AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of going silent at a time when leaders of his party, the BJP, are "openly giving hate speeches".
Mr Owaisi, the Hyderabad MP who heads the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, referred to a hate speech by BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, who yesterday in a public address in Delhi called for "total boycott" of a community, seemingly Muslims.
"According to rumours in parliament, this BJP MP [Mr Verma] is the closest to the PM. He enjoys great blessings and confidence of the PM and that is why he was emboldened to say what he had to say," Mr Owaisi told NDTV today.
"Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of everyone, not for only his electorate or those who follow the hateful Hindutva ideology. But unfortunately, the PM will not speak. Others will speak but it will have no impact on the ground," he said.
Mr Verma yesterday asked supporters to enforce a "total boycott" of a community, to which they replied with a thumping "yes". "...Wherever you see them, if you want to fix their head, if you want to set them straight, then the only cure is total boycott. Raise your hand if you agree," the BJP MP said at the Delhi event.
The Delhi Police have filed a first information report, or FIR, against the event organisers for allegedly not taking permission for the public meeting, but not over the hate speech.
"The police will never act against any BJP spokesperson. This is a regular feature...The BJP has made a policy that any genocidal call can be done with impunity. This same spokesperson [Mr Verma] had made remarks that started the Delhi riots [in February 2020]," Mr Owaisi alleged.
"Hate speech will not be stopped as far as the BJP and the RSS are concerned," the Hyderabad MP said. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, is the ideological mentor of the ruling BJP.
Mr Verma, when asked about his remarks, told The Indian Express that he "did not name any religious community". "What I said was that the families whose members carry out such killings should be boycotted. Such families, if they run any restaurant or business, should be boycotted," he said.
The latest hate speech controversy comes at a time when the country has been trying to fend off bad press, especially at the global level, over how it has been treating its large Muslim population.
The US government's commission on religious freedom had in June asked the Biden administration to categorise India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and 11 other nations as "countries of particular concern" in the context of religious freedom. India called the report "biased and inaccurate".
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