Controversial left-wing ‘Activist’ Harsh Mander has landed himself in a spot of bother after a video where he can be seen inciting Muslim mobs against the Indian State and judiciary went viral on social media. Mander said that henceforth, decisions pertaining to matters of the state shall not be delivered by the Supreme Court or the Parliament but will be made in the streets. Since then, the Supreme Court has refused to hear Harsh Mander’s petition until he clarifies his ‘justice on the streets’ speech.
The Delhi Police, too, has filed an affidavit against Harsh Mander in the Supreme Court accusing him not only of inciting violence but also bringing disrepute to the Judiciary and have sought contempt of court proceedings against him. The Police have also requested the Judiciary to dismiss the petitions filed by Harsh Mander and enforce exemplary costs on him.
In yet another video that has gone viral, the ‘activist’ has accused the Supreme Court of failing India’s minorities. It is, of course, obvious that when Harsh Mander says ‘minorities’, he does not mean Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs or Parsis. Meanwhile, he has fled to the United States of America while the Supreme Court spends its precious time on the petitions he filed. Harsh Mander had filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding the arrest of BJP leaders for ‘inciting’ the communal riots in Delhi.
Harsh Mander is the Chairman of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation’s Human Rights Initiative Advisory Board. As readers would be aware, George Soros had recently announced that he will commit $1 Billion towards fighting ‘nationalism’ and ‘nationalists’ and had chosen Prime Minister Modi as a prime target. Under such circumstances, it is worth looking into the antecedents of Harsh Mander.
Who is Harsh Mander?
Harsh Mander had worked in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) for almost two decades and quit the services ‘in protest’ against the ‘state-sponsored riots’ in Gujarat 2002. Since he left the IAS, Harsh Mander has spent quite a colourful life in ‘civil society’ organizations. Among his many contributions, he has worked as the country director of ActionAid India. However, he is most famous for his service in Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council (NAC) that drafted the anti-Hindu Communal Violence Bill.
Presently, Harsh Mander is the Director of the Centre for Equity Studies (CES). It has received funds from Christian Evangelical Organizations and he has openly batted for religious conversions in the past. Apart from Christian organizations, the CES has received funds to the tune of Rs. 30 crores between 2010 and March 31st, 2018. The donors include Action Aid, Oxfam and Bread for the World (Bread).
Bread has also donated to HRLN and another NGO that published a report calling the Amarnath Yatra a ‘militarized pilgrimage‘ in collaboration with a Kashmiri separatist organization. The Kashmiri separatist organization, in turn, is associated with the CDRO, an umbrella organization with intimate links to ‘Urban Naxals’. It is pertinent to mention that Harsh Mander was represented in Court by Colin Gonsalves, the founder of the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN).
In the past, Harsh Mander’s article designed to fuel the victimhood complex among Muslims was shared by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan. He had written in the article published in 2018, “Muslims are today’s castaways, political orphans with no home, for virtually every political party. This despite India being home to a tenth of the world’s Muslims, around 180 million people, making it the largest Muslim country after Indonesia and Pakistan. There has never been a harder time to be a Muslim in India, not since the stormy months that followed India’s Partition.”
Judicial Interventions by Harsh Mander
Harsh Mander is also a known Ishrat apologist, the female LeT operative who was killed in an encounter along with three others by Crime Branch Officials in Gujarat. He was also one of the individuals who had signed a mercy petition for the Mumbai Attack Terrorist Yakub Memon, was among the 203 persons who had signed the mercy petition for Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab, and had signed the mercy petition for Afzal Guru also. Apart from such antics, his judicial interventions have been many. Last year, Harsh Mander had filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking the recusal of then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi from hearing a case relating to the condition of detention camps and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam.
Harsh Mander was also one of the forty ‘activists’ who had filed a review petition in the Court against the Ayodhya Verdict that has paved the way for a Bhavya Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. He is also part of the coterie has also filed a petition against the Citizenship Amendment Act. It is important to remember here that Harsh Mander did all of this while being associated with foreign-funded NGOs.
Harsh Mander role in the CAA unrest
Harsh Mander with his organization ‘Karwaan-e-Mohabbat’ published a report on the violence at the Aligarh Muslim University that absolved the students of all sins and peddled numerous lies against the Uttar Pradesh Police. Later, of course, the entire report turned out to be a massive fraud. Harsh Mander had also promised to register himself as a Muslim if the CAB was passed but OpIndia has not been able to confirm yet if he has gone through with his promise after the CAB became CAA. He has also spread great lies about the NRC in the past and the foreign tribunals in Assam.
Earlier, Mander was part of a coterie that had penned a letter against the CAB. Harsh Mander and his NGO Karwan-e-Mohabbat have been very active at the protests in Shaheen Bagh, the anti-CAA protests masterminded by the notorious Radical Muslim Sharjeel Imam. Even more intriguingly, Harsh Mander spoke on the ‘importance of solidarity’ and “how we can practice civil-disobedience in today’s India”. Karwan-e-Mohabbat had also urged people to join the protests at Shaheen Bagh. And now, a lot more in this regard has surfaced as has been already mentioned earlier in the report.
Other Ventures
Harsh Mander is also the founder of the campaign Aman Biradari, “for secularism, peace and justice”, which often works in association with the CES. In addition to this, he has taught courses in numerous highly esteemed colleges and universities including the Jamia Milia Islamia. His other NGO venture, Karwan-e-Mohabbat, had used the ‘lynching’ of a man to peddle the narrative of rising hate crimes in the country. Harsh Mander had waxed great eloquence about rising intolerance, however, the man had later returned to his home safe and sound.
