Chicago – April 23, 2024
Amid the nation’s general elections, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made controversial remarks on Sunday in which he compared the Muslim community to “infiltrators” and promoted anti-Muslim stereotypes. As a result, he is being accused of inciting hatred against Muslims.
At a packed rally in the western state of Rajasthan, Modi made a clear allusion to Muslims when he stated that the country’s wealth will be divided among “those who have more children” should the opposition, represented by the Congress party, win power.
Should you give infiltrators your hard-earned money? He addressed the applauding audience before claiming that, given the opportunity, the opposition would remove even mangalsutras, the auspicious necklace that a Hindu husband ties around his wife’s neck.
Al Jazeera was informed by local poll officials in Rajasthan that they had received at least two complaints against Modi, demanding the suspension of his election campaign and his arrest. Regional political party Azad Adhikar Sena and a local non-profit organisation submitted the complaints, according to Renu Poonia, a nodal official of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the state capital of Jaipur.
India’s election code bars parties and politicians from engaging in speeches and campaigns that aim to perpetuate religious or caste differences. But independent watchdogs and activists have long complained that election officials act too slowly, if at all, especially when cases involve powerful officials in the government.
Many leaders in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies in India’s Hindu-majoritarian right have long portrayed the country’s 200 million Muslims effectively as outsiders. Muslim asylum seekers and refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar are in particular targeted as “infiltrators”.
The conspiracy notion that Indian Muslims have a higher birth rate than Hindus with the ultimate goal of overtaking Hindus in the nation has also long been promoted by the BJP and its allies. In actuality, government data indicates that throughout the last three decades, the Muslim fertility rate in India has nearly halved and is declining at the highest rate of any community.
In 2002, following an anti-Muslim massacre in Gujarat, where he held the position of chief minister, Modi notoriously made fun of relief camps by comparing them to factories that produce babies. This behaviour contributed to the propagation of this stereotype.
Yet, in recent years, while others in his party and its coalition partners have often engaged in open Islamophobic commentary and even violence, Modi has focused on his government’s claimed accomplishments in the fields of the economy and social development. That had been the principal thrust of his 2024 re-election campaign too.Until now.
