India’s war on Muslims

Pakistan has condemned in the strongest possible terms the blasphemous remarks made by two senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons, Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar Jindal. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has said that these completely unacceptable remarks have not only deeply hurt the sentiments of the people of Pakistan but of billions of Muslims around the world while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that Modi’s India is persecuting Muslims and that ‘the world should take note.’ Pakistan is not the only country to have taken exception to what India has become: a dangerously bigoted country for its minority communities, particularly Muslims who now have to contend not just with daily violence but also hateful attacks on their faith. The OIC has issued a statement while Qatar, Kuwait and Iran have summoned Indian envoys to condemn the blasphemous comments made by the Indian ruling party’s spokespersons.

While India has said that these comments do not reflect the views of the government of India and the BJP has suspended Nupur Sharma’s membership and expelled Jindal, this is a case of too little, too late. India under Modi has become a nightmare for Indian Muslims who have had to suffer a continuous Hindutva rampage since 2014 when Narendra Modi became prime minister. The only reason any action has now been taken by the BJP is because of the outrage in the Arab world against India and calls for boycotting Indian products. That such hateful comments could be made on a primetime Indian TV channel without the anchor batting an eyelid – and even encouraging such derogatory remarks – shows the level of discourse that has now been mainstreamed in the country.

India boasts a secular constitution but the facade of Indian inclusiveness has come completely undone under Narendra Modi’s divisive rule. From lynchings over beef consumption to the August 5, 2019 action in Occupied Kashmir, from going after Muslim students, journalists, activists to shutting down Muslim businesses in India, to gunning for Muslim women’s right to wear the hijab – India has turned into a country where bigotry and communal hatred thrive. And yet the international community has stayed silent, despite consistent reports regarding the lack of religious freedom under Modi. When in 2014, India elected an unvarnished Hindu supremacist as its leader – the ‘Butcher of Gujarat’ – and then proceeded to crackdown on religious freedoms not just in the occupied territories of Jammu and Kashmir but in India itself, the world should have woken up. Instead, Modi has been consistently treated with kid gloves. Something is deeply rotten in the state of India and the entire world stands complicit due to its silence.