India’s Modi hit by anti-Muslim backlash Comments: “Hate speech”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been attacked by political opponents for using the word “infiltrators” during a reference to Muslims in an election campaign speech.

The debate over Modi’s comments and the context in which they were intended has heightened tensions at a time of elections when Modi’s largely Hindu and nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is defending its majority in the Lok Sabha lower house. Many in the Muslim minority, which makes up a fifth of India’s 1.4 billion people, complain of discrimination under Modi.

Modi dismissed religious tensions in an interview with Newsweek this month and said: “Even the minorities in India no longer believe this story.”

But at a campaign rally in the western state of Rajasthan on Sunday, Modi warned of what could happen if the rival Congress party wins the election, using the words of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who once said Muslims were among the poorer groups in should belong to the world. society with a ‘first claim on resources’.

“Should your hard-earned money be given to infiltrators?” Modi asked.

Modi did not specify whether this meant all Muslims or those groups often called infiltrators – such as unauthorized Muslim immigrants. Modi’s office has not commented publicly on the issue.

Modi’s opponents expressed alarm over his comments.

“No previous Indian Prime Minister has damaged the dignity of office more than Modi by misrepresenting a 20-year-old speech by a former Prime Minister. This speech stated that youth, farmers, women and minorities of Adivasis (indigenous groups) have the first claim to resources – not that only Muslims have this right,” said Syed Naseer Hussain, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, Indian National Congress and in-charge in front of Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge’s office.

“We are part of India’s rich culture and heritage and share a common identity. However, our Prime Minister and his team have often tried to divide Indians with their poisonous statements,” said Hussain, who is also Muslim. Newsweek.

Other opposition politicians also accused Modi of making such a statement out of desperation over the elections, where the ruling party was widely expected to do well.

“The Prime Minister’s statement is nothing but hate speech,” Professor Rajeev Gowda, a senior politician with the Indian National Congress, told reporters. Newsweek.

Some Muslim leaders also expressed dismay.

Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad, a religious leader from the state of Kerala in southern India, warned against divisive communal statements and the use of sectarianism as a political tool. He urged Modi to correct all statements that had caused unrest within the Muslim community.

Although Hindus are a majority in India, India also has the third largest Muslim population in the world after Pakistan and Indonesia. Islam first arrived in India over a millennium ago. The history of rule under Muslim Mughal emperors of the 16th century^e to the 19^e Centuries are still an issue for some Hindu nationalists.

This was said by the Islamic scholar Mufti Wajahat Qasmi Newsweek that he disagreed with former Prime Minister Singh’s original message, quoted by Modi, that Muslims are among the poorer groups who should be a priority in obtaining resources.

“When former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh first said it, he also had a political reason to include Muslims in this conversation,” Qasmi said.

“There is no need for Indian Muslims to think that it (Modi’s comment) was said about them, especially the comment made by the invaders,” he added, explaining that he believed it was a reference to foreign Muslims who had emigrated illegally.

“If I am a Hindu, Christian, Sikh or Muslim and commit a crime, I cannot be treated specifically on the basis of my religion, but as a criminal.”