New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has told Indian Express that “Islamophobia is real for many Hindus”.
Sarma’s government has been in the news for communal policies across departments.
Sarma added that the problem of Islamophobia can only be contained if “Muslims agree to shift Mathura’s Shahi Idgah and Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque to other places through mutual consultations and constructive deliberations between the two communities”.
He added that if that happens, visitors who go to Mathura will come back “with gratitude to the Muslim community,” whereas if the Shahi Idgah continues to be at Mathura, Hindu visitors will “naturally get angry.”
In December last year, the Allahabad high court gave its nod for the survey of Shahi Idgah Mosque by a court-appointed and monitored advocate commissioner in response to petitions filed by Hindutva outfits which claim that the mosque stands on the place where the Hindu deity Krishna was born.
Sarma added that “so-called secular intellectuals” will not be able to counter the problem of Islamophobia.
“Islamophobia is real for many of us. Because there are sections of Muslims in our country who hate the majority community. If you see my election speeches in Assam, I have not mentioned the Muslim word at all and I have campaigned intensely in Muslim-dominated areas. I have transformed a large section of Muslim community from being Hindu haters to those who can coexist with Hindus. Transformation has happened in many places in Assam, so the incidents of love jihad have come down, incidents of land grabbing have come down,” he said.
Many BJP leaders, Prime Minister Modi among them, have said openly anti-Muslim and communal things in the course of campaigns for the elections.
The Express report mentions how during a campaign stopover in Jharkhand, Sarma himself said “infiltrators from Bangladesh” make up 1.25 crore of Assam’s population and account for 40 of its 126 MLAs.
