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Modi Slammed for 'Direct Attack on Muslims of India' in Campaign 'Hate Speech'
"Modi's rhetoric against Muslims is extremely divisive and dangerous," warned one critic. "It would only fuel more hate and violence against the already battered community."
Apr 22, 2024
Critics on Monday condemned far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what one group called a "hateful and dangerous" campaign speech in which he claimed that Muslim "infiltrators" would steal Indians' wealth if the opposition wins parliamentary elections that began last week.
Speaking to supporters at a rally in the western state of Rajasthan on Sunday, Modi said that the manifesto of the opposition Indian National Congress (INC) party details how to calculate "the amount of gold that mothers and sisters have" so that it can be redistributed to Muslims.
"When they were in power, they said Muslims have first right over resources," the prime minister claimed out of context. "They will gather all your wealth and redistribute among those who have more children. They will distribute it among infiltrators. Do you think your hard-earned money should be given to infiltrators? Would you accept this?"
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rhetoric against Muslims is extremely divisive and dangerous. It would only fuel more hate and violence against the already battered community. pic.twitter.com/KT36FVpS6u
— Raqib Hameed Naik (@raqib_naik) April 21, 2024
Members of Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—which does enjoy the support of a significant number of Indian Muslims—have often portrayed Muslims as outsiders. BJP officials have also pushed a baseless conspiracy narrative roughly analogous to U.S. white supremacists' "great replacement" theory, in this case positing that Muslim migrants and rapidly reproducing Indian Muslims will eventually outnumber Hindus—who make up around 80% of the country's 1.4 billion people.
Modi's remarks came a day after India's seven-step election of 543 members of the Lok Sabha, or lower legislative house, began. Modi is running for a third consecutive term. He's being challenged by INC President Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, the upper legislative house. Results will be announced on June 4.
Kharge responded to Modi's remarks by blasting the "panic-filled" address as "not only a hate speech but also a well-thought-out ploy to divert attention" by the prime minister, the BJP, and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—a fascist-inspired political and paramilitary movement whose brand of Hindu supremacy heavily influenced the rise of the BJP.
"Lying for power, making baseless references to things, and making false accusations on opponents is the specialty of the training of RSS and BJP," Kharge said, adding that Indians "are no longer going to fall prey to this lie."
Indian journalist and
Washington Post opinion columnist Rana Ayyub said on social media that "this is not a dogwhistle, this is a targeted, direct, brazen hate speech against a community."
Thousands of Indians petitioned the country's Election Commission seeking punitive action against Modi.
"The prime minister, while campaigning... made a speech on April 21 in Rajasthan that has disturbed the sentiments of millions of Constitution-respecting citizens of India," one petition states. "The speech is dangerous and a direct attack on the Muslims of India."
Muslim groups around the world also slammed Modi's speech, which the U.S.-based Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called "hateful and dangerous."
"It is unconscionable, but not surprising, that far-right Hindutva leader Narendra Modi would target Indian Muslims with a hateful and dangerous diatribe despite his role as the leader of a nation with such a diverse religious heritage," said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.
"We again call on the Biden administration to declare India a 'country of particular croncern' over its discriminatory and violent policies targeting Muslims and other religious minorities," Awad added. "Global Islamophobia is alive and well in India and must be confronted before it escalates to something even worse."
South Asia historian Audrey Truschke, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, accused Modi of "straight-up fascism."
"Modi had a history of encouraging mass violence against Muslims," Truschke added. "So we should all take his words seriously."
Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in February 2002 when a train full of Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze, killing 58 people. The cause of the disaster remains disputed, but Modi was quick to blame Muslims for the fire. In a three-day paroxysm of intercommunal bloodletting, Hindu mobs murdered at least hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of Muslim men, women, and children. Many women and girls were raped. More than 250 Hindus were also killed during what came to be called the Gujarat riots, during which an estimated 150,000 people were also forcibly displaced.
A team sent by the British government concluded that Modi was "directly responsible for a climate of impunity" that enabled the pogrom. However, a special investigation commissioned by the Indian Supreme Court cleared him of complicity in 2012. Modi's alleged role in the massacre led to a U.S. visa ban during the George W. Bush administration that was lifted during the tenure of former President Barack Obama after Modi became prime minister.
