South Asia Investor Review

In a recent  speech  to young Hindus in New Delhi, the Indian National Security Advisor  Ajit Doval  urged his audience to "avenge history". He talked about the looting and destruction of Hindu temples and many centuries humiliation suffered by Indians. Though he did not specifically say it, there was no doubt in the minds of his audience that he was talking about invaders like Mahmud of Ghazni, an Afghan Muslim ruler, who is said to have destroyed a Hindu temple in Somnath. Indian Prime Minister Modi (Left) with NSA Ajit Doval Anti-Muslim rhetoric like Doval’s has made Indian Muslims fear for their lives. It has also put India among top countries with greatest likelihood of  mass atrocities , and raised security concerns among India’s neighbors. In its latest warning, the US Holocaust Museum has put three countries scoring higher than India. Myanmar holds the top spot, followed by Chad and Sudan. However, many high-ranking nations including Myanmar and Sud...

Wall Street Journal's White House Correspondent Sabrina Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American Muslim journalist, got to ask the only question posed by an American journalist to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit to the White House in Washington, DC. This was the first time in 14 years that Mr. Modi took an unscripted question from any journalist anywhere in the world. In fact, it was his first press conference since taking office as the prime minister of India in 2014.  Narendra Modi (Left), Sabrina Siddiqui (R) Sabrina Siddiqui asked the Indian leader about rights groups’ assessments that his government is discriminating against religious minority groups and quashing dissent. She asked," What steps are you and your government willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in your country and to uphold free speech?"  The Islmophobic Indian prime minister feigned “surprise” at the question and said democracy is core to India. He t...

British Pakistani Humza Yousaf, 37, has made history. He has become the first Muslim to lead Scotland after winning the election of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to succeed Nicola Sturgeon. He is also the youngest person to be elected First Minister of Scotland. Humza's father was born in Pakistan and his mother in Kenya.  "We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message, that your color of skin, your faith, is not a barrier to leading the country we all call home", he declared in his victory speech. Back in 2016, he took the oath as a member of the Scottish parliament in Urdu, Pakistan's national language.  Currently, there are 5 members of Pakistani origin serving in the Scottish Parliament and 29 in the British Parliament.  Scottish Leader Humza Yousaf Scottish Independence: He has vowed to lead his nation to independence from Britain, now led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a British Indian. Channel 4 News quoted him as saying: ...

In the current fiscal year that started last October, a record 16,290 Indian citizens have been taken into custody by US Border Patrol at the Mexican border. A substantial number of them are Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and  Dalits  who are escaping persecution in the country ruled by the Hindu Nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  Genocide Watch  has issued "India  Genocide Warning" stating as follows:  "Islamophobia is no longer a fringe sentiment in India. It has become a state-manufactured ideology. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made Islamophobia central to its program for harassing India's 192 million Muslims and depriving them of their rights as Indian citizens". Indian Asylum Seekers at US-Mexico Border. Source: BBC Experts attribute the record increase in asylum seekers to a a number of factors, including rising discrimination in India, an end to pandemic-era restrictions, a percep...

Last week, two official spokespersons of India's ruling BJP party insulted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on an Indian television channel known for promoting  Islamophobia . Mohammad Zubair, an Indian Muslim journalist, tweeted a video clip of the TimesNow primetime show featuring BJP's official spokeswoman Nupur Sharma attacking the Prophet (SAW) revered by more than a billion Muslims around the world. As the video clip went viral, a long a growing list of Muslim countries has officially protested to the Indian government. The UAE, Oman, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iraq, the Maldives, Jordan, Libya, Bahrain and Pakistan have now joined Kuwait, Iran and Qatar, calling Indian ambassadors to register their protest, and Saudi Arabia has issued a strongly worded statement. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its condemnation and denunciation of the statements made by the spokeswoman of the BJP,"  the Saudi statement said. India's Ties to the GCC Nations. Source: Advaid The B...

