Muslims in India(JR01)

Indian Muslims (JR01)

Introduction

 India a Hindu majority has a Muslim population of some 150 million, making it the state with the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. While many Indian Muslims achieve celebrity status and high-profile positions abroad and in India’s government—the current president is Muslim—India’s booming economy has left the nation’s largest minority group lagging behind. Muslims experience low literacy and high poverty rates, and Hindu-Muslim violence has claimed a disproportionate number of Muslim lives. Yet Muslims can impact elections, using their power as a voting bloc to gain concessions from the candidates who court them. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are not just encouraged but also rewarded by those in power. According to a report on hate crimes released by Fact Checker, 76 percent of victims of hate crimes in India over the past 10 years have been Muslims. Ninety percent of these attacks have occurred since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was voted into power in 2014. PM Modi himself was rewarded for his role in the 2002 Gujarat massacre.

By labeling Muslims as “beef eaters” and expanding bans on the consumption of beef by putting in place new rules to curtail cow slaughter that disadvantage Muslim and lower-caste Hindus, the Hindu nationalist BJP is encouraging young Hindu men to become so-called cow vigilantes, who brandish their patriotism and faith by physically attacking Muslims. Even a rumor that a Muslim family ate beef for dinner, or a Muslim man ferried a cow to a slaughterhouse, can prove fatal in the hinterlands today.

When Muslims are not being lynched for bovine-related reasons, they are attacked for marrying Hindu girls, for sporting a beard, or for wearing a skullcap or other symbols of religious identity. They are berated on popular, state-favored news channels for being ungrateful betrayers and traitors who have no love for the national flag.

Attacks on Indian Muslims are also a part of a wider campaign to undermine the community and its rich history. The Taj Mahal is an iconic 17th-century mausoleum, built by another Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, but it is frequently disparaged in remarks by Modi’s deputies. Yogi Adityanath, Modi’s choice as chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has stated that the Taj Mahal isn’t sufficiently Indian — code for belonging to India’s Islamic past. “Foreign dignitaries visiting the country used to be gifted replicas of the Taj Mahal and other minarets, which did not reflect Indian culture,” he said at a rally in the state of Bihar last year. “Now, [Hindu] holy books such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana are offered as gifts.” In the past six months, names of iconic cities and railway stations such as Allahabad and Mughal Sarai named after Muslim figures have been changed to reflect Hindu culture.

Stats related to Muslim in India

India’s massive population includes not only the vast majority of the world’s Hindus, but also the second-largest group of Muslims within a single country, behind only Indonesia. By 2050, India’s Muslim population will grow to 311 million, making it the largest Muslim population in the world, according to Pew Research Center projections. Still, Indian Muslims are projected to remain a minority in their country, making up about 18% of the total population at midcentury, while Hindus figure to remain a majority (about 77%).

India also has experienced “very high” levels of religion-related social hostilities in the past decade, according to the same Pew Research Center study. In fact, since we began tracking this issue in 2007, the country has consistently scored “very high” on the study’s Social Hostilities Index. Much of the hostility is directed against low-caste Dalits, according to the U.S. State Department. Religious minorities, including Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Muslims and Sikhs, also are harassed. In recent years there has been a surge in mob attacks by Hindu vigilante groups against Dalit and Muslim consumers and traders in the beef, dairy and leather industries. Additionally, Dalit women are disproportionately victims of sexual violence due to their caste, while Muslim women and girls also have been targeted due to their religion.

ET Intelligence Group analysis indicate Muslims constitute a mere 2.67% of directors and senior executives — 62 of the 2,324 executives — among the BSE 500 companies. Muslims are the most deprived in the jobs market; their condition is worse than even the scheduled tribes (STs) in urban areas,” explains Amitabh Kundu, visiting professor at the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development (IHD). The Kundu committee examined the Muslim community on several counts: income, monthly per capita consumption expenditure, and access to health, education and basic services. They fared poorly on most of the indicators. Muslims, the largest minority who make up 14.2% of India’s 1.25-billion populations, come out pretty much at the bottom of most socio-economic indices, even a decade after a high-level government probe into their historical disadvantages led to policy actions. Almost a quarter of India’s 370,000 beggars are Muslims, newly released data from the 2011 Census show, reinforcing that the community still lags behind on most counts despite the country’s rapid economic growth. Muslims, the largest minority who make up 14.2% of India’s 1.25-billion populations, come out pretty much at the bottom of most socio-economic indices, even a decade after a high-level government probe into their historical disadvantages led to policy actions. The report found high poverty and low literacy levels among Muslims. Despite the community being highly self-employed, their access to credit facilities was very limited. At that time, less than 5% of Muslims held government jobs. Their living conditions were comparable, and on some parameters, worse than other backward categories such as Scheduled Castes, the report showed. Muslim population inside jails is going up too. Of the people lodged in Maharashtra jails in 2013, 31.09% were Muslims. The state average was 19.06%.

Status of Muslims

The Muslim literacy rate ranks well below the national average and Muslim poverty rates are only slightly higher than low-caste Hindus, according to a November 2006 government report  . Muslims—mostly Sunnis—make up 13.4 percent of India’s population, yet hold fewer than 5 percent of government posts and make up only 4 percent of the undergraduate student body in India’s elite universities. The report also found that Muslims fall behind other groups in terms of access to credit, despite the fact that Muslims are self-employed at a far higher rate than other groups.

Violence against Muslims

Religious violence in India includes targeted violence against Muslims. There have been several instances of religious violence against Muslims since Partition of India in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu mobs that form a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950 in 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982.

The causes of this violence against Muslims are varied. The roots are thought to lie in India's history – resentment toward the Islamic conquest of India during the Middle Ages, policies established by the country's \ British colonizers, and the violent partition of India into an Islamic state of Pakistan and a secular India with a Muslim minority.

