- Soutik Biswas
- BBC correspondent in India
image source,Getty Images
Muslims protest controversial remarks made by BJP leader
In April 2020, allegations that a Muslim gathering sparked a Covid-19 cluster outbreak in India quickly turned into a controversy over “Islamophobia”.
Thousands of missionaries from their home countries and abroad attended Delhi rallies organized by Tablighi Jamaat, a nearly 100-year-old missionary movement. The government of Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called it a “super-spreading event”.
Islamophobic memes and hashtags began to spread on social media, accusing the group of spreading the virus, while television news ran sensational headlines such as “Save the country from the coronavirus jihad.”
India has charged nearly a thousand people who attended the rally with flouting lockdown measures. (Eight months later, the court acquitted the last of the detained missionaries, saying they had been “badly prosecuted” at the direction of the government.)
Most of the missionaries were from Indonesia, India’s trading partner. Not surprisingly, Indonesia expressed concern about the issue at a regional summit. The country’s lawmakers say the controversy has been used to smear Muslims in India, where Hindus are the majority. A former Indian diplomat said it was an example of “externalizing” a domestic issue.
This isn’t the first time Modi’s party or government has faced global criticism for accusations of Muslim hatred as India continues its diplomatic firefight after two senior BJP members made offensive comments about Islam’s prophet Muhammad.
Two years ago, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya got caught up in the whirlpool. One of his widely circulated tweets about Arab women in 2015 was condemned by prominent business figures, lawyers and commentators in Dubai and Kuwait for his remarks. (Suria later deleted the tweet.)
This has created a storm in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, with a ministerial official describing the claims of India’s second most powerful leader as “superfluous” and “ignorant”. A Bangladeshi columnist wrote that Shah “has a long history of making hateful and insulting comments about Bangladeshis”.
India has been in a storm of hate speech over the past year, with saffron-clad right-wing Hindu radical leaders attacking the country’s 200 million Muslims. Some of them openly encouraged Hindus to take up arms and spoke of genocide against Muslims.
In the past, the right has stoked the so-called “love jihad,” an unfounded conspiracy theory that Muslim men use marriage to transform Hindu women. Self-described vigilante Hindu mobs lynched Muslim cattle dealers and demanded a boycott of businesses run by the community.
On social media, female Muslim journalists and social workers have been subjected to ferocious cyberbullying. Muslim women put up for ‘sale’ on fake auction sites. Partisan news networks added fuel to the fire, provoking participants to extreme positions on sharp talk shows.
image source,Facebook / DEVBHOOMI RAKSHA ABHIYAN
Some Hindu sect leaders incited violence against Muslims in December
Modi’s government, on the other hand, has either remained deliberately silent, has been slow to respond, or deduced that such behavior is “marginal.”
All of this seems to have emboldened ordinary Hindus to go online to insult Muslims. Doing so has consequences. In 2018, an Indian chef at a Dubai hotel was fired for posting anti-Muslim tweets. When Indians living in Dubai started tweeting against the Islamic Mission in 2020, a local businesswoman linked to the country’s ruling royal family tweeted that “anyone who is openly racist and discriminatory in the UAE will fined and kicked out.”
This time, there was also no surprise a violent backlash – 15 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar, protested to India. Talmiz Ahmad, a former Indian diplomat, said that making disparaging remarks against the Prophet clearly “crossed a red line”.
Modi’s government was forced to suspend its spokesman over the remarks. Prominent scholar Pratap Bhanu Mehta said it was a reminder that “impunity for acts against minorities, as well as officially sanctioned hate speech, will have a negative impact on India’s International reputation has consequences.”
Many BJP leaders privately believe that the anger will soon dissipate and things will return to normal.
image source,AFP
PM Modi puts ties with Gulf countries first
After all, India has a long and deep relationship with the Gulf countries. Some 8.5 million Indians work in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, double the number of Pakistanis, the second largest group of foreign workers.
India is also the largest exporter of foreign workers among all these countries. They remit about $35 billion a year to their hometowns to support 40 million families, many in India’s poorest states, such as Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled by the BJP. Trade between India and GCC countries is around $87 billion. Iraq is the country that exports the most oil to India, followed by Saudi Arabia. More than 40% of India’s natural gas comes from Qatar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has also prioritized relations with Gulf countries. “India’s relationship with West Asian countries is important on issues such as energy security, immigration and employment, and remittances abroad,” said Srinath Raghavan, professor of history and international relations at Ashoka University. .
However, India cannot be complacent and take everything for granted. “It’s short-sighted,” said Ahmed, the author and former diplomat who has just written a new book, “West Asia at War.” “Indians have built an apolitical, Law-abiding and tech-savvy image. If these offensive rhetoric continues, Gulf employers may quietly start not hiring Indians. Why would they risk hiring a potential fanatic?”
Experts believe that the Modi government’s response this time was slow but firm. “There seems to be a recognition that if these things happen, there could be consequences. Politics at home and abroad is not isolated from each other. The government has to make decisions. Does it really want to get into a situation where the masses are rioting?” Raghavan said. .