New Delhi: A group of former ambassadors, chief secretaries and other high-ranking government officials have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing concern over the deteriorating communal relations in the country.
The strained relations between Hindus, Muslims and Christians has caused “extreme anxiety and insecurity” for the minority communities, the letter said, with the latest to blow to communal harmony coming in the form of surveys of historic mosques and dargahs.
The former officials said that while the country went through a period of communal unrest during and after Partition, the incidents of the last 10 years are markedly different because “they show the clearly partisan role of many state governments and their administrative machinery.”
Listing the progression of communal rhetoric that has been popularised in India, the letter said, “What started as incidents of bullying or beating up Muslim youth on charges of carrying beef, grew into lynchings of innocent people…followed by Islamophobic hate speeches with clearly genocidal intent. In the recent past there have been calls for boycotting Muslim business establishments…and unrestrained bulldozing of Muslim homes at the behest of chief ministers themselves led by a ruthless local administration.”
Such activity is unprecedented and has shaken the core of all those who believe in secularism, they wrote.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
