India\u2019s main opposition party on Thursday condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi for anti-Muslim comments in election campaign speeches that have heightened concerns over sectarian tensions in the world\u2019s biggest democracy.
\nModi remains popular across much of India and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win this general election when it concludes in early June.
\nSince voting began last month, the 73-year-old premier has stepped up his rhetoric targeting India\u2019s main religious divide in a bid to rally voters.
\nHe has referred in campaign rallies to Muslims as \u201cinfiltrators\u201d and claimed the main opposition Congress party would redistribute the nation\u2019s wealth to Muslims if it won. P. Chidambaram, a former Indian finance minister and senior lawmaker for Congress, said Thursday that Modi was playing \u201chis usual game of dividing Hindus and Muslims\u201d. \u201cThe world is watching and analysing the Indian prime minister\u2019s statements, and they do not bring glory to India,\u201d he added.
\nAfter Modi suggested that a former prime minister from Congress had planned for a separate \u201cMuslim budget\u201d, the party\u2019s general secretary Jairam Ramesh condemned his statements as \u201cnonsensical\u201d. \u201cThis is typical Modi bombast and bogusness,\u201d he said Wednesday on social media platform X.
\nSince he swept to power a decade ago, Modi has sought to align India\u2019s politics more closely with its majority faith, in defiance of the country\u2019s officially secular constitution. His cultivated image as a champion of Hinduism has made him roundly popular but has left many among the country\u2019s 200-million-plus Muslim minority uneasy about their status and anxious about their futures. Modi on Tuesday denied stoking religious tensions in a television interview with broadcaster News18.
\n\u201cThe day I start talking about Hindu-Muslim (divisions) will be the day I will lose my ability to lead a public life,\u201d Modi said. But at a campaign rally the following day, Modi accused Congress of planning to commit \u201cvote jihad\u201d, an implied suggestion that his opponents were rallying Muslims to vote against him.
\nIndia\u2019s poll code prohibits sectarian campaigning and opposition parties lodged a complaint about an earlier Modi speech last month with the election commission, which has yet to announce any sanctions against the premier.
\nOther members of Modi\u2019s party have been accused of matching his rhetoric and unfairly targeting Muslims during the election.
\nA BJP candidate in Hyderabad, Madhavi Latha, was widely condemned on social media Monday for demanding veiled Muslim women remove their facial coverings at a polling station so she could personally check that their appearances matched their identity documents.
\nPolice in the southern city announced an investigation into the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s main opposition party on Thursday condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi for anti-Muslim comments in election campaign speeches that have heightened concerns over sectarian tensions in the world\u2019s biggest democracy. Modi remains popular across much of India and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win this general election when it concludes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64911,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64889\/revisions\/64911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}