Many scholars believe that incidents of anti-Muslim violence are politically motivated and a part of the electoral strategy of mainstream political parties who are associated with Hindu nationalism like the Bharatiya Janata Party. Other scholars believe that the violence is not widespread but that it is restricted to certain urban areas because of local socio-political conditions

Violence against Muslims is frequently in the form of mob attacks on Muslims by Hindus. These attacks are referred to as communal riots in India and are seen to be part of a pattern of sporadic sectarian violence between the majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities, and have also been connected to a rise in Islamophobia throughout the 20th century.^[Most incidents have occurred in the northern and western states of India, whereas communalist sentiment in the south is less pronounced.^[Among the largest incidents were Great Calcutta killings in 1946, Bihar and Garmukhteshwar in 1946 after Noakhali riot in East Bengal, the massacre of Muslims in Jammu in 1947, large-scale killing of Muslims following the Operation Polo in Hyderabad, anti-Muslim riots in Kolkata in the aftermath of 1950 Barisal Riots and 1964 East-Pakistan riots, 1969 Gujarat riots, 1984 Bhiwandi riot, 1985 Gujarat riots, 1989 Bhagalpur riots, Bombay riots,Nellie in 1983 and Gujarat riot in 2002 and 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

These patterns of violence have been well-established since partition, with dozens of studies documenting instances of mass violence against minority groups.^[Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal violence since 1950.^[According to official figures, there were 6,933 instances of communal violence between 1954 and 1982 and, between 1968 and 1980, there were 530 Hindus and 1,598 Muslims killed in a total of 3,949 instances of mass violence. In 2017, IndiaSpend reported that 84% of the victims of cow vigilante violence in India from 2010 to 2017 were Muslims, and almost 97% of these attacks were reported after May 2014

Political reasons for violence

Many social scientists feel that many of these acts of violence are institutionally supported, particularly by political parties and organizations connected to the Hindu nationalistvolunteer organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In particular, scholars fault the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena for complicity in these incidents of violence and of using violence against Muslims as a part of a larger electoral strategy. For example, research by Raheel Dhattiwala and Michael Biggs has stated that killings are far higher in areas where the BJP faces stiff electoral opposition than in areas in which it is already strong. In 1989, the north of India saw an increase in orchestrated attacks on Muslims, and the BJP had further success in the local and state elections. The social anthropologist Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah concludes that the violence in Bhagalpur in 1989, Hashimpura in 1987 and in Moradabad 1980 were organised killings. According to Ram Puniyani, the Shiv Sena were victorious in the elections due to the violence in the 1990s, and the BJP in Gujarat after the 2002 violence. Gyan Prakash, however, cautions that the BJP's actions in Gujarat do not equate to the entirety of India, and it remains to be seen if the Hindutva movement has been successful in the deployment of this strategy nationwide.

1964 Kolkata

Riots between Hindus and had left over a hundred people dead, 438 people were injured. Over 7000 people were arrested. 70,000 Muslims have fled their homes and 55,000 were provided protection by the Indian army. Muslims in Kolkata became more ghettoized than ever before in the aftermath of this riot. The riot was believed to be instigated by violence against Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the flow of refugees from there. Violence was also seen in rural West Bengal.

1983 Nellie massacre

In the state of Assam in 1983 the Nellie massacre occurred. Nearly 1,800 Muslims of Bengali origin were slaughtered by Lalung tribespeople (also known as Tiwa) at a village called Nellie. It has been described as one of the most severe massacres since World War II with the majority of victims being women and children, as a result of the actions of the Assam Movement.

One reason cited for this incident is that it resulted from a build-up of resentment over immigration. The Assam movement insisted on striking the names of illegal immigrants from the electoral register and their deportation from the state. There was widespread support for the movement, which tapered off between 1981 and 1982

The movement demanded that anyone who had entered the state illegally since 1951 be deported. The central government, however, insisted on a cutoff date of 1971. Towards the end of 1982, the central government called elections and the movement called for people to boycott it, which led to the widespread violence.

The official Tiwari Commission report on the Nellie massacre is still a closely guarded secret (only three copies exist). The 600-page report was submitted to the Assam Government in 1984 and the Congress Government (headed by Hiteswar Saikia) decided not to make it public, and subsequent Governments followed suit. Assam United Democratic Front and others are making legal efforts to make Tiwari Commission report public, so that reasonable justice is delivered to victims, at least after 25 years after the incident. Since, then there have been no instances of communal violence in Upper Assam.

1969 to 1989

During the 1969 Gujarat riots, it is estimated that 630 people lost their lives. The 1970 Bhiwandi Riots was an instance of anti-Muslim violence which occurred between 7 and 8 May in the Indian towns of Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad. There were large amounts of arson and vandalism of Muslim-owned properties. In 1980 in Moradabad, an estimated 2,500 people were killed. The official estimate is 400 and other observers estimate between 1,500 and 2,000. Local police were directly implicated in planning the violence. In 1989 in Bhagalpur, it is estimated nearly 1,000 people lost their lives in violent attacks, believed to be a result of tensions raised over the Ayodhya dispute and the processions carried out by VHP activists, which were to be a show of strength and to serve as a warning to the minority communities.

1987 Hashimpura massacre

Hashimpura massacre happened on 22 May 1987, during the Hindu-Muslim riots in Meerut city in Uttar Pradesh state, India, when 19 personnel of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) allegedly rounded up 42 Muslim youth from the Hashimpura mohalla (locality) of the city, took them in truck to the outskirts, near Murad Nagar, in Ghaziabad district, where they were shot and their bodies were dumped in water canals. A few days later dead bodies were found floating in the canals. In May 2000, 16 of the 19 accused surrendered, and were later released on bail, while 3 were already dead. The trial of the case was transferred by the Supreme Court of India in 2002 from Ghaziabad to a Sessions Court at the Tis Hazari complex in Delhi, where it is the oldest pending case.

1992 Bombay riots

The destruction of the Babri Mosque by Hindu nationalists led directly to the 1992 Bombay riots. BBC correspondent Toral Varia called the riots "a pre-planned pogrom," that had been in the making since 1990, and stated that the destruction of the mosque was "the final provocation".

Several scholars have likewise concluded that the riots must have been pre-planned, and that Hindu rioters had been given access to information about the locations of Muslim homes and businesses from non-public sources. This violence is widely reported as having been orchestrated by Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist group led by Bal Thackeray. A high-ranking member of the special branch, V. Deshmukh, gave evidence to the commission tasked with probing the riots. He said the failures in intelligence and prevention had been due to political assurances that the mosque in Ayodhya would be protected, that the police were fully aware of the Shiv Sena's capabilities to commit acts of violence, and that they had incited hate against the minority communities.  

2002 Gujarat violence

Since partition, Muslim community has been subject to and engaged in sectarian violence in Gujarat. In 2002, in an incident described as an act of "fascistic state terror, Hindu extremists carried out acts of violence against the Muslim minority population, in retaliation to on going sectarian violence and persecution by radicalised Islamists, often backed by the Pakistan Intelligence services  with increasing support amongst the local Muslim population.

The starting point for the incident was the Godhra train burning which was allegedly done by Muslims.  During the incident, young girls were sexually assaulted, burned or hacked to death.  These rapes were condoned by the ruling BJP, whose refusal to intervene lead to the displacement of 200,000.  Death toll figures range from the official estimate of 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus killed, to 2,000 Muslims killed Then Chief Minister Narendra Modi has also been accused of initiating and condoning the violence, as have the police and government officials who took part, as they directed the rioters and gave lists of Muslim-owned properties to the extremists.

