The latest outburst was on January 11, 2026, when inaugurating the Swabhiman Parv (self-respect event) in Somnath, he declared that “every particle of the soil of Prabhas Patan is a witness to valor, courage, and heroism, and that countless devotees of Shiva sacrificed their lives for the preservation of Somnath’s form. He said that on the occasion of Somnath Swabhiman Parv, he bows first to every brave man and woman who dedicated their lives to the protection and reconstruction of Somnath, offering everything to Lord Mahadeva.”[1]

Shri Modi further stated that “when invaders from Ghazni to Aurangzeb attacked Somnath, they believed their swords were conquering eternal Somnath, but those fanatics failed to understand that the very name ‘Som’ carries the essence of nectar, the idea of remaining immortal even after consuming poison. He added that within Somnath resides the conscious power of Sadashiva Mahadev, who is both benevolent and the fierce ‘Prachanda Tandava Shiva’.”

[‘PM addresses the Somnath Swabhiman Parv in Somnath, Gujarat’, 11 Jan, 2026, https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/pm-addresses-the-somnath-swabhiman-parv-in-somnath-gujarat/?comment=disable]

The senior most security advisor of the RSS-BJP government and close confidant of PM Modi, Ajit Doval was at his best seeking revenge for the religious crimes of Muslim rulers.  Speaking at the opening ceremony of Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue, at Delhi on January 9, 2026, Doval said, “This independent India wasn’t always as free as it appears now. Our ancestors made great sacrifices for it. They endured great humiliation and experienced periods of profound helplessness. Many people faced the gallows… Our villages were burned. Our civilisation was destroyed. Our temples were looted, and we watched helplessly as silent spectators. This history presents us with a challenge that every young person in India today should have the fire within them. The word ‘revenge’ isn’t ideal, but revenge itself is a powerful force. We have to take revenge for our history. We have to take this country back to where we can build a great India based on our rights, our ideas, and our beliefs.”[2]

[‘NSA Ajit Doval urges youth to learn from history, rebuild a strong India’ 10 Jan-2026, https://firstindia.co.in/news/delhi/nsa-ajit-doval-urges-youth-to-learn-from-history-rebuild-a-strong-india]

The gist of the speeches of both Modi and Doval was that Muslims destroyed Hindu temples. The revenge has to be taken from Indian Muslims who are necessarily children of the Muslim rulers. These calls were nothing but brazen demonizing the largest religious minority of India. PM Modi and NSA chief, in fact, were dog-whistling for cleansing of Muslims. However, we need to compare the above-mentioned claims with the ‘Hindu’ narratives of destruction of Somnath Temple.

No sane person can deny that Somnath Temple in Gujarat was desecrated, looted and razed by an army led by Mahmud Ghazi (Mahmud Ghaznavi) in 1026. But a crucial fact remains buried that it was done with the active help and participation of local Hindu chieftains. The most prominent ideologue of RSS, MS Golwalkar while referring to the desecration and destruction of Somnath Temple by Mahmud Ghazi in the RSS English organ, Organizer (January 4, 1950) stated:

“He crossed the Khyber Pass and set foot in Bharat to plunder the wealth of Somnath. He had to cross the great desert of Rajasthan. There was a time when he had no food, and no water for his army, and even for himself left to his fate, he would have perished…But no, Mahmud Ghazi made the local chieftains to believe that Saurashtra had expansionist designs against them. In their folly and pettiness, they believed him. And they joined him. When Mahmud Ghazi launched his assault on the great temple, it was the Hindu, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul-who stood in the vanguard of his army. Somnath was desecrated with the active help of the Hindus. These are facts of history.”

[Organizer, January 4, 1950.]

So far as valour of defenders of Somnath Temple against ‘idol-breaker’ Ghazni was concerned founder of Arya Samaj, Swami Dayananda Sarswati in his fundamental work, Satyarth Prakash, a Bible for Arya Samajists, stated that instead of resisting the army of defilers, the then priests, “made offering, called on gods and prayed: ‘O Mahadeva kill this infidel and protect us!’ They advised their royal followers to have patience as Mahadeva would send Bhairava or Bhadra who would kill all the infidels (mlechhas) or blinden them…Many popish astrologers said that it was not astrologically proper for their advance…Thus the warriors were misled and delayed.  The army of infidels soon came and surrounded them. They fled in disgrace.”  [Swami Dayananda Sarswati, Light of Truth (English translation of Satyarth Prakash), Dayanand Sansthan, Delhi, 1908, p. 328.]

PM, Ajit Doval and the entire Hindutva tribe instead of calling for revenge against Muslims need to do a serious introspection about the guilty-men responsible for the desecration of Somnath Temple. It is generally accepted that Mahmud entered India as aggressor seventeen times between 1000 AD and 1027 AD. He travelled approximately 2000 kilometres from Ghazni to reach Somnath Temple in 1025, covering almost 1000 kilometres in the region which fell in India. According to ‘Hindu’ narrative after destroying the Temple he travelled back with huge precious booty laden on hundreds of camels and horses. Those who are telling stories of valour at Somnath need to tell the nation: Who allowed his journey back? Why were he and his gang of robbers not liquidated despite destroying one of the holiest temples of India? The horrendous reality is that our ancestors miserably failed in resisting one of the meanest aggressors in Indian history.

Desecration of Buddhist and Jain Temples by ‘Hindus’

These were not ‘Muslim’ rulers only who were defiling Hindu temples. Swami Vivekananda shared the fact that, “Temple of Jagannath is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like that yet”.

[The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 3, 264.]

It has been corroborated by another darling of the Hindutva fraternity, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. According to him the Rath Yatra, an integral part of the rituals connected with Jagganath Temple was originally a Buddhist ritual. Bankim Chndra Chatterjee wrote:

“I am aware that another and a very reasonable, account of the origin of the festival of Rath [at Jagganath Temple] has been given by General Cunningham in his work on the Bhilsa Topes. He there traces it to a similar festival of the Buddhists, in which the three symbols of the Buddhist faith, Buddha, Dharmma, and Sangha, were drawn in a car in the same fashion, and I believe about the same season as the Rath. It is a fact greatly in support of the theory, that the images of Jagannath, Balaram, and Subhadra, which now figure in the Rath, are near copies of the representations of Buddha, Dharmma, and Sangha, and appear to have been modelled upon them.”[Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, ‘On the origin of Hindu festivals’ in Essays & Letters, Rupa, Delhi, 2010, pp. 8-9.]