Deadly violence against religious minorities and others has increased during BJP rule. And while the U.S. State Department has perennially criticized the Indian government's human rights record, Modi was courted by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Last year, the White House literally rolled out the red carpet for Modi, who was lavishly feted by President Joe Biden and invited to speak before a rare joint session of Congress. Several progressive lawmakers boycotted the address.
Earlier this year, Progressive International's (PI) executive body used Modi's consecration of a highly controversial Hindu temple on the former site of a 16th-century Muslim mosque destroyed by a Hindu nationalist mob as an opportunity to issue a warning about the accelerating erosion of democracy in India.
"The Modi government has made a decisive move to overthrow India's secular constitution in the name of a new Hindu supremacist nation," PI's statement asserted. "As prime minister, Modi has pushed this Hindu nationalism as India's dominant political force: banning the hijab in schools, introducing 'anti-conversion' laws, abusing municipal forces to demolish Muslim households and shops in cities, and pushing for a 'uniform civil code' in law."
Anti-Muslim speech has also increased dramatically in India, according to a report published earlier this year by the U.S.-based India Hate Lab. The publication detailed 668 incidents in 2023—75% of which occurred in BJP-ruled states.
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Modi Government Crackdown on Dissent Hits 'Crisis Point' Before Indian Elections
"The growing crackdown clearly shows the authorities' blatant disregard for human rights and rule of law," said one Amnesty International campaigner.
Mar 22, 2024
As India's right-wing government cracks down on opposition ahead of next month's general elections, Amnesty International on Friday urged authorities to "stop weaponizing the criminal justice system to intimidate and harass" political candidates, activists, and others.
Protests broke out in the capital New Delhi and other Indian cities after police on Thursday arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, an opposition leader from the Aam Aadmi Party, over corruption allegations AAP members say are politically motivated. Two other AAP leaders were previously arrested in connection with the same case, which involves the alleged favoring of certain alcohol vendors and illegal campaign financing.
Authorities also froze the bank accounts of another leading opposition party, the Indian National Congress, over a tax dispute that dates back to 2018. Party leader Sonia Gandhi accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party of perpetrating "a systematic effort to cripple the party financially."
“They want to know we are corrupt like them, which is not the case.” – AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar on the BJP’s crackdown on opposition politicians.
AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal was arrested just today on charges of corruption.
The India Report: https://t.co/rxPr6zKnWx pic.twitter.com/P3eSbxVTVm
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 21, 2024
Gandhi, Kejriwal and others have repeatedly accused of Modi's government of misusing federal agencies and resources to repress opposition figures as elections loom. The BJP denies the allegations.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Indian government's crackdown on peaceful dissent and opposition has now reached a crisis point," Amnesty International India board chair Aakar Patel said in a statement.
"The authorities have repeatedly exploited and weaponized various financial and terrorism laws to systematically crack down on human rights defenders, activists, critics, nonprofit organizations, journalists, students, academics, and political opposition," Patel added. "The arrest of Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of Indian National Congress' bank accounts a few weeks before India holds its general elections show the authorities' blatant failure to uphold the country's international human rights obligations."
Patel continued:
What we are witnessing is a brutal crackdown on human rights including through the misuse of central investigative and financial agencies, attacks on peaceful protests, arbitrary arrests, use and export of invasive spyware for unlawful surveillance, [and] systematic discrimination against religious minorities to feed into their majoritarian Hindutva politics and targeted suspension of opposition leaders from the Parliament who dare to hold the authorities to account.
"The growing crackdown clearly shows the authorities' blatant disregard for human rights and rule of law," Patel added. "Authorities must respect, protect, promote, and fulfill the human rights of everyone in the country including human rights defenders, activists, and opposition candidates before, during, and after the general elections which are due to begin in April 2024. Authorities must also ensure access to justice and effective remedies for victims of human rights violations."
On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives' bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a hearing on the situation in India.
