By: Yunus Musa
In a bid to erase the history of Islām in India. The country's ruling party BJP has embarked on an open and direct 'war' on Islām through renaming some Islāmic towns and villages across the country to a more Hindu friendly names.
What an oxymoron that the India's majority Hindus feel besieged by a lack of representation, or that the BJP sees them as a persecuted majority with more than 7,000 of India's villages named after Ram and Krishna, their two popular deities.
Last month we have seen the city of Allahabad renamed to Prayagraj. The BJP leaders have taken issue with the fact that the city's 435-year-old name was given by a Muslim ruler. Allahabad was indeed named by Mughal emperor Akbar. It was an administrative, military and cultural centre for the Mughal Empire, which ruled most of India and Pakistan in the 16th and 17th centuries.
As if that was not enough, the local government, led by a controversial Hindu religious leader, has changed the name of Faizabad district to Ayodhya, best known as the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. It was in Ayodhya that hard-line Hindu mobs razed an ancient mosque in 1992, sparking one of the worst episodes of religious violence in which nearly 2,000 people were killed across the country.
In Rajasthan Ismail Khurd, Miyon ka Bara and Narpada have been renamed as Pichanwa Khurd, Mahesh Nagar and Narpura respectively with Agra in Uttar Pradesh, home to the iconic Taj Mahal to follow.
This well coordinated war strategy against Islām might seems insignificant to certain Muslims but it's a step towards justifying future ethnic cleansing of Muslims just like its happened in Spain and Tanzania and like how it's happening now in Burma and China's Xiangyang.