India recently called out the United Nations (UN) resolution which declares May 15th as the International Day to combat Islamophobia. TS Tirumurti, India’s permanent representative to the UN, expressed concern that an emphasis on one religion takes away attention from the phobias against Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. He states that India had offered sanctuary to Zoroastrians, Jews and others in the spirit of pluralism and expressed concern regarding the attack on gurudwaras (Sikh temples), the destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, and the glorification of the breaking of idols. Tirumurti further said he instead preferred the generic term religion-phobia to combat hatred against all religions.
Such a position was to be expected from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) India, which is bent on ‘decolonising’ the influence of past Muslim invaders by furthering the dharmic faiths (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism) at the expense of demonising present-day Muslims and Islam. The fact that the ruling party remains strategically quiet when calls for genocide of Muslims are made is a testament to this observation. Scores of Hindutva trolls are usually out and about on Pakistani and other social media sites where they demonise Muslims and perpetuate their victimhood despite being an overwhelming majority in India. It is against this backdrop that the Indian representative brazenly projected his country’s institutionalised prejudice.
However, Tirumurti conveniently failed to recognise and mention the systemic genocide of the Rohingya Muslims by Buddhists in Myanmar, the concentration camps of Uighurs in China, the mass destruction of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq in a post 9/11 world that has led to the universal singling out of Muslims and Islam. He ignored the fact that two billion Muslims are often generalised and stereotyped as terrorists and that many Sikhs in the West are targeted not because of their Sikhism but because they are perceived as Muslims. In other words, the targeting of people of colour and Sikhs in the West is also because of Islamophobia.
