Discrimination against Muslims permitted through law in India, says Aakar Patel

India has developed a nationalism that is fierce, but essentially inward-focused, and of late there is discrimination against Muslims that is permitted through law, Aakar Patel, Chair of the Board of Amnesty International in India, has said.

He was here on Saturday to deliver a lecture on ‘Akhanda Bharat: Reimagining South India’ in memory of writer-filmmaker Chintha Raveendran, popularly known as ‘Chintha Ravi’. Mr. Patel also presented veteran journalist P. Sainath with an award named after Ravi.

Mr. Patel said Muslims were the only communities for whom divorce had been criminalised. “After 2018, marriages between Hindus and Muslims were criminalised too in eight States ruled by the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party]... There are States that have the power to annul marriages even if the couple have children,” he pointed out.

Mr. Patel said the ruling party in India did not have a Muslim MP, neither in the Lok Sabha nor in the Rajya Sabha. “There is no Muslim Cabinet Minister for the first time in the history of India. There is no Muslim Chief Minister anywhere in India. The BJP has around 1,000 MLAs across States, none of them is a Muslim. The idea is that there should be friction between communities for the democracy to work,” he said.

Mr. Patel pointed out that the Congress was also not different when it came to representation. Of the 1,000 AICC members across the country in 1947, only 3% were Muslims. The then Muslim League was correct when it accused the Congress of being a “Hindu party”. That trend had been transferred to the BJP in the 80s and 90s.

He said the idea of a government in India was highly centralised and top down and Delhi-based. “It is believed this is the only way to control the subcontinent. Also, we believe that our primary threat comes from Pakistan. Till 2020, 25 of the 38 divisions of the Indian Army were facing Pakistan. After the Galvan incident, though the number of divisions facing China has increased, most number of them are still focused on Pakistan,” he said.

Mr. Patel said that in terms of per capita of the Gross Domestic Product, the country’s economic output per person, as documented by the World Bank, India’s performance was almost similar to that of its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This was the case with human development indices as well. He claimed that there was a link between the poor economic growth and the brand of fierce nationalism being practised in South Asia.