Anti-Muslim
Aftermath of Modi’s Election Victory By Sajjad Shaukat (JR 189
SS 60)
Indian Prime
Nerendar Modi’s extremist party BJP had got a land sliding triumph in the
Indian elections 2014 on the basis of anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan slogans.
Indian election-campaign against Islam, Muslims and Pakistan enabled BJP
hardliner Modi to become Indian prime minister. Whereas, the Muslim community
in India had felt alienated, frightened and perturbed, as most of them were
also effectively disenfranchised.
Muslims were
already aware of Modi’s agenda to reduce the Muslim community in India to
second class citizens, and had felt nervous and gloomy. Their anxiety was
multiplying due to the fact that during the election-campaign, the BJP was also
speaking of Hindu deep seated animosity against Pakistan and Pakistani public.
Hence, since the
Prime Minister Modi came to power, he has been implementing anti-Muslim and
anti-Pakistan agenda with the support of fanatic coalition outfits.
In this regard,
various developments like unprecedented rise of Hindu extremism, persecution of
Muslims, assaults on Muslims, including their places of worships and property
by the fanatic Hindu mobs, inclusion of Hindu religious books in curriculum,
forced conversion of Muslims into Hindus and ban on beef and cow slaughter
clearly showed that encouraged by the Hindu fundamentalist groups such as BJP,
RSS VHP, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, including other similar parties have been
promoting religious and ethnic chauvinism in India by propagating the ideology
of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) which is the genesis of Hindu terrorism.
Besides,
continuing false flag operations, on Setember18, 2016, New Delhi staged the
drama of the terror attack in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) at a military
base in Uri, close to the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. After the Uri
episode, without any investigation, India’s top civil and military officials,
including their media started propaganda against Pakistan by accusing that the
militants who targeted the Uri base came from Pakistan’s side of Azad Kashmir.
India created war-hysteria against Pakistan and started mobilization of troops
near the LoC, while claiming surgical strikes on the Azad Kashmir. But, the myth
of Indian so-called surgical strikes was exposed, as Indian top civil and
military officers could not prove the strikes. Meanwhile, Indian forces also accelerated violations of the LoC by shelling
Pakistani side of Kashmir, which still continues.
However, BJP played the same anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan
card to gain votes of a majority of Hindus in the general elections 2019. Hindu majority
was mobilized on ‘hate Muslim’ slogans and ‘anti-Pakistan’ jargons, while the
incessant and unjust Indian propaganda against Pakistan was beyond anybody’s cognition,
which still keeps on going.
Notably, very
tension escalated rapidly between New Delhi and Islamabad when on February 27,
this year, in response to the Indian so-called pre-emptive air strike near the
town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir,
Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down two Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets and
launched aerial strikes at six targets in the IOK.
In the aftermath
of the false flag terror attack at Pulwama, truth about India’s surgical
strikes unmasked, when Indian top civil and military leaders failed in
providing any evidence.
The myth of
Indian surgical strikes was further exposed, when, referring to the statement
of Indian India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj who admitted on April
18, 2019 that no Pakistani soldier or citizen died in the air strike carried
out by IAF across the border in Balakot, Director General of Pakistan Army’s
media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Maj-Gen. Asif Ghafoor
stated on April 19, 2019: “After India finally admitted that their so-called
air strike carried on February 26 in Balakot caused no deaths and
casualties…Hopefully, so will be about other false Indian claims [such as]
surgical strike of 2016, denial of shooting down of two Indian Air Force [IAF]
jets by Pakistan Air Force and claims about F16…Better late than never.”
Afterwards,
journalists visited the targeted site of Balakot and Islamabad also released a
video which exposed the false statements of New Delhi that IAF fighters
targeted the camp of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and killed 350 militants.
In fact, the
false flag terror attack in the Pulwama
district of the IOK, which killed at least 44 Indian soldiers, was election
stunt of the BJP. Exploiting that episode, a wave of jingoism was created by
the BJP-led fanatic parties against the Muslims and Pakistan to win the general
elections 2019.
Therefore, as
regards the elections 2019, on May 23, 2019, National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
won 352 out of 542 Lok Sabha seats, with the BJP sweeping up 303 seats on its
own—21 seats more than it won in the 2014 elections. Across most of North and
Central India, BJP candidates also won with bigger vote shares and wider
victory margins than in 2014.
Owing to the
huge mandate of the BJP, violence has been let loose, with “Jai Shri Ram”–a
slogan that roughly translates to “Hail Lord Ram”. As Modi was named as the
leader of the NDA for a second time, minority communities especially Muslims
have made to live in fear by the extremist Hindus.