Mallika Sarabhai, who had complained over state complicity in the violence, was harassed, intimidated and falsely accused of human trafficking by the BJP. Three police officers were given punitive transfers by the BJP after they had successfully put down the rioting in their wards, so as not to interfere further in preventing the violence. According to Brass, the only conclusion from the evidence which is available points to a methodical pogrom, which was carried out with "exceptional brutality and was highly coordinated".

In 2007, Tehelka magazine released "The Truth: Gujarat 2002," a report which implicated the state government in the violence, and claimed that what had been called a spontaneous act of revenge was, in reality, a "state-sanctioned pogrom".According to Human Rights Watch, the violence in Gujarat in 2002 was pre-planned, and the police and state government participated in the violence. In 2012, Modi was cleared of complicity in the violence by a Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court. The Muslim community is reported to have reacted with "anger and disbelief," and activist Teesta Setalvad has said the legal fight was not yet over, as they had the right to appeal. Human Rights Watch has reported on acts of exceptional heroism by Hindus, Dalits and tribals, who tried to protect Muslims from the violence 

Web site www.soundvision.com states 

‘Communal riots against Muslims are among the biggest tragedies of this independent, secular democracy. Wherever Muslims have acquired a relatively better economic position, these riots send them back to the starting point. There have been 249 riots per year according to Indian government statistics. Senior Indian journalist, Khuswant Singh notes that in all communal violence that has taken place in India since Independence in the 1940s, over 75 per cent of the causalities - in terms of lives and property destroyed - were Muslim….The second important problem is the state of present textbooks in the Indian education system which have become very aggressive in teaching Hinduism. This hits Muslims' faith, culture, civilization, language and way of life. The educational syllabi have prescribed course books in all states, which are replete with matters pertaining to the faiths of the majority ….community, mythological and other stories of Hindu gods and goddesses against the principles prescribed in the Constitution. Obviously all these things are negations of Islamic beliefs and teachings, especially about the Oneness of God Almighty. Hence there is no doubt that these things are causing great concern to the Muslims….The rewriting of history is done in a way that continues to fuel the non-secular, chauvinistic Hindu perspectives, causing the new generation of Indians to shape their behavior towards minorities in a very hostile way. .. The economic problem: More than fifty percent Muslims are leading a life below the poverty line as compared to thirty-five percent of Hindus who live below the poverty line. Because of a general environment of hostility against Muslims, decent employment in the private sector is becoming increasingly difficult for Muslims, while in the public sector there is no encouragement for Muslims either. The future of Muslim professionals and its working class, traders etc has been very greatly affected…Today very few Muslims are found in government jobs. A recent survey shows that there are only eight Muslim police chiefs in India's 591 districts. That is .01% as compared to 12% of the Muslim population in India. The situation of other departments is also worsening day by day…Education: The active discrimination Muslims face in the private and public sector of the job market, has forced them to pay less attention to school education which, in India, is connected with the job market. In the educational field therefore, Muslims are very backwards.. Urdu language. Another major problem of Muslims of India is that of the Urdu language. The Urdu language was born as a result of the interaction and cohesion of different languages, nations, cultures and civilizations and is a mixture of some old languages like Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Turkish etc. Urdu is almost a dead language now as far as the medium of instruction is concerned. It is not tolerated even in the primary and secondary stages of education….The Muslims of India are very vulnerable in a country which describes itself as the world's "largest secular democracy". Muslims today remain poorer, less educated and less empowered in India.So much for those who question partition

Muslim Politics: 

The hearts and minds of Indian Muslims would be a valuable prize for Saudi Arabia and Turkey as they vie for leadership of the Muslim world. This is particularly true in the wake of the October 2 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which catapulted the rivalry to center stage.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently declared that Turkey was “the only country that can lead the Muslim world,” he probably wasn’t only thinking of Middle Eastern and other Islamic states such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. There is growing evidence that Indian Muslims, the Islamic world’s fourth-largest community after Indonesia and the South Asian states, is on Erdoğan’s radar.

Erdoğan’s interest in Indian Muslims highlights the flip side of a shared Turkish and Indian experience: the rise of religious parties and leaders with a tendency towards authoritarianism in non-Western democracies that, according to Turkey and India scholar Sumantra Bose, calls into question their commitment to secularism.  

Erdoğan is competing for Indian Muslim hearts and minds with a continued flow of Saudi funds to multiple Salafi organizations, including charities, educational institutions, and political organizations, as well as reporting by Turkish journalists associated with the Gülen movement who point to Turkish links with militant clerics.They include controversial televangelist Zakir Naik, whose Peace TV reaches 200 million viewers despite being banned in India.

Problematically for Erdoğan, some of his interlocutors, including Naik, seemingly prefer to straddle the fence between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and play both sides against the middle.

“One among the few Muslim leaders who appreciate, have the guts to support Islam openly, is the president of this country, that is President Erdoğan…. You are lucky to have a president like president Erdoğan,” Naik told a crowd in Istanbul shortly before Turkey declared its support for Qatar at the outset of the 18-month-old Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state.

Naik’s remarks are unlikely to have sat well with Saudi Arabia, whose King Salman had two years earlier awarded the preacher the King Faisal International Prize for “service to Islam.”

The award includes US$2 million in prize money. Unconfirmed press reports say Naik has been traveling on a Saudi passport since his Indian document was revoked in 2017.

If the geopolitical stakes for Erdoğan are primarily his leadership ambitions, for Saudi Arabia it’s not just about being top dog. Influence among Indian Muslims creates one more pressure point for the kingdom in its opposition to Indian funding of Iran’s Arabian Sea port of Chabahar.

Saudi Arabia fears the port will help Iran counter harsh US sanctions imposed after President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from a 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The kingdom is further concerned that the port will enable Iran to gain greater market share in India for its oil exports at the expense of Saudi Arabia, raise foreign investment in the Islamic Republic, increase government revenues, and enable Iran to project power in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Finally, Saudi Arabia sees Indian Shiites, who are believed to account for anywhere between 10% and 30% of the country’s 180 million Muslims, as an Iranian fifth wheel.

Indian media quoted a report by India’s Intelligence Bureau as saying that ultra-conservative Saudi Islamic scholars were frequently visiting Indian Sunni Muslim communities. The Bureau reportedly put the number of visitors in the years between 2011 and 2013 at 25,000. It said they had distributed tens of millions of dollars – a scale unmatched by Turkish funding. The Saudi effort is furthered by the fact that some three million Indians work in the kingdom, many of them from Kerala in southwestern India.

