The ‘Muslims have other countries’ claim spread from leaders to everyday Indians

Evidence

The Islamophobia deeply rooted in Hindutva supremacist lore was rising politically and spreading in Indian society. It became common for everyday Hindus to peddle the claim that “Muslims have fifty other countries, we Hindus only one,” shared Jaiwanth Reddy, an eighteen-year-old Hindu student from Hyderabad. BJP leaders echoed this claim, or some variation of it, at the federal and local levels in India, which were puppeted by their followers on the ground and on social media. Indian Islamophobes holding the highest offices, and their growing legions of loyalists, were “tearing India apart.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 407

Categorization

• XREF: The elite-to-grassroots diffusion of the ‘you have another homeland’ trope parallels a similar trope used against Muslims in Europe and America — a shared logic across cases.