The commission noted that in recent years, as Modi and the BJP have consolidated power, "concerns about human rights abuses in India have grown" over "a wide range of significant rights issues, including restrictions on religious and press freedoms, violence or threats of violence targeting members of national/racial/ethnic and religious minorities, harassment of and restrictions on civil society and human rights organizations, corruption, and lack of accountability."
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'India Lurches Toward Full-Fledged Fascism' as Modi Opens Contentious Hindu Temple
"The people of India have struggled for decades to secure a democracy that is secular, just, and equal. Modi must not be permitted to rob them of it now," admonished Progressive International's cabinet.
Jan 22, 2024
The executive body of Progressive International warned Monday of the accelerating erosion of Indian democracy as right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially consecrated a highly controversial Hindu temple on the former site of a 16th-century Muslim mosque destroyed a generation ago by a Hindu nationalist mob.
Modi heralded the "advent of a new era" as he spoke outside Ram Mandir, a temple to the Hindu deity figure Ram—who epitomizes the triumph of good over evil—in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The small city of approximately 55,000 inhabitants is known for its religious diversity and long history of peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims.
The prime minister, who exalted Ram as India's "national consciousness," claimed the temple's construction reflected that harmonious history, and that "this construction is not giving birth to any fire, but to energy."
"Today, the Modi government has made a decisive move to overthrow India's secular constitution in the name of a new Hindu supremacist nation."
However, it was extremist members of Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who, in December 1992, led a mob of Hindu nationalists in the destruction of the Babri Masjid Mosque, which they claim stood on the site of an ancient Hindu temple to Ram. The act sparked fierce communal riots in which more than 2,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims.
Celebrations of the new temple—much of which is still under construction—took part throughout India, with displays of Hindu nationalism prominent at many events. Emily Jones, a Christian Indian from Kerala state traveling in Goa, told Common Dreams that participants chanted slogans including "every inch of India is Hindu" at a car rally in Chapora.
In a statement, the Progressive International cabinet—whose members include National Federation of Indian Women president Aruna Roy—warned that "today, India lurches toward full-fledged fascism."
"Today, the Modi government has made a decisive move to overthrow India's secular constitution in the name of a new Hindu supremacist nation," the statement continued. "As prime minister, Modi has pushed this Hindu nationalism as India's dominant political force: banning the hijab in schools, introducing 'anti-conversion' laws, abusing municipal forces to demolish Muslim households and shops in cities, and pushing for a 'uniform civil code' in law."
"Now, in open defiance of India's secure constitution, Modi fuses 'prime minister' with 'chief priest' to conduct the consecration of this controversial temple," the cabinet contended.
Shoaib Daniyal, political editor of Scroll.in, wrote:
Modi's image in the manner of a medieval Hindu sovereign, involved in a ceremony that melded state and faith, is the final sign that India is now a de facto Hindu rashtra or Hindu state. This moment has been decades in the making. The destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was its biggest victory. January 22 inaugurates a second republic for the Indian Union...
The outlines of the Hindu rashtra are, therefore, being sketched out before our eyes, fashioned by current events. However, a decade into the Modi age, we can discern its defining contours. For one, quite obviously, it means a drastic shrinking of rights for its religious minorities, especially Muslims, who are the principal Other for the Hindu rashtra. Even something as banal as canvassing for Muslim votes is now decried as 'appeasement.' In many states, basic law and order is a privilege for Muslims.
In 2002, Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat and blamed Muslims for burning a train full of Hindu pilgrims, an act that sparked retaliatory massacres in which at least hundreds and perhaps thousands of Muslims were murdered, tortured, and raped. Hundreds of Hindus were also killed.
A U.K. government investigation found that Modi was "directly responsible" for the "climate of impunity" surrounding the massacre, although he was cleared by India's Supreme Court a decade later.
Banned by the George W. Bush administration from entering the United States over his role in the pogrom, U.S. politicians subsequently courted Modi as India rose to the top tier of nations. Former President Barack Obama lifted Modi's visa ban, while his and each subsequent U.S. administration has embraced the prime minister.