“The Muslim community in Kerala is undergoing the process of Arabification… It is happening like the westernization. Those Indians who had lived in England once used to emulate the English way of life back home. Similarly, Muslims in Kerala are trying to bring home the Arabian culture and way of life,” said scholar Hameed Chendamangalloor.

South Asia scholar Christophe Jaffrelot noted that Muslim institutions in Kerala, including the Islamic Mission Trust of Malappuram, the Islamic Welfare Trust, and the Mujahideen Arabic College had received “millions of (Saudi) riyals.”

As in the case of Naik, Turkey has reportedly sought to forge ties to Maulana Syed Salman Al-Husaini Al-Nadwi, a prominent Indian Muslim scholar who is a professor at one of the country’s foremost madrassas (religious seminaries), Darul-uloom Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow.

Al-Nadwi tweeted his support for Erdoğan in advance of last June’s election. “We represent the Muslim peoples and 300 million Muslim Indians. We want the Turkish people to take place next to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his party,” Al-Nadwi said.

Al-Nadwi’s son Yusuf was a speaker at a conference in Istanbul in 2016 on the history of the caliphate movement in Turkey and South Asia organized by the South Asian Center for Strategic Studies (GASAM). That center was founded by Ali Sahin, a former deputy minister for European affairs and a member of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Al-Nadwi sparked controversy in 2014 by suggesting to Saudi Arabia that he raise a 500,000-strong militia of Sunni Muslim Indian youth that would contribute to a global Islamic army to “help Muslims in need,” fight Iraqi Shiites, and become part of a Caliphate. At about the same time, he raised eyebrows by praising ISIS’s success in Iraq in a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Turkish-Saudi competition for Indian Muslim hearts and minds is grist for the mill of Hindu nationalists, even if Turkish moves have attracted less attention than those of their Saudi rivals.

The India Foundation, with its close ties to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), warned last year in an analysis of the significance of two Saudi-funded universities’ adoption of a palm tree in their logos that the kingdom’s proselytization “laid the ideological foundation for Arabization of Muslims in India. Over time, this has dealt a suicidal blow to the local character of Islam in the Indian subcontinent.”

Update: Apr., 4, 2019:

Leading constitutional expert and prominent author A.G Noorani was delivering the 12^th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture titled, “Muslims of India: Past and Present” at the Constitutional Club in Delhi on Nov 23. New Delhi: “Muslims of India are in worst position today than in 1857 or 1947”, lamented A.G Noorani, leading constitutional expert and prominent author. A.G Noorani was delivering the 12^th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture titled, “Muslims of India: Past and Present” at the Constitutional Club in Delhi on November 23, organized by Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS). The Lecture was chaired by Hamid Ansari, former Vice- President of India.

A.G Noorani in his Lecture primarily mapped the concerns facing the Muslims of India today. He broadly placed the problems plaguing the Muslims in the framework of discrimination and their isolation in public discourse marked dominantly by the binary of minority-majority which leads to their alienation and stigmatization. He said one of the biggest challenges facing the Muslims is that of discrimination at multiple levels. He pointed out that the representation of Muslims in the Parliament is low reflecting their overall lack of representation in decision making positions, political power and other areas like livelihoods, housing etc. He went on to say that the trend of suspecting the loyalty of Muslims in the country is pernicious. The loyalty of Muslims is unfairly linked to volatile Indo-Pakistan relations or the Kashmir issue thus portraying the Muslims in a poor light. Although he stressed on proportionate share in power is instrumental for improving the overall situation of Muslims, he rued that the Muslim leadership today is ineffective. He cautioned that separate parties for Muslims are not the panacea for better representation of their sensibilities and interests. Instead, Muslims should make their voice heard and place their concerns on common platforms. A.G Noorani in his Lecture discussed broad suggestions that will improve the status of Muslims in India.

Firstly, he believed that there should be an establishment of organizations dedicated to the advancement of minorities. However, such organizations should not be limited to minorities alone but should have Hindus in it too. The Muslims, he believes, should find support from Hindus for protecting secular values in the country. Secondly, he suggested that there should be meticulous documentation of violence and discrimination. Based on such documentation, agitations may be organized which will bring social cohesion and not exploit the existing fault lines. Thirdly, the marginalized have to negotiate for their space, issues and interests in political parties. They will have to bargain with political parties. Fourthly, he emphasized that Muslims can’t isolate themselves from the national issues. They will have to lend their voice and take an active interest in the broader socio-political landscape of India.

“I am afraid, these so-called secular parties....now you have the temple entry program of Congress party chief Rahul Gandhi earlier by Mrs Gandhi who also did that. And Rajiv Gandhi also started his election campaign by going to a temple. So you have to accept this reality. And then think what should be our strategy,” Noorani said

Hamid Ansari in his concluding remarks stressed on how education is the key for the rights and advancement of Muslims. He pointed out that education of Muslims has been so far ignored and that has proved detrimental in today’s social order. The audience asked perceptive questions to the speaker which shed light on some of the pressing issues faced by Muslims in India and also have severe implications on the secular democracy in India.

