An Indian origin professor Ashutosh Varshney based in the United States has said that India is entering a state of Anti-Muslim pogrom and the state is abandoning neutrality in the violence.
According to Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of social sciences and political science at Brown University in the United States, “India may now be entering the stage of anti-Muslim pogroms.” He claims that this is due to the BJP government’s abandonment of neutrality in the face of violence.
Varshney made this reply in response to a question on why so many cases of anti-Muslim violence had been reported across India.
“I have studied sectarian riots since the 1990s,” Varshney added, “but the current violence against Muslims in India is really different, and India may be entering the stage of the anti-Muslim pogrom.”
Varshney was making a point about violence against Muslims, particularly in BJP-ruled regions. His remarks were broadcasted on ‘The Wire’
“The prime minister is keeping mute because he believes in this ideology,” Varshney said flatly, while India is unconcerned about western criticism because “the calculation is that India is required by the west.”
Ashutosh Varshney is the director of the Center for Contemporary South Asia and a Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences.
Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy (2013), Collective Violence in Indonesia (2009), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale 2002), India in the Era of Economic Reforms (1999), and Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (all published by Yale University Press) (Cambridge 1995).