The Origins and Future of Islamophobia in India

“The BJP’s embrace of the Hindu majority at the expense of minorities has seeped into government institutions, undermining equal protection of the law without discrimination,” wrote Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at HRW.

Written by

Asad Mirza

Published on

October 29, 2024

In 2022, Jocelyne Cesari, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, along with Kalpana Jain, a journalist and editor at The Conversation U.S., delivered a discussion on the rise of anti-Muslim hate speech and violence in India. Combining scholarly and journalistic perspectives, the two argued that PM Modi and his party the BJP have constructed hostile attitudes toward Muslims among the country’s Hindu majority.

They were of the view that after Modi came to power in 2014, India experienced a large increase in anti-Muslim religious violence, with many conflicts centred around allegations of Muslims illegally selling and consuming cow meat. Modi and many prominent members of the BJP contributed to the hatred through their inflammatory rhetoric and their unwillingness to address or punish instances of violence against Muslims.

The pandemic exasperated religious tensions in many unprecedented ways. As Cesari pointed out, Muslims were arbitrarily denied basic needs: “Muslims were prevented in some cases from getting into hospitals. Their businesses were shut down.”

The BJP has also recently enacted “security” laws that disproportionally target Muslims. “The moment that the state starts to scrutinise one religious group, they also turn to do it to other religious groups,” Jain warned.

Cesari views the current religious tensions as a legacy of British interference in the region. Historically, religious groups on the Indian subcontinent tended to see themselves first and foremost as members of a local community. This local sense of belonging typically superseded religious differences.

This began to change when British rule introduced the modern notion of the state and different groups began competing over the national image and national resources. While, for instance, Muslims previously existed as members of a local community, now they had to conceptualise what it meant to be an Indian Muslim.

“Until the encounter with the British, the Muslims never thought of themselves as a minority because they saw themselves as a thread in the tapestry of what was India,” Cesari said, and we can’t agree more to this.

Thus, even though the British imposed a secular vision for the state, the new system actually created an enormous amount of tension between Muslims and Hindus by forcing the two communities to construct sometimes – divergent national identities.

The BJP emerged within this context, appealing to the Hindu fear that secularisation both threatened the Hindu identity and disproportionately favoured minorities. The BJP “is trying to preserve or strengthen the rights of the majority against the power given, or too much (perceived) power, given to the minorities,” Cesari said. This framework explains the common arguments made by Hindi nationalists aligned with the BJP: “Islam will take over India…Hindus will have no land left…all their girls will be converted to Islam…Muslim men are launching their jihad by way of marrying women.”

While the BJP has become by far the most popular political party in India, Jain argued that its significance is overblown. Despite the British legacy of creating the concept of “minorities” in India, she noted that extreme anti-Muslim sentiments did not emerge on a wide scale until more recently, meaning Islamophobia is more of a modern populist Hindu political ploy by Modi rather than an institutionalised way of thinking among the populace.

Jain suggested that Hindu nationalism as a defining identity for Indians is unsustainable, and that the public will eventually desire a political party that does more than appeal to religious sentiment. “People want more than religion, and I think people are smart enough to see, are we being fooled in the name of religion? Are we getting enough from our politicians?”

Government Policies and Actions Target Minorities

Authorities in India have adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against Muslims and stigmatise critics of the government, Human Rights Watch said in one of its reports. Prejudices embedded in the government of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP have infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass, and attack religious minorities with impunity.

On the first anniversary of Delhi riots, an HRW report analysing the reasons behind the riots stated that 23rd February, 2021 marked the one-year anniversary of the communal violence in Delhi that killed 53 people, 40 of them Muslim. Instead of conducting a credible and impartial investigation, including into allegations that BJP leaders incited violence and police officials were complicit in attacks, the authorities have targeted activists and protest organisers. The authorities have lately responded to another mass protest, this time by farmers, by vilifying minority Sikh protesters and opening investigations into their alleged affiliation with separatist groups.

