Arshad Madani
Arshad Madani is an Indian Muslim scholar and a professor at Darul Uloom Deoband. He is president of A group of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind since 8 February 2006.He believes that India's division in 1947 grew from religious sectarianism among the population of British India and the violence related to it. He suggests that secularism is the only path to a cohesive and united India.
He asserts that the current prime minister Narendra Modi is not acceptable to all Muslims of India. Muslim hostility to Modi is not softening recently at all as some circles in the Indian news media have suggested. He questions whether Indian Muslims can forgive Modi for initiating and condoning the 2002 Gujarat riots and the ensuing violence against Muslims in India, which Madani calls a mass murder of Muslims. Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat at that time.
He caused controversy by making a statement amounting to "promoting enmity between communities" in the backdrop of updating of the National Register of Citizens in Assam which led 3 FIRs registered against him in the state.
