Is religious intolerance on the rise in India? According to US President Barack Obama it is. While it is true that India has a “huge history of religious tolerance” as Arun Jaitly, India’s Finance Minister rightly stated, it is also a fact that the country has suffered a number of times on account of horrific communal riots. The carnage of Gujarat in 2002 under the watch of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of state, the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the deadly communal riots all over the country after the demolition of the historic Babri mosque in Ayodhya and the more recently riots of Muzaffar Nagar of Uttar Pradesh in 2013 are a few examples of deadly communal violence.
What prompted Obama to make such a comment must have come from the developments of the recent past. Since Modi’s ascension to power in May last year, the fundamentalist Hindu outfits have become emboldened. First, they went on the offensive against the religious minorities by launching a campaign against the so-called love-jihad. Love-jihad is a term that they have coined to describe marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women. Ironically, some of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top Muslim leaders are married to the daughters of top BJP leaders.
Modi came to power on the promise of good governance and progress for all but even before the people could get the slightest feeling of good days, his government decided to dismiss Christmas Day on December 25 and converted it into “Good Governance Day”.
The actions of intolerance and intimidation of minorities sow the seeds of fear and distrust among the different sections of the society. In addition, the PM’s silence on such important issues betrays his government’s commitment to maintaining the secular ethos of the country. India has always been a rainbow nation and any attempt to paint it with one colour would be a big threat to the country’s unity. Obama’s statement reflects the fact that the world is observing us.
— The reader is an Indian procurement officer based in Abu Dhabi
