*New Delhi: *There is growing alarm that the United Nations is focusinginternational attention on “human rights violations” in India, withunprecedented censure by UN special rapporteurs on anindustrial-environmental dispute in Thoothukudi, indictment by UN expertson journalist Rana Ayyub’s freedom of speech and expression, and mostrecently, the demand for an “independent international investigation” intoevents in Jammu & Kashmir.

As a Human Rights Council meeting opens in Geneva Monday, India will benervously watching if the international community further drags New Delhiinto its crosshairs.

In the last few weeks, New Delhi has thrice been rapped on its diplomaticknuckles by the UN. As the global international order led by the US andChina realigns itself, there is growing concern that the UN is using theturbulence to push its own interventionist agenda.

The scathing indictment by UN special rapporteurs on the police firing onprotesters against Vedanta’s Sterlite plant in Thoothukudi is a case inpoint. Never, at least in India, has the UN commented on an industrialdispute. But on 31 May, as many as eight UN special rapporteurs condemnedthe “apparent excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force” by theTamil Nadu police, in which 12 people were killed.

Barely a week before on 24 May, five UN special rapporteurs asked thegovernment to protect Rana Ayyub’s freedom of speech and expression andasked why she was being subject to extraordinary vilification and acampaign of hate, rape and death threats.

UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid bin Ra’ad’S detailed,blow-by-blow compilation last week of alleged human rights violations inJammu & Kashmir, is another sign of the times. The report even went to theextent of demanding that reparations be given to the victims of theconflict.

Never has a UN human rights organisation, not even at the height of theinsurgency in Kashmir in the early 1990s, called upon India to “fullyrespect the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir asprotected under international law”.

At the time, debates on Kashmir and growing religious intolerance after thedemolition of the Babri Masjid had taken place only when Pakistan hadinsisted that its resolution be taken up at the UN Human Rights committee.

A furious Delhi has since slammed the report, but there is growing concernthat the UN is pushing an agenda, using the “human rights” argument.

Now in Geneva, New Delhi is wondering if the international community willtake up the demand that he made in his own report for an “independentinternational investigation” into allegations of human rights violations inJammu & Kashmir.

For the first time in more than 25 years, New Delhi fears that the dreaded‘K’ word, Kashmir, is back front and centre. Except that this time aroundit is accompanied by criticism in other parts of India as well – onindustrial disputes and on freedom of speech.

For the first time in decades, as India returns to the crosshairs ofinternational attention, it is having to desperately scramble to keep upwith old friends and make sense of newer antagonisms.

The relationship between India and the US is less cosy than it was inrecent years, with New Delhi and Washington still finding their feet in thewake of President Donald Trump’s determination to shake up theinternational order.

He has already demanded India “do more”, especially in Afghanistan, even ashe creates new openings with Pakistan after the killing by a US drone ofdreaded terrorist Mullah Fazlullah.

Fazlullah, who belonged to the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was foundin southern Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, New Delhi is wondering how to deal with the Prince Zeidheadache. Officials note that he has been consistent in his attack of theModi government.

Last April he wrote a letter to external affairs minister Sushma Swarajdemanding that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) be expandedto “coverall relevant cases involving the paramilitary forces and the army,including in Jammu & Kashmir state,” as well as empowering it to “inquireinto alleged human rights violations and abuses by the armed forces ofIndia”.

Then in September last year, at the inaugural of the 36th session of theHuman Rights Council, Zeid al Ra’ad had said: “The current wave of violent,and often lethal, mob attacks against people under the pretext ofprotecting the lives of cows is alarming.”