persons under observation across the state, 83,649 are quarantined at their homes or institutional quarantine centres and 609 are isolated in hospitals.

A total of 162 persons were admitted to hospitals today.

Till now, 51,310 samples have been sent for testing and 49,535 samples have been confirmed without any infection. Apart from this, as part of sentinel surveillance of high-risk groups, 7,072 samples were tested separately and out of these, 6,630 samples have been confirmed with no infection.
No new place was declared as hotspot today and there are 28 hotspots in the state.

So far, 91,344 people have come to the state from foreign countries and other states by road, sea and air.

Expressing concern over the rising numbers, the Chief Minister said, "The increase in numbers is a serious warning. Our COVID-19 preventive measures need to be enhanced. More people are expected to come back and we will ensure proper testing, treatment and care to all. Serious patients are among those who are coming back."
"We will ensure additional facilities including ventilators in hospitals to accommodate more in-patients. Huge rush is being seen at some places. People should observe more self-restraint or else all efforts will become ineffective," he added.

Even as the Muslims of undivided Dakshina Kannada district broke out of the “spiral of silence” and made history by leading an unprecedented protest against CAA, NPR and NRC as well as the categorial mistreatment of non-saffronites at the hands of the police across the country, mainstream media turned a blind eye to the spectacle at the Shah Garden Maidan in Mangaluru’s Adyar where about two lakh patriots with tricolor in their hands converged to assert themselves on January 15th, 2020, a date which will be remembered by the people of coastal Karnataka forever.

The largest gathering in the history of Mangaluru was absolutely peaceful, law-abiding and respectful. While the slogans of ‘Azaadi’ were reverberating in the atmosphere, the protesters were seen making way for vehicles and passersby, taking care of women and helping elderly citizens on the highway adjacent to the ground. Though the organisers and most of the participants were Muslims, they collectively identified themselves as “We, the people of India”.

The district administration and the police department hadn’t imagined or even dreamt of such a mammoth gathering after blocking the highway and banning public transport from 9 am to 9 pm. Many opine that this action was taken only to discourage the concerned from participating in the protest and to create fear in the hearts of the people who are yet to process the unjustifiable deaths of two innocent citizens in an unwarranted police firing a few weeks ago.

What has since surprised the protesters most is the mainstream media’s blatant attempt to downplay the significance of this largest ever gathering. Shockingly, it could not make it to the front pages of any of the state-level Kannada daily newspapers except city-based Vaartha Bharathi. In the absence of The Hindu, which had announced a holiday on account of Makar Sankranti, most of the English newspapers too pitilessly buried the historic event in their inner pagers. National TV channels too were evidently reluctant to cover the event until NDTV started telecasting the news of the protest.

This uneasy relationship between the media and minorities in coastal Karnataka has long existed, but the non-coverage of the huge protest of Jan 15 marks a quantum leap beyond the media’s traditional pro-Sangh Parivar stance and biases –– which in the past had often demonised non-saffronites –– to now completely ignore and suppress the people’s voice. This media bias has naturally evoked a sharp response from netizens, who took to social media to issue clarion calls to boycott the mainstream media forever.

Cleanliness Drive

Most major protest meets and rallies –– both religious and political –– leave behind tonnes of garbage, especially water bottles, placards and buntings. However, the organisers of the Jan 15 protest meet led by example by launching a cleanliness drive in the area soon after the protesters left the venue peacefully. The drive continued on Jan 16 too. (Ironically, amidst this ongoing cleanliness drive, a local news portal captured photos of a few plastic bottles scattered along the road at Adyar and published a report accusing the event organisers and participants of polluting the area!)

In the wake of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) UN High Commissioner, Michele Bachelet, has filed an intervention in the Supreme Court petition challenging the constitutionality of the Citizenship Amendment Act, as she is critical of CAA. Responding to her, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jai Shanker strongly rebutted her criticism, saying that the body (UNHCR) has been wrong and is blind to the problem of cross border terrorism. The issue on hand is the possibility of scores of people, mainly Muslims, being declared as stateless. The problem at hand is the massive exercise of going through the responses/documents from over 120 crore of Indian population and screening documents, which as seen in Assam, yield result which are far from truthful or necessary.