Conversion of Buddhist monasteries into Hindu temples was a common occurrence after Buddhist rulers were gradually overthrown by Brahmins. This process began when the last of Maurya dynasty’s Buddhist king (Ashoka being one), Brihadratha was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin in 184 BCE thus ending the rule of a renowned Buddhist dynasty and establishing the rule of Brahman Shunga dynasty. It was corroborated by Bankim in his controversial novel Anandmath, Bible of the Hindu nationalism. He described the scene of a temple used by Hindu army in the following words:

“Within this wood there stood a large monastery on a large piece of land with broken stones all around. Antiquarians would perhaps say that it was a Buddhist monastery in old days and was subsequently converted into a Hindu one.” [Sen-Gupta, Nares Chandra (translator Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Anandamath), Abbey of Bliss, Padmini Mohan Neogi, Calcutta, nd, 16]

Many of Jain temples too met the same tragic fate. Swami Dayanand Saraswati regarded as a Prophet of Hindutva while dealing with the contribution of Adi Shankaracharya (8^TH CENTURY) in his tome, Satyarth Prakash wrote:

“For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are now-a-days dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst those that are found whole (unbroken) here and there under the ground had been buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken.” [Swami Dayananda Sarswati, Light of Truth (English translation of Satyarth Prakash), Dayanand Sansthan, Delhi, 1908, p. 294.]

Crimes of Maratha ‘Hindu’ armies against Hindus

Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958), a renowned historian, held no brief for Islam or Muslim rulers in India. In fact, he is regarded as a Hindu historian, narrator of the history of India from a Hindu point of view. His description of the Maratha invasion of Bengal in early 1740s, makes it clear that this army of ‘Hindu nation’ cared least about honour and property of Hindus of Bengal. According to Sarkar, “the roving Maratha bands committed wanton destruction and unspeakable outrage”. [Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal-Volume II Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D. (Delhi: BR Publishing, 2003), (first edition 1948), p. 457.]

Sarkar, in his monumental work on the history of Bengal, reproduced eyewitness accounts of the sufferings of Bengali Hindus at the hands of Marathas. According to one such eyewitness, Gangaram,

“The Marathas snatched away gold and silver, rejecting everything else. Of some people they cut off the hands, of some the nose and ear; some they killed outright. They dragged away the beautiful women and freed them only after raping them”. [Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal-Volume II Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D. (Delhi: BR Publishing, 2003), (first edition 1948), 457.]

Another eyewitness, Vaneshwar Vidyalankar, the court Pandit of the Maharaja of Bardwan, narrated the horrifying tales of atrocities committed by the Marathas against Hindus in the following words:

“Shahu Raja’s troops are niggard of pity, slayers of pregnant women and infants, of Brahmans and the poor, fierce of spirit, expert in robbing the property of everyone and committing every kind of sinful act.” [Ibid., 458.]

Another crucial fact which is consciously kept under wrap is that despite more than 500 hundred years of ‘Muslim’/Mughal rule which according to Hindutva historians was nothing but a project of annihilating Hindus or forcibly converting the latter to Islam, India remained a nation with an almost 2/3 majority of Hindus at the historical juncture when even ceremonial ‘Muslim’ rule was over. The British rulers held first census in 1871-72. According to the Census report:

“The population of British India is, in round numbers, divided into 140½ millions [sic] of Hindoos (including Sikhs), or 73½ per cent., 40¾ millions of Mahomedans, or 21½ per cent. And 9¼ millions of others, or barely 5 per cent., including under this title Buddhists and Jains, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Brahmoes…”

This happened because Hindu dominent Castes with few exceptions decided to serve the Muslim rulers for hundreds of years which is known as a relationship of roti-beti (bread and daughter).

[Memorandum on the Census of British India of 1871-72: Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty London, George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office 1875, 16.]

The linking of crimes committed by rulers with Muslim names in the pre-modern India to their religion is going to create serious unthinkable consequences even for ‘Hindu’ history as narrated by the RSS.

Take for example, Ravana, the king of Lanka who according to again ‘Hindu’ narrative committed unspeakable crimes against Sita, her husband Lord Rama and his companions for 14 years long vanvaas or exile. This Ravana, according to the same narrative, was a learned Brahman who also happened to be one of the greatest worshippers of Lord Shiva.

The epic Mahabharata is a story of a great war between two families known as Pandavas and Kauravas (both Kashtriyas) not between Hindus and Muslims but between two ‘Hindu’ armies in which, if you go by the ‘Hindu’ version 1.2 billion (120 crore) people, all Hindus are stated to have been slaughtered. Draupadi joint wife of Pandavas was disrobed by Kauravas, all Hindus. Modi and Doval must be aware that if the crimes of Ravana and Kauravas, are linked to their religion then India country will lose 80% of the population. And if revenge is to be taken from the present descendants of the past perpetrators then beginning must be made from the beginning of the Indian civilization; turn of the Indian Muslims will come far later!

[1] ‘PM addresses the Somnath Swabhiman Parv in Somnath, Gujarat’, 11 Jan, 2026, https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/pm-addresses-the-somnath-swabhiman-parv-in-somnath-gujarat/?comment=disable

[2] ‘NSA Ajit Doval urges youth to learn from history, rebuild a strong India’ 10 Jan-2026, https://firstindia.co.in/news/delhi/nsa-ajit-doval-urges-youth-to-learn-from-history-rebuild-a-strong-india

Related:

Babri Mosque Demolition: When the Indian State succumbed to majoritarian propaganda

November 26: How RSS mourned the passage of India’s Constitution by the Constituent Assembly

NCERT’s ‘Partition Horrors’: A brazen exercise in white-washing the ‘crimes’ of the Hindu Mahasabha & RSS

The post Busted: ‘Hindu’ Narratives of Desecration of Somnath, Buddhist & Jain Temples in India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

This propaganda is an attempt to derail the current discussion on misguided Waqf Bill. This campaign falsely claims that the DMC has suggested and DWB has demanded lands of Hindu temples. The fact is that neither DMC nor DWB ever suggested or demanded that temples built on Waqf land be demolished or their land be returned to the DWB. This is an unmitigated lie.

