India announces foundation of a new federal state Minorities fear violence and infringements of human rights

Minorities in India are threatened with new infringements of human rights through the federal state of Telangana, which the Indian government intends to found in the next few months in the present federal state of Andhra Pradesh. This was reported by the Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) on Thursday in Göttingen. The Moslem minority living in the state very much fear that Hindu nationalists in Telangana could take power and could refuse Moslems civil rights, as has happened in other parts of the country.

"The fears of the Moslem minority of attacks from extremist Hindu nationalists are unfortunately well founded”, said the STP Asia consultant, Ulrich Delius. Hindu extremists burnt alive six Moslems in the village of Vatoli . "Since then Moslems in the region has been living in fear.”

Indigenous people of the Adivasi tribe have also reacted critically to the announcement of the new foundation since they see no prospect of any improvement in their disastrous living conditions. The new state of Telangana will certainly be keeping to the planned destruction of almost 300 Adivasi villages for the Polavaram dam. Some 200,000 native people are to be resettled for the huge project. Besides this, mining companies are violating the land rights of the Adivasi on a large scale. The indigenous people are therefore calling for the establishment of a federal state of their own.

The Indian government announced suddenly on 10th December that it had decided to divide the federal state of Andhra Pradesh, thus responding to the pressure of the language minority of the Telegu, who had long been calling for the foundation of an independent federal state of Telangana. The announcement sparked off large-scale protest in Andhra Pradesh.

The day beforehand a delegation of Moslem politicians from the ruling Congress Party went to New Delhi to press their party leaders not to agree to the splitting up of Andhra Pradesh. Moslems make up about 9.2 percent of the 76 million inhabitants of Andhra Pradesh.

The number of attacks on Moslems registered in India by the "National Commission for Minorities” rose drastically in the years 2008/2009 by comparison with previous years. The number of incidents rose by nearly 50 percent (2007/2008: 1045 complaints; 2008/2009: 1474 cases registered for prosecution).

Ulrich Delius can also be reached at asien@gfbv.de