The issue of CAA has been extensively debated and despite heavy critique of the same by large number of groups and despite the biggest mass opposition ever to any move in Independent India, the Government is determined on going ahead with an exercise which is reminiscent of the dreaded regimes which are sectarian and heartless to its citizens, which have indulged in extinction of large mass of people on grounds of citizenship, race etc. The Foreign minister’s assertion is that it is a matter internal to India, where India’s sovereignty is all that matters! As far as sovereignty is concerned we should be clear that in current times any sovereign power has to consider the need to uphold the citizenship as per the principle of non-discrimination which is stipulated in Art.26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political (ICCPR) rights.

Can such policies, which affect large number of people and are likely to affect their citizenship be purely regarded as ‘internal’? With the World turning into a global village, some global norms have been formulated during last few decades. The norms relate to Human rights and migrations have been codified. India is also signatory to many such covenants in including ICCPR, which deals with the norms for dealing with refugees from other countries. One is not talking of Chicago speech of Swami Vivekanand, which said that India’s greatness has been in giving shelter to people from different parts of the World; one is also not talking of the Tattariaya Upanishad’s ‘Atithi Devovhav’ or ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam’ from Mahaupanishad today.

What are being talked about are the values and opinions of organizations which want to ensure to preserve of Human rights of all people Worldwide. In this matter India is calling United Nations body as ‘foreign party’; having no locus standi in the case as it pertains to India’s sovereignty. The truth is that since various countries are signatories to UN covenants, UN bodies have been monitoring the moves of different states and intervening at legal level as Amicus (Friend of the Court) to the courts in different countries and different global bodies. Just to mention some of these, UN and High Commissioner for Human Rights has often submitted amicus briefs in different judicial platforms. Some examples are their intervention in US Supreme Court, European Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. These are meant to help the Courts in areas where UN bodies have expertise.

 Expertise on this has been jointly formulated by various nations. These interventions also remind the nations as to what global norms have been evolved and what are the obligations of individual states to the values which have evolved over a period of time. Arvind Narrain draws our attention to the fact that, “commission has intervened in the European Court of Human Rights in cases involving Spain and Italy to underscore the principle of non-refoulement, which bars compulsory expulsion of illegal migrants… Similarly, the UN has intervened in the International Criminal Court in a case against the Central African Republic to explicate on the international jurisprudence on rape as a war crime.”

From time to time organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been monitoring the status of Human rights of different countries. This puts those countries in uncomfortable situation and is not welcome by those establishments. How should this contradiction between ‘internal matter’, ‘sovereignty’ and the norms for Human rights be resolved? This is a tough question at the time when the freedom indices and democratic ethos are sliding downwards all over the world. In India too has slid down on the scale of these norms.

In India we can look at the intervention of UN body from the angle of equality and non discrimination. Democratic spirit should encourage us to have a rethink on the matters which have been decided by the state. In the face of the greatest mass movement of Shaheen bagh, the state does need to look inwards and give a thought to international morality, the spirit of global family to state the least.

The popular perception is that when Christians were being persecuted in Kandhmal the global Christian community’s voice was not strong enough. Currently in the face of Delhi carnage many a Muslim majority countries have spoken. While Mr. Modi claims that his good relations with Muslim countries are a matter of heartburn to the parties like Congress, he needs to relook at his self gloating. Currently Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia and many Muslim majority countries have spoken against what Modi regime is unleashing in India. Bangladesh, our neighbor, has also seen various protests against the plight of Muslims in India. More than the ‘internal matter’ etc. what needs to be thought out is the moral aspect of the whole issue. We pride ourselves in treading the path of morality. What does that say in present context when while large section of local media is servile to the state, section of global media has strongly brought forward what is happening to minorities in India.   

The hope is that Indian Government wakes up to its International obligations, to the worsening of India’s image in the World due to CAA and the horrific violence witnessed in Delhi.