The DMC report of 2019 on some West Delhi mosques (https://archive.org/details/dmc-report-on-illegal-mosques-delhi) was prepared to examine the claim of the then BJP MP Mr Parvesh Verma that “illegal” mosques have been built in his parliamentary constituency and that such mosques should be demolished.

Mr Parvesh Verma had sent his complaint to the Delhi Lt. Governor in June 2019 claiming that 54 “illegal” mosques have cropped up in his constituency (West Delhi) during the last 20 years. He demanded that action should be taken against these mosques. In other words, he wanted these mosques be demolished. When no action was taken on his complaint, Mr Verma re-sent his complaint to the L.G. the next month.

On the publication of reports in the media about this communication to the L.G. by Mr Verma, as the then Chairman of the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC), I formed a 5-member committee consisting of two Muslims, two Christians and a Sikh. All of them were reputed members of society and were active in legal and human rights fields. The committee inspected all the mosques on the list provided by Mr Verma, inspected their papers and finally presented a detailed report to the Commission saying that none of these mosques is illegal while some of them were centuries-old and thus protected as ancient monuments. At the same time, the Committee came across a number of illegal temples found in the vicinity of the so-called “illegal” mosques and at times built on the same plot of land as the mosques.

In its report, the Committee mentioned these temples along with their locations and photographs, although Mr Verma had missed them.

Copies of the said DMC report were sent to the L.G., Delhi Chief Minister and even to Mr Parvesh Verma himself. The report was also released to the media during a press conference. Thereafter, Mr Verma never raised that issue. Now, after five years, Zee News suddenly remembered that report but (deliberately) potrayed this in a skewed, totally wrong context. Zee News presented it claiming that DWB wants to grab temple lands, while the report only passingly mentioned that some temples in the vicinity of the so-called illegal mosques stood on Waqf lands.

Our committee had inspected each and every mosque on Mr Verma’s list and found that no mosque in the list was “illegal”. All were legal while some were centuries-old. During its visits, the Committee came across illegal temples found in the area and discovered that some of them were built on Waqf lands. The Committee registered this fact in its report but did not make any demand on the said lands of the illegal temples. The DWB too did not stake any claim on such lands.

The propaganda aired by an entranced, ‘godi media’ now is totally concocted, brazenly motivated. This campaign obscures the real purpose and findings of the said report. It is an attempt to misdirect the current discussion on the Waqf issue and pave the way to drastic changes in the Waqf law as planned by the Modi government.

A few days back a reporter of Zee News phoned me saying that next day they are holding a panel discussion on the issue on their channel. He wanted me to participate in the said discussion. I apologized saying that for the last four and a half years I do not talk to Godi media due to bitter past experiences about its bias and lies. The said reporter quickly apologised and ended the call.

Next day a reporter of Zee Salam, the Urdu section of Zee News, phoned me for an interview. I repeated what I told earlier to his colleague. He assured me that Zee Salam is different and that my interview will be carried in full with no cuts. After this, I accepted to meet him. He came in the evening and recorded a long interview with me in which I explained the gist and the circumstances and the result of the DMC report and how it is being twisted now. I also gave him a printed copy of the said DMC report. That interview was not carried that night. Upon my enquiry, the reporter told me that the interview will be carried next day. On the following day, Zee News assembled six persons including three saffron-clad Hindutvites. The panel included an advocate who was a member of the said DMC committee. He tried to explain the issue but was not allowed by the anchor to complete his explanation while time was amply given to others including a saffron-clad sadhu who bluntly announced that if you take the land of one temple, we will take ten mosques!

Later, a reporter of a Hindi newspaper talked to me on the same issue but I ended the call when, instead of listening to me, he kept blurting out his understanding of the issue on the Godi media lines.

This propaganda continues on various Godi media and Hindutva platforms. The fact is that these people are not after truth. They can utter any lie in order to serve their agenda. The agenda is dangerous and divisive, to generate lies, half-truths about India’s minorities, the Muslims. 

(The author is a former Chairman, Delhi Minorities Commission)

The post Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) did not demand land of Hindu temples; former Chairperson DMC appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Claim: Christian Dalits are rice bag converts

Busted!: There has been clearly little to no evidence found of rice bags, or monetary incentives, provided for conversion to Christianity by Dalits. Across India, Dalits have converted their religious faith due to a number of reasons.

Father of the constitution, B R Ambedkar himself changed his religion and converted to Buddhism in a public ceremony on October 14, 1956, expressing his political understanding that caste and caste-based exclusion were indelibly linked to Hinduism and only converting out of the faith would liberate him and other Dalits. About 500,000 of his followers had also gathered there with him to convert to Buddhism. Over the centuries, the most large-scale conversion has been arguably of indigenous Indians with their multiple animist beliefs co-opted and converted into the ‘Sanatan Hindu faith’ followed by  conversions to Abrahanic faiths which took place alternatively through trade, commerce, as a move towards emancipation and equality, and, in some instances by power and coercion. However, for forces of the far Hindutva right, showcasing and stigmatising conversions to Christianity and Islam fits well with their fundamentals of who is the “insider” and who the “outsider.’

As the government slashes export prices for Basmati rice after sales saw a huge downturn, one is reminded that rice remains a controversial topic in India. In recent times, Hindutva sympathisers have been pushing a divisive narrative that simplifies conversions to Christianity under a derogatory term: ‘rice-bag converts.’ The term insinuates that by providing a bag of rice, one can allegedly induce Dalit people, particularly those from lower economic strata, to embrace Christianity. This contentious viewpoint repeatedly rises and ebbs, and was even leveraged at a Supreme Court judge herself when the outgoing Supreme Court judge, Judge R. Banumathi, mentioned the influence of Jesus in her life during her farewell speech.

The following is an excerpt, courtesy the LiveLaw, from Justice Banumathi’s farewell speech, where she also narrates the difficult and harrowing circumstances in her early life, and how she and her family overcame them, “Though I am a Hindu, I believe in the gospel of Jesus. By the Grace of Jesus, I got educated and came up in life. I got into the Tamil Nadu higher judicial services at the age of 33 in 1988 and served the institution for over 3 decades.” 

