Steep regression of India under the BJP, the world’s largest political party, since Narendra Modi became prime minister of India following party’s historic victory in 2014 general election was expected, it’s highly disappointing and frustrating nevertheless.

A beleaguered Congress party is no longer in a position to halt the ultra-right juggernaut in a country of over one billion people. How ironic however it is that the Aam Admi Party, which now rules Punjab in addition to Delhi, has begun to follow in the footsteps of BJP by pursuing a soft Hindutva agenda.

Narendra Modi, who had emerged as a brand in sheikhdoms or the Arab world by entering into a slew of bilateral trade deals with these Gulf states despite effectively othering Muslims in his own country in the last seven years has now turned into a villain because this time his party has gone too far.

Little did his government realise that the act of blasphemy committed by party’s spokeswoman Nupur Sharma will attract condemnation and outrage not from Muslims within India and Pakistan but from the entire Islamic world as well.

The ruling Sangh Parivar had never thought that India’s ambassadors would be summoned by the rulers of tiny states such as Qatar and Kuwait to answer why India’s once vibrant cultural and religious diversity has increasingly become elusive under the rule of present government.

None of the ambassadors had any plausible explanation in response to strong protest these and other Islamic states had lodged against the rising Islamophobia and systemic stigmatization and marginalization of Muslim community in India.

The BJP-RSS combine has no option but to revisit its approach to minorities and their rights so as to help the Indian society regain its equilibrium (santolan in Hindi) that it had lost not under Atal Behari Vajpayee, LK Advani and Manohar Joshi but under Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Aditiyanath Yogi.

Nadir Randhawa (Jhang, Punjab)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022