Asia-PacificAnalysis

Modi increases anti-Muslim rhetoric in ‘extremist’ bid to retain power

As India’s general election continues, the prime minister has been accused of being the most inflammatory in the country’s recent history

Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, during a campaign rally in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, on Thursday. Photograph: Prakash Singh/Bloomberg

Rahul Bedi's face
Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Sat May 4 2024 - 10:00

As his party BJP party seeks a third term in office, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has increased anti-Muslim rhetoric in an effort to attract Hindu voters.

The third of seven rounds of voting in India’s general elections to elect 543 MP’s, which began on April 19th, takes place on May 7th. Polling ends on June 1st, followed by results three days later.

At recent gatherings across the country, Modi claimed that an opposition victory would result in it “seizing” wealth and land from India’s majority Hindu community and surrendering it to the country’s 200-odd million minority Muslim population.

Hindus comprise 80 per cent of India’s population of about 1.4 billion, while Muslims form around 15 per cent.

READ MORE

Modi claimed that such a seizure by the opposition would apply to the mangal sutras or gold chains worn by most married Hindu women.

Workers attach a photograph of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to an election campaign vehicle in Mumbai on April 27th. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images

The prime minister also accused the principal opposition Indian National Congress party of declaring in its manifesto that, if elected, it would implement an affirmative employment policy benefiting Muslims to “strengthen its vote bank”.

In one address, Modi referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and a community that produced more children than Hindus.

His former comment was a reference to armed Islamic subversives who have been infiltrating India from neighbouring Pakistan for decades, trying to destabilise it by killing Hindus. The latter was an iteration of the BJP’s claim that an inordinately high birth rate would see Muslims overtake the country’s Hindu population, which stands at more that 800 million.

All of the prime minister’s assertions were debunked in fact checks by certain news websites and newspapers.

Political columnist Asim Ali described Modi’s remarks as “the most inflammatory by any prime minister in India’s recent history” and said they marked a “significant [sectarian] shift’ in his electioneering. Ali told Al Jazeera news that Modi has emerged as the BJPs “extremist campaigner”.

The BJP came to power in 2014 and were re-elected five years later. The right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Volunteer Corps, founded the BJP in 1980 as its political wing. The RSS’s founding charter in 1925 was to safeguard Hinduism from what it called the “sullying influences” of Islam and Christianity by promoting Hindutva or Hindu hegemony.

Soon after Modi became prime minister, Hindu vigilante mobs began lynching scores of Muslims across the country, who they claimed were trading in beef by killing cows, which are sacred to Hindus. The BJP enacted stringent laws with jail sentences of up to 10 years for killing a cow, adversely impacting millions of Muslim households who traditionally were cattle traders.

According to the US Council on Foreign Relations think tank, Muslims under BJP rule have faced widespread discrimination in employment, education, housing and basic healthcare. It says many have encountered barriers to achieving political power and have struggled to obtain justice as courts and state-run organisations have frequently overturned convictions or withdrawn cases involving Hindus accused of crimes against Muslims.

The council’s recent analysis says Indian authorities have frequently invoked extrajudicial measures to punish Muslims through a practice known as “bulldozer justice”, in which homes were arbitrarily demolished on the specious grounds that they lacked legal permits.

BJP-linked organisations have filed ownership petitions against several mosques on the grounds that they were illegally built by medieval Islamic invaders who had demolished Hindu temples. These groups have also accused Muslim men of “love jihad”, seducing Hindu women and marrying them after converting them to Islam. This had led to the enactment of legislation by the BJP administration which mandated that a person must receive state approval to convert to another religion. Likewise, Muslims have been denounced – and often prosecuted – for effecting “land Jihad”, or buying property in Hindu populated areas in BJP-ruled states.

The council said that assaults on Muslims by Hindu mobs, and their social and financial undermining, had prompted India’s supreme court to warn that such activity could become the “new normal”.

India Hate Lab, a Washington-based research group of journalists, academicians, and researchers recently revealed that 75 per cent of hate speech against Muslims – or 498 of 668 such incidents – had transpired in India in 2023 in BJP-controlled areas. It alleged “mistreatment” of Muslims under Modi.

The BJP has denied all allegations of minority abuse, claiming that its policies have benefited all Indians. In early April Modi told Newsweek that India’s minority communities, including Muslims, did not “buy the narrative of discrimination any more”. All minorities, he said, were living happily and thriving.

LATEST STORIES