NEW DELHI LETTER
The Jama Masjid mosque, built in the 17thand century by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, which stands like a beacon in the Indian capital and can accommodate 25,000 worshipers, was packed on Sunday 24 April. Plus a free square centimeter in which to settle. The families, equipped with rugs and baskets, arrived well before sunset to climb the huge red granite steps giving access to one of the building’s three entrance doors. A human tide, as if to make up for lost time or ward off fate. For two years, due to the Covid-19 epidemic, no iftar had been allowed at the Jama Masjid.
Everyone unwrapped dates, vegetable fritters, pieces of tandoori chicken, fruit, spicy chickpeas. The tablecloth of foreigners – few in number and not far-sighted – was quickly filled with small cups offered by neighbors. At nightfall, the building, with its two minarets and three domes, appeared in all its splendor and the fast was broken.
Down the steps, the crowded streets of Old Delhi exhumed the scent of kebabs and roast meats, dates, naans, pakoras, phirni, sheermal and other kheers. Garlands and lanterns formed a ceiling in the sky. There floated in the old town a joyful and light atmosphere.
The climate in New Delhi and the rest of India, however, is not festive for Muslims. A wave of Islamophobia is sweeping the country, with the silent acquiescence of the authorities. In several states, particularly those ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the formation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, extremists armed with swords and pistols parade in procession on the occasion of Hindu festivals in front of mosques or neighborhoods Muslims, chant hostile slogans and insults to the point of provoking confrontation. Local BJP officials then spring into action. Muslims are named as responsible, arrested, then their houses destroyed or burned.
Rise of the Hindutva
After Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, this punitive operation was repeated on April 20 in the Jahangirpuri district, in the north of the capital. Four days after a Hindu procession, a series of provocations and the stoning of a mosque and its faithful, the bulldozers, under the eye of the television cameras invited for the occasion, destroyed all the shops belonging to Muslims around from the religious building, to the carts of modest peddlers.
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