Good Neigbors?

After remarks made last week by two spokespeople of the ruling Indian Bharatiya Janata Party about the prophet Mohammed, Muslim-majority countries have slammed India for its perceived intolerance of their religion. The country's ambassadors in Qatar, Kuwait and Iran received official complaints and the foreign ministries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Libya issued official statements, according to Forbes, while calls for protests and the boycott of Indian products came from several more countries.

The issue is sensitive for India as relations between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority at home have been tense. In late 2019 and early 2020, the Citizenship Amendment Act - passed by the BJP - excluded certain Muslim immigrants from a new path to citizenship and led to deadly riots. Since then, violence has flared up regularly between Hindus and Muslims and anti-Muslim rhetoric has repeatedly come from BJP politicians.

The BJP has since issued a statement saying the party "respects all religions" and has disciplined or fired the members in question. The overt agreement with religious tolerance in India is echoed in a 2020 survey by Pew Research Center, in which 80 percent of Hindus and 79 percent of Muslims said that respecting other religions was an important part of their identities. When asked whether they would accept members of a different religion as their neighbors, however, acceptance wasn't as high.

Muslim neighbors were the most likely to be named as unacceptable by Jain, Hindu and Sikh respondents to the survey, with those unwilling to live next to Muslims ranging from a third to more than half of the religious groups in question. Christian and Buddhist neighbors received the next highest rates on non-acceptance. Muslims were slightly more tolerant of their neighbors, with 27 percent rejecting Buddhists, 26 percent rejecting Jains and Sikhs and 25 percent rejecting Christians. Hindus were deemed unacceptable as neighbors by only 16 percent of Muslims.

Muslims were also the most likely to be rejected as neighbors by Buddhists, albeit by a lower 19 percent. Christians called Muslims neighbors more acceptable than Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs but less acceptable than Hindus.