Soon after her farewell speech, Justice Banumathi’s expression of belief in the gospel of Jesus triggered a slew of derogatory comments on social media, with many labelling her a “rice-bag convert.” This online slur is part of a broader campaign by the Hindu Right to ridicule Christians in India, and it is disheartening to see even a high-ranking Supreme Court Justice becoming a target of this hate campaign.

Some examples of the tweets Justice Banumathi received on Twitter are as follows:

#Justice Banumathi: After d temples r free frm govts, the resources shud be used to inculcate pride in Hinduism & to serve d poor so that rice-bag-evangelism is eliminated 1/3 @MoAmi2 @NITINJO51699293 @rajkarsewak @Swamy39 @RahulEaswar @jsaideepak @viksa_bhartiya @RealSandeep21 https://t.co/E3rL6iYiID

— Akshai Aggarwal (@aka19a) July 17, 2020

Furthermore, when right-wing media portal, OpIndia, posted an article outlining Justice Banumathi’s statements on the gospel, the comments section was flooded with several users mocking her statement, with one user, Nandaa Kumar, also stating “She said cleverly I could benefit from reservations and monetarily from Jesus…”

Retiring Judge Banumathi reveals how she believes in the Gospel of Jesus Christ despite being a ‘Hindu’https://t.co/18IDtMARL3

— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) July 18, 2020

Public figures such as Disha Ravi and comedian Kenny Sebastian have also been the target of hate campaigns, calling them rice bag converts. Sebastian was attacked online by a person called Madhur Singh, according to Scroll.in. According to Scroll, Sebastian replied to Singh on Twitter, now X, saying, “It’s not twitter if someone doesn’t call you a rice bag convert Actually I learned a lot from ‘the placard guy’ who apparently fights for causes but doesn’t hesitate to be a bigot. I had to google what “rice bag” means. Sorry Madhur that I follow a particular religion.” Ravi too was the target of a disinformation campaign where a false claim proclaiming she was Christian went viral online and propagated a slew of hate towards her. SabrangIndia revisited the post attacking Sebastian linked on Scroll’s website by Madhur Singh, however the post on X seems to be deleted. It must be of note that Madhur Singh has about 135500 followers on the social networking site currently.

Acclaimed doctor and public health practitioner who routinely talks about caste, health and nutrition, Dr Sylvia Karpagam, has also been at the receiving end of casteism in the form of the rice bag convert slur on her X account often, as you can see in the X exchange below.

But didn’t you want the same privileges when you or your parents got the first Rice Bag? Or are you unhappy that you didn’t get it?

— BlackGrain (@GrainBlack) October 28, 2023

This suggests a derogatory attitude towards Dalits who it is imputed “can be so easily bought” as also of course towards Christians themselves who are all made to carry the late 17th-18th century “missionary tag”. Conversions as scholars have seen have been driven by multiple impulses, and cannot be all attributed to force and coercion. A large percentage of the conversions to first, Christianity and then Islam were not (only) borne of force but of a perceived sense, among oppressed sections, that faiths that had equality and parity in worship, offered equality and dignity denied to them at birth.

The claim that Dalit Christians are converts solely motivated by material gains also reveal an attitude that is not merely patronising towards Dalits but deny oppressed caste any agency. By imputing such motives and speaking of Dalits in largely insensitive and offensive manner, by virtue of their historically subjugated positions, are not just incapable of exercising agency, but are also incapable of having spiritual aspirations or inclinations. This derogatory right-wing claim would thus envision Dalits as being a group of people that does not have any reasoning capacity, ability of critical thought, sense of judgement, or aspirations beyond relieving themselves (transactionally) of poverty. This entrenched way of thinking does injustice not just to Dalits but the spirit of equality and fraternity as well the cultivation of critical thought as embedded in the Indian constitution.

Furthermore, as explored in another Hate Buster by CJP, it was noted that missionary faiths, including Christianity, have arrived and spread in India via a number of ways, routes, and methods. They cannot be clubbed  together with the Hindutva adage of saying that they were spread by the sword; doing so would not only be a disservice to history but also to living practitioners of these faiths, many of whom belong to marginalised backgrounds. The article argues that Christianity, as opposed to the perception the right-wing wishes to spread, did not arrive in violence. In fact, Christians have had a largely peaceful coexistence, starting from the state of Kerala, with a history that goes back, as local legends would say as far back as to the times of Thomas the Apostle.

These conversions were not just about embracing a new faith but represented a collective effort by Dalits to attain dignity, self-respect, and the ability to shape their own destinies. In an article titled Change and Continuity by S M Michael, he notes that there are records that mass movements to conversion were a historical moment marked the beginning of the modern Dalit movement. In these situations, individuals made a group decision to become part of a new community that not only had a religious tradition comparable to that of the caste Hindus but also promised newfound dignity and esteem. Further this push towards discovering and exploring new faiths was promulgated by a response to a socio-religious system that had failed to address Dalit needs and aspirations. Hence, it is difficult to identify conversion to Christianity as an instance of missionaries luring, coercing or even bribing vulnerable individual Dalits to convert; there is ample evidence of collective, decisive conversions. Ambedkar, when he converted, converted en masse with about 500,000 people converting at the same time, which points to the fact that there is a collective and well thought out  push within Dalits to move to a different faith. Furthermore, this push was not sanctioned by errant gurus but by informed leaders, one of whom exists today to be globally known as the father of the Indian constitution.

One question we must ask leaders, politicians is that if instances of monetary or material incentives are provided to convert, then there must be some evidence of the circulation or reception of this money being transferred. Because, as one can see scholars and activists who have researched and worked on the issues converting Dalit Christians have estimated, according to Scroll.in, that about 50 -75 % of the Christian community in India consists of Dalits. If there was undue funds flowing in this relatively large number of people, as is claimed, it would reflect in the government data which assess economic status of these groups.

Similarly, scholar SM Michael argues that in India’s approximately 20 million Christians, around 14 million belong to Dalit caste groups, and thus would account for 70% of all conversions to Christianity. That the Indian church itself has (practices) its fair share of casteism is testimony to the pernicious pervasiveness of caste as a division. That Dalit Christians are excluded from affirmative rights granted to Dalits (including those who have converted to Buddhism and Sikhism) adds yet another unfortunate and discriminatory dimension.

Wouldn’t this mean, if the conspiracy that material gain was provided by missionaries in exchange for conversion were true, that most of these converted people would be significantly better off than and experience some change in their economic class? What does the data say here? Let’s take a look at government data and see if it can support this right-wing theory.

