In re­sponse to con­cerns raised by Mus­lim groups in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­gard­ing the of­fi­cial vis­it of In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di, the Gov­ern­ment has re­it­er­at­ed its stead­fast com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ples of equal­i­ty, re­spect, and in­clu­sion for all cit­i­zens.

The vis­it, part of on­go­ing diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and In­dia, has sparked ap­pre­hen­sion from seg­ments of the lo­cal Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, who have pub­licly ex­pressed dis­com­fort over Mo­di’s pres­ence due to his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s treat­ment of Mus­lim mi­nori­ties in In­dia.

The An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) has ex­pressed pro­found reser­va­tions which it says are root­ed in ex­ten­sive and cred­i­ble in­ter­na­tion­al con­cerns over the Mo­di ad­min­is­tra­tion’s treat­ment of Mus­lims in In­dia.