According to Rahyafte (the missionaries and converts website):Formed last month, the coalition is concerned that the government’s practices and rhetoric have led to discrimination in India and the United States.
A group of diverse Indian community members met on a recent afternoon in a colorful meeting room in the lower level of an office building in St. Anthony. Their mission: track the troubling politics of their home country and compel Americans to help stem a growing tide of hate against South Asian Muslims.
They formed the India Coalition to promote coexistence in the Twin Cities’ Indian community and to curb bigotry spreading through the United States as a result of a form of Hindu nationalism–Hindutva–that is pitting Hindus against Muslims.
“I see an inexonerable wave of hate, bigotry, and fascism taking over India,” said attendee Zafar Siddiqui, an activist and board member of several local nonprofits. “And if there is no pushback, however small that is, it’s going to consume us.”
Siddiqui started the group by bringing together a network of friends and acquaintances from a variety of faith, cultural, linguistic, and professional backgrounds.
“I have to make a deliberate effort to reach out to other people of Indian origin—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians—and form more alliances,” he said.
The group of about 31 hopes to draw attention to political issues that have cost lives in India but have gone largely unnoticed by the general public in the United States.
Muslims suffer under new regime
Members of the India Coalition, many of whom grew up in different parts of India and the diaspora, remembered an upbringing very different from the India they see on the news today. People of all religions cared for one another, they said, and they didn’t see hate emboldened by the government.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, succeeding Manhoman Singh, the nation’s first Sikh prime minister. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party advocates making India a Hindu state. The rise of the Hindu nationalist sentiment in India, often referred to as “Hindutva” and not a sect of the religion, follows a global trend of political groups that are anti-political establishment, anti-globalization, and anti-immigration coming to power.
India is a religiously, culturally, and linguistically diverse country. The conflict between Hindus, Muslims, and other minorities is a long and complicated history driven by imperialism and British colonization. More recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party has made controversial moves targeting Muslims and minorities throughout the country.
For example, a law passed in India in 2020 outlines a pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. However, all Muslims were excluded from eligibility. Hindus make up about 80 percent of India’s population in a country of nearly 1.2 billion. Muslims make up the second largest faith group, totaling more than 200 million.
“What has really troubled me is the non-reaction,” Siddiqui said of the local Indian community. “The enormity of the things happening in India should have at least made Indian people here sit up and take notice and do something about it.”
The government also published a registry of citizens in 2019 in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. The registry excluded two million people, many of whom were migrants, and roughly 600,000 Muslims. Those who were excluded had to prove their citizenship at state service centers and risked detention if they could not.
Ajay Skaria, a professor of South Asian politics and history at the University of Minnesota, hopes the India Coalition will reach out beyond their group to the larger Hindu community in the Twin Cities and discuss the current government in India.
Source: Sahanjournal.com
