ISLAMABAD: Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood this week called on permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to act against the “rising tide of Islamophobia” in India as derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammad from top ruling party officials have drawn protests from Islamic nations around the world.
Last week Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party suspended a spokeswoman and expelled another official after Islamic nations demanded apologies from the Indian government and summoned diplomats to protest against anti-Islamic remarks made during a TV debate.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran were among the nations that made their complaints public.
India's minority Muslims have felt more pressure on everything from freedom of worship to hijab head scarves under Modi’s rule.
“The foreign secretary individually met the Envoys of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council (P-5) to apprise them of the derogatory and offensive remarks made by two senior officials of India’s ruling party BJP, against the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him),” the foreign office said in a press release on Tuesday.
“The foreign secretary underscored that the BJP’s perfunctory and token disciplinary action against its spokespersons would not assuage the hurt they had caused to Muslims worldwide.”
Noting a “clear and consistent pattern of state-sanctioned persecution of Muslims” in India, he said the failure of the BJP leadership and the Indian government "to unequivocally condemn the recent sacrilegious comments was yet another proof of the impunity enjoyed by ‘Hindutva’ zealots."
Although Modi's party has denied any rise in communal tensions during his reign, BJP rule has emboldened hardline Hindu groups in recent years to take up causes they say defend their faith, stoking a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment.
The US State Department, in an annual report on international religious freedom released in June, said that attacks on members of minority communities, including killings, assaults, and intimidation, took place in India throughout 2021.
India's foreign ministry said on Monday the offensive tweets and comments did not in any way reflect the government's views.
"We are not barred from speaking on sensitive religious issues, but we must never insult the basic tenets of any religion," senior BJP spokesperson Gopal Krishna Agarwal said.
Modi in recent years has improved economic ties with energy-rich Islamic nations, the main source for India's fuel imports, but relations have come under stress from the anti-Islamic utterances of the two BJP members, foreign policy experts have said.
Small-scale protests erupted in parts of India as Muslim groups demanded the arrest of the suspended BJP spokeswoman.