Whither the proof?

However, the data does not corroborate the theory, of the report by Scroll.in further attests that out 30 % of Dalit Christian live under the poverty line, according to a 2004-’05, by monthly per capita expenditure in rural India conducted by the National Sample Survey Office. Interestingly so according to Dr S. M. Michael, who has worked on the question of Dalit Christians, has written that one of the most significant benefits that the Dalit Christians have derived from their conversions is education. Michael argued that while illiteracy rates continue to remain relatively high among Dalit Christians as compared to other Christians from other caste groups, the impact of missionary education across India has played a crucial role in providing the communities with upliftment. Now, right-wingers would argue that provision of schooling and educational facilities would amount to a monetary incentive, however the claim does not hold ground. Missionary schools have opened their arms to students of all religions, and have provided avenues for studying at these schools for the larger Indian community at large.   If missionary schools have contributed to the upliftment of Dalit Christians, then surely they must have contributed to the upliftment of Indian students across religious denominations. However, this remains a logical assumption and not an expression of facts, but it does serve to provide us with some food for thought.

A neglected history

Over the past couple of years, proponents of the Hindutva movement have crafted a narrative of hostility toward Christians and other religious minorities. This campaign includes downplaying the role of Christian missionaries in India’s socio-economic development and framing conversions as a deceitful scheme aimed at eroding the nation’s cultural heritage. The conspiracy theories surrounding Christian missionaries are numerous, and they go beyond the scope of this article. Article 25 of the Indian constitution clearly affirms the right to freedom of conscience and religion, emphasising that all individuals are equally entitled to profess, practice, and propagate their faith.

Teesta Setalvad, writing for Sabrang India, notes the extremely vulnerable and marginalised positions occupied by Dalits in India, and asserts that one must let go of the refusal to recognise the contribution of Christian institutions in the absence of the pointed welfare initiatives for Dalits. Furthermore, the authors asserts that Christians individuals and institutions have an inbuilt mandate as part of their religious duty to help and alleviate the hardships of the marginalised, “To accept their role is to face our moral and cultural poverty, the rank injustice and marginalisation that we have perpetuated on sections of our people. To accept their role is to nail the grand lie.” The article further notes that it was St Francis Xavier who led a pioneering endeavour to open primary schools in every village. Christians living in India have contributed greatly by setting up libraries, institutions, and engaging, including crucial work of archive generation that has been instrumental in constructing India’s rich history. Furthermore, their efforts were recognised by stalwart leaders Jyotiba Phule and Pandita Ramabai. Jyotiba Phule founded the Satyashodak Samaj (Truth Seeker’s Society) 1983 and has written critically about the extensive work done by missionaries for the backward castes with regards to education.  Pandita Ramabai, a Brahmin widow, converted to Christianity to escape, and testified before the Education Commission in 1882 about women’s right to education, saying “in ninety–nine cases out of a hundred the educated men of the country were opposed to female education and the proper position of women.”

Thus the question readers must ask is, what purpose does the idea of ‘rice bag Christian’ serve, whom does it benefit, what political interests does it serve to those who claim it, and what does it mean when we denigrate a whole population of 14 million Indians as a group?

Related:

Hate Buster: Why is the right-wing so scared of Sai Baba of Shirdi

Anti-Christian violence: Opening of a church resisted, police raids aid the rightwing

Alarming rise in violence against Christians in India as G20 Summit takes centre stage

Crying for Justice

The post Hindutva’s “rice-bag” controversy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Claim: All Indian Muslims are converted Hindus.

Busted: Fails Einstein’s oversimplification test which says ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler’.

‘Conversions’, or adopting a new religion, has taken place throughout human history all across the world. As Hilal Ahmed argues, ‘There is no doubt that the majority of South Asian Muslims are converts. This is not a profound statement because by this logic, except Prophet Mohammad, all Muslims of the world are converted as their forefathers embraced Islam at different historical moments’.

So, why do members of the Sangh Parivar keep repeating this claim? What objective does it serve, what does it seek to convey – and what is the relevance of such a question in today’s society? These are questions that this Hate Buster seems to provide further questions for, and in doing so, hopes to ‘bust’ the claim propagated.

The message inherent in this statement by the Hindutva leaders is that all people inhabiting the land we know today as the Indian subcontinent were once Hindus.  

While the question of conversion becomes curious and contentious today, the land and its contours as we know of today would have been vastly unfamiliar to ancient Indians.

For the Hindutva project, the default religious state of everyone in the Indian subcontinent is Hinduism. But the diverse communities in India have engaged with questions of faith rigorously over thousands of years. Coupled with local peculiarities characteristic of this land, the permutations that are possible become innumerous. From these permutations and interactions have evolved religions that we recognise today as ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim’ in the Indian context. As many historians have argued, the very division of Indian history into Muslim and Hindu period is a colonial construct, articulated by James Mill in his influential book History of British India. The British thereafter fanned the flames of divide that led to the emergence of two competing communal forces in India, leading to the two-nation theory and eventually partition.

The concept of a unitary religion itself was introduced in India with the arrival of colonial rule as Romila Thapar describes, ‘Colonial history tried to tidy up the diversity, not by asking how these diversities related to each other, but by envisioning all religions in India as large monolithic religions’. She also talks about two religious groups present in early India – the adherents of Brahmanism, whose belief in the social function and hierarchy of caste, the supremacy of the twice-borns (the two ‘upper’ castes) and focus on ritual worship demarcated them from Sramanism, which as she says,

“(is) a term covering a variety of Buddhist, Jaina, Ajivika and other sects, (which) denied the fundamentals of Brahmanism such as Vedic sruti and smrti. It was also opposed to the sacrificial ritual both on account of the beliefs incorporated in the ritual as well as the violence involved in the killing of animals.”

It is the political patronage Brahmanism enjoys in the first millennium AD and the accompanying expansion of influence that,

“results in the gradual displacement of Sramanism–but not entirely. Local cults associated with new social groups led to the emergence of the more popular Puranic religion. Vedic deities were subordinated or ousted. Visnu and Siva came to be worshipped as the pre-eminent deities. The thrust of Puranic religion was in its assimilative and accommodating processes. A multitude of new cults, sects and castes were worked into the social and religious hierarchy.  

