Muslim countries have for years looked on with concern as the Bharatiya Janata Party went about its goal of turning India into a Hindu state
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThe reaction was rather different when, a couple of days later, many countries in the Gulf lodged complaints concerning offensive remarks about the Prophet Muhammad by two senior officials in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party .
The party quickly declared that the comments of these officials did not represent its official stance. When that failed to calm tempers, thetook action against the pair. Nupur Sharma, the party’s national spokeswoman, was suspended. Naveen Jindal, its head of media in Delhi, the country’s capital, was expelled. Indian diplomats in the Gulf sought to play the incident down by describing the two as “fringe elements”, prompting incredulity on Indian social media.
The unusual contrition reflects the material importance of India’s relationships with Muslim-majority countries in the Gulf. America and its allies are easy to ignore because their objections are usually just verbal. India is important as a geopolitical counterweight to China, so no Western country wants to pick a fight with it. But when it comes to the Gulf, “we need them more than they need us,” reckons Happymon Jacob of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
But as public discourse in India has coarsened—Ms Sharma made her remarks on a widely watched television debate show—and the ruling party’s apparatchiks have become, the balancing act has become harder to sustain. Muslim countries stayed silent about the treatment of minorities within India to avoid being rebuked for meddling in domestic affairs. But “an attack on the very tenets of the faith is a different category of offence”, says Mr Jacob.
The government is trying to limit the damage without appearing weak. It pushed back against a statement from the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation that suggested the remarks were representative of systematic discrimination against Muslims in India. Nevertheless, it separately contacted officials from allHowever, instead of dying down, the anger has only grown. Protests have spread from the Gulf to the rest of the Islamic world.
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