“In the Muslim minority, we need more doctors, police officers, officials and teachers than imams for mosques,” Education Minister Himanta Bisva Sarma said in a debate in parliament. He is considered the rising star of the Indian People’s Party by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which is close to the ideology of Hindu nationalism.
According to the Minister of Education, the operation of about seven hundred religious schools, the so-called madras, will be stopped in April. The government wants to turn them into ordinary facilities, the teaching of which will have a more secular content.
One of the members of the opposition party, the Indian National Congress, protested: “The law is intended to expel Muslims.” According to the opposition, the law is part of the government’s hostile approach to the religious minority.
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The Assam government also announced its intention to ban a change of religion due to marriage. A similar law was introduced in early December by India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP also rules. Although the law applies to all religious conversions, lawmakers did not hide their intention to fight the so-called jihad of love, or situations where a Hindu woman marries a Muslim man during his marriage. According to the Reuters agency, about 30 Muslims were detained in Uttar Pradesh under this law.
Tension
Muslims are the largest religious minority in predominantly Hindu India, accounting for about 13 percent of its population of 1.35 billion. It is estimated that about 80 percent of Indians profess Hinduism.
Tensions between Muslims and Hindus also exist in neighboring Pakistan. In the city of Karak in the northwest of the country on Wednesday, a crowd of several thousand destroyed and set fire to a Hindu temple. According to world agencies, he was prompted to attack by the preaching of clergy. Pakistan’s human rights minister has condemned the attack.
This year, Amnesty International criticized the Pakistani government for failing to adequately protect the rights of the Hindu minority, which makes up about two percent of Pakistan’s population. More than 90 percent of Pakistan’s 212 million people profess Islam.
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