New Delhi, India (August 29, 2014): Since the formation of Narendra Modi led BJP government in India Hindutva forces have been making repeated assertions regarding their ideological agenda against the minorities, distinct cultural, religious and ethnic entities/ identities in India saying “all inhabiting India are Hindus”.
After Goa ministers, including the state CM, endorsed RSS idea of “all inhabitants of India are Hindus”, the Minority affairs minister Najma Heptullah has also endorsed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s view that all Indians are Hindus, saying there is nothing wrong with the term Hindu being applied equally to all citizens as a label of “national identity”.
According to Hindustan Times: [d]rawing a series of analogies from Islam, the only Muslim minister in the Modi cabinet said the Arab world referred to India as “al-Hind” and even invoked Prophet Mohammed and said his aunt’s daughter was named “Hinda”. Arabia’s best sword was called “Hinda” too, the 74-year-old leader said.
Minister of Minority Affairs, Nazma Heptulla, reportedly enforced RSS agenda of enforcing “Hindu identity” of all inhabitants of the peninsula in an interview to Hindustan Times on Wednesday (August 27).
The idea that all Indians were Hindus had “evolved in history”, she said. “Anything beyond the Hindu Kush mountains and on this side of the Sindh river is Hind. In Persian, they call it Hindustani… where the people of India live (sic).”
Nazma Heptulla claimed that the word Hindu originally referred to the national identity of people who live in this land, she said. “I look at it very rationally. One should not forget history.”
It may be recalled that the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has been repeatedly asserting that India was a Hindu Nation and all Hindu was the identity of all (so-called) Indians.
Mohan Bhagwat in a separate statement also fired offensive against the Sikhs, and claimed that RSS does not recognise Sikh religion as a separate, independent or distinct religion from Hinduism.
Mohan Bhagwat’s statement drew strong criticism and condemnation from Sikh bodies and personalities. The Akal Takht Sahib Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh, Takht Damdadma Shaib Jathedar Giani Balwant Singh Nandgarh, SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar and the Dal Khalsa, besides various other Sikh organizations have condemned and rejected Mohan Bhagwat’s statements.
Bhagwat’s statement also led the opposition from the Muslim community.
According to Hindustan Times (HT): [a]sked if it was right to call India’s minorities “Hindu-Muslims” and “Hindu-Christians”, Nazma Heptulla said, “It is not about right or wrong. It is about history.”
If some people called Muslims Hindi or Musmil Hindu they should not be “so sensitive” because it didn’t affect their “faith”, said Heptullah.
AS per HT, the minister argued Muslims doubted the BJP because the party had always been depicted as “anti-Muslim”, refusing to be drawn into a discussion about events such as the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992.