The word ‘Hinduism’ is in fact ascribed to Raja Rammohan Roy, and the usage of ‘Hindu’ as a marker of cultural difference is only seen by the 14th century AD.

The idea of a unitary religion, handed down to us unchanged over thousands of years is a mischievous simplification. The identification of millions of people as ‘Hindu’, caught in a battle of supremacy with another unitary thought, ‘Islam’, is a surprisingly modern one. To paraphrase a historian of repute, the present must not be imposed on the past and an attempt to recognise how the past looked at itself at various points of time, should be made.

Implicit in such claims by Hindutva leaders is also that all conversion took place by the ‘sword’ (read force)

By the early second millennium A.D. a variety of devotional cults-referred to by the generic label bhakti-had come to form a major new religious expression. They drew on the Puranic tradition of Saivism and Vaishnavism but were also in varying degrees the inheritors of the Sramanic religions…Some sects accepted, up to a point, Brahmanical sruti and smrti whereas others vehemently denied it, a debate which continues to this day…with the arrival of Islam in India some drew from the ideas of Islam.”

And one must add, therefore providing ample justification for ‘revenge’.

While there is no denying that temples were destroyed by invading armies who also supported the proselytising of semitic religions. But as Prof. Irfan Habib observes in this interview,

‘….when Hajjaj ibn Yusuf sent Mohammed Bin Qasim to Sindh [in the eighth century], he asked him to treat the Hindus as they were treating the Christians and the Parsis, that is to say: be tolerant.…now I can perhaps say that Hajjaj’s policy was not driven by any great religious spirit of tolerance but simply by practical sense. If you invade a country, you don’t antagonise all of its people…Mughals had very large components of Hindu officials. An ordinary Muslim had little chance to go up the ladder. The first finance minister of Aurangzeb was a Hindu, his greatest officer was Maharaja Jai Singh of Amber [later Jaipur] who was appointed viceroy of the Deccan. Of course, the Mughals were not democrats, but neither were they out to convert people by force …One can’t deny the fact that temples were destroyed. Nobody defends Aurangzeb’s discriminating measures….’

Historically people have changed their religion due to a number of reasons. For instance, in his exploration of Islam’s spread in Bengal, acclaimed historian Richard Eaton rejects the idea that a singular catalyst or reason could be the cause for conversion, arguing that conversion in India may have happened due to several reasons, mainly social liberation, patronage, and force. He also goes on to find little to no evidence for the latter two in large swathes of Bengal.

Eaton also finds that many Buddhist strongholds situated predominantly in south and east Bengal, which notably had a comparatively lower influx of Brahman migration, had converted to Islam. This coincides with present day Bangladesh.

Similarly, in the case of Kerala, Islam arrived through the sea and its trade routes. Kerala has witnessed the earliest known instances of conversion to Islam, and has even featured in the travels of Ibn Batuta.

According to Stephen F. Dale, the native rulers of Kerala depended on tax duty to bulk up their revenues, and hence they were open to incoming Muslims, Christians as well as Jews. The region, in the very early years of the Christian era, became a stronghold for Jewish and Christian communities, and later on as Muslims became dominant in global trade, for Muslims too.

Charu Gupta chronicles conversions amongst Dalits, noting that lower castes in northern India engaged in multiple ways with interpreting Islam during the mediaeval period itself. Notably this creates tensions and sense of competition amongst the Arya Samajis in the modern era which lead to Shuddhi movements.

Forces that seek to appropriate certain marginalised and less powerful systems. For instance, the question of indigeneity is contentious to say the least. The RSS and its affiliates often extol the virtues and supremacy of the Aryan race and often praise the Nazis, as they claim to declare India a land of the Aryans. However, competing narratives and evidence counters their claims. The tribal communities of India pose several questions and loopholes to the theory of race. The RSS has sought to subsume the tribal demands for autonomous history and identity under its mammoth project which seeks to Hinduise tribal communities. India’s Adivasis have waged a long, sustained war against erasure. The RSS has various organisations, including the most salient, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram which has in its official objectives, as stated on its website, the prevention of conversion in the “Vanvasis.” The RSS continues the usage of the term Vanvasi over Adivasi or any other name despite opposition from tribal communities. Vanvasi, or forest dwellers, is a term used to refer to tribes in Hindu religious texts, and secondly, it also takes away any reference to the Adivasis as then original inhabitants of India, and thus comfortably fits into the history and future the RSS imagines. However, tribes and marginalised castes have refuted hegemony by the RSS and its totalising attempts at imposing a unified culture on them. They have resisted being trampled under the large designs of the RSS.

Research by the Anthropological Survey of India which is known for its extensive research into tribal life and history. An outstanding support it states is that Indians are characteristically migrants. Artisans, peasants, and tribes have been decidedly moving about for centuries with their cultures, trade skills, and arts. This pool of movement creates a rich whirlpool of cultural diffusion and pluralism. This rings true, for instance India has witnessed dialogue between discourses and traditions over time – each discourse has arisen to challenge reigning hegemonies, whether it be traditions within Vedic systems of knowledge, or Buddhist and Jain traditions. According to Romila Thapar, these ‘dissenting’ ideas have existed perennially.

Furthermore, research by the survey also includes notable genetic similarity between Hindus and Muslims, as well as between lower and upper castes. According to the Economic and Political Weekly, this data propelled pioneer of Sociology M. N. Srinivas to say that he is “surprised at the tremendous unity” inherent in the people of India despite migration and linguistic and cultural differences.

Thus, in this scenario, the Hindutva thinkers’’ insistence on being “original” to the land can be seen as an engineering history to create a narrative that can declare Muslims, Christians, and marginalised castes in India as inferior and secondary. History has shown its prescient nature and warned us as it informs us of the cultural malleability, unity amidst diversity the land has seen. Despite attempts to thwart the harmony deeply foundational to the land, unity and diversity still prevail.

So were all Muslims once Hindus? No.

Do people of various communities, engaging with each other, in a dynamic process that continues till date, make religions what they are and the country what it is? Yes.

Related:

Were some Hindu structures originally Buddhist temples?