FT on Muslims in India : Apr.,13,2019:  Kaleemullah Kasmi dreads the potential re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party. “There is so much tension,” said Mr Kasmi before Indians headed to the polls on Thursday. “After the BJP came to power it’s not just Muslims, it’s all minorities that are suffering. I fear for the country.” Buying clothes from a market in Old Delhi, where the red sandstone minarets of the ancient Jama Masjid mosque dominate the horizon, Mr Kasmi worries that there is no future for Muslims in Mr Modi’s India. “Muslims raise the issues, but our voice doesn’t reach the corridors of power,” the 31-year-old teacher at an Islamic school said. Experts say Mr Kasmi’s view is not unusual among Muslims in India, a group that represents about 14 per cent of the country’s population. Many believe they are being marginalised in the nation’s politics under the BJP, raising concerns that India’s secular framework is being subverted under Mr Modi. This has extended to the ostensibly secular Congress party, with analysts suggesting it does not want to alienate Hindu voters galvanised by the BJP’s potent cocktail of religious nationalism. India is home to 170m Muslims, the third-largest population in the world behind Indonesia and Pakistan. But there is rising concern that Mr Modi’s government is cementing a de facto majoritarian regime for Hindus, which represent 80 per cent of India’s 1.3bn people. The prime minister, a protégé of the nationalist Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has sought to cultivate the image of a pan-Indian leader since becoming prime minister in 2014 in an effort to distance himself from a controversial tenure as chief minister of Gujarat, the state he led from 2001 to 2014. He was accused of complicity in communal violence that left about 2,000 Muslims dead in 2002. Mr Modi has denied any involvement but he was denied a US visa over his alleged role in the violence. Despite his efforts at rebranding, Muslim political representation has dropped to its lowest level in Indian history since Mr Modi took power. There is not one Muslim BJP MP in India’s Lok Sabha, or lower house, and Muslims now hold only 4 per cent of the seats in parliament, compared with more than 6 per cent a decade ago and a peak of 9.6 per cent in 1980. This is despite the fact that the overall number of Muslim candidates put forward by independent parties for election has risen in recent years, reflecting the dominance of the two major parties. As of the latest count, the BJP is fielding just six Muslims out of 375 candidates in the polls, while the main opposition Congress party is putting forward 32 Muslims out of 344 candidates. This trend is mirrored at the state level. In the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where Muslims represent about one-fifth of the population, the number of elected Muslim members fell from more than 60 out of 403 in 2012 to 24 in 2017. None of the candidates were fielded by the BJP. “The BJP’s vision of a Hindu nation will make minorities invisible, it means giving no space at all in public institutions,” said Gilles Verniers, a political scientist at Ashoka University. “What is significant is that [some] other parties fearing the Hindu backlash have also started fielding fewer Muslims than they did before.” Analysts say that even the Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Gandhi-Nehru political dynasty that helped lead the country to independence, has moved in a similar direction. “Congress is hesitating to give tickets to Muslims; there is Hindu-Muslim polarisation and they fear a Hindu mobilisation behind the BJP,” said Zoya Hasan, a political scientist. “Muslims in any constituency aren’t so large to decide an outcome, but Hindus are everywhere.” Vinayak Dalmia, a spokesman for Congress, rebuffed the claims. “Congress has a truly secular spirit,” he said, adding that many candidates have yet to be announced. “Compared to every other party, the party has the most inclusive and composite culture.” A spokesman for the BJP did not respond to a request for comment. Muslims worship at the Jama Masjid mosque in New Delhi © Reuters The fear is that the continued marginalisation of Muslims could open the door to radicalism. “At the moment the response of Indian Muslims to what is happening is silence, in the hope that they can use the ballot to vote in a more inclusive government,” said Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a top adviser for the Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi party, which has traditionally drawn strong support from Muslims. “However if this doesn’t happen then the alienation of a population of almost 200m people could lead to heightened conservatism and potentially even radicalism, which is non-existent right now.” The BJP has been criticised for turning a blind eye to rising numbers of Hindu vigilante attacks on Muslim dairy farmers, livestock traders and farmers transporting cows, an animal Hindus revere as semi-divine. “The rhetoric has always been we’re pro-Hindu, not anti-Muslims, but the practical effect of that is it bleeds into anti-Muslim activities, attacks and lynchings,” said Prof Verniers. Christophe Jaffrelot, a professor of politics at Sciences Po in Paris, said the government has targeted Muslims in part to deflect criticism away from its economic failures, including promises to create millions of jobs. India, he adds, is beginning to resemble an ethnic democracy. “India was supposed to be a form of multiculturalism, with minorities represented in different power centres, but gradually now we see those people marginalised,” he said. “India is becoming a democracy that only works for the majority.”

NY Times: Apr., 13, 2019: In the machine tools market in the catacombs of Old Delhi, Muslims dominate the business stalls. But at night, they say, they are increasingly afraid to walk alone. And when they talk politics, their voices drop to a whisper. “I  could be lynched right now and nobody would do anything about it,” said Abdul Adnan, a Muslim who sells drill bits. “My government doesn’t even consider me Indian. How can that be when my ancestors have lived here hundreds of years?” “Brother, let me tell you,” Mr. Adnan added with a sigh, “I live with fear in my heart.” When Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, was elected in 2014, it was with broad support for his sweeping promises to modernize India’s economy, fight corruption and aggressively assert India’s role in the world. Five years later, he is widely seen as having made at least some progress on those issues.  But over the past five years, his bloc, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has been spreading an us-versus-them philosophy in a country already rived by dangerous divisions. The Hindu right has never been more enfranchised at every level of  .Now, with national elections underway, and with most polling data indicating that Mr. Modi will return to power, the growing belief here is that a divisive Hindu-first agenda will only accelerate. The emboldening effect became apparent within months of the 2014 election. Hindu lynch mobs began to pop up across the landscape, killing Muslims and lower-caste people suspected of slaughtering cows, a sacred animal under Hinduism. Most often, the mobs have gotten away with it. Hate speech began to proliferate. So did the use of internet trolls to shut down critics. Government bodies began rewriting history books, lopping out sections on Muslim rulers, changing official place names to Hindu from Muslim, and more aggressively contesting holy sites. They also began pushing extremist Hindu priorities, including an effort to locate a mystical river that features prominently in Hindu scriptures. Critics called it pseudoscience and said the search was akin to using public dollars to study mermaids. The consensus among Indian activists and liberal political analysts is that their society, under Mr. Modi, has become more toxically divided between Hindus and Muslims, between upper and lower castes, between men and women. Its population may be 80 percent Hindu, but the modern country’s founding fathers, including Nehru and Mohandas K. Gandhi, resisted going down the path of establishing a religiously identified state like Iran. But Mr. Modi’s popularity raises the question of how long this will last.  In modern India, Hindu nationalist views and corresponding anti-Muslim feelings have come in waves. But by many measures this particular wave of majoritarianism has hit a higher crest than ever before. Mr. Modi, 68, rose to power by climbing the ranks of a hard-line Hindu organization known as the R.S.S., whose volunteers preach the virtues of Hinduism and also do martial arts and yoga. They are effectively the foot soldiers of the nationalist movement. His moment came in 2002, when the state of Gujarat exploded in religious bloodshed. As Gujarat’s chief minister, he was criticized for doing little to stop the Hindu-Muslim violence that killed over 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. Mr. Modi himself rarely makes overt religiously charged statements, unlike many lawmakers in his party, who have called Muslims “dogs” and threatened to kill them. More recently, though, as complaints have piled up about joblessness, problems on farms and other economic trouble spots, he has turned more openly to Hindu nationalist themes. On April 1, at an outdoor election rally in central India, he stood in a cream-colored shirt with a green and saffron scarf around his neck — saffron is a holy color in Hinduism, and a favorite of Mr. Modi’s party. Politically, India’s Muslim minority — about 15 percent of the population — was dealt a serious setback in the 2014 elections. Their parliamentary presence dropped to just 22 seats, or just 4 percent of the total available, the lowest Muslim representation in five decades. Roving bands of self-proclaimed cow protectors began to appear, mostly in northern India, which is more socially conservative. Their targets were Muslim or lower-caste butchers and livestock traders, and dozens were beaten to death, sometimes with a crowd recording the macabre scene on their phones. Many Indians complain that Mr. Modi and his party have created a poisonous atmosphere that has dehumanized minorities and inspired the violence. Senior party members have rallied to the defense of people accused of those attacks, and at times even those few who have been convicted. In the vast majority of lynching cases, though, the suspects escaped punishment, often with the help of state officers. 

