A collective outcry in defense of Islam’s Prophet. What about India’s Muslims?

Hurrah! BJP spokeswoman Nupur Sharma has been suspended by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Not just her, the BJP office said it also expelled BJP spokesman Naveen Jindal. 

Now every Indian Muslim can breathe easy and live a peaceful life. Or can they?

So what did the spokespersons' say? While Sharma chose to make derogatory comments about Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) during a live television debate, Jindal took to his social media to make not-so-nice comments about Islam - the religion of 200 million Indian Muslims residing in the country. 

This did not bode well. (Almost surprisingly) their comments, particularly Sharma's statements, caused an immediate upheaval among the Muslim majority countries. Leaders from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Oman, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait and Pakistan, among others, called out the Indian government for such unimaginable, heinous public statements made by public figures representing the proud and loud ruling BJP. BJP was forced to declare they are  "strongly against any ideology which insults or demeans any sect or religion," according to a statement made in response to the backlash. 

Now that settles it, doesn't it? Someone (or more than one person) made mistakes, and they have been reprimanded by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP office. But the problem is, this is merely the garnish you would perhaps put on the cherry on top of a cake. 

As The Wire India aptly pointed out, this incident is not an outlier. It is not the exception; it is in fact, the standard. On 6 June, they published "10 Times When BJP Leaders (Not Fringe) Made Anti-Muslim Hate Speeches", citing when major BJP leaders made Islamophobic remarks in public. 

Yogi Adityanath is a world-class star in this category who also, coincidentally, happens to be the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India. 

Oh yes, the word "fringe" (a reference to The Wire article headline) was thrown around as an excuse by the BJP in describing the role and place of Sharma and Jindal arguing that it really isn't what the BJP leaders feel and think about Muslims. 

One other takeaway from the latest (and new in that it's so collective) international outcry against Modi's BJP representatives is that it came after the most respected figure in Islam was insulted on national television by a BJP official. And that's reasonable. 

But one may also wonder where was this unified call from the international community when India passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) 2019 or the High Court of Karnataka enabled a hijab ban in March this year (after all, Qatar's foreign ministry, despite welcoming BJP's decision to suspend the official also demanded a public apology and immediate condemnation of the remarks by the Indian government). Or are we being a little too ambitious, Qatar? 

For the uninitiated, the CAA 2019 is the Citizenship Amendment Act - which is one of the turning points in recent history testing India's relationship with its Muslim population - passed by the Parliament of India. 

It essentially amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 by providing a pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis or Christians, and arrived in India before the end of December 2014. 

It is vehemently discriminatory against Muslims. And it led to widespread protests across the country, which, with time, were suppressed by state-sanctioned coercion.    

While the time is good as any for international outcry or the Muslim majority countries to call out India for the statements the government officials made against Islam's most respected figure, it is also essential to call out India for its treatment of Muslims through its policies and actions (such as the lynching of Indian Muslims, electrification of Indian Muslims, eviction of Indian Muslim families).  

What is really happening in India?

It is rational to dig just a smudge inch deep into Sharma's anti-Muslim comment on national television. Sharma's audacity did not form overnight. This is not an isolated incident. This is a symptom of the Islamophobic problem raging for years. And for the "Islamic world-India ties to be tested" over this, is all good and dandy, but void of any meaningful call to action to address India's root, widespread 'Hindutva' sentiment. 

The CAA 2019 and Karnataka hijab ban are mere drops in the ocean of anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobia crashing against marginalised communities and in effect, evicting Indian Muslims and destroying their lives. Hindutva - the saffron coloured "ideology or movement seeking to establish the hegemony of Hindus and Hinduism in India" - is alive and well. 

And there is literature, investigation, reports and accounts, in sheer abundance, to attest to this. One example is independent journalist Mohammad Ali's "The Rise of a Hindu Vigilante in the Age of WhatsApp and Modi", published in the American magazine WIRED. The 10,000-long word piece won the Daniel Pearl Award for outstanding reporting on South Asia in 2021. 

Another example is Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up, authored and self-published by journalist Rana Ayyub in 2016, based on the communal Gujarat riots in 2002, which left approximately 1,000 people dead, reported the BBC. 

At the time, Narendra Modi was Gujarat's Chief Minister. And 10 years later, Modi was cleared, by a court in India, of allegations tying him to the riots.   

If one were to follow Ayyub's, also a Washington Post columnist, work and social media accounts, it shows cause for concern. The stark threat posed by the BJP against Indian Muslim reporters is dangerous and, again, another sign attesting to how prevalently the BJP-led India hates Muslims, even their own.   

Does any of this adversely impact Modi's reign or popularity?

Modi keeps winning elections. Bloomberg's opinion columnist Mihir Sharma wrote this March, "The economist Santosh Mehrotra, using government data, has pointed out that the state's [Uttar Pradesh] output grew at barely 2% a year from 2017 to 2021, compared to almost 7% for the five-year tenure of the previous government. 

In fact, the job-creating manufacturing sector shrank after growing 15% in the previous term. Youth unemployment is so high that the state has begun to see job riots. 

Even so, the BJP won [state election] with a comfortable margin. Was it simply Adityanath's image [remember him from earlier on in this article?] as the hard man of Hindutva? 

That's only part of the explanation. Many analysts assume that the age of populism in which we live is one in which identity politics can be trumped only by class or economic interests.

Sharma, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and head of its Economy and Growth Programme, is most likely right. 

While we spend hours, especially as outsiders, studying and attempting to understand the cause and extent of Modi's popularity despite BJP's clear anti-Muslim sentiment, 'The age of populism' surfaces as an explanation in many junctures of our studies. 

But for the world's largest 'democracy' to unabashedly and continuously spew hate against a minority population is cause for concern far beyond an 'Islamic-world' outcry over a single anti-Muslim statement. 

Sketch: TBS