Just when we were shocked by Trump’s anti Muslim and anti-Minority rhetoric, India the so called world’s largest democracy (but also the practical joke of the world); a country where over five hundred million people don’t have a toilet to go to (because they cannot afford to build one); where over one third of the population lives in desperate poverty yet is ready to enter into an arms race with China (whose economy is $10 trillion bigger than India’s), a country whose capital city Delhi also holds the privilege of being the rape capital of the world has just given us another shocking surprise.
The largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh has just elected a religious bigot as its chief minister, the one and only Yogi Adityanath, a man who not only openly advocates raping dead Muslim women but also forcefully converting Christians and Muslims to Hinduism.
Yogi Adityanath is a member of India’s ruling BJP party and is known for preaching hatred and violence against India’s non-Hindu minorities. After the elections in Uttar Pradesh last month despite his criminal past or maybe because of it, he has been appointed the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh by BJP India (the political wing of radical Hindu organisation RSS).
In his speech to a charged crowd before the elections he said that if elected he will take the right of vote from the Indian Muslims and declare them 2nd class citizens.
He also said: Masjid will be converted into Hindu Temples and instead of Muslim call to prayer ‘Azan’, mosques will call ‘Har Har Mahahdave’ from the Masjids.
Further elaborating on his grand plans for his country’s minorities, he added, ‘‘my armed Hindu gangs are openly parading in the streets, take the Muslim women out of their graves and rape them’’.
What is shocking is that one fifth of Uttar Pradesh state’s population is Muslim. Has anti Muslim sentiment been raised to such an extent in India that vast majority of the rest of the Hindu population in Uttar Pradesh voted for a radical Hindu bigot?
Or is it because the Modi led government unable to address the country’s economic problems has now resorted to turning to communalism for votes?
Perhaps economic anxiety in India has risen to the level that the Indian masses have now turned to violence against the country’s helpless minorities to take out their frustration!
