Skip to main content

BJP lawmaker warns against buying vegetables from Muslim vendors to keep safe from virus

A lawmaker from India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Suresh Tiwari from Uttar Pradesh, has asked people of his constituency not to buy vegetables from Muslim vendors to protect themselves from the coronavirus, Indian media reported on Tuesday.

In a widely circulated video on Indian social media, Tiwari can be seen telling people to "keep one thing in mind [...] do not buy vegetables from miyan (Muslims)".

Read: In Modi's India, virus fallout inflames divisions between Muslims and Hindus

Talking to Indian publication The Wire, Tiwari later confirmed he had made those remarks "around April 17-18", and defended his statement by saying he had heard reports from people in his constituency that Muslim vendors were "spitting on vegetables before selling them".

He said he "advised the people to [not buy vegetables from them] so they could protect themselves from the coronavirus".

Referring to himself as a "legislator who was listening to a complaint", Tiwari questioned what was wrong in his statement.

While talking to The Indian Express Tiwari referred to a congregation of the Tableeghi Jamaat in Delhi last month, which was linked to dozens of infections and several deaths, and said: "Everyone can see what Jamaat members have done in the country".

State BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said the party did "not endorse such statements" and would question the legislator over his remarks.

The Wire quoted BJP national president JP Nadda as saying that Tiwari's statement was "irresponsible and will not be tolerated by the party".

All India Radio News in a post on Twitter said the BJP issued a show cause notice to the legislator over his remarks "targeting a particular community".

Fanning hate

The coronavirus has exacerbated festering divisions between the country's majority Hindu population and its sizeable Muslim minority in a country already reeling from communal violence triggered by the BJP-led government's contentious citizenship law that fast-tracks citizenship for newcomers who belong to six religions, but excludes Muslims.

Since the virus outbreak hampered lives in the Indian capital, many Muslim vendors have seen their livelihoods threatened by the establishment of quarantine zones in densely packed areas like New Delhi's Dharavi.

Many Muslims feel unfairly blamed for spreading the disease after a cluster emerged at a gathering of Tableeghi Jamaat in New Delhi last month.

Sensational news coverage about the event, fanned by some Hindu nationalist politicians, helped spur the trending topic “Coronajihad” on Indian social media earlier in April.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government has since faced criticism from several quarters for fanning the religious divide after the head of the Tableeghi Jamaat was charged with culpable homicide earlier this month for the coronavirus surge in the country.

Yesterday, in a strongly worded statement, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmooq Qureshi urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and its member countries to condemn vilification of Indian Mus­lims for allegedly sprea­ding the coronavirus.

Read: 'Cannot stand by and let another Gujarat happen': Qureshi asks OIC to stop attack on Muslims in India

The same day, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that India be declared a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom – a designation used against a nation guilty of particularly severe violations of religious freedom under the US International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998.

The panel noted that this was the first time since 2004 that India was being designated on the religious freedom blacklist.



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/3d362ts
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more