India replaces tolerance with anti-Muslim hatred, violence
As a travel writer, I have been invited to attend a tourism mart in India in May. With profound regret, I had to decline the invitation as I have adopted a self-imposed boycott of India in protest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anti-Muslim policies.
I have always enjoyed visiting India as a travel writer and a tourist. However, my affinity goes beyond that because my ancestors hailed from Gujarat, where Modi was chief minister before becoming prime minister, and emigrated to Africa in the 19th century. As a third-generation Indian born in Africa, India always held an emotional significance for me and many other East Africa-born Indians.
I have watched in disbelief the communal violence against Muslims resulting in deaths and am disgusted at the direction Modi is taking India. Modi has stripped Kashmir, the country’s Muslim-majority state, of its special autonomous status and has amended citizenship laws, giving priority to Hindus over Muslims.
Ever since Modi became prime minister in 2014, he has been rewriting the history of India, from that of secular democracy to that of a Hindu nation. Reuters reported one Delhi incident in which police seemed to encourage mobs of Hindu supremacists to attack Muslims with rocks while they stood by as the mob lit vehicles on fire. This month, as Muslims gathered for evening prayers during Ramadan, Hindu mobs gathered at mosques shouting abusive slogans, sparking violent confrontations.
All this is happening in the world’s so-called largest secular democracy where HinduMuslim harmony was central to the vision of India’s founder, Mahatma Gandhi.
Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat, turned a blind eye to a massacre in which nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed and 150,000 were driven from their homes. Till now, Modi has refused to apologize or show remorse for the killings.
Modi’s party, the BJP (Bharatiya Jana
Sangh), was established in 1951 as the political wing of the pro-Hindu group, Rashtriya Swayamseyak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary body often accused of plotting assassinations, setting riots and acts of terrorism. The BJP seeks to rebuild India in accordance with Hindu culture, hindutya (“Hindu-ness”), an ideology based on Hindu values, and contrary to the secular policies of the opposition Congress Party. The RSS, which has appointed itself as the architect of a Hindu nation-state, has at least four million volunteers, who swear oaths of allegiance and take part in quasi-military drills.
Modi and BJP have conveniently forgotten Muslims’ contributions during India’s struggle for independence. According to Indian writer, Kushwant Singh, “Indian freedom is written on Muslim’s blood, their participation in the freedom struggle was much more than their percentage.” Of 95,300 freedom fighters whose names are written in India Gate, New Delhi, 61,945 are Muslims which means 65% of freedom fighters are Muslims.
Mughal rulers of India have left a legacy of famous monuments with Indo-Islamic architecture, such as the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Humayun’s Tomb, Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Tomb of Akbar the Great, Jama Masjid, Shalimar Gardens, Wazir Khan Mosque — to name a few, all generating handsome revenue for the government.
Bollywood is full of Muslim actors who are respected and adored by millions of fans. Actors like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Irfan Khan and Said Aly Khan have donated funds during such crises as the COVID-19 pandemic.
India has several successful Muslim businesspeople, among them Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro and known as the “Czar of the Indian IT industry,” who donated US$132 million toward the COVID-19 relief fund. Another notable Muslim was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, president of India from 2002 to 2007.
According to Samanth Subramanian, an Indian author, and commentator, in its 73 years as a free country, India has never faced a more serious crisis.
“Already its institutions — its courts, much of its media, its investigative agencies, its election commission — have been pressured to fall in line with Modi’s policies.
The political opposition is withered and infirm. More is in the offing: the idea of Hindutva, in its fullest expression, will ultimately involve undoing the constitution and unravelling the fabric of liberal democracy. The ferment gripping India since the passage of the citizenship act — the fever of the protests, the brutality of the police, the viciousness of the politics — has only reflected how existentially high the stakes have become.
“For the first time since 1947, when the subcontinent went through its bloody partition into India and Pakistan, a politics is being constructed entirely around the premise of exclusion — of deciding who can’t be Indian, or calibrating how Indian anyone can be,” he added.
The new citizenship bill is an affront to the fundamental tenets of equality and religious non-discrimination enshrined in its constitution, says Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and Congress MP and “an all-out assault on the very idea of India for which our forefathers gave their lives.”
Indians used to proudly point out that Indian democracy gave Muslims an equal stake in the country’s well-being.
“We can no longer say that. Democratic India has never had a religious test for citizenship. Muslims have served as presidents, generals, chief ministers and governors of states, ambassadors, Supreme Court chief justices, and captains of national sports teams. The religious bigotry that led to partition and the establishment of Pakistan has now been mirrored in pluralist India.”
The 1947 partition was “a partition of India’s soil,” he said, adding “this has become a partition of India’s soul. It seems safer in many places to be a cow than a Muslim.”