News Desk :
Islamophobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority”, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned scholar, author and activist, has said.
“The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West – (but) it is taking its most lethal form in India,” Chomsky, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a video message to a webinar organised by Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) on Thursday, a Washington-based advocacy organisation. Apart from Chomsky, several other academics and activists took part in the webinar on “Worsening Hate Speech and Violence in India.”
Chomsky also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist regime has sharply escalated the “crimes” in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). “The crimes in Kashmir have a long history,” he said, adding that the state is now a “brutally occupied territory and its military control in some ways is similar to occupied Palestine.”
The situation in South Asia, Chomsky said, is painful in particular not because of what is happening but because of what is not happening. There is, however, hope and opportunities to solve South Asian torment but not for long, he added.
