Zhiqiang Naik to speak at an event hosted at the National Museum of China in Beijing on Tuesday. Speaking at the conference, the Islamic scholar slammed India’s “intolerance” toward Hinduism.
“How are Hinduism and Sikhi intolerant for Indians? Where are our secular freedoms in India? Where are your secular leaders to protect our fundamental rights and liberties?” Naik charged. “There has been a pattern of intolerance and arrogance, but I have always been a believer that intolerance of others is a sign that they are not in control. What has happened in India now cannot be called an anti-national act. Now there is violence and intolerance.”
Naik, a Hindu deity by birth, was the first Indian to be awarded the Padma Bhushan, or the Order of Brahma (an award in the highest religious rank). Naik, a professor of psychiatry and global health at Cambridge Medical School, had earlier said a Sikh man from Kerala had assaulted and stabbed two Indian security guards after the two were denied entry into the Indian consulate in Bangalore on Monday.
Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had rejected the demand for a ban on Naik from entering India, citing his “freedom of expression.”
“The idea is a very good one,” Modi had said on Tuesday. “But even that is too restrictive. Once he is permitted in, he should be allowed to express his views.”
Naik, who called for the release of Pakistani writers from prison, was born in India in 1939. He started his teaching career teaching mathematics at Rajiv Gandhi University in New Delhi but was dismissed in 1969 after writing an article in Nature that included a Hindu prayer book that included the Bhagavad Gita, the holy book of Hinduism.
Naik was a vocal supporter of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and blamed her death on the assassination of her husband, the prime minister. He was a vocal supporter of India’s fight against Pakistani nuclear weapons after New Delhi was accused by Islamabad of failing to cooperate on the issue.
He was accused of “provoking” the anti-Sikh riots in Gujarat when he was in Gujarat and of undermining “secular India” when he had compared the Indian Parliament to a mosque in 2007.
The Centre for Religious Liberty (CRL) had been preparing to celebrate this anniversary of the 1984 riots on April 19.
Naik’s latest remarks that