Threats to Muslims: Apr., 14, 2019: Two top members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party including an estranged member of the Gandhi dynasty were in hot water Saturday for appearing to threaten people to vote for them in the ongoing mega-election. Indian politicians are often accused of using hate or intimidation to win support of the electorate. Soliciting votes on religious lines or threatening voters is prohibited. A video showed women and child welfare minister Maneka Gandhi, widow of former politician Sanjay Gandhi, warning a gathering of Muslim community members to vote for her or be shunned if she returns to power. “I am winning with the help of the people. But if my victory comes without the support of Muslims, then I will not feel good,” Gandhi told a gathering during a campaign rally on Friday. “It will leave a bitter taste. And then when a Muslim comes for any work, then I will think let it be.” Her comments sparked outrage online and demands for action by the opposition Congress party — headed by her former husband’s nephew Rahul Gandhi — as local election authorities told her to explain her comments. 4. The other new incident in the current election, which runs to May 19, involved Sakshi Maharaj, a Hindu monk, who told a gathering in the northern city of Kanpur he would “curse” those who do not vote for him. “When a saint comes to beg and isn’t given what he asks for, he takes away all the happiness of the family and in turn gives curse to the family,” Maharaj said, adding he was quoting from sacred Hindu scriptures. Maharaj is facing 34 criminal charges against him, including alleged murder, robbery and cheating. He is running for a second term from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh state. The BJP member’s previous comments include calling upon Hindus to produce four children and grow faster than the Muslim population.

Indian elections: May, 1, 2019:

The country's election commission says nearly 900 million voters are eligible to vote in the seven-phase voting, which started on April 11 and will go on till May 19 for 543 parliamentary constituencies. But nationwide reports of voters finding they were unable to vote after being deleted from, or deemed ineligible to be included in, the electoral rolls,  have raised concerns.  But those left out of the voting process in India's northeastern state have not been able to join in the enthusiasm. Last year, a controversial update to a citizenship list, known as the National Registry of Citizens (NRC), excluded around four million people, effectively stripping them of Indian citizenship. Many of them   are from Assam's Bengali-origin minority.  

Assam's D voters are not the only people to have been denied voting rights in India. Around three million names were allegedly deleted off voter rolls in the southern state of Telangana between 2015 and 2018, leading to mass disenfranchisement in the state elections that were held in December.  The deletions in Telangana took place during a process aimed at removing duplicate names from the electoral rolls and linking voter details to Aadhaar, a controversial biometric identity card. But people there say their names were removed from the list without proper verification, leaving them unable to cast their votes in last year's elections. Similar mass deletion of names from voters' lists has been reported from other states, such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Delhi.

  Research by two leading psephologists has suggested that as many as 28 million women are missing from the electoral rolls. An initiative called Missing Voters goes even higher, estimating that a whopping 120 million Indians are not on the voters' lists  Khalid Saifullah, founder of the Hyderabad-based initiative, told Al Jazeera that he believes around 65 million of these missing voters are women. Among the 120 million people Missing Voters suggests are not included on the rolls, Saifullah further estimates that around 40 million of them, are Muslims while 30 million are Dalits, the former "untouchables". Saifullah's estimates are based on discrepancies he says he found between the number of single households in census data and the election commission's data. The numbers include those who may not have registered to vote in addition to the names that may have been deleted.

Indian Elections: May 5, 2019:

a new book, Algebra of Warfare-Welfare: A Long View of India's 2014 Election - published in March, has raised questions regarding representation and social justice in the world's largest democracy. The book also deploys warfare to mean politics of enmity. Indian democracy seems more like a spectacle of crass majoritarianism than an inspiring example where dissenters - Muslims, Christians and other silenced and marginalised groups - can fearlessly express themselves. Instead of addressing the country's failing economy, systemic corruption, the problems ordinary people confront, India's ruling party has promoted anti-Muslim rhetoric to win elections. The Congress party mostly plays as BJP's team B. This majoritarian impulse is traceable to India's birth as a democracy when the Congress enacted constitutional acts, such as beef ban, that discriminate against Muslims and other marginalised groups. Nehru may have been personally "secular"; policies he pursued were not. Nor were most Congress leaders or institutions they headed.

Unlike India, neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan have never voted an Islamist party to power. The irony is that while "democratic" Bangladesh has effectively banned Jamaat-e-Islami for its religious politics, the BJP, which unfailingly fuses religion and politics to subjugate religious minorities is touted as an emblem of democracy. Western leaders, the "guardians" of democracy, see no contradiction in their opposition to religious politics of one type and the embrace of another. Like Sri Lanka's anti-Tamil, pro-Sinhala/Buddhist democracy, India is heading towards a full ethnic democracy. Indian democracy has failed the marginalised by replacing justice with bare, "staged" elections. The "road shows" politicians organise show nothing except their own faces because actual challenges ordinary people face largely remain concealed. While the media shows trivial details about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's love for mango, the kind of clothes he wears, it tells pretty little about the true faces of ministers like Jayant Sinha who garlanded criminals convicted for lynching. Denial of justice to victims of the state-mediated massacres - whether of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, 1996 anti-landless massacres (in Bihar's Bathani Tola and Laxmanpur Bathe), 2002 anti-Muslim riots and many more - militates against any genuine democracy.

True, a democracy routinely holds election. However, in many ways, the current Indian election is against democracy for it does not follow the spirit of democracy and has barely any place for social justice, much less for truth and humane hope. India today significantly resembles Germany of the 1930s. The current propaganda of "love jihad" tell the public that Muslims receive foreign funding to lure Hindu girls to ultimately convert them. Such concerns about Hindu girls on the part of Hindu populists resonates with Mein Kampf according to which: "The … Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, spying on the unsuspicious German girls he plans to seduce."

Since the promise that democracy would solve rampant political and social injustice, rising economic inequality, wars within and among nations, social misery and so on has remained unmet, contemporary democracy seems conceptually exhausted. Justice must be the core of democracy - a democracy that, as philosopher Jacques Derrida observed, is yet to come.   The electoral/political success of the Hindu right wing in India has many reasons. The Hindu right has a long legacy covering a span of a century, drawing sustenance from a majoritarian ideology which claims India to be a Hindu nation. Though it remained peripheral during India's freedom struggle and even after India's partition in 1947 on the basis of religion, it gradually and systematically entrenched itself into various spheres of society. Sustained ideological, organisational and mobilisation work of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the fountainhead of the Hindu right, helped its political front, the BJP, to control today India's state power. Besides, loss of credibility of the Indian National Congress, the dominant political party, due to corruption, non-governance, nepotism, absence of strong leadership, made the task of the Hindu right easy.

