It is the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Egypt in 26 years; Modi invited President al-Sisi to the G20 in Delhi. The visit to the al-Hakim mosque, a place much loved by a small Islamic community in Gujarat allied to the BJP, was significant. The gesture comes after he rejected a reporter’s question in Washington about allegations about laws and policies that Muslims in India perceive as violations of their rights.
Cairo ( / Agencies) – Returning from his trip to the United States, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made another very significant stop in Cairo, meeting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. It had been 26 years since a prime minister from New Delhi had stopped in Egypt. During the visit, Modi officially invited al-Sisi to participate as a guest at the G20 summit to be held in New Delhi in September. It should be remembered that Egypt is one of the countries that have officially applied to join the BRICS group (the alternative world forum to the G7 that brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The Cairo summit also served to sign a series of bilateral agreements on issues such as agriculture and the protection of archaeological heritage.
And precisely in the context of the relationship between culture and religions, during the visit to Cairo a gesture took place that caused a stir in India. And it is that Modi visited the al-Hakim mosque, a monumental Muslim place of worship dating from the 11th century and which has been recently restored with the help of the Dawoodi Bohra, an Indian Islamic community that traces its roots to this part of Egypt. It is a community of some 500,000 Shiite Muslims, well established in Gujarat, the Indian state where Modi was head of local government before his rise to the top of national politics in 2014.
As noted by the Indian website Mintin Gujarat – marked by the deep tensions between Hindus and Muslims that exploded in the bloody acts of violence of 2002 – the Dawoodi Bohra it is considered the Islamic face of the constituency of the Hindu nationalists of the BJP. The Indian Prime Minister has always credited this community with helping him in his government action in Gujarat, extolling it as a “patriotic” reality. Hence the political importance of the homage he paid to his mosque in Cairo and the role these Indian Muslims played in its restoration.
However, these Modi links to the Dawoodi Bohra they are at odds with the general climate in India, where the BJP is accused of constantly promoting anti-Muslim laws and policies under the Modi government. Minority rights are considered to have suffered a severe blow. And this was also the subject of the first question that a journalist from the Wall Street Journal Modi in the United States during a press conference (an exceptional event, since in his country the Indian prime minister is not open to this type of confrontation with the press, and the latest precedent dates back to a visit to London in 2015). When asked, Modi said he was “surprised” and basically did not answer, limiting himself to stating that since India is a democracy, there would be “no discrimination or violation of human rights” in the country.
Photo: Twitter account Narendra Modi
