Only two days into India’s six-week-long general elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unleashed yet another tirade against the country’s largest religious minority: Addressing a rally in the western state of Rajasthan, Modi called India’s 200 million Muslims “infiltrators”.
The remarks drew widespread ire. Thousands of enraged civil society members wrote to the Election Commission, seeking action against the PM for his “dangerous speech”, calling it a “direct attack” on Indian Muslims.
But none of this is new, or unexpected, in India anymore. As a member of the minority community myself, I face such attacks daily even if they are at a symbolic level.
Since Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, all aspects of civil society have come under increasingly brazen attack.
But with Modi poised to assume the premiership for a third consecutive term, his open use of terms like “vote jihad” on the campaign trail is now a matter of grave concern for India’s Muslims, and for minorities more broadly.
Over his 10 years at the helm, Modi has already shown what he and his BJP are capable of: A brazen populist push for greater disenfranchisement of non-Hindus, and attempts at tightening their grip on power through just about whatever means necessary.
This story was originally published in thenewhumanitarian.org. Read the full story here.
