Hardliner Hindus Attack, Set On Fire Home Of Muslim Ex-Foreign Minister Of India

KARACHI ( JAVED MAHMOOD ) 

Hardliners in India have ransacked and set ablaze the home of a former Indian foreign minister Salman Khurshid which seems to be the latest incident of religious violence that critics say has been inflamed under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Salman Khurshid published a book last month in which he compared the kind of Hindu nationalism that has flourished under Modi to extremist groups such as ISIL (ISIS). Salman Khurshid is a Muslim and belongs to Indian Congress.

Police said a mob of about 20 people from a hardline local Hindu group massed outside Khurshid’s house near the northern city of Nainital on Monday.

“They shouted slogans, threw stones, broke several windows, ransacked the entry and set fire [to a door],” local police chief Jagdish Chandra said.

The extremists group had set fire to an effigy of Khurshid, fired shots and threatened the daughter-in-law of the caretaker with a gun.

Khurshid, who served as foreign minister from 2012 to 2014, was away with his family at the time of the incident. He later posted images of the aftermath of the attack on social media.

“Shame is too ineffective a word,” Khurshid, 68, said on social media.

“I hoped to open these doors to my friends who have left this calling card. Am I still wrong to say this cannot be Hinduism?” he added.

Activists say that religious minorities in Hindu-majority India have faced increased levels of discrimination and violence since Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.

In 2020, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom listed India as a “country of particular concern” for the first time since 2004. The listing continued in 2021.