By Ruchira Gupta
On Thursday, India will announce election results that could put the country’s 200 million Muslims in danger. Over the last five and a half weeks, more than 500 million Indians voted in an election that will determine whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will return to power. If exit polls are to be believed, Modi and the BJP seem set to win a terrifying mandate.
One candidate for Parliament in particular illustrates the growing extremism of the BJP. In Bhopal, a city of 1.8 million people, Modi personally endorsed Pragya Singh Thakur, who is out on bail after almost nine years in jail for alleged involvement in a terrorist bombing that killed six Muslims.
She denies having anything to do with the 2008 attacks, but says a curse she placed on the investigating police officer resulted in his murder.
Thakur’s main election plank appears to be revenge against Indian Muslims for 400-year-old humiliations. At her campaign launch, she boasted that 27 years ago she helped demolish a 16th-century mosque in northern India: “I climbed atop the structure and broke it, and I feel extremely proud that God gave me this opportunity.”
Categories: Asia, India, Muslims, The Muslim Times
I disagree.