The 2002 Gujarat riots that witnessed the killings of more than 1000 people, mostly Muslim, was one of the worst episodes of communal violence in India’s history.
February 27, 2002, a train fire tragedy in Godhra killed 59 people and led to communal riots across the state.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, is believed by many to have initiated the ensuing violence against the minority Muslim community of the state.
The Nanavati Commission report tabled in the Gujarat Assembly back in December, 2019, cleared the then Modi government in the state of complicity in the riots that rocked Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra incident. However, Modi’s dissidents persist that the Indian Prime Minister is largely responsible for the deaths of what certain Human Rights groups claim to be ‘more than 2000’.
Now, 18 years later, an old video, recorded five months before the Godhra riots, has surfaced on social media platform Twitter in which Modi can be seen having a go at Islam and how the Abrahamic faith’s aim is to ‘conquer the world’.
Blast from the past. Good afternoon, and have a good lunch.
— Hussain Haidry (@hussainhaidry) February 6, 2020
“Muslims have a political roadmap,” Modi says in the video. “They have divided the world into three parts: first is Dar al-Aman (land of peace), second is Dar al-Harb (land of war) and third Dar al-Islam (Land of Muslims).”
“Dar al-Aman is where Islam has already reached. Dar al-Harb is the land of conflict. If Islam does not already prevail there then fight and spread Islam there,” he added.
“Dar al-Islam means converting the entire world into Islam. There are some political activists belonging to the Islamic faith who harbour these agendas,” he said.
Modi’s entire rant was factually wrong, obviously as terms like Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb do not appear anywhere in the Quran or the Hadith.
The Nanavati Commission was constituted to probe the allegations that members of the then Cabinet fomented violence against minorities in Gujarat.
The report which runs into 1,500 pages, points out that there is no direct evidence to implicate the then chief minister or any member of his cabinet in inspiring violence in the riots.
PNN