Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s strong reply to the ‘negative western perception’ regarding Indian minorities  

All eyes are now on India who will be hosting the G20 summit this year where leaders of some of the most powerful nations on earth will arrive in the country. India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman arrived in Washington DC on Monday to chair the second G20 finance ministers and central governors’ meeting as well as IMF’s spring meetings, where she encountered a question about how does investments in India get affected due to the negative perception about the state of minorities in India, especially the Muslim population. Sitharaman gave a sharp response to that question by highlighting the growth in their standard of living vis-a-vis countries like Pakistan.   

Sitharaman was reported by ANI responding, “India has the second-largest Muslim population in the world, and that population is only growing in numbers. If there is a perception, or if there’s in reality, their lives are difficult or made difficult with the support of the state, which is what is implied in most of these write-ups, I would ask, will this happen in India in the sense, will the Muslim population be growing than what it was in 1947?” She further urged World Trade Organisation to be more “progressive” in nature and to have a fair approach to the voices of all the countries.