Is India’s honeymoon with the gulf region is getting over

Is India’s honeymoon with the gulf region is getting over  

Syed Ali Mujtaba

The Gulf fall out of the Covid-19 on India is the repatriation of the Indian workers working in the Gulf region. India is making a major evacuation plan involving its Navy, Air Force and Air India to take back Indians facing job losses due to plummeting oil prices and continuous lockdown due to Covid-19. Such operation may involve taking back home some 20 lakh Indians. This is expected to take place sometime after May 3 when the lock down period ends in India.

The Gulf countries have made it clear that it would not to renew visas of Indian migrants that have expired during this pandemic period and they have to leave their country of their work. They have also made clear that after the pandemic is over they may like to restructure their ‘cooperation’ and ‘labour’ relations with India. These include imposing strict future restrictions on the “recruitment policy" where they may  introduce "quota system” for each country. It is also said  that they have terminated the MoUs signed earlier in this regard.

 

It looks two things one the fall out of the Covid – 19 and other the carefully crafted ‘political project’ in India, has cast an evil shadow on the Indians working in the gulf region. It is estimated that about eight million Indians are working currently in the Gulf region, with about 3.2 million in the UAE alone. The massive job loss and uncertain future looms large and it appears that Indian workers honeymoon with the gulf region is looks getting over.  

In this how far the Hindu zealot's spread of Islamophobia in India and Arabia is responsible is a matter of debate but fact is there has been a conspiracy of silence of the Indian ruling elite that may have accentuated the matter. The failure of the Indian government to reign in the radicals elements at home gives the impression that it wants to condone the acts of Islmophobia even at the cost of historic ties with the Gulf region.

Ever since the world got riddled with Covid-19 epidemic, in India the novel virus took a communal turn. Muslims and Islam has become a subject of rebuke and the entire community is held responsible for the spread of the unseen virus. The tweets on social media, the reports on television, newspaper and websites were all awash with linkage of the pandemic with the Muslim community.  

These angry comments targeting Muslims in the media were largely due to the linkage of the Covid-19 with Tablgi Markaz congregation in New Delhi. Even as the hate orchestra was played in the full volume there was a complete silence of the Indian ruling elite as all and sundry took a pot shot on Muslims and Islam. The government instead of given stern warming to the hate mongers chose conspiracy of silence at the sudden rise of Islamophbia in the country. Their tight lips look like that they endorsed the hate mongering industry flourishing in India. 

Professor Ashok Swain, who is at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden says; “Islamophobia has reached its peak in India with the increasing rise of coronavirus crisis. This is not just a primordial reaction of a society, but a very well planned and finely executed political project of the ruling elite.”

Professor Swain attributes this to the mismanagement of the government in handling the pandemic and the serious nature of economic crisis that India faces. He goes on to add; “India’s Hindu nationalist regime aims to give the coronavirus crisis a communal color, which will give it an escape route from its abject policy failures and at the same time the increasing anti-Muslim environment will bring much better political benefit in the future. Even though Coronavirus is responsible for a very serious crisis in India,  for the Narendra Modi regime, it has also provided a powerful political opportunity,”  he says. 

This ‘Islmophobia project’ in India took a new turn, when the exchanges between Hindu nationalists and some sections of the Gulf’s elite – royal family members, business persons, professionals and human rights activists etc started taking place on the social media. The exchange of unsavory words by few Indians caught the attention of the Arab world and they saw a new face of India that is abusive of Muslims and Islam with much dismay.

This made Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a federation of 57 Muslim nations to came up with a statement to condemn the developments in India. It chose some harsh words; “the unrelenting vicious Islamophobic campaign in India, maligning Muslims for spread of Covid-19 as well as their negative profiling in media subjecting them to discrimination and violence with impunity is highly deplorable.” The OIC called for a special session to deal with the problem of Islamophobia emanating from India that otherwise was supposed to meet in April 2020 in Islamabad to discuss on India’s new stand on Kashmir.

Similarly, Kuwait a member of the ‘Arab League’ which comprise of 22 Gulf States  called for an emergency session to deal with problem of anti-Muslim anti Islam propaganda going on in India.

The reasons for such annoyance of the Arabs was uncouth Muslim profiling, hate Muslim propaganda,  fake news, abuse messages churned out  on social media from India  and state government little opposition to it giving the impression  of a ‘well-crafted’ state project.

When the Indian the ruling elite that this ‘political project’ is slipping out of its control, it engaged in damage control exercise. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held telephone conversation with the leaders of the Gulf countries reminding them that India continues to be secular and pluralistic country. This was followed-up by India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar who talked to the Foreign Ministers of Gulf region and committed that India is not on the throes of any rhetorical shift.  

Prime Minster Narandar Modi tried to clarify the communal controversy building around Covid-19 in India with a tweet on April 19. “COVID-19 does not see race, religion, color, caste, creed, language or borders before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood.  We are in this together,” Modi said.  

Modi’s tweet if read between the lines has the most glaring omission and that is total silence to shut the hate shops in India and to reign in the Hindu zealots in the country.  The tweet was more to placate the paranoid Gulf audience rather than to warn the Hindu radicals. 

It is not as if the Gulf region does not know of the periodic communal conflagration that occurs in India but so far they have viewed them as an aberration in a large and diverse nation as India.  Even in the exchanges of the current tweets their responses were of anger, dismay and not of any bad blood at the developments in India.

Nonetheless, the recent exchanges of tweets have exposed the Hindutva ideology in its full nakedness to the Gulf public. It has planted the seeds of suspicion in their minds and future ‘cooperation’ and ‘labour’ relations with India maybe no more shaped by old parameters.    

This is because it is for the first time the Gulf countries have woken up to the scourge of extremist Hindutva ideology in India. So far they had never paid any attention to faith based relationship with India. In fact in their ties with India, faith hardly played any role either in recruitment of the work force or making investments. Among the eight million Indian who work in Gulf region there is almost negligible percent of Indian Muslims. The lion share of gulf remittances goes to Hindus homes and the employers have no qualms about it.

However, now that the Gulf region has become familiar with the agenda of Hindutva adherents, it is difficult to assume that the India - Arab ties will be the same as before the Covid- 19 incursions.  The challenge before India’s ruling elite is to make sincere efforts to re-cement the centuries-old ties with the Gulf region. 

The first thing to be done is to stop aiding and abating the Hindutva cadres from spewing venom against the Muslims and Islam and all the hate factories in India should be lock down immediately.  If India’s ruling elite continues to maintain a conspiracy of silence on this issue it would certainly impact the India-Gulf relations for worse and fore sure not for better.    

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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com