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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 8/6/22

India's 200 million Muslims are marginalized by Modi's regime

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On Tuesday Masjid-e-Khaja Mahmood outside Hyderabad was demolished by the municipal staff amid heavy police presence. The Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) leader Amjedullah Khan told media that the mosque was constructed three years ago and daily five times namaz including Friday prayers were being performed regularly. He pointed out that Green Avenue Colony on 15 acres of land was plotted and sold after due permission from Shamshad Grampanchayat. Two plots of 250 square yards were marked as a site for masjid.

Demolition of mosques has become a common phenomenon under the extreme right wing anti-Muslim regime of Narender Modi who came to power through Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh support.

In August 2021, the ancient Bilal Mosque located in Faridabad in the Indian state of Haryana was demolished by the Indian government.

Tellingly, the demolition of the historic Babri mosque in December 1992 triggered deadly religious riots across India, killing more than 2,000 people, and according to historians, permanently rupturing India's social fabric.

According to Lindsay Maizland - Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), anti-Muslim sentiments have heightened under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has pursued a Hindu nationalist agenda since elected to power in 2014. Since Modi's reelection in 2019, the government has pushed controversial policies that critics say explicitly ignore Muslims' rights and are intended to disenfranchise millions of Muslims. Under Modi, violence against Muslims has become more common. The moves have sparked protests in India and drawn international condemnation.

In an article published by CFR on July 14, 2022, Maizland pointed out that a 2019 report by India-based nongovernmental organization Common Cause found that half of police surveyed showed anti-Muslim bias, making them less likely to intervene to stop crimes against Muslims. Analysts have also noted widespread impunity for those who attack Muslims. In recent years, courts and government bodies have sometimes overturned convictions or withdrawn cases that accused Hindus of involvement in violence against Muslims. States have increasingly passed laws restricting Muslims' religious freedoms, including anti-conversion laws and bans on wearing headscarves in school.

In addition, authorities have turned to extrajudicial means to punish Muslims, through a practice critics call "bulldozer justice." In 2022, authorities in several states destroyed people's homes, alleging that the demolished buildings lacked proper permits. However, critics said they primarily targeted Muslims, some of whom had recently participated in protests. In response, India's Supreme Court said that demolitions "cannot be retaliatory," though the practice has continued.

Maizland enumerated the following events as the largest outbursts of bloodshed and carnage:

Babri Masjid, 1992. Disputes over the mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya have turned deadly in recent decades. Hindus claim a general from the Muslim Mughal empire built the mosque on the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram during the sixteenth century. In 1992, Hindu militants destroyed the mosque. An estimated three thousand people, most of them Muslim, died in ensuing riots"the deadliest religious clashes since partition.

Gujarat riots, 2002. Nationwide clashes broke out after a train of Hindu pilgrims traveling from Ayodhya through the western state of Gujarat caught fire, killing dozens of people. Blaming Muslims for starting the fire, Hindu mobs throughout Gujarat killed hundreds of Muslims, raped Muslim women, and destroyed Muslim businesses and places of worship. Opposition politicians, human rights groups, and U.S. lawmakers criticized Modi, then Gujarat's chief minister, and the BJP for not doing enough to prevent the violence and in some cases encouraging it. An Indian government investigation said the train fire was an accident, but conflicting reports have said it was arson.

Muzaffarnagar riots, 2013. In towns near the city of Muzaffarnagar, more than sixty people were killed in clashes that broke out between Hindus and Muslims after two Hindu men died in an altercation with Muslim men. An estimated fifty thousand people, most of them Muslim, fled the violence; many lived in relief camps for months, and some never returned home.

Anti-Muslim mobs. Hindu mob attacks have become so common in recent years that India's Supreme Court warned that they could become the "new normal." One of the most common forms of anti-Muslim violence is vigilante groups attacking people rumored to trade or kill cows, which many Hindus believe are sacred. At least forty-four people, most of them Muslims, have been killed by these so-called cow protection groups, according to a 2019 Human Rights Watch report. Muslim men have also been attacked after being accused of "love jihad," a term used by Hindu groups to describe Muslim men allegedly trying to seduce and marry Hindu women to convert them. Hundreds of Muslim men have been arrested for violating anti-conversion laws that several BJP-led states passed in an effort to prevent love jihad.

New Delhi clashes, 2020. Violence broke out as Muslims and others protested the Citizenship Amendment Act in New Delhi. Around fifty people were killed, most of them Muslim, in the capital city's worst communal violence in decades. Some BJP politicians helped incite the violence, and police reportedly did not intervene to stop Hindu mobs from attacking Muslims. A 2021 Human Rights Watch report found that authorities had not investigated police complicity, while they had charged more than a dozen protesters.

Protests over Islamophobic rhetoric, 2022. In May, two BJP officials made profane comments about Prophet Mohammed, leading to deadly protests across India and condemnation from Muslim-majority countries. The BJP suspended the officials. The following month, two Muslim men killed a Hindu man who supported one of the BJP officials in an attack they filmed and shared online.

Critics say that BJP officials have ignored recent violence against Muslims. "During Modi's first five-year term, there were continuous attacks on Muslim individuals, which kind of made the community feel under siege," says Ghazala Jamil, an assistant professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "The idea was that if you were a Muslim, you were liable to be attacked anywhere, anytime." Hate speech and misinformation spread online have also encouraged violence against Muslims.
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Author and journalist. Author of Islamic Pakistan: Illusions & Reality; Islam in the Post-Cold War Era; Islam & Modernism; Islam & Muslims in the Post-9/11 America. Currently working as free lance journalist. Executive Editor of American (more...)
 
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