It is quite fashionable among liberal Indian and Pakistani elite to question religion as a basis of nationhood. Pakistani intellectual Javed Jabbar responded to some of these "liberal" critics at a conference in New Delhi, India. He said as follows: "India was a region, not a country until 1947....Pakistan was NOT carved out of India.... Both India and Pakistan became independent countries in 1947.. Religion can be a basis for nationhood". Happy Independence Day Pakistan In his detailed remarks, Jabbar made a reference to British political scientist Hugh Seton-Watson who said there is no scientific definition of nationhood.  Jabbar also talked about "Imagined Communities" by Professor Benedict Anderson who taught political science at Cornell University in New York. Anderson explored how these "imagined communities" are created by the territorialization of  religious faiths  and the decline of antique  kingship .  Talking about pluralism, Jabbar s...

The 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) results confirm the anecdotal evidence of India's Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's massive popularity among Hindu Americans. The findings of a survey sponsored by Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment For International Peace reveal that 69% of Hindu Americans approve of Mr. Modi's performance. 70% of Hindu Americans agree or strongly agree that white supremacy is a threat to minorities in the United States, compared to 79% of non-Hindu Indian American. Regarding Hindu majoritarianism in India, however, the data point to a much sharper divide: only 40% of Hindus agree that Hindu majoritarianism is a threat to minorities, compared to 67% of non-Hindus, according to the 2020 IAAS Survey.  69% of Hindu Americans Support Modi. Source: Indian American Attitudes Survey 2020 The 7 in 10 approval rating of Mr. Modi by Hindu Indian Americans stands in sharp contrast to that of barely one in five Muslim Indian...

 الطُّهُورُ شَطْرُ الإِيمَانِ” – “Cleanliness is half the faith [Sahih Muslim Hadith]   India is setting new global records in daily COVID19 cases while neighboring Pakistan has seen an unrelenting  decline in coronavirus cases  in recent weeks. This is happening in spite of the fact that both nations have taken similar measures on paper to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. Both have imposed lockdowns. Both have required people to wear face masks in public. Both share similar climates, demographics and socioeconomic conditions. Then why this difference? Is it in the implementation of such measures? Or the fact that people in Muslim-majority Pakistan wash their hands before prayers much more often everyday with or  without soap , a hygiene practice highly recommended by public health experts during the pandemic? Or could it be that fewer women in Pakistan participate in the work force?  Let's examine this difference. Muslim Wudu I...

After 73 years of  independence , a small upper caste Indian minority retains near monopoly of the highest ranks in both the Indian government and the private sector. A few well-educated Indian Muslims and low-caste Hindus can not escape caste-ism even when they move to work in Silicon Valley.  Over two-thirds of  low caste Indian-Americans  report being discriminated against by upper caste Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley, according to a report by Equality Labs, an organization of Dalits in America.  Dalits also report hearing derogatory comments about  Muslim  job applicants at tech companies. These revelations have recently surfaced in a California state lawsuit against Silicon Valley tech giant Cisco Systems. 1901 India Census UP Hindu Population By Castes Upper Caste Domination: It is not just the 220 million Dalits (untouchables), or the  190 million Muslims , or the 110 million from “scheduled tribes” (Adivasis)  who are under-r...

November 9, 2019 will go down in South Asian history as a day of sharp contrasts: While Pakistan restored and opened Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur for Sikh pilgrims, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the construction of a Hindu temple on the site where Babri Masjid stood for centuries. Can India and its western apologists still claim to have shared values? Shared Values: At a congressional hearing on the Capitol Hill in Washington in October, 2019, American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar asked Ms. Alice Wells, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, the following pertinent  question : " Kashmiris  have been restricted from communicating outside their country for  50+ days . In Assam, almost 2 million people are being asked to prove their citizenship. This is how the Rohingya genocide started. At what point do we question whether PM Modi shares our values?" The question of shared values has been forcefully answered in the negative by the Indian Supreme Cou...