When Muslims in India expect some sort of direct sympathy or open condemnation, they receive none
LAHORE: Three days before India celebrated Eid on June 23rd, 15-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death by a group of men aboard a train. He was going home to Khandawli, a village in the north Indian state of Haryana, after shopping for new clothes in New Delhi, accompanied by his brother and a couple of friends. The mob even mocked them for eating beef, before stabbing them.
Eid was gloomy in Khandawli on Monday, as it was throughout India for Muslims. For the first time in their history, countless Muslims across the country offered their Eid prayers while wearing a black band, a symbol of protest against the killing of the teen as well as growing massacres and lynchings of Muslims in the country, which have been on the rise since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office three years ago.
Perhaps just as painful as the increase in Muslim killings and lynchings in India is the fact that Modi has not been confrontational about the matter. When Muslims in India expect some sort of direct sympathy or open condemnation, they receive none. Amnesty International released a statement on Wednesday, June 28th, calling the situation “deeply worrying” and accused Modi and other BJP leaders of not condemning the attacks and in fact to have “even justified the attacks at times.” Aakar Patel, executive director of Amnesty International India, said in a statement, “The Indian prime minister, senior BJP leaders and chief ministers must break their silence and unequivocally condemn the attacks.”
It is not unfair to say that Modi’s apathy on these acts of violence and hatred emboldens extremist right-wing groups. Moreover, even if Modi has subtly remarked in his tweet on June 30th for the making of an India that Gandhi envisioned, he has yet to elaborate upon his plan of action for stopping such crimes from occurring in the future.
Sabiha Hassan
Published in The Express Tribune, July 3rd, 2017.
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