So have members of Congress from both parties, although progressive lawmakers have condemned what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) described as his administration's "systemic human rights abuses."
The new Progressive International cabinet statement asserted that "India's fundamentalist turn is terrifying."
"We call on progressive forces around the world to stand vigilant ahead of its general elections in April," the statement added. "The people of India have struggled for decades to secure a democracy that is secular, just, and equal. Modi must not be permitted to rob them of it now."
Observers noted the timing of the new temple's inauguration coincides with the start of the 2024 election cycle.
"We call on progressive forces around the world to stand vigilant ahead of its general elections in April."
"As Modi seeks a third term, his ruling Hindu nationalist BJP has signaled that the crux of its campaign will be anchored in the discourse around Modi's leadership as a Hindutva icon, and how the party has delivered on its ideological, political, and economic commitments," Haris Zargar, a doctoral researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, wrote for Middle East Eye, referring to the political ideology of "Hindu-ness" which advocates the dominant religion's supremacy and the transformation of secular India into an ethnonationalist state.
"Through this historic ceremony, Modi fulfills a pivotal campaign promise to his Hindu nationalist support base, and solidifies the party's connection with its core constituency in northern India's Hindi heartland," he added. "It also sets in motion a campaign aiming to polarize the electorate for political dividends."
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Indian Court Suggests BJP-Led State's Demolition of Muslim Homes Could Be 'Ethnic Cleansing'
The tribunal's order to stop razing buildings comes amid escalating deadly violence perpetrated primarily by far-right Hindu supremacists against Muslims and other minorities.
Aug 08, 2023
An Indian high court on Monday ordered a halt to the destruction of Muslim homes and businesses in a district of Haryana state by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, acts the tribunal suggested are "an exercise in ethnic cleansing."
Justices G.S. Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh issued a notice to the BJP-led Haryana state government stating that no demolitions could be carried out in the Nuh and Gurugram districts unless proper legal procedures are followed, The Hindu reported.
"Apparently, without any demolition orders, the law and order problem is being used as a ruse to bring down buildings without following the procedure established by law," the justices wrote. "The issue also arises whether the buildings belonging to a particular community are being brought down under the guise of [a] law and order problem and an exercise of ethnic cleansing is being conducted by the state."
According to the Hindustan Times, authorities in Nuh have demolished more than 750 homes, businesses, and roadside shacks belonging to or occupied by Muslims since last week, when violence flared after a Hindu religious procession there was reportedly pelted with stones allegedly thrown by Muslims from structures the government said were illegally built.
Four people including two police officers were killed in subsequent clashes, with more than 60 others injured.
Residents of Nuh—the majority of whom are Muslim—told Al Jazeera that participants in the procession, which was organized by the Hindu nationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, carried sticks, swords, and guns, and chanted hateful slogans while marching through Muslim neighborhoods.
A video in which notorious Hindu vigilante Mohit Yadav—a Bajrang Dal member who is accused of murdering two Muslim men earlier this year after they allegedly killed a cow—has been cited by Indian media as a catalyst for the bloodshed in Nuh.
Violence quickly spilled over into adjacent areas, including Gurugram—a finance and technology hub bordering the capital New Delhi—where a Hindu mob torched a mosque and killed its deputy imam. Far-right Hindu supremacist groups aligned with the BJP have been pushing to end Friday prayers in Gurugram.
The death and destruction in Nuh and Gurugram come amid rising religious and ethnic violence in the world's most populous nation.
Late last month, an Indian Railways security guard was arrested after he allegedly shot and killed a colleague and three passengers aboard an intercity train near Mumbai. The shooting suspect, Chetan Singh, posted a video on social media in which he is carrying a rifle and standing next to a bloody body.
"If you want to live and vote in Hindustan, I am telling you, it's only Modi and Yogi," Singh said, referring to India, its BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Yogi Adityanath, the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.
"The genie of hate is now out of the bottle and it will take a lot of collective effort to put it back in."
