This month, India commemorates the anniversary of its independence and the historic Quit India movement, both milestones rooted in the people’s uncompromising struggle for freedom, justice, and sovereignty. But alarmingly the very values that shaped our republic are under systematic attack by the Modi regime. What we are witnessing is not mere erosion, but the deliberate bulldozing of the constitutional ethos birthed by the freedom movement.
Justice Sabotaged
A day after the Home Minister Amit Shah announced in parliament that no Hindu is a terrorist, the Special NIA Court in Mumbai acquitted all seven accused including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case relating to the bomb explosion near a mosque that took six lives.
17 years after the blast, the Court has held that the State prosecution has failed to prove the charges of terrorist activities against the accused, marking the logical conclusion to a sustained sabotage of the trial.
The case was investigated by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) under slain cop Hemant Karkare, who uncovered a right-wing conspiracy against the Muslim community. The chargesheet flled by the ATS detailed the process from the planning meetings across the country, to procurement of explosives by Lt. Col. Purohit from army stocks, and the manner in which the accused implemented the plan. It invoked several charges under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) against the accused.
In 2011, the case was taken over by the NIA, which performed a complete u-turn in 2016 by filing a supplementary chargesheet dropping MCOCA charges and giving a clean chit to 7 accused including Pragya Thakur. The NIA also alleged that the ATS had coerced witnesses into giving statements without any formal enquiry into the allegation. Contrary to expectations, the Special Court, however, refused to discharge Thakur despite the NIA giving her a clean chit.
A year earlier, in 2015, Rohini Salian, the Special Public Prosecutor in the 2008 Malegaon case, who was abruptly dropped, went on record to say that the government, through the NIA, had urged her to go “soft” on the right-wing leaders accused in the case. Now after this verdict, she has come out stating that the true evidence has been withheld. Shockingly, key evidence has “disappeared” from the court records during the trial including the confessional statements of several key witnesses and two accused, recorded under CrPC 164 and MCOCA, and the accounts of meetings between Pragya Thakur and another accused, Ramji Kalsangra, discussing the plans for the Malegaon bomb blast. Photocopies were eventually relied upon at the end.
This series of sabotages has made justice a casualty: justice to the victims of this heinous crime, and more broadly, justice to the people who seek freedom from this right-wing terror. After 17 long years, the families of the victims are confronted with the accused walking scot-free, just like the victims of the other right-wing bombings – the 2003 Parbhani Mosque bomb blast, 2006 Nanded Mosque bombing, 2007 Samjhauta Express Train, Mecca Masjid and the Khwaja Chishti Shrine bomb blast cases. In each of these cases, it became apparent that these were perpetrated by saffron terror outfits. Indeed, the ATS theory of the Malegaon blast being a part of a larger Hindutva terror nexus, too, was quietly shelved by the NIA.
This terrorism trial marked by disappeared documents, hostile witnesses, political interference, deliberate dereliction of duty and institutional sabotage has dealt justice a huge blow.
While Hindutva terrorists are being legitimised and shielded by the regime, Amit Shah went so far as to claim in Parliament that no Hindu can be a terrorist. Yet their violence continues unchecked. In Karnataka’s Hoolikatti village, members of the far-right group Sri Ram Sene conspired to poison a school’s water tank in an attempt to falsely implicate the Muslim principal. Several students were hospitalised. This was not an isolated act of hate, but part of a wider campaign to demonise minorities and create fear.
At the same time, Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers are facing heightened persecution in state after BJP-ruled state. Hundreds of workers were detained recently in Gurugram and subjected to tremendous humiliation, harassment and even violence. As part of this nefarious campaign, BJP leader Amit Malviya and the Delhi Police have now gone so far as to label Bengali, a language officially recognised in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, as a "Bangladeshi" language.
Modi’s MIGA Silence and Surrendering of India’s Sovereignty
While justice bleeds at home, India's sovereignty is auctioned abroad. In a recent insulting move, Donald Trump slapped a 25% punitive tariff on Indian goods, publicly mocking India’s economy as “dead.” Trump also threatened India with more tariffs as India is purchasing oil, but beyond the oil the tariff is also imposed due to India being part of BRICS. All this comes after Modi went out of his way to appease Trump, famously chanting “Abki baar, Trump Sarkar” in 2020 and mimicking Trump’s “MAGA” slogan with his own catchphrase, “Make India Great Again.”
Modi’s foreign policy, paraded with the pomp of photo-ops and hollow slogans, has proven to be nothing but a series of humiliating surrenders. His much-hyped friendship with Donald Trump has yielded nothing but threats of tariffs and trade penalties. The relentless pursuit of Western approval has come at the cost of India’s historical leadership in the Global South. SAARC has been rendered comatose. BRICS is treated as an afterthought. NAM, the very platform that once allowed India to stand tall among postcolonial nations is all but abandoned.
This dilution of sovereignty is also reflected in India’s deafening silence in the face of the genocidal war in Gaza. As thousands of Palestinians, including children, are massacred in a campaign of ethnic cleansing by Israel, the Modi government has chosen silence and complicity over solidarity. India's growing closeness to the murderous Israel-US axis, is now shamelessly flaunted. The Modi regime has chosen to align itself with the very colonial powers our freedom movement fought against.
The result? India stands isolated in its region and alienated from the global South it once helped to lead. From diluting our anti-colonial legacy to selling off national resources and economic autonomy in the service of a neoliberal agenda and for the profit of cronies like Adani and Ambani, Modi has driven India into a corner on the world stage.
As we remember the Quit India movement and the birth of our freedom, we must renew our resolve to resist the Modi regime’s betrayal of our fundamental values, our constitutional ethos, and the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for justice, solidarity, and independence. We owe it to the martyrs of our freedom struggle, to the victims of violence and dispossession, and to future generations to reclaim the soul of republic and build a just, sovereign, socialist, secular, and free India.
