Gulf States Push Back Against Islamophobia ‘Imported’ from India

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi. — File photo

Abdulla Moaswes in Dubai and Hari Prasad in Washington DC

SOCIAL media users across the Gulf states, a region that is home to millions of Indian expatriates, have hit back at what they see as Islamophobia being imported from India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The campaign – exemplified by the likes of Gulf News Editor-in-Chief Abdul Hamid Ahmad, whose editorial posted on Twitter on May 7 calling for Indian media to stop “exporting hate to the Gulf” was liked more than 13,000 times – has sparked vicious retaliation from supporters of Modi’s party and the closely affiliated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

These exchanges are significant, given that the Gulf states rarely criticise India. They have also resulted in equally rare criticisms of Modi from his own supporters on political and economic grounds, as well as for appeasing Gulf leaders.

The online anti-BJP campaign was launched in response to an uptick in reports of Islamophobia involving Indian citizens residing in the Gulf. Some of the social media accounts involved are thought to be run by Pakistanis posing as individuals from the region, but those belonging to Arabs are seen as encouraging the idea of Pan-Islamic solidarity with India’s Muslims.

Such appeals for solidarity have long been used by Gulf states in opposition to anything that the ruling regimes perceive as ideological threats to their power.

Muslim devotees pray in front of closed shops at a market in New Delhi during Ramadan earlier this month. — AFP

This approach, for example, was a large part of the effort to contain the spread of Soviet ideological influence in the region in the 1980s, then seen as a threat to oil supplies and trade.

Today, it is being used in an attempt to contain the spread of Hindu nationalism in the Gulf, as states that have enjoyed largely cordial ties with India in recent years look on with suspicion at the role the RSS is taking within their borders.

theclarionindia
theclarionindiahttps://clarionindia.net
Clarion India - News, Views and Insights about Indian Muslims, Dalits, Minorities, Women and Other Marginalised and Dispossessed Communities.

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