Hindutva Supremacy & Oppression of Muslims in India

Download Jummah Khutbah Talking Points

The following are various talking points on the historical and political analysis on the current crisis in India we believe may be salient for your sermon.

  • India’s Muslim population is under threat of statelessness followed by genocide. They are under threat by an ideology that is based upon the hatred of Muslims. The ideology of Hindutva, Hindu supremacy, holds that the glory of a unified Hindu racial identity is India’s destiny.
  • The political ideology of Hindutva driving the ruling party of India Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the political wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was formed almost 100 years ago. Hindutva was developed when its founding ideologue envisioned an India where there would be no Muslims. His first target of elimination were Muslims, then Christians.
  • The pioneers of RSS idolized and corresponded with Adolf Hitler. They were in alignment with his agenda and methods. Veer Savarkar, father of HIndutva, argued in 1940 that “Nazism proved undeniably the savior of Germany.” Increasingly, the RSS began to re-appropriate Nazi iconography to suit their own pursuit of a pure Aryan race.
  • The RSS has organized anti-Muslim terrorism for decades; they were outlawed three times in modern Indian history, but now assume complete power over government and society. The RSS is the base of Modi’s power, and its Hindutva advocacy has pushed forward Modi’s agendas all throughout India.
  • In 2001, Narendra Modi rose to power as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, where he watched over the Gujarat massacre, an anti-Muslim pogrom killing thousands of people. One of the first policies Modi signed into action after he became Prime Minister was a major reduction in social welfare spending knowing that it would directly impact the most impoverished group of people in the nation; Muslims. In the years since, his policy measures have died of starvation-killing more than the Gujarat genocide.
  • The BJP through it’s military arm (the RSS) has consistently instigated communal violence all throughout India. The RSS has a volunteer arm of 30-40 million volunteer militia army that is in sync with this mission. They institute a social and economic boycott of Indian Muslims and Indian minority groups.
  • Most recently, the Indian government removed about 2 million Muslims from the National Registration of Citizens (NRC) list. Many have been put into detention camps with more being constructed to detain more. The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) offers fast track citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants from neighboring countries at the exclusion of Muslims. Coupled with the nationwide NRC, the law openly discriminates against Muslims, making them second-class citizens without equal rights & citizenship before the law.
  • After decades of structural violence, displacement, rape, and repression against Indian Muslims, the BJP is now intensifying its efforts to push the Indian Muslim population towards statelessness, leading to an epic political and humanitarian crisis.
  • We ask everyone to call their elected Representatives and Senators to ask that the State Department put pressure on the Indian government to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Bill which violates the Indian Constitution and to call attention to the state sanctioned violence against peaceful protesters that are speaking up for their basic human rights.