TRT World in a recent opinion piece raised many issues surrounding Muslim community members in India, but like other anti-India propaganda contents, they are selective and reek off biasness and prejudices against the country's current political establishment

Back in 2021 Mediterranean-Asian Investigative Journalists reported that Turkey has set up a propaganda team, in collaboration with Pakistan’s ISI, to further their anti-India propaganda. Turkey’s TRT World is part of that propaganda machinery which invariably dishes out misleading, highly biased and pejorative stories against India, and all this with a single minded objective to malign the country’s image at the global level.

In its latest report, ‘The role of the West in the plight of India’s Muslims’, TRT World has called India as one of the most hostile places for minorities without giving it a thought that in India which is a home to 204 million Muslims, there is no perverse anti-minority feeling and this is the reason, Muslims like rest of Indian citizens live by their country and die by their country.

In fact, the Indian government has been working for the all-around development of Muslims without any appeasement, discrimination and political exploitation. Several schemes run by the Minority Affairs Ministry in India are working wonders for minorities, especially for Muslims as they are the largest minority in India. Some of these schemes are Naya Savera, Seekho Aur Kamao, Nai Manzil, Nai Roshni, Hamari Dharohar, Nai Udaan, Gharib Nawaz Employment Scheme and Shaadi Mubarak Scheme.

Under the Nai Udaan scheme, several successful candidates from Muslim community are being provided with coaching for top government jobs in India. Besides major beneficiary of welfare schemes launched by the government has been members of the Muslim community. Out of the 2.31 crore houses built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, 31 per cent were allocated in 25 minority-dominated areas, 33 per cent beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi were minorities and out of the nine crore beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, 37 per cent were from the minority communities. Besides, 36 percent of beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana are minority community members.

TRT World said in India, attacks against minorities in the last few years have surged, with new fronts of populism grounded in an anti-Muslim stance. From being hounded on the street by hateful mobs for any visible identity markers to now being hammered with laws that criminalise public appearance of Muslimness.

Unfortunately, the Turkish public broadcaster has refused to see the ground realities in India which has a carefully built pluralist democracy where no one identity or principle is dominant, and Muslims are as enthusiastic about the tenets of democracy as other Indians. Muslims, like their fellow countrymen, agree with the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.

The claim that attacks against Muslims have surged in the last few years, is as erroneous as some propagandists’ accusation that members of the minority community are not held in trust in India. If Muslims were hated and hounded on India’s streets, there could not have been a higher number of mosques, madrasas and maulvis, nor could there have been much display of religious symbolism in dress and appearance than ever. Rather the fact is India’s Muslim women are today better fed, better educated and also, they are well empowered who vote and get voted to from Panchayat to Parliament—a facility which they can’t get in Islamic countries. Above all, the cultural ethos of India is ‘Sarv Dharma Sambhav’ (peaceful co-existence of all religions). The Indian Constitution has followed this ethos in letter and spirit; it precludes ill-will towards people because of their faith.