'Your Silence is Deafening': Over 100 Indian ex-Officials Urge PM Modi to Stop 'Politics of Hate'

For the past several months, some Hindu groups who claimed to be backed by PM Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have openly threatened and abused minorities, especially Muslims.

A total of 108 former Indian bureaucrats have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing concern over the "escalation of violence against the minority communities, particularly Muslims" across several "BJP-ruled states".

They believe such violence poses a threat to the constitutional republic, as the state governments appear to be fully complicit in the current state of affairs.

""As former civil servants, it is not normally our wont to express ourselves in such extreme terms, but the relentless pace at which the constitutional edifice created by our founding fathers is being destroyed compels us to speak out and express our anger and anguish. The escalation of hate violence against the minority communities, particularly Muslims, in the last few years and months across several states – Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, all states in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, barring Delhi (where the union government controls the police) – has acquired a frightening new dimension," states the three-page letter, which was written to the Prime Minister on Tuesday.

Among the 108, there are Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, ex-foreign secretary Sujatha Singh, and former Home Secretary G.K. Pillai, as well as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Principal Secretary T.K.A Nair.

"Your silence, in the face of this enormous societal threat, is deafening," the letter states while appealing to the Prime Minister to call for an end to the politics of hate. "We appeal to your conscience, taking heart from your promise of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas (Everyone support, everyone development)." "It is our fond hope that in this year of 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' (campaign launched by Indian government to celebrate country's 75th year of independence this year in August), rising above partisan considerations, you will call for an end to the politics of hate that governments under your party's control are so assiduously practising".

The open letter came a few weeks after communal turmoil in Delhi, where BJP-ruled civic agency carried out a demolition drive in the Jahangirpuri area in which mostly Muslim houses, including a mosque, were ruined. The demolition came days after a religious procession sparked communal violence in the area in which nine people, including seven police officers, were reportedly injured.

Earlier in April, several incidents of communal violence were reported on the occasion of the Hindu festival Ram Navami in the Indian states of Gujarat, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh.