Being a Muslim in Today’s India
And Other Queries about Our World
This week I touch on five (!) diverse subjects: the squeezing of India’s Muslims; the Trump-Modi relationship and the new US-India trade deal; likely US-Iran talks in Istanbul and their possible impact on the Middle East; Pakistan’s Balochistan crisis; and the David Brooks column in the New York Times comes to an end.
An ugly reality effectively buried by India’s media – a reality the world ought to take in and remember – is the daily persecution of Muslims eking out a living amidst their country’s Hindu majority. On January 26, India’s Republic Day, a group of intimidators heckled and threatened a 70-year-old shopkeeper named Vakeel Ahmed in the Himalayan town of Kotdwar in the state of Uttarakhand for naming his shop “Baba School Dress,” the adjective “Baba” signifying a child or children.
Had the shop been called “Ahmed School Dress,” passers-by and shoppers would have known that a Muslim owned it. “Hiding” that fact was evidently Ahmed’s “offence.” Inside the shop when the hecklers arrived was Ahmed’s friend Deepak Kumar, who runs a gym close-by. Kumar confronted the mob and asked why others could use the “Baba” name for their shops but not Ahmed. “The shop is 30 years old,” added Kumar. “Will you now change the name?”
“What’s your name?” Kumar was asked by one of the mob. “My name is Mohammad Deepak” was the reply. Recounting the incident to the Indian Express, Kumar said: “The 70-year-old man was asked to change the name of his shop from ‘Baba’ to something else because he was not Hindu. I asked them not to threaten an old man. They asked me my name, and in anger I said I was Mohammad Deepak. I intended to convey that I was an Indian and everyone was equal before the law.”
Five days later, more than forty men – from outside the town, it seems -- assembled in a Kotdwar park and raised threats against Kumar and his family. Police officers in the district told the Indian Express (writes reporter Aiswarya Raj) that they had received a complaint about the threats but would first conduct an inquiry before registering it.
NO REBUKE LIKELY
Going by India’s history of the last twelve years, no rebuke for the mob’s threats should be expected from the area’s police or from the state or central government. No one will be punished. Anxiety will remain in the minds of Ahmed and Kumar and in their families.
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According to a subsequent story in the courageous portal The Wire, those demonstrating in the Kotdwar park had even blocked a national highway. Kumar told The Wire that his mother, wife, and five-year-old daughter were on their own when demonstrators raised slogans outside his house. “I fear for my life,” Kumar added.
Many Hindus and non-Hindus will quietly cheer Deepak Kumar’s action of solidarity, and there may be satisfaction that sections of the media reported the shameful incident. I’m certainly glad that Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, has called Kumar a hero and has added,
“Deepak is fighting for the Constitution and humanity... He is a living symbol of a shop of love in the bazaar of hate, and that’s what stings those in power the most. No country can move forward in an atmosphere of hate, fear, and anarchy... We need more Deepaks – those who do not bow down, who do not fear, and who stand firmly with the Constitution with all their might.”
Kolkata’s Telegraph reports that the video of Kumar’s defense of Ahmed and his shop has gained wide admiration from India’s netizens:
“CLEANSING” THE STREETS
“The footage, first uploaded by Kumar to his Instagram account (@deepakakkikumar), spread across social media. Within hours, ‘Mohammad Deepak’ was trending, with many framing the moment as an assertion of India’s composite culture.”
However, we should also recognize another reality, a most disturbing one. Which is that the pressure on Vakeel Ahmed and his shop is part of an escalating campaign the ultimate aim of which is to “cleanse” India’s streets of Muslim vendors and shopkeepers.
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Meanwhile Donald Trump claims that India has agreed to buy Venezuelan oil, as opposed to purchasing it from Iran. “We’ve already made that deal, the concept of the deal,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. According to India’s ndtv.com, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodriguez spoke on January 30. In a subsequent post on X, Modi said:
“Spoke with Acting President of Venezuela, Ms. Delcy Rodriguez. We agreed to further deepen and expand our bilateral partnership in all areas, with a shared vision of taking India-Venezuela relations to new heights in the years ahead.”
Making bigger news on February 3, Trump announced that he has agreed to a trade deal with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi whereby the US will lower tariffs on goods from India to 18% from 25%. BBC reports:
“In a post on Truth Social, Trump said India will reduce trade barriers to zero and will also stop buying Russian oil. An additional 25% tariff penalty imposed for Delhi's refusal to stop buying oil from Russia will be dropped.
“NO MORE OIL FROM RUSSIA”
“The announcement comes less than a week after India and the European Union announced a landmark trade deal that capped nearly two decades of on-off talks. Modi said on X that he is ‘delighted’ that an agreement with the US has been reached.
“In [his] post, Trump said that a morning phone call with Modi included discussions of trade and the Russia-Ukraine war. ‘[Modi] agreed to stop buying Russian oil, and to buy much more oil from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela,’ Trump wrote.
“Trump added that, at Modi’s request, he immediately ‘agreed to a trade deal’ that would see tariffs lowered and India’s tariffs and non-tariff barriers reduced to zero. Additionally, Trump said Modi committed to buying more than $500bn worth of American goods including energy, technology, agriculture and coal products…
“Last week, India and the European Union announced a free trade agreement that is set to lower taxes on nearly all goods between India and the bloc of 27 European states...”
BBC adds however that We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of 800 US small businesses, “has criticized the latest announcement, noting that before Trump’s tariffs policies were implemented, American importers paid an average of 2.5% on goods from India. ‘This deal locks in a rate six times higher than what we were paying a year ago,’ the organization’s director, Dan Anthony, said.”
It has been widely reported that Iran and the United States will resume nuclear talks on February 6 in Turkey. Trump has warned that “with big U.S. warships heading to Iran, bad things would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.” According to a Reuters story, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, “will meet in Istanbul in an effort to revive diplomacy over a long-running dispute about Iran’s nuclear program and dispel fears of a new regional war, while a regional diplomat said representatives from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt would also participate.”
EXPULSION THREAT
If any agreement involving suspension by Iran of uranium enrichment prevents a mighty regional war in the Middle East, the world will feel relieved, but two great questions will remain. One is about the future of Iran. Will Iranians be free to determine their tomorrow?
The other question is about the future of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and in Gaza. Will they finally gain a state of their own? Or, following Iran’s reduction, will Israeli extremists implement their threat of expelling the Palestinians to places far from their ancestral home for centuries, including to Somaliland, the semi-autonomous portion of Somalia, which Israel recognized at the end of 2025? No other country has so far recognized Somaliland, but there seems no doubt that Israel would like to be able to push the Palestinians out of their homeland and into places like Somaliland.
Going by recent history, it does not seem impossible that Europe and the world will permit ethnic cleansing of this magnitude, or that Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Pakistan, and other Muslim lands will remain helpless spectators as Palestinians are driven out. Sadly, our amazing and beautiful world can often be callous as well.
I am unhappy at the heavy, all-sided, and continuing toll from the unending insurgency in Pakistan’s immense but thinly populated Balochistan province, which takes up 44 percent, or almost half, of Pakistan’s area but holds less than 3 percent of its population. Only about 15 million of the country’s 260 million live in Balochistan. The Baloch people also reside across Pakistan’s western border in Iran.
During last month’s final two days, January 30 & 31, insurgents calling themselves the Baloch Liberation Army killed at least 33 people including Pakistani soldiers while losing 92 from their ranks to Pakistan’s security forces. Provided by Pakistan’s military and published in England’s Guardian newspaper, these figures may or may not be accurate or complete.
Pakistan’s interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, claimed the attackers in Balochistan had the backing of India, an allegation denied by New Delhi.
NEIGHBORLY FEELINGS?
In neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, violent groups allegedly backed from across the border by Afghanistan have assailed Pakistani targets for years. Pakistan’s travails do not, however, upset India. The thrust of neighborly sentiment can be gauged by this headline on India’s largest online portal, ndtv.com, after India and the EU signed their big trade agreement on January 27: “India’s ‘Mother Of All Deals’ With EU Wipes Out Pakistan’s Trade Advantage.” How Pakistan would lose out was seen to be at least as important as the gains accruing to India or the EU.
Another part of the sad picture, to which Pakistan too has made unhelpful contributions, is
India’s refusal to entertain the legality of the international Arbitration Court set up under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 for examining Pakistan’s objections to recent Indian actions in relation to waters flowing down the Himalayas into the subcontinent.
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Many, including those disagreeing with his opinions, will mark the fact that the fair-minded, learned, and searching commentator, David Brooks, has written his last New York Times column. There, among other things, he named the sort of questions that continue to interest him:
“How do you become a better person? How do you find meaning in retirement? Does America still have a unifying national narrative? How do great nations recover from tyranny?”
In this farewelling column, Brooks also passed on his finding that at this time “only 13 percent of young adults believe America is heading in the right direction” while “sixty-nine percent of Americans say they do not believe in the American dream.”
We can be sure that his departure from the Times will not terminate Brooks’s tenacious bid to improve these numbers.
Column written on the morning (US Eastern Time) of Tuesday, February 3, 2026.
