I used to reply the cellphone with “Salam.” Not anymore. I don’t need individuals to know I’m a Muslim.
There’s little that may establish me as Muslim to start with, apart from my identify. I don’t put on a skullcap, and in public I keep away from sporting the loosefitting Pathani kurta and peppering my speech with Urdu phrases, all of that are identification markers for Indian Muslims. However within the India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, you may’t take any possibilities.
For 10 years, Mr. Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist authorities has vilified the nation’s 200 million Muslims as harmful undesirables. Lately, he took that rhetoric to a brand new low in the course of the six weeks of voting in India’s nationwide elections — that are extensively anticipated to win him a 3rd consecutive five-year time period — straight referring to Muslims as “infiltrators” in a rustic that he and his followers search to show right into a pure Hindu state.
As offensive as that was, it’s sadly acquainted to Indian Muslims like me who — after a decade of denigration, violence and homicide — stay in day by day concern of being recognized and attacked, forcing us into self-denial to guard ourselves.
India is residence to one of many world’s largest Muslim populations. Islam got here right here round 1,300 years in the past, and Indian Muslims descend from natives of this land who transformed to Islam centuries in the past. Many Indian Muslims fought in opposition to British colonization, and hundreds of thousands rejected the 1947 partition of the nation right into a predominantly Hindu India and a largely Muslim Pakistan. India is our residence, and folks like me are proud patriots.
However Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism has made us the targets in what is likely to be the most important radicalization of individuals on the planet. Its seeds had been planted with the founding in 1925 of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu group that sought the institution of a completely Hindu state in India and was impressed by the European fascism of that period. When Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering — a political offshoot of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — gained elections in 2014 and he turned prime minister, he and his followers noticed it because the civilizational second that Hindus had been ready for. Mr. Modi was the god-king who would free Hindu civilization from centuries of domination, first by a sequence of Muslim rulers culminating with the Mughal empire that dominated India for round three centuries after which by the British colonizers who adopted.
Islamophobia isn’t new to India, and Muslims additionally confronted prejudice and recurring violence in the course of the generations through which the liberal upper-caste Hindu elite dominated the nation’s secular democratic politics. However below Mr. Modi’s right-wing management, hatred of Muslims has successfully change into state coverage. India is now a rustic the place police have been accused of standing by as Hindus assault Muslims, the place the killers of non secular minorities go unpunished and the place Hindu extremists overtly name for the genocide of Muslims.
Protest, and also you run the chance of getting a Hindu mob unleashed on you. That’s what occurred after Mr. Modi’s authorities in 2019 pushed via a citizenship legislation that discriminates in opposition to Muslims and his occasion promised to expel “infiltrators” from the nation. When Indian Muslims protested, certainly one of Mr. Modi’s supporters responded with a provocative speech that’s blamed for sparking lethal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Delhi in February 2020. Police had been accused of wanting the opposite means as Muslims had their retailers destroyed, had been assaulted and had been even killed.
Bulldozers have change into an emblem of this state terrorism — rolled out at right-wing rallies, tattooed on the arms of Modi supporters and featured in Hindu nationalist songs — due to their use in areas ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering to illegally knock down the properties and companies of Muslims who dare to talk up. Some states have primarily made Muslim-Hindu relationships unlawful, based mostly on an absurd Hindu conspiracy principle that Muslim males are seducing Hindu ladies as a part of a long-term plan to show India right into a Muslim nation.
The liberal Hindu elite, as an alternative of acknowledging its function in enabling the emotions on which Mr. Modi has capitalized, has accomplished little to assist, aside from to ineffectually categorical nostalgia for a misplaced Hindu tolerance. And there may be little that Indian Muslims can do inside the political system: Though the Muslim share of India’s inhabitants has slowly grown to 14 p.c, the proportion of Parliament members who’re Muslim has declined to lower than 5 p.c in the present day, in contrast with 9 p.c within the early Nineteen Eighties.
The Indian Muslim response to our subjugation has largely been a deafening silence. Many people are merely unwilling to talk out in opposition to the Modi’s authorities bitter cut price: that for us to exist as Indian residents, we should meekly settle for historic revisionism, dehumanization and demonization.
This debasement, and the data that you’re primarily outdoors the safety of the legislation, kills one thing inside you. You are taking precautions to guard your self. My mom now not packs mutton for me to take again to Delhi after I go to her, as she used to. She’s afraid it will likely be mistaken for beef: Dozens of Muslims have reportedly been killed or assaulted by Hindu mobs on suspicion of killing cows — that are sacred to Hindus — or for consuming or possessing beef . Muslim dad and mom now routinely repeat a litany of don’ts to their kids: Don’t seem Muslim in public, don’t reveal your identify, don’t enter Hindu areas or journey alone and don’t get pulled into any potential confrontation.
Whereas we warning each other to mix in, it’s troublesome to reconcile with the entire thing. Every of us has one thing embedded in our sense of self and expression that’s notably painful to erase. And the form of bodily markers we try to cover should not even wholly particular to Muslims in India. My cousin likes to put on his Pathani kurta, however so do many Hindus. My youngest sister prefers to maintain her head lined, however so do many Hindu ladies, though not with a hijab. I’m hooked up to utilizing sure Urdu phrases which have lengthy been a characteristic of India’s syncretic tradition and have been used extensively by Hindus, too.
Self-denial results in deep frustration. Now throughout gatherings with family and friends, we keep away from politics; discussing the elephant within the room solely reminds us of our helplessness. The cumulative weight of all this has created a psychological well being disaster of concern and melancholy amongst Muslims. But due to a determined scarcity of psychological well being professionals in India and a restricted understanding of our new actuality by many non-Muslim therapists, many Muslims are left to manage on their very own.
I used to be hesitant to write down this essay. I’m not purported to protest, to talk up. After I typically do, posting on-line about it, the everyday response is, “Go to Pakistan.” However why would I depart? I’m an Indian. I used to be born right here, as had been my ancestors who opposed the spiritual foundation of the partition with Pakistan and believed within the Indian beliefs of secular democracy.
However many Muslims have fled over time, emigrating to Australia, Canada, Britain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia or elsewhere due to the worsening political local weather. Many who can’t afford to to migrate are transferring out of the predominantly Hindu or combined neighborhoods the place they lived for many years, to poorer Muslim areas for security. Two of my Muslim mates and I used to personal flats in a suburban space close to New Delhi the place many upper-caste Hindus lived. However in 2020, after the discriminatory citizenship legislation was handed, a Hindu mob charged via the neighborhood baying for Muslim blood. My two mates quickly moved out. I saved my residence, however within the elevator one night in 2022, I overheard two males discussing what number of katua (a derogatory time period for Muslims that refers to circumcision) lived within the space. I moved out the subsequent day. Sadly, Hindu mates and colleagues of mine even have change into colder and extra distant and are dropping out of contact.
On June 1, India’s voting interval involves an in depth. It looms as a day of dread for Muslims like me. In accordance with most projections, it will likely be one other victory for Mr. Modi — and additional validation of mob rule and the debasement of 200 million Muslims by a hubristic Hindu majority.
Mohammad Ali (@hindureporter) is an unbiased journalist and author who divides his time between New York and India. He’s writing a e book on rising up in India as Narendra Modi and his occasion have sought to remodel India right into a Hindu nation.
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