I'm deeply saddened to read about the new anti-Muslim law in #India and the resulting violence. Both #Jaipur and the state of #Kerala--where C & I lived about a year-each during our two years in India--reported violence and deaths. In Dehli, where we spent a fair amount of time, the report suggests a police riot (and I suspect other places as well, although some held higher expectations of the #Dehli police). India has, I believe, the second-highest population of Muslims in the world (behind Indonesia), but Indian Muslims have been subject to a great deal of discrimination and mistreatment--including violence. When we were in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala, in 2014, Modi was elected prime minister, and I, and many others, thought his election didn't bode well for India and the fraught issue of religious tolerance. Where we lived in Thiruvananthapuram, we had a mosque, a surprising variety of Christian churches, and Hindu temples within a short walking distance of our apartment. And they seemed to play well together. (Of Jaipur, firmly in the center of the solidly Hindu-dominant north but near Muslim areas, I'm less surprised.)
The leadership of Gandhi, Nehru, and Ambedkar (the least known & under-appreciated of this founding triumvirate) attempted to form a religiously-tolerate nation-state, but that has been difficult, as it has been in the U.S. And as the U.S. still suffers the original sin of slavery, so India from its caste system. It's sad but not surprising that these troubles exist and that the BJP under #Modi would attempt to fan and exploit divisions. At one point Modi was barred from traveling to the U.S. because of his perceived role in anti-Muslin riots in #Gujarat in the early 1990s. So again, no surprise.
"A widespread belief is that the Indian government will use both these measures — the citizenship tests and the new citizenship law — to render millions of Muslims who have been living in India for generations stateless." (From the article below.) The words "render . . . stateless" should send a chill through anyone who's read Hannah Arendt or #TimothySnyder, among others. Such moves pave the way for genocide and less lethal forms of discrimination and horror. It's a very sad & alarming story to wake-up to.
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