By 
11-09-2024
Stella Liantsi
South and East Asia Researcher,
Global Human Rights Defence.
Despite hopes that the elections this year would reduce hate and violence against Muslims, the situation remains dire. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was pushed into a coalition after failing to achieve a majority, yet violence, harassment, and humiliation against Muslims persisted. The hopes were quickly crushed when less than a month after the formation of the new government incidents escalated.
Hindu nationalism dates back to the British colonial period and the 1947 Partition of British India. It is believed that Hindy-Muslim tension was exacerbated by the British government’s “divide-and-rule” policy which gave the Muslim minority special electoral privileges. Political tensions increased after the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League gathered supporters along religious lines. Hindu-Muslim ties were further strained after the Partition in 1947 by a British judge who hurriedly split India into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan (including what is now Bangladesh) causing deadly communal riots and large-scale migrations. Together with the belief that Hindus are the “true sons of the soil” because of the holy lands in India, whereas Christian and Muslim holy lands are outside, Muslims were seen as suspicious foreigners and disloyal mainly due to the establishment of Pakistan and the Partition. These incidents set the stage for enduring hostility and prejudice towards Muslims in India which continued in the political scene with the founding of the BJP in 1980. The BJP came to power with a coalition government in the 1998 national elections, and more recently in 2014 when it won a single party majority making party leader Narendra Modi prime minister. In 2019, the party won a majority once again following a contentious campaign filled with anti-Muslim messaging. In 2024 the BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi won 240 seats but was short of the 272 seats needed for a majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower chamber of the Indian Parliament. However, the BJP won 293 seats and maintained a majority with the help of its alliances.
One of the most controversial and critical actions of Modi’s government was the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act in December 2019. The Act enables the expedited acquisition of citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Because it excludes Muslims and applies a religious criterion to citizenship for the first time, critics claimed that the law is discriminatory. According to Modi’s government, the law was created to shield vulnerable religious minorities from persecution in these three nations with a majority of Muslims.
Recent examples of the BJP that have been perceived as discriminatory towards India’s Muslim community highlight the cruelty against Muslim citizens across India. For instance, in July 2024 BJP-led governments in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand implemented a law mandating that food vendors along a major Hindu pilgrimage route disclose the owners and their staff’s religious identities. This was perceived as a means of isolating Muslim-owned businesses and deepening societal tensions despite the stated justification being to guarantee “religious sentiment” was respected. More recently, Mohammad Fareed, a 35-year-old Muslim, was brutally lynched by a mob of Hindu hardliners armed with iron rods and wooden sticks. After the Eid celebrations, Fareed was attacked on his way home and sadly died before arriving at the hospital. Following the arrest and murder charges against six attackers, the BJP and other far-right organisations staged protests calling for the attacker’s release. A video of a mob threatening a 70-year-old man who was alone on the train with rape and murder has also gone viral. The man was beaten and verbally assaulted by the large mob of supposed Hindutva men less than half his age suspecting that he was carrying beef. In late August 2024, a 19-year-old boy Aryan Mishra was shot in the head by a gang of ‘cow protectors’ after they confused him for being a Muslim cattle smuggler.
Deep-seated corruption and a worrisome alignment of state institutions with the ideological position of the governing party are reflected in the inaction and even the involvement of police and civil administration in these heinous attacks. The results of the elections in 2024 demonstrated the tenacity and robustness of India’s democracy but also raised important concerns regarding the impact on assertive foreign policy and policymaking by a weakened Modi government. Lastly, with less power coming into play as Modi starts his third term it seems like his governance will likely face more resistance and difficulty managing domestic unrest.
Sources and further readings:
Aljazeera, ‘Attacks on India’s Muslims continue under BJP-led coalition’ Aljazeera (6 September 2024) <https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/9/6/attacks-on-indias-muslims-continue-under-bjp-led-coalition > Accessed 10 September 2024.
Apoorvanand, ‘Why BJP’s election upset failed to halt the persecution of Muslims in India’, Aljazeera (26 June 2024) <https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/7/26/why-bjps-election-upset-failed-to-halt-the-persecution-of-muslims-in-india> Accessed 10 September 2024.
Chietigj Bahpaee, ‘India’s shock election result in a loss for Modi but a win for democracy’ Chatham House (6 June 2024) <https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/06/indias-shock-election-result-loss-modi-win-democracy> Accessed 10 September 2024.
Lindsay Maizland, ‘India’s Muslims: An Increasingly Marginalized Population’ Council on Foreign Relations (18 March 2024) <https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/india-muslims-marginalized-population-bjp-modi > Accessed 10 September 2024.
Nadim Asrar, ‘What killing of Hindu teen by India cow vigilantes tells us about Modi 3.0’ Aljazeera (6 September 2024) <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/6/what-killing-of-hindu-teen-by-india-cow-vigilantes-tells-us-about-modi-3-0 > Accessed 10 September 2024.
Sarah Shamim, ‘India election results: Big wins, losses and surprises’ Aljazeera (4 June 2024) <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/4/india-election-results-big-wins-losses-and-surprises > Accessed 10 September 2024.
Syed Ali, ‘Hospitalised Elderly Muslim Tortured by Hindutva Calls for Clam Despite Doubts He Get Justice’ S2J News (6 September 2024) <https://s2jnews.com/hospitalised-elderly-muslim-tortured-by-hindutva-calls-for-calm-despite-doubts-he-will-get-justice/ > Accessed 10 September 2024.
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