Distorting facts about Muslim population growth at the Digital Hindu Conclave

Hate Hatao: CJP’s Campaign against Hate and Division

Hathras Judgment: Unpacking the complex intersection of caste, gender & justice in India’s landmark case

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Claim: In response to a query about perceptions of Muslim minorities in India at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) in the USA, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman denounced the claims of Muslims facing violence in the country, saying:

“India has the second-largest Muslim population in the world, and that population is only growing in numbers. If there is a perception, or if there’s in reality, their lives are difficult or made difficult with the support of the state, which is what is implied in most of these write-ups, I would ask, will this happen in India in a sense, will the Muslim population be growing than what it was in 1947? You would find every strand of Muslims in India doing their business, their children are being educated, and the government provides fellowships.” 

Inviting people to come to India and see the ‘ground’ reality for themselves, the Union Finance Minister also said that Muslims of every strand in India are doing their business, their children are being educated, and the government is disbursing fellowships. Law and order, she further stated, was not an issue of the Union of India but that of the state and provincial governments. 

Busted: Socio-economic data and reports of unabated, unchecked violence against India’s marginalised Muslim minority sharply contradict the claim that a rise in the population after partition means the religious minority is as secure as the rest of Indians and faces no persecution and discrimination.

In her speech, the Finance Minister’s seems to be saying broadly that:

(i) There is no violence or discrimination against Muslims in India.

(ii) A growth in population from independence is evidence for the above, i.e., there is no violence against Muslims in India. 

(iii) Muslims can do business, get an education, and get government scholarships without hurdles. 

It takes no genius in the social sciences to conclude that it may not be necessary to have a steep fall in numbers or even a full-blown genocide to substantiate the claims that a minority suffers from unchecked violence. Lack of political representation over decades declining to a zero over the past nine years, the absence (denial) of education and other basic rights including health services combined with socially and politically sanctioned entrenched prejudice –that in the same period of the past nine years has taken the form of unchecked calls for both social ostracism and economic boycott– are some clear manifestations of a systemic exclusion and denial. There is sufficient data to assert that the minister’s claims on India being a safe haven for minorities are based on a combination of a coloured ideological gaze and as dangerous, a manipulation of statistical data.

Do the Finance Minister’s claims hold ground? In order to have a closer look at what she said, let’s look at what the data tells us. 

Claim #1: There is no violence against Muslims in India. 

Busted: Observers note a sharp increase in violence against Muslims since the BJP government came to power. Data substantiates these claims, revealing a clear pattern showing that many hate crime incidents have occurred mainly in BJP-ruled states. The past four years have witnessed a large number of upheavals and stories of violence and discrimination against minorities. From the police brutality and state-led prosecution of people protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2020, to the north-east Delhi violence of 2020, to the very recent Ram Navmi incidents of violence (2022, 2023), Muslims in India face the threat of continued violence. 

CJP keeps track of hate crimes and violence against religious minorities and marginalized caste groups in India, presenting a map that tallies such violence across the country. Termed the Nafrat ka Naqsha, this map reveals 37 reported counts of hate speech since January 2023. Several elected representatives of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its members or ministers have been proponents of these speeches. Ms Sitharaman hails from the same political party. 

CJP’s constantly updated map also shows that around 31 instances of communal violence, including lynching by vigilante groups, have been reported in the past three months. Law-enforcement agencies in these states have even provided immunity to the assailants in some cases by refusing to register FIRs against them, filing criminal claims against victims, and even colluding with offenders to escape prosecution. Put together, these facts reveal a deliberate denial of constitutional protection (Articles 14, 15,16 and 21) for the Muslim minorities and a pervasive immunity for both perpetrators and law enforcement personnel who collude. This callous abdication of the law by state and non-state actors continues even as the Muslim minorities (and others like Christians, Dalits, Adivasis) face violence. These facts point to a harsh reality far at odds with Nirmala Sitharaman’s response at the PIIE. 

Claim #2: A growth in the population of Muslims means that Muslims don’t face violence or discrimination in India. 

Busted: There is no theoretical or statistical basis to establish a link between figures of rising population growth and discrimination or violence faced by a social category or group. A lack of social security and increased economic deprivation levels are accepted basis or factors for groups and communities to have more children, seen as a source of support for them.  Besides, denial of representation that amounts to denial of access includes denial of health care and education for the thrice oppressed sections within Minorities, the Women. Both factors, Muslims are a group that face high levels of poverty as a whole and Muslim Women are denied access to education and health schemes in particular, both factors that also contribute to population figures.

Research shows that about 25 percent of people forced to beg for a living are Muslims. Among all groups, Muslims are the least upwardly mobile social group. Even the dwindling number of available government benefits for Muslims rarely reach the targeted group for several reasons, including awareness and lack of government outreach measures and difficulty in procuring identification documents required to avail of government benefits. Political representation is an accepted factor in ensuring deeper democratic access of groups and communities. Representation of Muslims during the rule of Ms Sitharaman’s party, the BJP has dwindled to naught. Of the 303 Lok Sabha and 92 Rajya Sabha Members of Parliament that the party boasts of claiming undisputed majority, there is not a single Muslim. Of the over 1,000 MLAS (elected officials in state assemblies) belonging to the BJP, there is no Muslim.

Claim #3: Can Muslims really do business with ease in India?

Busted: Muslims from all economic groups face hurdles in earning a living due to rising violence and discrimination. From businesses to small-scale vendors and daily wagers, consistent communal violence, socio-economic marginalisation, and even campaigns for an economic boycott of Muslims make it challenging to earn a day’s wage in India. It is noted by scholars of communal violence, such as Paul Brass, that riots against Muslims are particularly orchestrated to target shops and businesses, along with other factors. This phenomenon that goes back decades has arguably reached a peak recently.

Claim #4: India’s Muslims can afford education and government fellowships.  

Busted: The present Union Government’s own actions belie this statement. It is Ms. Sitharaman’s government (Ms Smriti Irani, Minority Affairs Minister) which scrapped the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF). These scholarships were instituted post 2006, after the Union of India, finally accepted the Justice Sachar Committee Report, Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, a document fortuitously still available on the website of the Minorities Affairs Ministry. On qualifying a National Eligibility Test, MANF was a research fellowship to selected students from India’s religious minorities. The union government also drastically cut down the budget for minorities by 38 percent for the fiscal year 2023-2024, in addition to a stark 50 percent cut for special schemes for minority students. Even before Ms Sitharaman’s statement, the Indian State (read Union Government) has reversed baby steps that were a much delayed acknowledgement of institutional discrimination against Muslim minorities in India.

