India rejects Iranian supreme leader’s claim

Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei earlier criticised New Delhi’s treatment of Muslims

New Delhi on Monday said it “strongly deplored” comments by Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, after he listed India as being among the places where Muslims are suffering. 

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Ali Khamenei wrote: “The enemies of Islam have always tried to make us indifferent with regard to our shared identity as an Islamic Ummah. We cannot consider ourselves to be Muslims if we are oblivious to the suffering that Muslims are enduring in Myanmar, Gaza, India, or any other place.”

India’s Ministry of External Affairs branded the comments “misinformed” and “unacceptable,” saying that “countries commenting on minorities are advised to look at their own record before making any observations about others.”

The dispute comes despite a generally strong relationship between the two nations. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Tehran in January this year, and the countries have signed a major deal for the development of the Chabahar Port in southeast Iran. The project would expand New Delhi’s options to ship goods to Central Asia, Russia and Europe. It would also play a key role in the International North-South Transport Corridor connecting India with Russia and the CIS region via Iran, bypassing volatile parts of the Middle East.

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It is not the first time the Iranian spiritual leader has criticized the treatment of Muslims in India. In 2020, during communal riots in Delhi that killed at least 53 people and injured hundreds, Khamenei called the events a “massacre of Muslims.” He called on New Delhi to “confront extremist Hindus” to prevent India’s “isolation from the world of Islam.”

Khamenei also expressed “concern” in 2019 when India abolished Article 370 of the Constitution, which granted special privileges to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.

New Delhi has routinely rebuffed international allegations that Muslims are being mistreated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been accused of targeting the Muslim minority for electoral gains.

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Earlier this year, India rejected the findings of the US State Department’s 2023 religious freedom report, which flagged a “concerning increase” in anti-conversion laws and “hate speech” in the South Asian country. The foreign minister described the document as “deeply biased” and lacking an understanding of the “social fabric of India.”