Modi tries to sow discord between Christians and Muslims during the election campaign
At a rally in Jharkhand on the eve of the last voting round, the Indian prime minister attacked some schools that chose Friday as a public holiday instead of Sunday, claiming that after Hindus, Muslims are also “fighting with Christians". He also vowed that Muslims would never be eligible for benefits meant for Dalits and tribal people.
Dumka (AsiaNews/Agencies) – An election rally held yesterday in Dumka, in the northern state of Jharkhand, on the eve of the last round of voting in India, provided Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an opportunity to pit Christians against Muslims, the country’s two largest religious minorities.
In a swipe at the Jharkhand government, which is led by a local political party allied with the Indian National Congress, Mr Modi lashed out at the results of an investigation that shows that some schools in Jamtara switched their weekly break to Friday from Sunday, which is the usual day across the country.
“First, they fought with Hindus, now they are fighting with Christians,” Modi said.
In reality, the state the government led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) party reinstated Sunday as the official day off in 2022, reversing the decision taken two years earlier by 43 state-run schools to observe Friday as the weekly break.
An investigation later determined that some schools in Jamtara, an area with a large Muslim population, did not implement this decisionFor Jamtara MLA Irfan Ansari, a “trivial matter” was given “a communal colour”.
At the rally, Modi also reiterated the claim that the main opposition INDIA bloc wants to grant Muslims, “on a religious basis”, the same benefits under Indian law reserved for disadvantaged groups, like job quotas.
“I want to tell the people of INDI alliance (sic) that as long as Modi is alive, you will not be able to snatch away the reservation of Tribals, Dalits, backward classes and extremely backward classes and give it to Muslims, to those who do 'vote jihad',” Modi said.
For years, Indian Catholics have waged a battle to have Christian Dalits and tribals benefit from India’s quota system, a demand consistently rejected by Hindu nationalists who are the same who complain of forced conversions.
Jharkhand is the place where Fr Stan Swamy served the local tribal population much of his life. The Jesuit clergyman died in 2021, aged 84, from COVID-19 after almost nine months in prison on false charges of aiding and abetting terrorism, despite repeated requests to Modi for his release.
Precisely to oppose a sectarian vision of society, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) called for a day of fasting and prayer on 22 March before the start of the vote.
In its statement, the CBCI spoke out against “divisive attitudes, hate speech and fundamentalist movements” because they are eroding “the pluralist ethos that has always characterised our country”.
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14/02/2005
