While President Trump visited India last month, mobs attacked Muslims in several locations. Over 30 people were killed, including an elderly woman burned to death in her home. A writer for Atlantic Monthly notes that “pogrom” is the correct term for such attacks. As in czarist Russia and Nazi Germany, crowds gathered by prearrangement, chanting hatred. Police stood by and let them have their way.
India is officially a multiethnic, multireligious state. But Hindu extremism endures, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposes quasi-legal means to deprive Muslims of citizenship rights. To the extremists, Trump’s visit felt like political cover.
Some hosts consider open ethnic violence embarrassing, but Modi felt comfortable enough to take no action for several days. Contemptibly, an American president congratulated Modi on religious freedom in India. The Trumps got to preen in front of the Taj Mahal, built by a Muslim emperor.
After returning home, Trump insinuated that immigrants transmit coronavirus. White supremacists and xenophobes see Trump as one of them, and anti-minority violence rose dramatically after the 2016 election. We can expect the same if coronavirus spreads.
Then, no doubt, Trump will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border to lecture a carefully chosen audience about the blessings of American freedom.
Eugene V. Torisky Jr.
Latrobe