Explanation:

India lashed out at the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), after the grouping 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.

• The Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation is the world’s second largest multilateral body after the UN.
• It counts 57 members, all of which are Islamic countries or Muslim majority members.
• The Central African Republic, Russia, Thailand, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the unrecognised Turkish Cypriot “state”, have Observer status.
• The OIC’s stated objective is “to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world”.
• 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 Jersualem by a 28-year-old Australian in 1969.

India & 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 ejected at Pakistan’s behest.
• In 2006, as India turned the economic corner and improved ties with the US, Saudi Arabia invited Delhi to join as an observer.
• But India stayed away because of a multiplicity of reasons, not least of which was that as a secular country, it did not want to join an organisation founded on religion.
• Plus 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.
• That invitation came again at the 45th session of the Foreign Ministers’ Summit in 2018, when Bangladesh, the host, suggested that India, where more than 10 per cent of the world’s Muslims live, should be given observer status but Pakistan opposed the proposal.
• In 2019, India made its maiden appearance at the OIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting, as a “guest of honour”.

Role of Pakistan

• 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.
• As a result, over the years, the organisation has issued several statements on Kashmir that have been supportive of Pakistan and critical of Indian “atrocities”.

Hence both statements are correct.