Anti-Muslim tensions rise in India

Gwynne Dyer is a UK-based Canadian journalist and longtime commentator on international affairs.

OPINION: As everyone knows, the gods have thin skin, both the many gods of the classical pantheons (Greek, Roman, Hindu) and the unique gods jealous of monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).

Criticize them in any way, and they will punish you severely – or at least their earthly followers will.

These earthly adepts see themselves as the executive arm of their god’s powers, which mysteriously only work through man. (Waiting for direct divine punishment from critics is only for sissies.) Loyal followers cry out for uncontrollable outrage and attack the attackers.

Like, for example, in India now.

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The ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party – Indian People‘s Party) is a Hindu nationalist party whose goal is to make India a Hindu-ruled country where all religious minorities are second-class citizens.

The main target is India’s Muslims, who make up 15% of the population – nearly 200 million people.

Muslims are the best target because long ago their Mughal ancestors conquered India and ruled it for many centuries. India is therefore a “wounded civilization” in the eyes of the Hindu radicals, and the Muslim infection must be purged in order to restore the health of a true Hindu civilization.

Rather, it ignores the fact that the vast majority of Indian Muslims are not descended from foreign conquerors but from locals who converted to Islam, whether for religious or practical reasons, during the long centuries of Muslim rule.

It also ignores the fact that Indian Muslims today already lag behind Hindus in prosperity and education.

Above all, it deliberately overlooks the fact that India’s most recent conquerors were the British, who left an even deeper mark on the country.

But they are useless as scapegoats because a) they are no longer in India; and b) it was their overthrow of Mughal power that paved the way for Hindus to rise in the political realm.

Hatred and fear of Muslims is what brought the BJP to power, and to keep their supporters energized they must constantly find new Muslim outrages to exploit.

The latest was the “discovery” that a historic mosque in the city of Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest sites, was built on the ruins of a Hindu temple.

How do they know?

Because the basin of the mosque contains a fountain which can, when viewed in the right light with half-closed eyes, be interpreted as embodying a ‘Shivling’ or Shiva Linga: a carved stone which symbolizes the ineffable essence of Lord Shiva.

Why Muslims of long ago would have incorporated such a symbol into the mosque’s pool remains unexplained, but it immediately became the BJP’s claim.

Other mosques were destroyed by Hindu mobs on equally flimsy grounds, so various Muslim spokesmen immediately came to his defense.

One of them, debating on air with BJP National Spokesperson Nupur Sharma, reportedly said harsh things about Shiva. What could they be? Too many arms? Too inclined to destroy things?

The video has been “disappeared”. We will never know.

In any case, Mrs. Sharma, provoked beyond reason, responded by slandering the Prophet Muhammad. As it can be life-threatening, I will not repeat them, but they concerned the age of the youngest wife of the Prophet, Aisha. It’s in the Quran.

As for Nupur Sharma, she was suddenly downgraded from national spokesperson to a “fringe element”, suspended from the BJP at least for a while. Delhi BJP media chief Naveen K Jindal, who tweeted his support for Sharma, was expelled outright.

Is the BJP turning over a new leaf?

No way.

He is backing down frantically to appease the wrath of oil-rich Muslim Gulf counties, which supply most of India’s oil and employ millions of its workers. The BJP’s war on Islam is for domestic purposes only.

Likewise, the Gulf States will gladly continue to ignore the behavior of the Indian government at home in exchange for a bogus apology, just as they ignore Chinese oppression of Muslims in Xinjiang and continue to sell their oil to Beijing.

The scale of the hypocrisy is breathtaking – but it’s also sadly familiar.

And none of this proves that rival religions are incompatible. Multi-religious societies have flourished peacefully both in the past and in the present, even though every believer must necessarily believe that those who follow another faith are totally, even catastrophically, in error.

A little politeness goes a long way.

A sense of humor also helps. “The Mughal architecture is amazing! They always built an ancient Hindu temple in the basement first,” an Indian Muslim tweeted, undermining the BJP story without a single angry word.

But things are bad in India: religion is being weaponized in a way that has already led to massacres and could lead to genocide.