Modi has come under fire for his silence in the face of weeks of interethnic bloodletting between the Metiei and Kuki peoples in the northeastern state of Manipur. The prime minister faces a parliamentary vote of no confidence over the matter, which he will all but certainly defeat given the legislature's BJP majority.
Following the train killings, Jairam Ramesh, a senior leader of the opposition Indian National Congress party, placed the blame for the "hate and violence" on BJP leaders including Modi.
"The genie of hate is now out of the bottle and it will take a lot of collective effort to put it back in," Ramesh wrote in a social media post condemning "the politics of prejudice and polarization of the BJP."
In 2020, more than 50 people—most of them Muslims—were shot, stabbed, slashed, beaten, and burned to death by rampaging Hindu mobs reacting to a peaceful demonstration by Muslims protesting a discriminatory citizenship law passed by the BJP government.
Far-right Hindu extremists allied with Modi—an adherent of Hindutva, or "Hinduness," a political ideology condemned by critics as supremacist—have for years called for a genocide of India's Muslims, who make up about 14% of the country's 1.4 billion people.
Last year, Gregory Stanton, a genocide scholar and founder of the advocacy group Genocide Watch, warned that "genocide could very well happen in India."
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Human Rights Defenders Blast Biden's 'Shameful' Red Carpet Welcome for Indian PM Modi
"We have taken the view that geopolitics and countering China is more important to us right now than the values-based diplomacy the Biden administration came in saying they would prioritize," said one critic.
Jun 18, 2023
Human rights defenders this week condemned President Joe Biden's upcoming state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—who was once banned from entering the United States for supporting violent Hindu supremacists who massacred Muslims—as part of an ongoing U.S. "whitewash" of the right-wing leader's extremism.
Modi—who represents the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—is set to meet with Biden and speak before Congress this week in a visit the White House says "will strengthen our two countries' shared commitment to a free, open, prosperous, and secure Indo-Pacific."
However, rights groups and activists are condemning Biden's embrace of Modi while underscoring the grave human rights violations committed by the prime minister, his party, and their allies.
"Increasingly in recent years, BJP leaders have used toxic and hateful speech targeting religious minorities, inciting violence or discrimination against them."
"For almost a decade now, human rights activists and others have regularly brought to the White House—Democrats or Republicans—that Modi's regime is authoritarian, it's right-wing, it's anti-Muslim, and it's anti-minority" Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, told HuffPost.
"The fact that they continue to whitewash him by giving them a platform is very worrying," she added.
Vijayan noted that "despite who is in the White House, the U.S. has a long history of propping up authoritarian regimes for its own personal ends."
John Prabhudoss, chairman of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations, told HuffPost that Indian pastors and their families live in constant terror.
"Their family could be jailed or even the worst, killed. The fear is real," he said. "For the president to bring [Modi] to the White House... is shameful. Mr. Biden, shame on you."
In a June 8 letter to Biden, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Modi's visit "an important opportunity for the U.S. government to raise concerns—both privately and publicly—about India's worsening human rights situation."
The letter stated:
There are numerous areas of concern. Increasingly in recent years, BJP leaders have used toxic and hateful speech targeting religious minorities, inciting violence or discrimination against them. BJP-led authorities have tightened restrictions on free speech while ramping up censorship and using overbroad and vague laws to investigate and prosecute critics. Modi's government has also demonstrated blatant bias in protecting BJP supporters and affiliates accused [of] a range of crimes, including murder, assault, corruption, and sexual violence. At the international level, Modi's government has often proven unwilling to stand with other governments on key human rights crises, abstaining or refraining from condemning grave human rights violations elsewhere.
HRW and Amnesty International are set to host a private screening of a BBC documentary on Modi and his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. The film, India: The Modi Question, was banned by the government, which raided the BBC's India offices over what officials called a tax probe but critics condemned as retaliation in line with Modi's attacks on press freedom.
Reporters Without Borders ranks India 161st out of 180 nations in press freedom, behind Afghanistan and just ahead of Russia.
Modi, who was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat at the time of the 2002 slaughter, blamed Muslims for torching a train full of Hindu pilgrims, an attack that killed around 60 people. Hindu mobs then murdered at least hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Muslim men, women, and children in a retaliatory rampage, with many women raped and mutilated.
