India under Modi

In 2014, a country that prided itself on its secularism and on being the largest democracy in the world elected an unvarnished Hindu supremacist as its leader. Modi’s India has been even worse than one imagined. Right after coming to power, his BJP had banned beef in Maharashtra, and Muslims were lynched to death supposedly for eating beef or stealing cows. One would have thought being premier may have tempered him and his party a bit but India has grown progressively worse for the most vulnerable communities that live in it – the main being the Indian Muslim. The India of today is one where its numerous minorities, numbering over 200 million, live in fear. And, while India’s pluralism may always have been somewhat exaggerated, under the current regime it has effectively been obliterated.

In the latest descent into madness in the country, a party official in the state of Haryana posted a picture of Shahrukh Khan saying dua at Lata Mangeshkar’s funeral rites, alleging that Shahrukh’s act of saying a traditional Muslim prayer was actually him spitting at the late singer’s remains. The very fact that something like this bizarre allegation can even find takers – in the thousands – in India is enough to show just where the country has landed under a fascist regime. The 200 million Muslims that live in that country and the issues they are facing under the BJP government amount to a campaign of hatred deliberately started against them.

After Love Jihad and auctioning of high-profile Indian Muslim women online, Indian Muslims are now facing a completely unnecessary and vile hijab controversy. Per reports, the government of Karnataka state has declared that Muslim girls cannot attend school wearing a hijab or a dupatta over their heads. They claim that such religious expression should be left at home and not displayed at schools. This violation of the girls’ right to education, and expression, becomes all the worse when it is apparent that the target is just one religious community. In a mainly deeply conservative society such as India’s, women covering up or people displaying religious symbols is too common for anyone to think this to be anything other than anti-Muslim discrimination. Perhaps one of the most visible acts of deliberate discrimination came in the Citizenship Act of India under which any person entering the country from India's neighbouring nations can be fast-tracked for Indian citizenship, unless he or she is a Muslim. That can be no more open gesture of discrimination than this. In Kashmir, of course, violent attacks against the Muslim majority continue. And it appears there is an attempt to change the demographics of Jammu and Kashmir, turning it into a Muslim minority state. The world has already stood by and allowed India to oppress an entire people in Occupied Kashmir. It is now standing silently by as India attempts the same against its own citizens – Muslim citizens – on its own soil. The India of today represents the worst of all worlds: religious obscurantism, unrepentant crony capitalism, and unrepentant political fascism.