Bharatiya Janata Party leader KJ Alphons on Wednesday claimed that minorities in the country have never been safer than now, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, PTI reported.
“Never has it been safer for minorities than under Modi,” the former Union minister said even as opposition parties jeered and pointed out cases of lynching of minorities in some parts of the country. He was responding to the Motion of Thanks on President’s address in the Upper House of Parliament.
He claimed that five years ago, people were saying Christians will be beaten up and churches will be burnt if the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. “Have you seen any Christian being beaten up or any church being burnt [since the BJP came to power],” he asked. Alphons added that Modi is “more democratic” than anyone before him.
He also said “you shall have a new India” in an apparent dig at senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who had on Monday called for the return of the “Old India”, where, he alleged, there was no hatred or lynching. “‘New India’ is one where humans are enemies of each other,” Azad had said. “You won’t be scared of animals in a jungle, but you’ll be scared of humans in a colony. Give us an India where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians live for each other.”
Instead of whining, the country should be celebrating achievements of the government, Alphons claimed. He said 99.2% of the population now had toilets, 35 crore people had bank accounts, 7.5 crore people had obtained gas connections and 19 crore people had received loans under the Mudra scheme. He also pointed out that India’s ease of doing business rank had climbed and that India had attacked the enemy, in apparent reference to India’s “non-military preemptive” strikes on the biggest camp of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militant outfit in February.
The statement came days after 24-year-old Tabrej Ansari was lynched by a mob in Jharkhand. He was reportedly tied to a pole and beaten for 12 hours and also forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman” on June 18. Several leaders of the Opposition have condemned the incident and also raised the matter in Parliament. Azad had said that Jharkhand had become a lynching factory where Muslims and Dalits were being attacked or lynched regularly. Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi had also said there was a pattern in most lynchings. He alleged that the BJP and RSS have increased a sense of hatred against Muslims.
Modi also spoke about the attack in Parliament on Wednesday said that it has “pained” him. He, however, questioned if the entire state of Jharkhand must be criticised for the incident. “The lynching in Jharkhand has pained me,” Modi said. “It has saddened others too. But, some people in the Rajya Sabha are calling Jharkhand a hub of lynching. Is this fair? Why are they insulting a State? None of us have the right to insult the state of Jharkhand.”
On Sunday, the Ministry of External Affairs had rejected an official report released by the United States that said mob attacks by “violent extremist Hindu groups” against minority communities, particularly Muslims, continued in India in 2018 amid rumours that victims had traded or killed cows for beef. The 2018 International Religious Freedom Report by the US State Department also alleged that some senior officials of the ruling BJP made inflammatory speeches against minority communities. It said 18 such mob attacks were reported as of November 2018 and eight people were killed during the year.
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