Rapid Growth of Islamophobia in India: What Should Muslims Do?

Syed Khalique Ahmed

 NEW DELHI—Islamophobia, or hatred against Islam and Muslims in India, has reached such a magnitude that a group of so-called Hindu religious leaders has given a clarion call for mass execution of Muslims.

The call for the mass massacre of Muslims came from an event organized by the fascist-religious leaders at Haridwar, a Hindu religious town, a little more than 200 km from the national capital.

The reason for the call is that they consider Muslims a source of terrorism. Moreover, they argue that Muslims may emerge as a strong geopolitical force in the next few decades if not curbed. 

But their apprehension seems to be based on false propaganda of the right-wing Hindu religious leaders who don’t have a study of their own as far as Islam and Muslims are concerned. They form their opinion based on anti-Islamic propaganda in the Christian West. And this falsehood is being repeated ad infinitum because it suits their nefarious political agenda based on MS Golwalkar and Veer Savarkar’s ideals of Hindutva, in which Muslims and Christians find no place.

Hence, this call for genocide against Muslims to achieve the dream of “Muslim-mukt” (free of Muslims) Bharat. Muslims account for more than 15 percent of India’s population scattered in every town and village.

Muslims did not take communal slogans very seriously earlier because BJP and other right-wing outfits raised them before state and national elections to polarize voters in their favour. But such slogans stopped after the elections.

But the situation has become totally different now. Raising anti-Muslim activity has become a permanent feature in Modi’s India and acquired a high tone also. 

The new situation has stirred India’s Muslims, Christians, and Hindu liberals because of the administration at state and national levels not reacting and taking action to curb the menace.

The call for Muslim genocide, incitement to terrorism, has set off a debate in the country. Muslims, who are at the centre of assault from fascist elements, are discussing what steps must be taken to counter the challenge of Islamophobia. In the last seven years, the hatred against Islam and Muslims has spread its tentacles more extensively and intensively.

The most significant cause of concern is that the Modi government at the centre is silent and not taking action against the fascist elements. 

But Islamophobia in India has a long history, and it begins with the British-Christian era.

Since Muslims had lost political power to Britishers, they were at the forefront to liberate India from the clutches of the British.

To ensure that Muslims failed, the Britishers launched a campaign of vilification against Indian Muslims.

Britishers began a hate campaign against Muslims by distorting their history and religion. They misrepresented the history of Muslim rule and their contribution to India. India was known as the “Golden Bird” because of the generation of abundant wealth during the Muslim period. India achieved this because of forward-looking and progressive policies of Islam that the Muslim rulers implemented.

But the Britishers, with an ulterior motive, painted Islam as a primitive and backward-looking system. Moreover, they propagated that Islam was spread by the sword in India, and Muslims were violent, dangerous, and bloodthirsty.

The Britishers successfully created a public perception that Muslims had committed atrocities on the local Hindu population and needed to be boycotted and eliminated. So, present-day Islamophobia has its roots in Britishers’ hate-peddling against Muslims and Islam.

Such a narrative is essential to justify violence and genocide against a community. When you successfully inject such a poison in the people’s minds against a particular community, it creates hatred against them in society. 

So, when a mass massacre is launched, the victim-community does not find a supporter in such a situation. It makes the job of the fascist forces easy.

And this can be best exemplified by the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia and Myanmar. A campaign of vilification was launched against the Muslim communities for decades before their mass execution. It was not only the civilian population, armed forces, and police also indulged in the massacre of Muslims in the two countries.

 After Britishers left India in 1947, Hindutva forces led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) launched a character assassination campaign against Islam and Muslims. 

The RSS had, in fact, begun this campaign soon after its establishment in 1925.

RSS and dozens of organizations came out with literature to demonize Muslims and Islam. They continued the false British-Christian theory that Muslims forcibly converted Hindus to Islam. 

The RSS, its sister organizations, and workers are now repeating it with a greater force because their supporters have acquired political power and taken over all government institutions. 

As Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister of Adolf Hitler launched a false campaign against Jews and held them responsible for all the ills prevailing in Germany, the RSS, and its offshoots are spreading similar propaganda and accuse Muslims of being responsible for all the mess in India. Some extremists are looking for a similar solution that Hitler implemented about the Jews in Germany.

 The Hindutva forces launched their grand plan of erasing Muslim history in India and presenting the Indian Muslim history as anti-Hindu to poison the minds of ordinary Hindus. 

The Hindutva forces are bombarding the minds of the general Hindu population through various kinds of literature in print, electronic, digital, and social media that Muslims were invaders and do not belong to India. Their position in India is equal to an encroacher on somebody else’s property. They are not the natives of the land, unlike Hindus. So, they needed to be treated as aliens and foreigners. 

RSS is non-stop propagating that Muslim rulers like Aurangzeb in North India and Tipu Sultan in South India used force to convert the Hindu population to Islam and increase the Muslim population. 

PM Modi gave a call to remember August 14 every year as Vibhajan Vibhishika Smriti Divas (Partition Horror Remembrance Day). He clarified that this was imperative to remind people to ensure that such a horror was not repeated in the future. Unfortunately, this added fuel to the fire. His announcement was followed by articles by a central minister describing the Moplah Rebellion in Kerala as an anti-Hindu movement, thus giving strength to communalism in South India that had remained almost free of communal virus. BJP leaders and ministers in BJP-ruled states have been pouring out communal venom against Muslims as if Muslims are responsible for all the problems plaguing India. 

So, when the fascist Hindu religious leaders gave a clarion call for genocide against Muslims, hardly anyone from civil society came forward to condemn and demand action against it. 

Perhaps the fear of retaliation forced the members of civil society to shut their mouths against Islamophobic religious leaders. 

After a week of the incident, some former Army officers and prominent citizens wrote an open letter, but in a very guarded language, to President Ram Nath Kovind and PM Narendra Modi to seek action against the hate-peddlers of Haridwar. 

Surprisingly, there has been no response from President or PM? Union Home Minister Amit shah also maintains silence as if nothing has happened.

 What should Muslims do?

 So, what should Muslims do in such a situation? Does the silence of civil society on the Haridwar episode amount to its approval of the call for genocide against Muslims? 

Participating in a debate, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) vice-president Prof. Mohammad Salim Engineer said that the silence of civil society should not be construed as approval. 

According to him, most Hindus do not subscribe to the views of so-called religious leaders who spewed venom at the Haridwar meet. 

Muslims, he said, need to approach civil society members and launch a democratic and legal battle to counter their nefarious agenda.

 Abdul Wadood Sajid, editor of Urdu daily Inquilab, speaking at a programme, asked Muslims not to react politically to the controversial religious leaders because anti-Muslim forces would misuse that.

He said that the best way to counter it is to take legal recourse and file court cases against the miscreants. 

Welfare Party of India President Dr. SQR Ilyas echoes the views of Prof. Salim. He says Muslims should mobilize civil society to counter Islamophobia. According to Dr. Ilyas, Hindus, in general, do not subscribe to the views of the few who poured out venom against Muslims at Haridwar.

 A former professor at Osmania University, Mohsin Usmani, says that organizing protests, demonstrations, agitations, and court cases are short-term solutions. 

A permanent solution, he says, lies in removing the poison and misunderstandings that have been injected into the minds of the Hindu population against Muslims and Islam. 

According to him, Muslims must go for mass publication of literature on Islam and the contribution of Muslims to India’s growth and development when they were in power in this country. 

Prof. Usmani argues that this needs to be done in all the regional languages, besides Hindi, which is read and spoken in most states. Muslims need to convince Hindus that Islam is not a religion of violence and that Islam was not spread by the sword in India as projected by the Britishers and then by the RSS. 

Though it is a difficult job, Usmani believes this is the only trustworthy solution to counter Islamophobia.

At a recent press conference, senior Supreme Court advocate and human rights activist Prashant Bhushan offered almost the same solution to counter the menace of Islamophobia. He said Muslims must publicize their contribution to the freedom struggle that the BJP government headed by Modi was erasing.