• India has enacted its controversial anti-Muslim citizenship bill that discriminates on the basis of religion
• How Prime Minister Modi is trying to fuel Islamophobia to win the upcoming election
With elections next month in Modi’s India, and the economy still in a state of peril, it becomes evident that once again Prime Minister Modi is trying to appeal to his nationalist base supporters as a way to propel himself to victory for a third term.
The Indian media has time and time again propagated islamophobia on a mass scale, with every little incident across the world involving Muslims blamed upon Islam and deemed to make Muslims seem like aggressors. A notable incident was during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which a few Muslim missionaries were blamed for spreading COVID to a large crowd, which was exacerbated by the media and Hindu nationalists on social media as a Muslim problem. This led to doctors and hospitals not seeing Muslim patients at all as a result of the scaremongering from the nationalists on social media and in mainstream media alike. Every small thing, from the decline in oil supplies in Saudi Arabia to President Erdogan of Turkey simply calling for the unity of Muslims, the Indian media do not fall short of misrepresenting Muslims and Islam. The situation has reached such a point that after the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, the Indian media did 24-hour coverage revolving around the Taliban, Islam, and Muslims. This coverage of the Taliban led to Hindu supremacists unleashing a new wave of Islamophobia against the Muslim community in 2021. This, on top of the social media war in which millions of anti-Muslim posts have been going viral across India, has only increased the anti-Muslim sentiment, even when it may have looked as if it had reached its peak.
A police officer attacking Muslim worshippers whilst praying the Friday prayer in New Delhi
The bill
The Indian government has enacted a citizenship law that was designed to discriminate specifically against the Muslim community. The law was passed in 2019 but was only enacted on Monday, weeks before the election. Under the law, Christians, Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains who entered India from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan before 2014 are allowed to fast-track to Indian nationality. However, Muslims are not granted this right. Many Indians believe that this bill is a precursor to a national register of citizens that could leave them stateless in the country of 1.4 billion. Many poor Indians do not have the documents to prove their nationality and could face the prospect of deportation if a follow-up law is passed.
India is still categorically classified as a secular nation in which ethnic groups are meant to live in racial harmony. Unfortunately, the Indian establishment and government have only whipped up divisions and hatred among ethnic groups. Muslims are the largest minority in India, numbering 400 million, yet the state led manipulation that has transpired over the last decade will likely only become worse as the global crisis unfolds. Experts believe that the anti-Muslim hate has become so bad that a genocide against Muslims in India is impending. Gregory Stanton, the President of Genocide Watch, who predicted the Rwanda genocide before it happened, said that ‘we are predicting that a genocide could well happen in India’.
