ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has said the world has begun to acknowledge the “anti-democratic and fascist ideology” being imposed by the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India-held Kashmir as well as the whole country.

“This is the biggest threat to regional peace and stability. Already, eight million Kashmiris and Muslims in India are suffering because of Modi’s fascist policies,” Mr Khan said in a tweet in which he also shared the cover of the British magazine The Economist titled ‘Intolerant India: How Modi is endangering the world’s biggest democracy’.

In its latest issue, The Economist has highlighted the situation in India after the passage of the controversial citizenship law which has made 200 million Indian Muslims fearful of becoming stateless sparking nationwide protests.

The article titled ‘Narendra Modi stokes divisions in the world’s biggest democracy’ says that “India’s 200 million Muslims fear the prime minister is building a Hindu state”. “Last month, India changed law to make it easier for adherents of all subcontinent’s religions, except Islam, to acquire citizenship. At the same time BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] wants to compile a register of all India’s 1.3bn citizens, as a means to hunt down illegal immigrants,” says The Economist.

It says those sound like technicalities, but many of the country’s 200m Muslims do not have the papers to prove they are Indian, so they risk being made stateless. Ominously, the government has ordered the building of camps to detain those caught in the net. The scheme, it says, looks like most ambitious step yet in a decades-long project of incitement.

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2020