‘Confront extremist Hindus’: Iran’s Khamenei on Delhi riots; comment unhelpful, says India

Delhi: India has sought to stave off overseas criticism over the Delhi riots, including a rare one from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayotallah Syed Ali Khamenei and another from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by claiming that such comments are unhelpful at a time when the government is doing its best to restore normalcy.
While Erdogan has been a frequent critic of India’s Kashmir policy and his comments on Kashmir led to the Turkish Ambassador to India being called in by the Ministry of External Affairs and served a demarche, Iran this week has thrice criticised the Modi government’s handling of the Delhi riots.
Iran calibrated its criticism with the first comments coming from the Foreign Office spokesperson Abbas Mousavi followed by tougher comments from Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. New Delhi had then summoned the Iranian Ambassador Ali Chegeni to express its displeasure over the Zarif-Mousavi comments.
It remains to be seen how New Delhi will respond to Khamenei calling upon the Indian government to “confront extremist Hindus and their parties and stop the massacre of Muslims in order to prevent India’s isolation from the world of Islam”.
Adverse comments have also come from the British Parliament, the Indonesian government and federal panels of the US Congress.
India again took on Erdogan who has been a consistent critic of New Delhi’s Kashmir policy and has now weighed in on the Delhi riots. “As far as comments by the Turkish President are concerned, they are factually inaccurate and are driven by his political agenda. We do not expect such irresponsible statements from a Head of State,” said the MEA spokesperson at a media briefing.
PM Modi had attempted to turn around ties with Turkey by inviting Erdogan for a state visit in 2017. But the Turkish President, while in India, had called for a multilateral dialogue on Kashmir that had reduced the visit to mere optics.
The MEA spokesperson said India had submitted a strong demarche on the matter with the Turkish Ambassador in Delhi on March 3. “At this sensitive time, we would urge people not to make any irresponsible comments and not to be influenced by selective and unsubstantiated narrative on the matter,” said the spokesperson.
On a US federal panel’s criticism, the MEA said the as the comments are selective and not based on fact, they will do more damage. “We would urge people not to make such remarks when at this point the government’s focus is on retiring normalcy,” the spokesperson said.