 The Hindu right primarily fought the 2014 elections on the plank of "development for all" and Narendra Modi promised to bring "good days" in the lives of everyone, particularly for the poor and the youth. He received a massive mandate and became the prime minister. Though he began his tenure with many positive initiatives on governance, curiously, he simultaneously allowed the right-wing vigilantes to unleash violence and intimidation against minorities, particularly Muslims. He himself used polarising strategy to win elections in states. Thus governance lost direction and many promises were not fulfilled. In this milieu, the 2019 elections had to depend on a strategy which would be different from 2014; national security, terrorism and nationalism became core issues overshadowing development. The right wing has different trajectories. BJP and its predecessor BJS (Bharatiya Jana Sangh) have remained part and parcel of democratic process and even fought against the authoritarian regime of (former Prime Minister) Indira Gandhi. Former Prime Minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee, despite being from the right, was a democrat, not authoritarian.

Modi's great mass appeal, oratory, charisma, strong leadership gave him a massive popular mandate in New Delhi and in majority of states. As he came to enjoy to control the party, the government and the state without facing any challenge, he naturally emerged as an authoritarian leader Authoritarianism is anti-thesis of democracy. Though the Indian constitution has enough checks and balances to stem authoritarianism, yet a powerful leader like Modi, with large mass support, could attempt to subvert the constitution and suppress democratic institutions threating India's democracy. 

Post election: May, 26, 2019: 

Three Muslims, including a woman, were beaten by vigilantes over rumors of possessing beef in the Indian city of Seoni in the Madhya Pradesh state, reported India Today. The vigilantes, known in India as self-proclaimed ‘gau rakshaks’, acted on a tip-off they had received about two Muslim youths and a woman transporting beef in a rickshaw. A video of the attack shows the goons beating the Muslims with sticks. They were held to a tree one by one and beaten brutally in front of a crowd of onlookers. The victims were also forced to chant slogans of “Jai Shree Ram”. Police reports suggest the attack occurred on May 22. Officials  

 June , 25, 2019: 

In the first instance a Muslim youth was beaten by a mob for not chanting ''Jai Sri Ram". He later died in a hospital.In another instance in Kolkotta another Muslim youth was beaten up for not chanting ''Jai Sri Ram".

US report on Muslims in India: June, 25, 2019: The US State Department in its annual 2018 International Religious Freedom Report says Mob attacks by violent extremist Hindu groups against the minority communities, particularly Muslims, continued in India in 2018, amid rumors that victims had traded or killed cows for beef and the authorities often protected perpetrators from prosecution. The US report also said that some senior officials of the ruling BJP made inflammatory speeches against the minority communities.

The report said that as of November 2018, there were 18 such attacks, and eight people killed during the year. On June 22, two Uttar Pradesh police officers were charged with culpable homicide after Muslim cattle trader died of injuries sustained while being questioned in police custody, the report said. In the India section, it said that there were reports by nongovernmental organizations that the government sometimes failed to act on mob attacks on religious minorities, marginalized communities and critics of the government. The report also said that the central and state governments and members of political parties took steps that affected Muslim practices and institutions. The government continued its challenge in the Supreme Court to the minority status of Muslim educational institutions, which affords them independence in hiring and curriculum decisions, it said.

In its World Report covering 2018, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the government failed to “prevent or credibly investigate” mob attacks on religious minorities, marginalized communities, and critics of the government. At the same time, according to HRW, some BJP officials publicly supported perpetrators of such crimes and made inflammatory speeches against minority communities, which encouraged further violence. According to HRW, mob violence against minority communities amid rumors that they traded or killed cows for beef, especially Muslims, by extremist Hindu groups continued throughout the year. As of November, there had been 18 such attacks, and eight people killed during the year.

The US report pointed out that twenty-four of the 29 states apply partial to full restrictions on bovine slaughter. Penalties vary among states, and may vary based on whether the animal is a cow, calf, bull, or ox. The ban mostly affects Muslims and members of other Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. In the majority of the 24 states where bovine slaughter is banned, punishments include imprisonment for six months to two years and a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 rupees ($14 to $140). Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir penalize cow slaughter with imprisonment of two to 10 years. The law in Gujarat mandates a minimum 10-year sentence (the punishment for some counts of manslaughter) and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment (the punishment for premeditated murder of humans) for killing cows, selling beef, and illegally transporting cows or beef.

In February the first public display of “ghar-wapsi” (reconversion activities facilitated by Hindu organizations for those who had left Hinduism) in Kolkata took place when the organization Hindu Samhati featured 16 members of a Muslim family who were “reconverted to Hinduism” at a public rally. Hindu Samhati founder Tapan Ghosh said he had organized similar events previously for quite some time but decided to showcase the “reconverted” people in public as “the time was right.”

In its official newspaper, the Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist regional party, stated the country’s Muslim community had too many children and “needs a family planning policy.”  The paper’s December 4 editorial said the policy was needed to “ensure stability in the country and maintain national security.” It added, “the population of Indian Muslims is proliferating at the speed of a bullet train.  Implementing family planning on them is the only solution.”

“Throughout the year representatives from the embassy and consulates general met government officials to discuss challenges faced by religious minorities, especially Christians and Muslims, incidents of cow vigilantism, the status of religious freedom in the country, and religiously motivated violence,” the US report on International Religious Freedom concluded.

The US International Religious Freedom Report gave specific examples of religiously motivated killings, assaults, riots, discrimination, vandalism and actions restricting the right of Muslims:

“As of November 2018, there were 18 such attacks, and eight people killed during the year.On June 22, two Uttar Pradesh police officers were charged with culpable homicide after a Muslim cattle trader died of injuries sustained while being questioned in police custody.  In a separate incident, a court in Jharkhand sentenced 11 individuals, including a local BJP official, to life in prison for beating to death a Muslim, whom his killers believed to be trading in beef.

“On July 17, the Supreme Court said violence in the name of “cow vigilantism” was unacceptable and the onus of preventing such incidents lay with the states. Attacks on religious minorities included allegations of involvement by law enforcement personnel.  “On January 10, Jammu and Kashmir police arrested eight men, including four police personnel, in connection with the kidnapping, gang rape, and killing of an 8-year-old girl.  The men allegedly kidnapped the victim, took her to a nearby temple, and raped and killed her in an effort to drive her nomadic Muslim community out of the area. In September Uttar Pradesh authorities suspended three police officers after videos surfaced of them abusing a Hindu woman in Meerut for reportedly consorting with a Muslim man. The central and state governments and members of political parties took steps that affected Muslim practices and institutions.

