(L-R) Ejaz Ahmed Aslam (secretary), Nusrat Ali (Secretary General) and Mohammad Salim Engineer (secretary) of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind at press conference in New Delhi. (Photo credit: IndiaTomorrow)
New Delhi: One of Narendra Modi’s harshest criticism against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his election campaign was the latter’s silence on issues concerning the country and its people. However, since taking reigns, Mr. Modi seems to have been afflicted by the very element he and his party had accused the previous regime with.
Addressing the press meet at their headquarters in New Delhi, the country’s largest Muslim socio-religious organization, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) expressed their concern at Mr. Modi and his government’s silence, at the vicious hate campaigns of right wing outfits and some of his party members’s targeting against minority Muslim and Christian community in the country.
“Jamaat is seriously concerned at the rise in hate campaign against minorities, particularly Muslims, since BJP came to power at the centre. There has since been a spate of communal incidents also (Saharanpur, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Kanpur etc.). At regular interval, leaders of BJP and Sangh Parivar have raked up contentious issues like Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, in violation of the ethos of the constitution, said that India is a Hindu Rashtra and all citizens of this country are Hindus,” said the gathered Jamaat leaders.
Mr. Nusrat Ali, Secretary General of JIH, criticized Mr. Modi for maintaining silence on hate campaigns in the name of concocted theories like ‘Love Jihad’ and forced conversions.
“A period of 100 days is very short to judge a government elected by people for five years. However, the initial trends are not good. It seems the government is working on two fronts – while PM Modi is talking about development, some leaders of his party and Sangh Parivar have opened aggressive hate campaign against Muslims and Modi is silent. It seems there is a silent understanding among them,” said Mr. Ali.
While appreciating Mr. Modi for some of the good measures initiated during his first 100 days as PM, the Jamaat leaders said that, “PM Modi’s austerity moves like asking ministers not to buy new cars and curtail foreign tours and his announcement for toilets at every home and school, and bank account for every citizen are indeed good. In an apparent move to provide a clean and corruption free government, he asked ministers not to hire relative as personal secretaries. His visit to Japan was also successful in terms of attracting investment.”
However, the party also ccriticized the manner in which the BJP government and PM Modi used Teachers’ Day to impose his personality on the young minds of the country. “We are against the government for having made it compulsory for schools and children to listen to PM’s speech as we think such tendency does not match with democratic values of the constitution,” said Mr. Ali.
On the question of Al-Qaeda announcing its branch in India, the party leaders expressed apprehensions that this may be used by country’s intelligence agencies to witch hunt minority youths as has been the trend for past 10 years.