Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
ATTITUDE SHIFT. Members of Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volun-
teer Organization, stand during the Varsh Pratipada festival, the Hindu New Year in Ahmadabad, India. Several in-
cidents this fall have reinforced fears that anti-Muslim sentiment has hardened in India in the three years since a
right-wing Hindu nationalist party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki,
File)
In India, some fear lawmakers
are stoking anti-Muslim fervor
By Nick Perry
The Associated Press
EW DELHI — A lawmaker from
India’s ruling party called the Taj
Mahal a blot on Indian culture,
saying in October that the famous tourist
site had been built by Muslim traitors. In
November, another party member offered
a bounty for the heads of two people
involved in a movie featuring a Muslim
sultan. Then, in December, a laborer was
hacked to death and set afire while his
alleged attacker ranted against Muslims.
The series of incidents this fall has
reinforced fears that anti-Muslim senti-
ment has hardened in India in the three
years since a Hindu nationalist party led
by Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept
to power. Some say it has reached a point
where Hindu extremists believe they can
get away with murder. Others worry
hardline Hindu leaders want to rewrite
the country’s rich Muslim history.
The shift in attitudes is happening in a
democracy of 1.3 billion people that is often
held up as a model for inclusion in the
developing world. When former U.S. Presi-
dent Barack Obama visited New Delhi in
December, he said Muslims were inte-
grated and consider themselves Indian.
Hindus account for 80 percent of the
population, compared to Muslims’ 14
percent. While there have long been
religious tensions, there is a sense the
stakes have risen under Modi’s Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP). The BJP maintained
its hold on Modi’s home state of Gujarat in
recent election results, although with a
reduced majority.
In a tweet, Muslim lawmaker
Asaduddin Owaisi questioned whether
Modi is a leader for all religions or just
Hindus. “Remember that you have taken
oath on constitution,” he wrote.
Muslims in India have had to deal with a
certain level of discrimination for decades,
historian and writer Mukul Kesavan said,
noting they often find it difficult to buy or
rent homes.
But Kesavan said Modi and his party
have given Hindus a sense of permission to
lash out against Muslims. He cited cases of
mob violence against Muslims who buy or
sell cows for slaughter, which is banned in
most of the country because Hindus
consider cows sacred.
The mobs have gone unpunished in
some cases, while the victims or their
families have been charged with illegally
possessing beef, Kesavan said.
“There have always been two kinds of
justice,” he said. “But the notion that
people now have a license to kill, that is
new. This idea of impunity has taken hold
so strongly.”
N
The brutality of the laborer’s death in
the western state of Rajasthan shocked
many. TV showed a video of the alleged
attacker ranting while the victim lay on
the ground behind him. Police have made
an arrest.
But in other cases, investigations have
dragged on or gone nowhere. Kesavan said
police often await advice from the ruling
party before acting.
Modi’s BJP rejects the notion it is
encouraging violence.
At an office in the Constitution Club of
India, party spokesman and former
lawmaker Bizay Sonkar Shastri said
occasional flare-ups between Hindus and
Muslims are a natural part of life and
began long before his party came to power.
“Our political agenda is only to develop
the nation,” he said. “We never prefer to do
politics on caste, color, religion, or any
such sort of things.”
He said that in two decades of power in
Gujarat, the BJP has built an inter-
connected system of roads and ensured
every village has electricity.
Yet party member Suraj Pal Amu
offered 100 million rupees ($1.6 million) to
anybody who would behead the lead
actress and director of Padmavati, a
still-unreleased Bollywood movie that is
rumored to depict a relationship between a
Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler.
Amu later resigned from his party
leadership post in the northern state of
Haryana. Police say they’re investigating.
Shastri said he didn’t know much about
Amu’s threat, but that he should be
punished according to the law. Shastri
went on to say he had heard about the
movie’s rumored love sequence, which if
accurate, would be “very bad” because it
would be twisting the Padmavati story.
The movie is based on a 16th-century
poem in which a queen chooses to kill her-
self rather than be captured by a sultan.
Over centuries of retelling, the epic has
come to be seen by many as historical fact.
Most of the anger against the film
appears to stem from rumors that
filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali shot a
romantic dream sequence between the
protagonists, which Bhansali has denied.
There has also been something of a
campaign against India’s most famous
monument, the Taj Mahal, which was
built by a Muslim emperor nearly 370
years ago in memory of his deceased wife.
A Hindu monk who is the top elected
official of Uttar Pradesh state, where the
mausoleum is located, said in September
that visiting foreign dignitaries should be
given a copy of a Hindu religious book
rather than miniature replicas of the Taj
Mahal.
Continued on page 11
January 1, 2018
INFREQUENT FESTIVAL. Villagers watch a paper horse burn during a ceremony in the hope it brings
luck at the Tai Ping Ching Jiu festival at Lam Tsuen village in Hong Kong. The dayslong festival happens only
once a decade and is held in a rural community, far from China’s famed skyscraper-ringed cities. Organizers
spend lavishly for the celebration, including erecting a massive temporary bamboo theater for traditional Canton-
ese Opera performances. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Hong Kong village holds
once-a-decade festival
HONG KONG (AP) — In a rural
community far from Hong Kong’s hustle
and bustle and towering skyscrapers,
villagers hold one of the southern Chinese
city’s rare and colorful local festivals.
Residents gather in the village of Lam
Tsuen for the dayslong Tai Ping Ching Jiu
festival. Participants give thanks to Taoist
deities like Tin Hau for abundant harvests
and pray for peace.
Organizers spend lavishly on the
celebration, erecting a massive temporary
bamboo theatre for traditional Cantonese
Opera performances.
Other highlights include lion dances,
vegetarian feasts, and the burning of
life-size paper effigies of animals like
horses for luck. On the final day, meat is
once again allowed to mark the ritual’s
close, so revellers enjoy delicacies such as
roast suckling pig.
The event is so popular that even
villagers who have emigrated overseas
return home to join in the festivities.
The festival, also known as Da Jiao, is
held in other agrarian villages across Hong
Kong’s outlying New Territories at
varying intervals. It was also once common
in parts of neighboring Guangdong
province in mainland China until the
Communist Party took power, when such
traditions were suppressed by the
country’s atheist leaders, who viewed
them as feudal superstition.
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