“The BJP’s embrace of the Hindu majority at the expense of minorities has seeped into government institutions, undermining equal protection of the law without discrimination,” wrote Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch. “The government has not only failed to protect Muslims and other minorities from attacks but is providing political patronage and cover for bigotry.”

The February 2020 attacks in Delhi had followed months of peaceful protests by Indians of all faiths against the government’s discriminatory citizenship law and proposed policies. BJP leaders and supporters attempted to discredit protesters, particularly Muslims, by accusing them of conspiring against national interests.

Similarly, after hundreds of thousands of farmers of various faiths began protesting against the government’s new farm laws in November 2020, senior BJP leaders, their supporters on social media, and pro-government media, began blaming the Sikhs, another religious minority. They accuse Sikhs of having a “Khalistani” agenda, a reference to a Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s. On 8th February 2021, PM Modi spoke in Parliament, describing people participating in various peaceful protests as “parasites,” and calling international criticism of increasing authoritarianism in India a “foreign destructive ideology”.

Following violent clashes on 26th January 2021 between the police and protesting farmers who broke through police barricades to enter Delhi, the authorities filed baseless criminal cases against journalists, ordered the internet to be shut down at multiple sites, and ordered Twitter to block nearly 1,200 accounts, including of journalists and news organisations, some of which Twitter later restored. On 14th February 2021, the authorities arrested a climate activist, accusing her of sedition and criminal conspiracy for allegedly editing a document providing information on the protests and how to support them on social media, and issued warrants against two others.

The latest arrests come amid increased targeting of activists, academics, and other critics, by the government in recent years. The authorities have especially harassed and prosecuted those protecting the rights of minorities and vulnerable communities. BJP leaders and affiliated groups have long portrayed minority communities, especially Muslims, as a threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life. They have raised the bogey of “love jihad,” claiming that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam, labelled Muslims illegal immigrants or even extremists, and accused them of hurting Hindu sentiment over cow slaughter.

Human Rights Watch says that since Modi’s BJP came to power in 2014, it has taken various legislative and other actions that have legitimised discrimination against religious minorities and enabled violent Hindu nationalism.

The government passed a citizenship law in December 2019 that discriminates against Muslims, making religion the basis for citizenship for the first time. In August 2019, the government also revoked the constitutional autonomy granted to the only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, and imposed restrictions in violation of people’s basic rights. Since October 2018, Indian authorities have threatened to deport Rohingya Muslim refugees to Myanmar despite the risks to their lives and security, and have already repatriated over a dozen. States use laws against cow slaughter to prosecute Muslim cattle traders even as BJP-affiliated groups attack Muslims and Dalits on rumours that they killed or traded cows for beef. Most recently, three BJP-ruled states have passed an anti-conversion law, which in practice is used against Muslim men who marry Hindu women.

These actions violate domestic law and India’s obligations under international human rights law that prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion, and require the governments to provide residents with equal protection of the law. The Indian government is also obligated to protect religious and other minority populations, and to fully and fairly prosecute those responsible for discrimination and violence against them, Human Rights Watch said.

“The BJP government’s actions have stoked communal hatred, created deep fissures in society, and led to much fear and mistrust of authorities among minority communities,” Ganguly said. “India’s standing as a secular democracy is at serious risk unless the government rolls back discriminatory laws and policies and ensures justice for abuses against minorities.”

In November 2022, India’s Uttar Pradesh state government passed a law aimed at curbing interfaith relationships. Essentially, BJP politicians promote a baseless theory that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam and use the phrase “love jihad” to describe this act. The law, Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, requires anyone wishing to convert to seek approval from the district authorities and carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison for converting another person through coercion, fraud, misrepresentation, or inducement. While this law ostensibly applies to all forced religious conversions, enforcement has largely targeted Muslim men in Hindu-Muslim relationships.

Since the law came into effect, Uttar Pradesh authorities have filed cases against 86 people, 79 of whom were Muslim, accusing them of “enticing a woman” and forcing her to convert to Islam. Seven others are accused of coercing women to convert them to Christianity. The government has even unlawfully used the law retroactively, and sometimes even brought cases against families of the accused Muslim men. In most cases, the complainant is not the woman but her relatives, who oppose an interfaith relationship.