In this respect,
in the aftermath of the election results, news reports have highlighted different
cases in which Dalits and particularly Muslims were violently targeted for
reasons as varied as allegedly possessing beef, protesting against caste-based
discrimination or simply being Muslim. Especially, various incidents of arrests
and violent assaults on the Muslims by the Hindus have been recorded.
In an incident,
a Santhali teacher in Jharkhand was arrested for a two-year-old Facebook post
defending the right of Adivasi communities to eat beef.
In Begusarai
district, where Hindutva hardliner Giriraj Singh won the 2019 Lok Sabha seat, a
Muslim youth Mohammed Qasim was shot at by a Hindu Yadav on May 26 after his
attacker discovered his religious identity.
25-year-old
Mohammad Barkat from Gurugram in Haryana was accosted by a group of Hindus who
ordered him to take off his skullcap. According to a report of “The Hindu”, the
group of men abused Barkat and told him that skullcaps were not allowed in that
area. When Barkat told them that he was returning from the mosque after
prayers, one of the men slapped him. Barkat told ‘The Hindu’, “When I refused,
he threatened to feed me pork…The men also beat me with a stick and tore my
shirt before driving away on a motorbike.”
Tabrez Ansari,
22, was caught by a crowd in the BJP-ruled state of Jharkhand on suspicion of
stealing a motorcycle on 18 June. He was tied to a tree and beaten within an
inch of his life. And while he was being thrashed, the crowd established his
religion–Muslim and then began the demands for “Jai Shri Ram”. Ansari was then
arrested and taken into judicial custody. On June 23, he died in a local
hospital after he complained that he felt unwell.
In the West
Bengal, a 26-year-old Muslim teacher Hafeez Mohammad Sahrukh Haldar was
attacked by a group of Hindus on June 24 and was pushed off a train in Kolkata
for not chanting “Jai Shri Ram”.
In the run-up to
May’s general elections and after the results were declared, Mamata Banerjee,
chief minister of Bengal, was constantly heckled by BJP mobs to shout, “Jai
Shri Ram”.
Nevertheless,
persecution of the Muslims continues unabated in India and the BJP-ruled
central government has been largely silent in this regard.
In this
connection, Hindu-Muslim communal tension flared up in Old Delhi’s Hauz Qazi on
July 1, this year after 3 or 4 Hindu boys, including 45-year-old Sanjeev Kumar
Gupta tortured a Muslim boy Aas Mohammad (20) on alleged wrong parking of motor
bike on night of June 30, 2019 outside his house next to the temple. Muslims of
the area observed shutter down strike. During protest, another scuffle took
place between Hindus and Muslims, which resulted into increased tensions. A
group of Muslims damaged two Mandirs in the area. However, no casualty took
place.
India’s Central
Reserve Police (CRPF) cordoned the areas of Darya Gunj, Pahar Gunj, Lal Kunwan,
Jamia Masjid and Chandni Chowk with unannounced curfew like situation. New
Delhi has ensured a complete black-out of the incident in print and electronic
media.
According to the
India Today, “Politicians giving communal spin to the incident: Sanjiv Kumar,
man involved parking scuffle in Delhi, speaks to India Today...Reiterating that
there was no intention to give the Hauz Qazi incident a communal
colour…Politicians end up giving communal colour to everything. Whether it is
the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Congress or Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), there is
no exception.”
It
is notable that even foreign print and electronic media and analysts opined,
“Modi’s election win is a victory for far right Hindu nationalism…India’s
secular democracy is under threat…BJP’s record in 2015-2019 has been
divisive to say the least. The party has marginalised religious minorities,
especially Muslims, from public life with many, as a result, being lynched by
Hindu nationalists in the name of cow protection…Jingoism and Islamophobia has
propelled the BJP to an even stronger showing than in 2014. A Modi victory puts
India’s 200 million Muslims in danger…Modi is part of the large Hindu
supremacist family…In his home state of Odisha, he furthered India’s sectarian
divide, pushed the idea of Hindu supremacy and with that, violence against
Muslims, Christians and other minorities…Modi is radicalising Muslims.”
Undoubtedly,
we can that the Constitution declares India to be a secular state, granting
equal rights to the religious minorities, but in practice, ideology of Hindutva
prevails. Hindu politics and culture, dominated by the extremist Hindu parties
have been propagating Hindutva agenda. After the election victory of the BJP
and its coalition parties led by the fundamentalist Prime Minister Modi, Muslim
anxiety in India is increasing owing to the fact that like the previous
elections, during the election-campaign of 2019, Hindu majority was mobilized
on the anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim slogans.
Sajjad Shaukat
writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic
Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International
Relations
Email:
sajjad_logic@yahoo.com
