Indian Researcher to Al-Estiklal: Modi's Failed Government Wins by Fighting Muslims

The Indian journalist and thinker, Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan, confirmed that the escalation of violations against the Muslims of India is activated by political motives intended by the Hindu nationalist movement, to fuel polarization, which help it stay in power.

Khan, the editor-in-chief of India's Milli Gazette newspaper, said in an interview with Al-Estiklal that right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows a dualistic approach focused on fighting Muslims inside, while showing to those who are outside and to the Islamic world that his country is secular.

He explained that Modi's government is a failure and has not succeeded in any field and is using hatred against Muslims (and Christians to some extent) to unite the ranks of the Hindus behind that.

Internationally, Khan pointed out that the majority of Islamic and Arab countries, especially the Gulf countries, did not pay attention to the abuses of the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party, and instead established good relations with the Hindu government.

According to him, Muslims won’t have any role to support Muslims in India after they failed to support Palestine, the Rohingya and the Uyghurs.

Zafarul-Islam Khan, 74 years old, is a famous Indian intellectual. He completed his higher education in Egypt and got a doctorate degree in Islamic studies from Britain. 

He has contributed in authoring, translation and publishing in the Arabic, Urdu and English press inside and outside India. He is the son of the great Islamic thinker Wahiduddin Khan.

 

 

Blatant Assault

 

• In your opinion, what is the motive behind some Indians’ abuse of the Prophet Muhammad, and how did you follow the reactions of Islamic countries?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: Insulting thethe Prophet Muhammad, PBUH, is part of the Hindu plan to attract more supporters.

The Hindu nationalist movement (Hindutu) is adopting a discourse that insults Islam presenting it as a "cancer" that must be eradicated; Muslims are harassed in various ways.

 

• Do you see a relationship between the statements and the persecution of Indian Muslims?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: The statements were part of the party's continuous attempts to cause severe political polarization between Hindus (80% of the population) and Muslims (15%) and thus win the Hindus votes in the elections.

These statements become more racist as the elections approach, whether at the level of India or at the level of states and municipalities.

 

• How do you evaluate the Indian government's reaction to the criticism of some Arab and Islamic countries?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: The Indian government thought that the policy of intelligent division between the internal and external policies was successful, and it could exercise persecution and restrictions on minorities (Muslims and Christians) inside the country while presenting a civilized secular image to the outside world, especially the Islamic world.

This policy has now collapsed and the Indian government has been forced to retreat and apologize, and even to force all the party's spokesmen not to say anything about Islam and religions without the permission of the party leadership.

Perhaps the party will return to its old internal policy, but with caution, because spreading hatred against Muslims in particular is an important weapon for this party to bring about the political polarization that must win the elections.

Because hate speech makes the majority of Hindus think that the party is looking after their interests and shielding them from the (imaginary) danger of Muslims.

 

• What do you think about the dismissal of the media spokesman in the ruling party?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: The dismissal of the party's spokesman was a step to reduce losses and preserve the major interests linking India to the Gulf region in particular.

 

 

Harassment and Persecution

 

• What are the forms of persecution and harassment that Muslims are exposed to in India?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: Hindutva's campaigns against Muslims took many forms, such as refusing the veils of Muslim students, and the killing of hundreds of Muslims on charges of eating beef or slaughtering cows, as well as assaulting Muslims on charges of forcing Hindus to convert to Islam and tempting Hindu women to marry Muslims.

Among the forms of restrictions and persecution are opposing the sale of halal meat, refusing to write the description of “halal” on food packages, and changing hundreds of Islamic names for cities, villages, streets and roads with Hindu names to erase Muslims from the history of India.

The government has also changed textbooks and history books to release any material that praises Muslims, in addition to calling for the extermination of millions of Muslims

 

• What are the reasons for the rise of hate speech against Muslims in India?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: Here it is worth mentioning historical facts, as the English, during the 1857 revolution against their colonial rule, found that Muslims and Hindus were fighting them together. 

After they put an end to the revolution, they thought of using the "divide and conquer," policy.

The British resorted to inventing a new history for India claiming that the Islamic era (more than seven centuries) was an era of darkness, injustice, rape, murder, and forcing Hindus to convert to Islam by the sword, demolishing their temples, and other slanders.

Then the British began to study this false history in schools and publish books containing these lies.

Among them, there were anti-Muslim movements, the most important of which was RSS, which arose in 1925 and became over time a big octopus.

Its political branch is the Indian People's Party, which has been ruling India since 2014, and it implements the policies RSS has advocated since its inception such as the necessity of marginalizing Muslims, reducing their numbers in India, depriving them of government facilities, and not employing them in the state and the private sector, in addition to forcing Muslims to convert to Hinduism, which they called "returning home," meaning that the majority of Indian Muslims are those who previously rejected Hinduism and embraced Islam, and they have only to return now to their ancient roots.

 

• In your opinion, why does the Indian government insist on persecuting Muslims despite criticism?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: The government is a failure and has not succeeded in any field, and it uses the spread of hatred against Muslims (and Christians to some extent) to unite the ranks of the Hindus behind that, which is known as political polarization.

 

Suspicious Alliance

 

• How do you find Modi's relationship with the Islamic world?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: Unfortunately, although the list of Modi government's persecution of Muslims is long and endless, he sought to improve relations with the Muslim world and the Gulf in particular, and was given the highest civilian honors in every country he visited, like the Emirates, which allowed him to establish a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi and concluded a free trade treaty with him, Saudi Arabia also welcomes good relations with him.

The Modi government's domestic rhetoric was to fight Islam and Muslims within India, while its rhetoric to the outside world was that India was a secular state that did not give prority to any citizen regardless his religion.

The Islamic countries and the Gulf states in particular should have studied the conditions of India on their own, for what is happening in India is neither a secret nor a mystery.

The United States is constantly following up on the matter, and the Commission for the Rights of Religious Minorities in the US State Department has put India in the category of countries that abuse its religious minorities for the third year in a row.

 

 

• What is your assessment of the reaction of some Islamic and Arab countries to the offensive statements?

Zafarul-Islam Khan: The statement of the spokeswoman for the ruling Indian party that was offensive to Muhammad, PBUH, came to awaken some of these countries, forcing the Indian government, as usual, to expel the criminal officials who dared to attack our prophet.

Here, we note that three quarters of the Islamic countries (there are 58 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation) did not pay any attention to the matter.

In any case, even this amount of attention and protest has forced the Modi government to back down, although it is known for its arrogance and refusal to accept any wrongdoing or make any apologies for its policies.