The law has created considerable fear among interfaith couples already at risk of censure from families and Hindu nationalist groups. In November, the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh had to grant protection to 125 interfaith couples. Hindu nationalist groups, including those affiliated with the BJP, have openly harassed and attacked interfaith couples and filed cases against them.

BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh states passed similar laws and other BJP-ruled states, including Haryana and Karnataka, are considering it. Several states – Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand – already have anti-conversion laws that have been used against minority communities, especially Christians, including from Dalit and Adivasi communities.

In December 2019, the Modi administration achieved passage of the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which fast-tracks asylum claims of non-Muslim irregular immigrants from the neighbouring Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Coupled with the government’s push for a nationwide citizenship verification process through a National Population Register and a proposed National Register of Citizens, aimed at identifying “illegal migrants,” it has heightened fears that millions of Indian Muslims could be stripped of their citizenship rights and disenfranchised.

Before the government passed the law, Home Minister Amit Shah said at an election rally in Delhi in September 2018: “Illegal immigrants are like termites and they are eating the food that should go to our poor and they are taking our jobs.” He promised, “If we come to power in 2019, we will find each and every one and send them away.”

 

Charges of Judicial Bias

The HRW report is also of the view that in many states, the criminal justice system increasingly reflects the discriminatory views of the BJP, targeting religious and other minorities and critics of the government, and shielding its supporters.

 

Delhi Riots

The government’s citizenship policies sparked weeks of nationwide protests beginning December 2019. During the protests, police in several cases did not intervene when BJP-affiliated groups attacked protesters. In at least three BJP-governed states, police used excessive and unnecessary lethal force, killing at least 30 people during protests and injuring scores more. Some BJP leaders called the protesters anti-national and pro-Pakistan, while others led chants to “shoot the traitors.”

On 23rd February 2020, after a BJP leader, Kapil Mishra, advocated forcibly dispersing peaceful protesters, many of them Muslim, BJP supporters gathered in the area, leading to clashes between the groups. The situation was aggravated as Hindu mobs armed with swords, sticks, metal pipes, and bottles filled with gasoline, targeted Muslims in several neighbourhoods in northeast Delhi. While most of the 53 people killed were Muslim, a policeman and a government official were among the Hindus who also died.

An independent investigation by the Delhi Minorities Commission found that the violence was “planned and targeted” and that some policemen actively participated in the attacks on Muslims. In a February 2024 video, several policemen are seen beating five grievously injured Muslim men lying on the street, forcing them to sing the Indian national anthem to prove their patriotism. The police then detained them. One of the men, Faizan, 23, died from his injuries two days later. A year later, the police say they are still trying to identify the policemen in the video. The authorities have yet to investigate other allegations of police complicity in the violence.

In contrast, the Delhi police have filed politically motivated charges, including terrorism and sedition, against 18 activists, students, opposition politicians, and residents – 16 of them Muslim. The police case relies extensively on disclosure statements that are suspiciously similar and WhatsApp chats and social media messages about organizing and announcing peaceful protests as evidence of complicity in a larger conspiracy to defame the Indian government, hatched by those who organised the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

The authorities have filed charges under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, related to unlawful activity, terrorist funding, and planning and committing acts of terrorism. They have also accused protest organisers and activists of sedition, murder, attempted murder, promotion of religious enmity, and damage to public property, among other alleged offenses. All those charged have been critical of the BJP government and the citizenship law. They include members of Pinjra Tod, an autonomous collective of women students; United Against Hate, a group that works to protect religious minorities; and the Jamia Coordination Committee, which led the student protest at Jamia Millia Islamia.

[This is an excerpt from “Decoding HATE In Politics,” a recent work on spread of Islamophobia, globally and nationally, by Asad Mirza. The book published by The Board of Islamic Publications (BIP) will be available soon on the racks. Watch this space for more details.(To be continued…)]