'Hate Is Being Preached Openly Against Us.' After Delhi Riots, Muslims in India Fear What's Next
Mar 4, 2020 08:34:12 #
Surrounded by smoldering houses and the blackened skeletons of burned-out cars, Mohammed Efaz picked his way through the streets of Khajuri Khas, a neighborhood in north-east Delhi.
The 32 year-old Muslim said he would never return to India’s capital after what he saw happen here last week.
“We will never come back here to live among Hindus,” Efaz told TIME on Saturday as he loaded a burlap sack into his small truck, preparing to travel back to his home village. “The divide between Hindus and Muslims is unbridgeable now.”
The violence began on Feb. 23 and lasted for several days, leaving at least 46 people dead in Delhi, the majority of them Muslims. It was the worst religious violence in India in years. Though some Hindus too were killed in the riots, it quickly emerged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Delhi police force his government oversees, had tacitly supported the mobs, who chanted Hindu nationalist slogans as they burned buildings and beat Muslims while police reportedly looked on.
Since the riots, hundreds of Muslims have fled the city, unsure if they will ever feel safe enough to return. Although both Hindu and Muslim houses were burned down in this corner of Delhi, on Saturday it was only Muslim families loading up their possessions to flee. “The ruling party has built an atmosphere against Muslims,” Efaz said. “Now, hate is being preached openly against us.”
For India, the violence has marked a bloody milestone after six years of governance by Hindu nationalists, who are now more politically dominant than ever before. Since winning reelection in a landslide last May, Modi has stoked his far-right Hindu nationalist base, many of whom see Muslims as invaders of a rightfully Hindu India. In August, Modi put Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, on lockdown and stripped it of its semi-autonomous status. His government is planning to construct a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque demolished by Hindu nationalists in 1992. And his Home Minister, Amit Shah, is pushing forward plans to deport “infiltrators” from India with the help of a mass population registration program.
After days of silence, Modi condemned the violence in Delhi on Feb. 26. “Peace and harmony are central to our ethos,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is important that calm and normalcy is restored at the earliest.” But Muslims and academics alike say it was his own rhetoric that led to the riots. “The trend we see across India is that a lot of the violence perpetrated against Muslims these days is actually perpetrated by subsidiaries of the Hindu nationalist movement,” says Thomas Blom Hansen, a Stanford professor of anthropology who has studied religious identities and violence in India for three decades. “The government and the BJP can wash their hands and say, ‘we have nothing to do with it, these are just patriots acting on their own.’”
The policies and rhetoric of the ruling party are felt directly, too. The BJP has tried to cast India’s Muslims as terrorists, says Mohammed Numan, a Muslim resident of the Khajuri Khas neighborhood whose house was burned down on Feb. 25. Numan told TIME he had long expected the BJP’s rhetoric would cause riots targeting Muslims. “A vast majority of Indians have come to believe that Muslims are a threat to India — which we are not,” he said. “We are as Indian as they are.” Refusing to turn his face toward the smoldering ruin of his home, Numan recalled how his Hindu neighbor used to taunt him, saying that soon Muslims would be stripped of their voting rights and thrown in detention camps.
For more go to.........................................
https://time.com/5794354/delhi-riots-muslims-india/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20200304&xid=newsletter-brief
The 32 year-old Muslim said he would never return to India’s capital after what he saw happen here last week.
“We will never come back here to live among Hindus,” Efaz told TIME on Saturday as he loaded a burlap sack into his small truck, preparing to travel back to his home village. “The divide between Hindus and Muslims is unbridgeable now.”
The violence began on Feb. 23 and lasted for several days, leaving at least 46 people dead in Delhi, the majority of them Muslims. It was the worst religious violence in India in years. Though some Hindus too were killed in the riots, it quickly emerged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Delhi police force his government oversees, had tacitly supported the mobs, who chanted Hindu nationalist slogans as they burned buildings and beat Muslims while police reportedly looked on.
Since the riots, hundreds of Muslims have fled the city, unsure if they will ever feel safe enough to return. Although both Hindu and Muslim houses were burned down in this corner of Delhi, on Saturday it was only Muslim families loading up their possessions to flee. “The ruling party has built an atmosphere against Muslims,” Efaz said. “Now, hate is being preached openly against us.”
For India, the violence has marked a bloody milestone after six years of governance by Hindu nationalists, who are now more politically dominant than ever before. Since winning reelection in a landslide last May, Modi has stoked his far-right Hindu nationalist base, many of whom see Muslims as invaders of a rightfully Hindu India. In August, Modi put Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, on lockdown and stripped it of its semi-autonomous status. His government is planning to construct a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque demolished by Hindu nationalists in 1992. And his Home Minister, Amit Shah, is pushing forward plans to deport “infiltrators” from India with the help of a mass population registration program.
After days of silence, Modi condemned the violence in Delhi on Feb. 26. “Peace and harmony are central to our ethos,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is important that calm and normalcy is restored at the earliest.” But Muslims and academics alike say it was his own rhetoric that led to the riots. “The trend we see across India is that a lot of the violence perpetrated against Muslims these days is actually perpetrated by subsidiaries of the Hindu nationalist movement,” says Thomas Blom Hansen, a Stanford professor of anthropology who has studied religious identities and violence in India for three decades. “The government and the BJP can wash their hands and say, ‘we have nothing to do with it, these are just patriots acting on their own.’”
The policies and rhetoric of the ruling party are felt directly, too. The BJP has tried to cast India’s Muslims as terrorists, says Mohammed Numan, a Muslim resident of the Khajuri Khas neighborhood whose house was burned down on Feb. 25. Numan told TIME he had long expected the BJP’s rhetoric would cause riots targeting Muslims. “A vast majority of Indians have come to believe that Muslims are a threat to India — which we are not,” he said. “We are as Indian as they are.” Refusing to turn his face toward the smoldering ruin of his home, Numan recalled how his Hindu neighbor used to taunt him, saying that soon Muslims would be stripped of their voting rights and thrown in detention camps.
For more go to.........................................
https://time.com/5794354/delhi-riots-muslims-india/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20200304&xid=newsletter-brief
Mar 4, 2020 08:36:54 #
Mar 4, 2020 08:49:34 #
soba1 wrote:
Let them go to Canada the US is full
Full of poop, well at least 38% of it is.
Mar 4, 2020 09:35:06 #
Elaine2025
Loc: Seattle, Wa
Kraken wrote:
Surrounded by smoldering houses and the blackened ... (show quote)
Don't you ever get tired of being a kanuck and posting crap only a knauck would believe?
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