Indian minister under fire for communal remarks about Muslim army officer

From army to diplomacy, India’s Hindu right targets public officials with anti-Muslim and anti-peace trolling campaigns

NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — A minister from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come under fire for making a deeply communal remark against Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, a senior Muslim officer in the Indian Army who led public briefings on “Operation Sindoor” — India’s military operation in Pakistan.

Kunwar Vijay Shah, the Tribal Welfare Minister of Madhya Pradesh, implied in a public speech that Colonel Qureshi was selected for the role because she belongs to the “same community” as the alleged attackers — a reference widely condemned as Islamophobic and incendiary.

“We sent the sisters of those people who had destroyed the vermilion of our sisters to them and got them beaten up… If you have made our sisters widows, then the sister of your community will come and leave you naked,” Shah declared in a speech laced with violent and communal undertones.

Opposition leaders and civil society groups slammed the comments, accusing Shah of communalizing the military and questioning the patriotism of a Muslim officer.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge called the remarks “insulting, shameful, and vulgar,” and demanded the minister’s dismissal for undermining the secular values of India’s armed forces.

Colonel Sofiya Qureshi is one of the few high-ranking Muslim women in the Indian Army and was the first woman to lead an Indian military contingent in a multinational field exercise.

Shah later claimed his comments were “misinterpreted,” — a defense rejected by many who saw it as part of a broader pattern of Hindutva leaders subtly or overtly questioning the loyalty of Indian Muslims.

Only days earlier, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri became the target of a vicious online campaign by Hindu right-wing accounts.

Misri — a seasoned diplomat — was forced to lock his social media account after his family was doxed and his daughter was attacked for her past work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Myanmar, where she supported Rohingya Muslims.

Trolls accused Misri of “betraying India” and labeled him a “traitor” for his involvement in the government’s ceasefire decision with Pakistan, using his family’s international affiliations to paint him as “anti-national.”

Earlier, Himanshi Narwal, widow of Indian Navy officer Lt. Vinay Narwal who was killed in the Pahalgam attack, was also viciously trolled after she publicly appealed for peace and urged citizens not to target Muslims or Kashmiris.

“We want peace and only peace… Don’t go after Muslims or Kashmiris,” she said — a call that was met with online abuse, character attacks, and conspiracy theories from Hindutva-aligned accounts.

These coordinated attacks — both digital and political — reveal a disturbing pattern under India’s Hindu nationalist government: even uniformed officers, diplomats, and grieving widows are not spared if they are Muslim, or dare to speak for peace.

Far from isolated incidents, they reflect a deepening climate of intolerance where identity and ideology, not service or sacrifice, determine loyalty.