More than 250 Hindus were also killed during the violence, which displaced an estimated 150,000 people.
A U.K. government probe found that Modi was "directly responsible" for the "climate of impunity" surrounding the massacre.
While Modi was accused of deliberately allowing the violence, a special investigation commissioned by the Indian Supreme Court cleared him of complicity in 2012. Still, Modi's alleged role in the massacre led to a U.S. visa ban, first instated during the George W. Bush administration in 2005. The ban was lifted by then-President Barack Obama's administration in 2014 after Modi became prime minister.
Violence—sometimes deadly—against religious minorities and others has continued, and increased, under BJP rule.
As the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) notes:
The U.S. government and numerous internationally recognized organizations have condemned Modi for his and his political party's attacks on core democratic freedoms, as well as their roles in enabling violence against Indian minorities. The 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom by the Department of State highlights hate speeches by leaders of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, which have contributed to anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence; the BJP's criminalization of religious conversion; BJP-led demolitions of Muslim-owned properties; Hindu supremacist rewriting of school curricula; arbitrary arrests of Muslims; and denial of bail for jailed Muslim activists. For four years running, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has designated India as a Country of Particular Concern for its egregious violations of human rights and religious freedoms, citing similar abuses.
"To fail to note Modi’s violent, anti-minority, authoritarian tendencies, and his corrupt mismanagement of the Indian economy, is not only to ignore the U.S. government's own findings but a strategic blunder with the potential to jeopardize global stability," IAMC said.
"The turmoil Modi and the BJP have sown within Indian society is a profound threat to regional stability and has the potential to substantially undermine any joint initiatives," the group argued.
Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst with the Rand Corporation, said in an interview published Saturday by the Financial Times, "The question is, are we propping up an increasingly illiberal democracy here?"
"In my view, we are," he asserted. "We have taken the view that geopolitics and countering China is more important to us right now than the values-based diplomacy the Biden administration came in saying they would prioritize."
Some congressional Democrats have also faced criticism for their varying degrees of support for Modi and the BJP.
When then-President Donald Trump embraced the Indian leader at the raucous 2019 "Howdy Modi!" rally in Houston, six Democrats took to the stage to greet Modi: then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas); Rep. Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.); Rep. Danny Davis (Ill.); Rep. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.), an erstwhile critic of Indian human rights abuses in Kashmir; and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.).
Krishnamoorthi has attended the World Hindu Congress, a notorious platform for Hindu nationalists including Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a fascist-inspired political and paramilitary movement whose brand of Hindu supremacy heavily influenced the rise of the BJP. Modi is a former RSS regional director.
Others, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), have been unwaveringly critical of Modi's policies and practices.
Then there is the curious case of Rep. Ro Khanna. Invoking the name of his grandfather Amarnath Vidyalankar, a figure in India's independence movement who served multiple terms in parliament, the California Democrat in 2019 declared that "it's the duty of every American politician of Hindu faith to stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist, and Christians."
Hindutva—literally, "Hindu-ness"—is the modern political ideology espoused by Modi, the BJP, and many of their extremist allies advocating Hindu supremacy and the transformation of secular India into an ethno-nationalist state.
However, last month IAMC expressed its disappointment that Khanna asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to invite Modi to deliver a joint address before Congress during his state visit to Washington. Khanna's request—which was made with Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.,)—contended that "granting a joint address to Congress is a commensurate honor for the leader of the world's largest democracy and perhaps the most critical partner to countering China in the 21st century."
In response, IAMC cautioned that "the opportunity to speak before Congress will help to legitimize Modi's brand of Hindu nationalist politics and the systematic persecution of religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, under his rule."
"Khanna has previously and admirably criticized Hindu nationalism, Rahul Gandhi's expulsion from parliament, and disingenuous cries of Hinduphobia used to deflect legitimate criticism of the Indian government," the group added. "IAMC urges Rep. Khanna to continue this fight, cancel his request, and instead educate his constituents about the harms the Modi regime has done to India."
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