ASJA raises concern over India PM Modi’s T&T visit

The An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) has con­firmed it will send a for­mal let­ter of con­cern to both the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion op­pos­ing the state vis­it of In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di.

In a re­sponse to ques­tions sent to AS­JA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Rahi­mool Ho­sein by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion said it has a “deep and prin­ci­pled con­cern” over the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to of­fi­cial­ly wel­come a leader with what it called a “wide­ly crit­i­cised hu­man rights record.”

AS­JA said it had no ob­jec­tion to diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment in prin­ci­ple, but strong­ly ob­ject­ed to what it views as the le­git­imi­sa­tion of a po­lit­i­cal fig­ure whose gov­ern­ment has “em­bold­ened re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance and tar­get­ed the Mus­lim mi­nor­i­ty” in In­dia.