INDIA IS SECULAR BUT … MUSLIMS ARE TROUBLED The alienation of Muslims in some parts of India is a troubling development.   For the most part, India has been a hospitable and friendly home to people of many religions, including significant minorities who are Muslims and Christians.  The conflicts between Hindus and Muslims date back to the Mughal era (a period between 16th and 19th century when most of the subcontinent was ruled by Mughal emperors).  Muslims and Hindus have lived with one another in peace in India, although they tend to live in separate enclaves.  The partition of the subcontinent in 1947 into India and Pakistan was based on the desire of a large number of Muslims to have their own separate nation.   What became India has been a secular republic, with periodic regional conflicts between different religious groups.  In recent decades, the occasional incursions of terrorists from Pakistan has reinforced a sense of phobia among India’s Hindu population and this has been exploited and exacerbated by politicians of India’s ruling party, degrading the goodwill which has existed between Hindus and people of other faiths.

This issue was highlighted recently in a question raised by a Wall Street Journal reporter, Sabrina Siddiqui, to Prime Minister Modi at a White House press conference.  The reporter asked India’s Prime Minister what steps his government would take to uphold free speech and to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in India.  Prime Minister Modi responded with a general platitude: “In India’s democratic values, there is absolutely no discrimination, neither on the basis of caste, creed, or age or any kind of geographic location.”

The Prime Minister’s comments do not reflect the current plight of Muslims in India, as described in a recent op-ed in The Hindu by Ziya Us Salam, a seasoned journalist based in India.  See link below. Mr. Salam, a Muslim, has worked at The Hindu since 2000.  His parents chose to migrate from Lahore (at the time of India’s partition) deliberately, in the hope of living in a secular nation instead of in Pakistan.  [By the way, the publication’s name (The Hindu) may be misleading.  The Hindu is a relatively liberal newspaper, not catering narrowly to Hindu interests.  It is a very old daily newspaper, dating back to 1889.]

Mr. Salam has also elaborated on the points made in the op-ed in an interview with Karan Thapar of The Wire which is available at YouTube at: https://youtu.be/oflEB1wacLs

It is disturbing to learn from Mr. Salam that India’s Opposition Parties (including The Congress Party) have also given up defending the rights of Muslims and have even stopped using the word “Muslims!”