“The government continued its challenge in the Supreme Court to the minority status of Muslim educational institutions, which affords them independence in hiring and curriculum decisions. Proposals to rename Indian cities with Muslim provenance continued, most notably the renaming of Allahabad to Prayagraj. Activists said these proposals were designed to erase Muslim contributions to Indian history and had led to increased communal tensions.

“There were reports of religiously motivated killings, assaults, riots, discrimination, vandalism, and actions restricting the right of individuals to practice their religious beliefs and proselytize. According to Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) data presented in the lower house of parliament on February 6, communal incidents increased by 9 percent from 2015 to 2017, with 822 incidents resulting in 111 deaths and 2,384 injuries in 2017. “Authorities often failed to prosecute perpetrators of “cow vigilante” attacks, which included killings, mob violence, and intimidation.  On July 21, a group attacked and killed Rakbar Khan, a Muslim dairy farmer from Haryana, while he was transporting two cows at night. In December (2017) an estimated 300 persons, angered by reports of cows being slaughtered in the area, set fire to the police station in Chigrawati and killed a police officer. An 18-year-old protester was also killed in the violence.  

“A mob assaulted two Muslim men, killing one, in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna District on May 17, alleging they were slaughtering a bull.Police arrested four assailants and filed a complaint alleging cow slaughter against the injured survivor.

“In December the Shiv Sena Party published an editorial calling for government to curb the growth of the country’s Muslim population through such measures as compulsory family planning for Muslims.  On September 28, the Supreme Court overturned a ban on females aged 10 to 50 years from entering the Hindu Sabarimala temple in Kerala, a move that, according to media, sparked political controversy across the country…..

“On September 18, media reported a village council in Haryana passed a decree urging Muslim residents to adopt Hindu names, refrain from such actions as growing beards or wearing traditional skullcaps, and avoid praying in public. The announcement reportedly came a month after police arrested Yamin Khokkar, a Muslim villager, whom local authorities accused of illegally slaughtering a calf. Subsequent media reports stated the village council denied it passed the decree….

“On June 11, Hyderabad police charged a member of the Telangana legislative assembly, T. Raja Singh of the BJP, for making hateful and derogatory remarks against Muslims and the Quran.  The police arrested him on charges of promoting enmity between different groups. This was the 19th case filed against Singh.In a live Facebook video session, Singh allegedly demanded a ban on the Quran, stating that its verses called for killing Hindus.

“On February 7, BJP Member of Parliament Vinay Katiyar said Muslims had “no business” staying in India. Speaking to a media organization, Katiyar said Muslims should instead settle in Bangladesh and Pakistan since they were responsible for the partition of India….

“On July 8, Union Minister Jayant Sinha came under public scrutiny after embracing individuals convicted of killing a Muslim trader in Jharkhand in 2017.The eight men who met with Sinha were convicted of murder in the killing of Alimuddin Ansari, who they said was transporting beef.  Social commentators criticized Sinha, particularly for not speaking about the victim or about justice for his surviving family members. Following the public backlash, he issued statements condemning violence and vigilantism….

“State and local jurisdictions submitted 25 proposals to the MHA during the year to rename cities across India, mirroring a similar trend of renaming train stations, islands, and roads that previously had British or Islamic names. According to AsiaNews and Reuters, BJP leaders in Uttar Pradesh decided to rename some cities that “sounded too Islamic.” In October Uttar Pradesh changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraj. In November authorities changed the name of the Faizabad District to Ayodhya, the place where Hindus believe Lord Ram was born. Activists said these proposals were designed to erase Muslim contributions to Indian history and had led to increased communal tensions….

Aliens: July, 18, 2019:

India will identify and deport illegal immigrants from across the country, the Indian interior minister said on Wednesday, stepping up a campaign that critics say could stoke religious tension and further alienate minority Muslims. An exercise to identify alien immigrants from Muslim-majority Bangladesh has been going on in the northeastern state of Assam for years, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist-led government has taken it up in earnest. The campaign was a key issue in this year's general election, won by Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist party.

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament the government would not limit its efforts to Assam, but would come down hard on illegal immigrants anywhere. “Illegal immigrants living on every inch of this country will be deported according to the law,” Shah told the upper house of parliament. Shah, seen as a Hindu nationalist hardliner and a possible future replacement for Modi in the top job, called illegal migrants “termites” eating into Assam's resources during the election campaign.  of any group.

While reinforcing measures against migrants slipping into the country, the government is trying to bring in a law that would simplify the process of getting Indian citizenship for immigrants from religious minorities persecuted in neighbouring Muslim countries, including Pakistan. People in Assam are scrambling to prove their citizenship as part of an exercise to prepare a Supreme Court-ordered registry of citizens in the state. The list is due to be released on July 31. A draft of the list released in July last year identified four million of the state's roughly 31 million people as illegal residents, including many Hindus.

But rights groups have warned that many residents, largely poor Muslims, are at risk of becoming stateless under the process. Other states in the northeast have launched similar exercises to identify people without Indian citizenship. Mizoram state passed legislation in March to create separate registers for “residents” and “non-residents”, and the neighbouring state of Nagaland is working on a similar register.

Assam: Aug., 31, 2019:

In India’s northeastern Assam state, anxiety and panic is mounting among nearly four million people who fear they may no longer count as Indian citizens although many have lived in the country for decades. As part of a campaign to root out illegal immigrants, authorities will publish on Saturday a final list of the state’s bonafide citizens.

The hundreds of thousands whose names were excluded from a preliminary list last July have scrambled through a bureaucratic maze for the past year, trying to dig out documents from government offices or engaging lawyers they often cannot afford to fight for their inclusion in the citizens’ register.

 Critics also point out that the campaign is not targeting recent immigrants but those that may have migrated decades ago. The arbitrariness was highlighted when a war veteran, Mohammed Sanaullah was identified as a “foreigner” in May and packed off to a detention camp – he was released days later by the state’s High Court on bail when the case made headlines.

Worries run especially high among Muslims in a state where they make up one third of the population, far higher than in other parts of India. And as many Muslims complain of bias against them, critics have slammed the BJP for exposing communal fault lines and using them as a political target to build their support base in the state.

Among those who have scrambled to prove that they are Indians are 70 members of school principal Mansur Ahmed’s maternal family whose names never made it to the citizens’ list published last year. The problem: his grandfather’s name appeared with different spellings on land records that date back to the 1930’s — a common problem in India, where record keeping in the past was never accurate.

Ahmed says the family has appeared over 12 times before officials hearing appeals. “They are becoming tired, appearing in interviews again and again. Still they are in confusion whether their name will come or not,” he says.“It is very distressing for all people, specially Muslims, they are in great fear,”