Freedom House, the global freedom watchdog in its latest report has downgraded India from "free" to "partly free." And when Indians, both free and partly free, woke up to Freedom House's assessment and timely intervention for the partly free, Indians were already split into two highly divisive camps with Social Media and media breaking out in writeups and comments galore that further widened the split.

Coming on the heels of Congress party's muscle-flexing Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi's statement that "RSS schools" were on par with "Pakistan's madrasas", Freedom House's rating of India and Indians was a double whammy that should have pole-axed Narendra Modi and his band merry RSS men, who, Freedom Watch says, has infiltrated all government and semi-government bodies from top to bottom.

Of course, the fit as a fiddle Rahul Gandhi caught flak for his utter disdain for the overarching RSS with BJP spokespersons on all channels going hammer and tong against the Congress mainstay, but what can the Modi dispensation do to Freedom House, which unlike Twitter does not make billions by going after the Brahminical heirarchy of Bharat/Hindustan? Freedom House cannot be touched, pulled up and berated by Meenakshi Lekhi, and Modi will have to take the "free to partly free" insults and live with them.

According to Freedom House, India’s "score" fell from 71 to 67, and its rank fell from 83 to 88 out of 211 countries. The Washington-based Freedom House's demotion of India’s freedom score comes as no surprise. Now that Donald Trump is out of the way, expelled to the Florida panhandle, human rights watch groups like Freedom House finally have the time to cast their widening eyes on Trump's pal Narendra Modi's doings or rather wrongdoings in far-off India, where rights and civil liberties “have been eroding since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014”.

Going by Freedom House's description of India, specifically referring to attacks on Muslims, use of the sedition law, and the government’s coronavirus response including the lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an ogre who came down Jack's beanstalk in May 2014 and has been since then feeding unwanted for the BJP Indians, those who are "partly free", to the wolves and the lions, and to the hyenas circling in the margins, slobbering jaws hanging to the grass.

“His (Modi’s) Hindu nationalist government has presided over increased pressure on human rights organizations, rising intimidation of academics and journalists, and a spate of bigoted attacks — including lynchings — aimed at Muslims. The decline deepened following Modi’s reelection in 2019, and the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 featured further abuses of fundamental rights," says Freedom House in its annual report.

It mentions "intimidation of academics and journalists", but forgot to add "Bollywood actors and directors", who too were "intimidated" with the full force of the law, using agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department. One more day and Freedom House would have heard of the "hounding" of director Anurag Kashyap and actor Taapsee Pannu by the Income Tax Department.

Imagine to be woken up by creepy income tax sleuths at 7 am and then told to sit on the hands for the next 12 hours minimum as the creepy lot crept into nooks and crannies looking for something to incriminate, anything, kuch bhi! That's the perfect definition of the "partly free", done only to allegedly put the fear of the RSS in the heads and hearts of law-abiding citizens, those who don't stand for courtesy or permission when it comes to telling the Modi Government that a wrong is a wrong and nothing two things about it!

In fact, the Freedom House put its finger on the nub when it came to the treatment of Muslims and other minorities. The organisation in its report, spoke of a “pattern in which the Hindu nationalist government and its allies have presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population and pursued a crackdown on expressions of dissent by the media, academics, civil society groups, and protesters”. Is there an iota of truth in the allegation?

The fact is India’s score of 67 puts it alongside Ecuador and Dominican Republic. Freedom House underlined this with saying that the change in India’s status from "free” to “partly free” was the most significant for 2020, “meaning less than 20 per cent of the world’s people now live in a Free country — the smallest proportion since 1995″. For common Indians this is ignominous, but the fact remains that very few Indians will have known, knew, of Freedom House, who?

For those who don't know, had never heard of Freedom House, Google! Even the "partly free" can do that. That is the easy part. The hard part is to digest the fact that nothing's gonna change, even with this report. Not in India, which is now a hated divided house, like the United States is. The Anurag Kashyaps and the Taapsee Pannus are not the real victims of this split country. The really persecuted victims are the common folk of India, like the 54 who were killed in the northeast Delhi riots. And those who faced the wrath of the cow vigilante before that.

Of course, there are those in the realm, the so-called RSS "chaddis" and the "BJP bhakts", who wouldn't give the time of the day to Freedom House, especially at this time of the Kalyug when the Narendra Modi Government has half the world at its throat because of the perceived ill-treatment of farmers in and around Delhi by the Modi Government, which allegedly serves only Adani & Ambani from both ends of the Narendra Modi Stadium!

The Freedom House annual report is a severe indictment of the Modi Government and its treatment of India's democracy in the time of the coronavirus and before. While the "partly free" will equate the Narendra Modi rule with a pandemic with no vaccine to beat the virus, the reality is that in a democracy there's always the ballot to set things right. Elections are a recurring cycle, and the best means to set oneself free from the yoke. There is always one more election to come, a never-ending stream of elections! Wait. (IPA Service)