Besides, several developmental indexes reveal that Muslims have the lowest education enrolment rates amongst all religious groups and face educational marginalization, according to several reports. They also have the highest dropout rates- especially from primary to middle school. According to the All India Survey of Higher Education 2020-2021 (AISHE), the total enrollment percentage of Muslims in higher education is 4.6 percent of the total population enrolled. In contrast, the religious minority consists of about 14 percent of the total population of India. In addition, Muslim students face discrimination by the state and school administration. In 2022, young Muslim school girls were prevented from attending school in the BJP-ruled state of Karnataka, after a government order issued a notice banning the hijab in schools, which forced hundreds of Muslim girls to drop out. 

Where does Nirmala Sitharaman’s misrepresentation of statistical data lead us?

 The Finance Minister’s carefree and cynical  usage of statistics is misleading in many ways. First, as emphasised above, the claim that the supposed rise in a group’s population indicates the well-being of minority populations is itself fallacious. There is  no correlation between the two. Muslims in India, today, are among the most targeted religious minorities that also lag behind in almost every socio-economic index. Their representation in the Indian Parliament is at an all time low in proportion to their population that is 14 %.. In fact, Sitharaman’s own party, by mid-2022 the BJP, has been noted to give zero representation, in terms of seats in the parliament, to Muslims. Apart from the fact that the BJP has simply no Muslim political representative as stated above, the declining representation of Muslims is systemic as revealed by these figures: In Indian Parliament, the political representation overall, of Muslims came down by half from 49 in 1980 to 27 in 2017. (In 2009, it was at 30). Going by the population of Muslims which is at 14 % of the Indian population, they should have at least 77 MPs but the numbers today, in 2023 are 27.

The rising, unchecked, and often state-endorsed violence against Muslim and Christian minorities has further presented a hurdle in the progress and development of the communities. 

Finally, do these claims of a rising Muslim population hold ground?

According to Pew Research Center, India’s population has tripled since independence due to a massive shift in life expectancy, living standards, and food production. Thereby, every religious group in India saw an increase in numbers post-Partition. While the growth rate of Muslims is higher than other groups, according to Pew’s findings, the ratio and proportion of religious groups in India have remained relatively stable, rubbishing claims of a supposed attempt to overthrow the Hindu population by Muslims.

As the former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India and author of the book titled ‘The Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning, and Politics in India, S. Y. Quraishi, puts it, family planning measures rarely reach marginalised communities, which generally are forced to live in segregated localities, often low-income, vulnerable groups such as Muslims due to a lack of accessibility to health services. 

The fertility rate of Muslims has been declining sharply, faster than the Hindu community even, according to the National Family Health Survey – 5 (NFHS) conducted in 2022. The declining fertility rate in Muslims is a sharp 46 percent, and that in Hindus is 41 percent. Smaller families are becoming the norm in many Muslim households, according to the NFHS survey. The rising costs of quality education and private education can often act as a deterrent to Muslims from having more children. Due to economic strains, the government has often advocated, though not enforced, methods of contraception and family planning over the years.

The government of India has been notably infamous for having engaged in forced sterilization drives of poor Muslims several times in the past. Thereby, one can note that there has been considerable mythmaking related to apparent notions of population increase or population explosion of the Muslim community in the aftermath of partition. Such perceptions and rumours have often given rise to hate speech, paranoia about Muslims, and harmful stereotypes. According to an Oxfam India survey conducted in 2021, one-third of Muslims are subjected to prejudice when they try to avail of healthcare services in private and government-run health facilities across India. 

Is India’s Union Finance Minister, Ms Sitharaman’s highly publicised allusion to the growth of the Muslim population an isolated remark or part of pernicious anti-Minority propaganda?

Is there a strain of Islamophobia to be detected in the Union minister’s reference to the rising population? First, this statement is only the latest among high-level attempts to deny the targeted violence being allowed to occur without check, against religious minorities. Second, the political and social sanction behind this bald statement –emanating from the top of both the political and organisational hierarchy of the ruling party– can only embolden the hate-mongers among Ms Sitharaman’s party peers or the non-state actors and groups who add grist to this mill.. 

Dangerous too, as the statement can also potentially add fodder to existing tropes and fears about the mythical rise in Muslim population in relation to the numerical majority, the Hindu community. Hate speech against Muslims is replete with dangerous doses of falsified facts and selectively jumbled statistics that attest to “rising” Muslim populations and the supposed danger this demographic imbalance could pose to India’s Hindus.

Several BJP ministers and right-wing media houses often propagate this enduring right-wing rhetoric to evoke widespread, angered sentiments against Muslims. Acting ministers and politicians evoke the bogey of a return to ‘Muslim-ruled India’ the rising population will bring along with fears of a numerical and political transformation of Hindus into a minority. Propaganda by the Hindu Right, which began early in the 1970s, insisted that Muslims are anti-national as they don’t adopt contraceptive measures. Ms Sitharaman, through her statement on April 11, 2023 in her official capacity, has attempted an official stamp of approval on this pernicious hate-driven propaganda.

Fear Mongering about the return to ‘Mughal rule’ or Muslims overtaking Hindus numerically has been prevalent in the speeches of the supporters and members of the BJP and RSS. Mohan Bhagwat, sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in an address in 2021, spoke about the rising population of India’s Muslims as well and called for a policy to balance the population. Nirmala Sitharaman seems to be evoking the self-same stereotype, with little regard to facts, to erase the stark reality of widespread social and economic exclusion and politically driven violence against minorities in India. 

References 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scroll.in/latest/1011223/33-of-muslims-experienced-religious-discrimination-in-hospitals-finds-oxfam-india-survey

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scroll.in/article/812272/muslims-have-the-lowest-rate-of-enrolment-in-higher-education-in-india

https://frontline.thehindu.com/news/budget-cut-for-minority-affairs-ministry-intensifies/article66462801.ece

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.thewire.in/article/rights/hate-crimes-minorities-india-cmri-report/amp 

1000s or hundreds of thousands, the Karnataka govt’s ill-motivated ‘Hijab ban’ has pushed Muslim girls out of school

(Source: Unlike Pakistan’s Minorities, Every Strand of the Muslim Community is doing Business in India, The Hindu.)

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