Awareness Wednesday :: Xenophobia, Part IV — Let Them Worship

xenophobia worship Hindu Muslim - Mormon Women for Ethical Government

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may (Articles of Faith 1:11).

India is a secular federal republic of more than 1.3 billion people, governed by a democratic parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual, and multi-ethnic society. About 80% of the population is Hindu. Nearly 15% are Muslim.

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of the Republic of India. He was committed to the idea of India being a secular nation. In 1950, when the Republic was first formed, perhaps some felt they had received a raw deal. Pakistan, which was formed concurrently through the partition of British India, became a Muslim nation. India, however, was not a Hindu nation.

In recent years there has been a rise of a populist political party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The main platform of the BJP is Hindutva (or Hinduness) with the goal of creating a Hindu nation.

How can a country with about 200 million Muslims create a Hindu nation? One of the tenets of Hinduism is the veneration of the cow. Over the past few years there have been beef lynchings in India, which have targeted Muslims who have been accused of mistreating or eating beef. Some of the victims included a Muslim man who was accused of stealing and eating a cow, students who were taunted as beef eaters while returning home on the train, and many others. Prime Minister Modi’s response to these terrible acts has been tepid. In one case he noted that he was saddened — eight days after the event. There was no call for peace from Modi, or demands that the offenders be brought to justice.

Effective January 10, 2020, the Citizenship Amendment Act gave a path to citizenship for refugees from neighboring countries Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. If a person can prove they are originally from those countries, are either Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian, and have lived or worked in India for six years, they become eligible for citizenship. Omitted from the list of approved religions is Islam. Under the law, Muslim migrants can still be deported from India.

The passage of the Citizenship Act has given rise to many violent uprisings throughout India. Muslim people in India say they do not feel safe anymore. The BJP position has been that there is no reason to include Muslims in this law because the countries of origin that are included are Muslim nations. Therefore, Muslims should not be seeking refuge due to religious persecution, even though there are Muslim groups that have faced persecution in these other coutries.

Also relevant, in 2003, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was created. This act was passed with the stated goal of identifying legal citizens of India and deporting those who were illegal. To be declared a citizen, one must prove through land records and identification that one has ancestral ties to India. This has been implemented in the state of Assam since 2013. Assam is a border area near Bangladesh, and its people are predominately Muslim. In Assam nearly 130,000 people have been declared to not be citizens of India. Bangladesh, however, claims no responsibility for them and is unwilling to take them in because most have been in India for many generations and have no ties to Bangladesh. India has essentially created a population that is stateless. The NRC is expected to continue to be rolled out throughout more states in India.

What has India done with these stateless people? Many are already in detention centers. Under the law, people can be held for three years in a detention center and then are eligible for bail. There are plans to open detention centers in every state in India with at least ten planned for Assam.

If we are to believe that each person may worship according to the dictates of their own conscience, we must and should be outraged by the treatment of Muslims in India. To lose one’s citizenship based on religion is unconscionable. The things Hindus and Muslims in India have in common are greater than any differences. The country was created to be a secular republic, and now the BJP is turning its back on their history.

As we go about our daily lives, we must remember the painful realities of our own histories, when our beliefs have been ridiculed and when people of our religion have been persecuted. We can look at what is happening in India and see the parallels in the history of the early Latter-Day Saints. We can also see the parallels in modern-day America.

To read the other posts in our xenophobia series, click here.