India’s finance minister has derided comments by the former US president Barack Obama that Narendra Modi’s government should protect the rights of minority Muslims, accusing Obama of being hypocritical.
During the Indian prime minister’s state visit to the US last week, Obama told CNN that the issue of the “protection of the Muslim minority in a majority-Hindu India” would be worth raising in Modi’s meeting with the US president, Joe Biden.
Obama said that without such protection there was “a strong possibility that India at some point starts pulling apart“.
The Indian finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, said she was shocked Obama had made such remarks when Modi was visiting the US aiming to deepen relations.
“He was commenting on Indian Muslims … having bombed Muslim-majority countries from Syria to Yemen … during his presidency,” Sitharaman told a press conference on Sunday. “Why would anyone listen to any allegations from such people?“
The US state department has raised concerns over treatment of Muslims and other religious minorities in India under Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party. The Indian government says it treats all citizens equally.
Biden said he discussed human rights and other democratic values with Modi during their talks in the White House.
Modi, at a press conference with Biden last week, denied any discrimination against minorities under his government.
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