India is a curious nation to many, where cows are worshiped as sacred while the poorest of the poor, known as dalits in the Hindu religion, are forced to live in conditions worse than animals because it is believed that this is their divinely ordained position in life because of actions from their previous “life.” As historical evidence suggests and is something which Hindu nationalists are quick to dismiss or hide, is that this caste system and the entire Hindu religion itself is but a vehicle to promote and maintain the power of the small, elite, Brahmin caste that came to India from the Aryan invasions thousands of years ago and have ruled India at the expense of the majority of the people, making the entire religion nothing less than a struggle for worldly power.
Because Hinduism does not value human life and is itself but an ancient form of Darwinism, many will do anything that they believe will better their earthly conditions. Because India is attempting to expand her sphere of influence in southern Asia at a time when she is sabre-rattling with Pakistan and becoming more nationalistic, she needs more resources to realize her goals. As a part of this quest, she has turned to exploit the resources found in her forests, where according to Indian media, involve forcibly expelling over one million people throughout the country using a court ruling that says it is being done to help Indian wildlife:
India’s Supreme Court has ordered its government to evict a million people from their homes – for the good of the country’s wildlife.
The ruling, issued Wednesday, was a startling conclusion to a decade-long case that has pitted the rights of some of India’s most vulnerable citizens against the preservation of its forests.
The court told the government to evict over a million people – mostly members of indigenous tribes – from their homes in public forest land because they had not met the legal criterion to live there.
With over 700 tribal groups, India is home to over 100 million indigenous people. While the forest land is legally controlled by the government, people have lived in such areas for centuries.
A landmark law passed in 2006 gave legal rights over forest land and its produce to tribes and forest-dwelling communities provided they could prove that their families have stayed there for at least three generations.
The battle for mineral-rich forest land is not new in India. The ruling is the latest flash point in the competing interests of industry, wildlife conservationists and forest communities.
In the last 30 years, the government has diverted 5,400 square miles of forest land, the size of Connecticut, for industrial projects – many of which were opposed by the indigenous people. Wildlife groups contend that granting “wide-ranging” rights to people on forest land leads to fragmentation of forests at a time when the country’s forest cover is shrinking. Critics, however, say that neither accounts for the rights of the indigenous people who rely on the forest for daily needs and for their livelihood.
Now the court says that those whose claims were rejected must go – by July 27. The number of affected people is estimated to go up to 1.89 million when more states comply with the order.
Human rights groups and activists were stunned by the ruling. Nicholas Dawes, the acting managing director of Human Rights Watch, wrote that it had “staggering” implications for India’s most marginalized.
Forest Rights Alliance, a grassroots advocacy group, called the judgment “draconian.” Another group advocating for the rights of forest dwellers, the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, called the order a “major blow.” It also noted that thousands of claims for land rights under the law – the Forest Rights Act – get “wrongly rejected.”
Wildlife groups first challenged the law back in 2008, arguing that it threatened “long-term conservation of forests and biodiversity.” Praveen Bhargav of Wildlife First issued a statement on behalf of the petitioners welcoming Wednesday’s ruling as an “extremely important order.” The statement noted that “ineligible” and “bogus” claimants under the Forest Rights Act “continue to occupy a huge area of forestland.”
C.R. Bijoy of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity fired back. He said that the environmental groups which brought the case represent a “vanishing” way of thinking about conservation which excludes people from the process.
The ruling comes just weeks before India is slated to begin national elections, putting state governments in the highly awkward position of being instructed to evict voters from their homes. As a result, few believe the order will be carried out in the mandated time frame – plus it will almost certainly face an additional legal challenge.
One big question mark is the Indian government’s own position on the issue. It failed to defend its own law in the current court case. The result was a lopsided proceeding where judges heard arguments in favor of the wildlife groups.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Congress, the country’s main opposition party, criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government last week for being a “silent spectator” in court. Gandhi also asked three states governed by the Congress party to re-look at cases where land claims had been rejected.
Back in 2002, the government had ordered evictions of unauthorized dwellings on a similar directive from the top court, sparking large-scale protests by indigenous people and forest rights groups. (source, source)
This is also an interesting ruling because while most tribal peoples practice Hinduism or another form of paganism, many of the converts to Christianity in India come from either the dalit class mentioned above, or they come from the tribal peoples who live in these forests. This is one of the reasons why Christianity in India, in addition to having a historical presence in the southern states of Goa and Kerala on the Malabar coast, is found also in the easternmost regions of India from Bangladesh to the Burmese border. In three states in India- Meghalayla, Mizoram, and Nagaland – are over 50% Christian and are made up almost entirely of tribal peoples, and the neighboring states of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur are over 25% Christian.
Consider the two maps above, the first being one of Christian presence, and the second of population distribution. While the states of Goa and Kerala in the southwestern part of India have a historical Christian presence, note in particular the rural easternmost regions of India that is locked between Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, and China. Christianity has grown extensively here while the region at the same time. That the Indian government is targeting rural peoples throughout India but seems to be avoiding this region is a concern they may turn to this region in the future using this or a like ruling to justify the mass expulsion of Christians.
Now none of these states have been reported to be a main focus of the Indian government. However, because they border China, of which India has a long-running dispute with China over the borders of the Christian-filled Arunachal Pradesh, and given China’s reliance on Burma as a food source and how Burma borders two of the three Christian-majority states (Mizoram and Nagaland) as well as the Christian heavy Manipur state, they also have a direct national strategic interest over there as well.
Something which Shoebat.com has almost exclusively discussed but will be seldom mentioned most elsewhere is the existence of the “aadhaar” (sometimes written “aadhar”) system, which is India’s national ID card that Christians and former Hindu nationalists have expressed concern will be used to track and eventually, exterminate all of India’s Christians. Since almost all of the people in India have been registered in the Aadhar system, it would not take much for the government not only to track people, but to restrict them from buying and selling lest they convert to Hinduism. However, it is said that the Indian government will not do this in the public, but will wait for a major global conflict to happen and then attempt to fulfill her openly-admitted desire to exterminate all Christians from India, which the Hindu nationalists under their main parties in the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and the BJP (Bharat Janata Party) will be in about a decade, or around 2027-2028.
It is known that this ruling above has absolutely nothing to do with helping India’s wildlife. But in a continuation of that same question, does it really have anything to do with even the exploitation of resources, but rather the government’s legalization of the mass deportation, expulsion, and relocation of tribal peoples by force? If the Indian government can establish a precedent by this action, then there is no reason to say they will not attempt to do it again. Considering how the majority of these Christian-heavy regions are populated by tribal peoples, is the Indian government actually getting ready for its own version of a Christian holocaust?
Mass deportations in India are not a new phenomenon. While many people will laud the so-called “bloodless” revolution of Ghandi, a Hindu who hated Christianity, the partition of the Hindu subcontinent into West and East Pakistan (now Pakistan and Bangladesh) from India caused a massive migration of peoples during which over a million were killed in fighting between mostly Hindus and Muslims.
What happens in India remains to be seen. However, it will be wise to watch how these “deportations” in modern times work, and to see if following this particular incident if the government will direct her attention towards her easternmost regions where many Christians reside.