ORGANISATION OF ISLAMIC COOPERATION

CONTEXT

OIC called on the UN Human Rights Council to take necessary measures on the issue of Muslim girl students being told not to wear the hijab in Karnataka schools.

Key Points 

• The OIC also urged India to "ensure the safety, security, and well-being of the Muslim community while protecting their way of life” and bring to justice the "instigators and propagators of violence and hate crimes" against Muslims while India slashed OIC being communal-minded.
• India's response to OIC is that India is a democracy and issues within the country are resolved under our constitutional framework and mechanism, as well as democratic ethos and polity.

ABOUT OIC

EVOLUTION

• The Organisation of the Islamic Conference was established by the First Islamic Summit Conference held in Morocco in September 1969, to marshal the Islamic world after an act of arson at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by a 28-year-old Australian in 1969.
• It plunged the Middle East into its worst crisis after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. It was known as the Organisation of Islamic Conference until 2011.

INDIA AND OIC

• As a country with the world's second-largest Muslim community, India had been invited to the founding conference at Rabat in 1969 but was humiliatingly rejected at Pakistan’s behest.
• Then Agriculture Minister Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was dis-invited upon arrival in Morocco.
• In 2006, as India turned the economic corner and improved ties with the US, Saudi Arabia invited Delhi to join as an observer.

• The OIC is mainly controlled by Saudi Arabia, but Pakistan, as the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons, has had a large say since its inception.

WHY INDIA STAYED AWAY FROM JOINING THE ORGANISATION

• As a secular country, it did not want to join an organization founded on religion.
• There was the risk that improving bilateral relations with individual member states would come under pressure in a grouping, especially on issues such as Kashmir.
• Over the years, the organisation has issued several statements on Kashmir that have been supportive of Pakistan and critical of Indian “atrocities”.
• In the 1990s, Delhi got used to combating these statements at home and abroad.

CHANGING TERMS

• After building close ties with powerful members such as UAE and Saudi Arabia.
• India has been confident of riding over any statement by the grouping.
• India has consistently underlined that J&K is an “integral part of India and is a matter strictly internal to India”, and that the OIC has no locus stand on the issue.
• In 2019, India made its maiden appearance at the OIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting, as a “guest of honour”.
• Then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj addressed the Inaugural Plenary in Abu Dhabi on March 1, 2019, after having been invited by Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister.

• This first-time invitation was seen as a diplomatic victory for New Delhi, especially at a time of heightened tensions with Pakistan following the Pulwama attack.
• Mohamed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince had visited Delhi just before the OIC invitation.
• Pakistan had opposed the invitation to Swaraj, and its Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi boycotted the plenary after the UAE turned down his demand to rescind the invitation.
• Within months of this, when India’s dramatic changes in Jammu & Kashmir took the world by surprise, while OIC flagged its concerns and the "internationally recognized status of the J&K dispute, UAE and Saudi Arabia individually took more nuanced positions".

INDIA’S RESPONSE TO HIJAB ROW

• Given India’s sanguine response to OIC’s Kashmir statements, the strongly worded statement on the hijab row may appear unusual.
• But Delhi had already conveyed a different approach with OIC back in 2020.

• Officials then said it was untenable that individual members with good bilateral relations with India are happy to sign off on anti-India OIC statements.