A rising tide of hate crimes against multi-faith communities in India is deluging throughout the country. Whether it's in the form of hateful speeches made by politicians or attacks on religious minorities, mostly Muslims and Dalits.
The terrorism which is found in India includes ethno-nationalist terrorism, religious terrorism, left wing terrorism and narco terrorism. A common definition of terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government for political, religious, or ideological goal.
This is exactly what is happening in India where the acquiescent environment has been created and some people openly galvanize hate speeches and assaults which is belligerently fostered by the majoritarian anti-minority ideology by our politicans. Therefore minorities are systematically demonised as sexual predators, as being sympathetic to terrorism and as people who slaughter and eat cow, which is held sacred by many Hindus.
This has stimulated widespread social legitimisation of anti-Muslim prejudice, hate speeches and hate crimes against them. The Vigilante mobs who style themselves as cow protectors or so called (gau Rakshaks) lynch people, visibly supported in many instances by the local police officials because without their support they can't commence such crime against minorities.
A report by the website of IndiaSpend found that around 97% of hate attacks in the name of the cow since 2010 occurred after the NDA government came into power in 2014 General elections. About half of the attacks are committed against Muslims, but 86% of the people who were being killed are also Muslims. And around 8% of those killed were from the Dalit community of untouchables.
Communal Violence
There have been several instances in the past which shows religious violence against Muslims since the Partition took place in 1947, frequently in the form of violent attacks on Muslims by the Hindus. Over 10,000 people have been killed in Hindu Muslim riots since 1950 and around 6,933 instances of communal violence took place in 1954 and 1982. The causes of this violence against Muslims has its roots lying in the Indian history, the resentment towards the Islamic domination of India during the Middle Ages.
Among the largest incidents were the Great Calcutta killings in 1946. Then the great massacre of Muslims in Jammu district of Jammu and Kashmir in the year 1947, where large number of killing of Muslims took place. Then the East-Pakistan riots in 1969, Bhiwandi riot in 1985, and Gujarat riot in 2002 and more recently the Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013. These kinds of violence have been well-established and well planned since partition. With dozens of studies documenting exemplification of mass violence against minority groups has been proved.
According to a report there were 6,933 instances of communal violence incidents between 1954 and 1982 and between 1968 & 1980, there were 530 Hindus and 1,598 Muslims killed in a total of 3,949 instances of mass violence. In 1989, there were incidents of mass violence throughout the north of India.
Political parties and organizations connected to the Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation i.e (RSS) which has been banned. In particular some scholars says that the (BJP) and Shiv Sena for complicity in these incidents, they are using violence against Muslims as a part of a larger electoral strategy which they have achieved during 2014 elections.
Another reason for the outbreaks of such violence against minorities must be the upward mobility of the lower castes caused by the expansion of the economy. The violence has become a replacement for class tensions. Nationalists, rather than dealing with the claims from the lower classes instead view Muslims and Christians as not fully Indians due to their faith/religion and labelled them "Anti-Nationals" on several occasions.
Hate Legacy
In 2015, a 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq an ironsmith was dragged from his house after a local Hindu temple announced that a cow, considered sacred by many Hindus had been slaughtered. He was beaten to death in front of his family and his son was severely wounded.
In 2016, a PhD student Rohit Vemula in hyderabad committed suicide by hanging himself in his hostel room which tells us, Most of us think of caste oppression through the lens of the “outdated” practice of untouchability, violent caste clashes in the distant countryside and in lavish biopics on the silver screen. But caste is alive in our homes and streets. In his suicide note, he blamed the System for his death.
In July 2017, a Muslim dairy farmer called Pehlu Khan was attacked and beaten to death by scores of Hindu cow vigilantes on highway. Another Muslim man, four months after Pehlu Khan, who was also a dairy farmer Umar Mohammed was shot dead allegedly by Hindu cow vigilantes.
Most of the social activists say Hindu far-right groups have been emboldened by PM Modi after he rose to power in 2014. Leaders of Modi's Hindu nationalist have openly declared India a nation of Hindus, posing a challenge to its multi-faith constitutional commitment.
This is extremely inhumane statements and ofcourse a bereaved part that the role of the police is extremely missing in this context. Because they tend to register cases against the victims rather than the accused. So we are going to see more and more of this kind of hate crimes against multi-faith communities in India. And this is one of the worst crimes in the recent upsurge of attacks suffered by Indian Muslims and Hindu lower caste communities.
More Recently in western state of Rajasthan, a Muslim man was hacked and burned to death in a suspected hate crime. The half-burned body of the victim was found as 48-year-old Mohammed Afrazul, who was working as a labourer in the town. The accused made a YouTube clip in which he showed the accused leading the Muslim man to a secluded spot and attacking him with a weapon. The victim cries out for help until he falls numb. The attacker was identified as Hindu far-right member who was saying that this is the fate that awaits you. Stop 'love jihad' in India, or else you all will meet the fate of this man, the attacker was saying in Hindi. He then proceeds to douse the body with petrol and set it on fire. This is a brutal atrocity on the part of humanity.
Love Jihad
The term "Love Jihad" was first used around 2007 in Kerala and neighbouring Karnataka state, but it became part of the public discourse in 2009. It was originally referred to as "Romeo Jihad" but now it has been replaced by "Love Jihad".
One of the antecedent of violence against Muslims is the Far-right Hindu groups allege that "Love Jihad" is a conspiracy by Muslim groups to lure Hindu women into marriages with Muslim men and to convert them to Islam. Some far-right Hindu groups have depicted interfaith marriages as a Muslim conspiracy to annihilate Hinduism in India.
In 2009, a 15-year-old girl Silija Raj who eloped with her Muslim boyfriend in Karnataka was used as propaganda by far-right Hindu groups to peddle the "Love Jihad" myth. This term was widely used by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of PM Narendra Modi during elections in northern UP state, contributing to the polarisation of the electorate along with the religious lines.
In 2014, a Muslim man Mohsin Shaikh was lynched in Pune by around 25 members of a group called the Hindu Rashtra Sena.
Meanwhile as the judicial battle continues, a 15-year old boy Junaid Khan was singled out as Muslim for the cap he was wearing and stabbed to death in a train in Haryana. The victims say the stakes are high and the cow is just an excuse, their only aim is to put Muslims of the country under siege and an attempt is being made to turn them into a second-class citizens.
Several protests have turned out across India against a wave of attacks on Muslims by mobs that accuse them of killing cows or eating beef. Waving "Not in My Name" banners and "Stop Cow Terrorism" which is also joined by a cast of intellectuals, rational people and social activists with the relatives of recent lynching victims.
Almost all of the 63 attacks since 2010 involving cow-related violence were recorded after Modi government and his Hindu nationalist supporters RSS and Shiv Sena came to power in 2014.
According to a report. Twenty-eight victims out of which 24 were Muslims, have been killed and 124 injured since 2010 in cow-related violence.
According to Omar Khalidi:
Anti-Muslim violence is planned and executed to render Muslims economically and socially crippled and, as a final outcome of that economic and social backwardness, assimilating them into lower rungs of Hindu society.
The actions of anti-Hindu and anti-India militant groups in Kashmir and Pakistan have reinforced anti-Muslim feelings in India, which has strengthened the Hindu Right group. The Hindutva discourse portrays Muslims as traitors and state enemies, whose patriotism is being suspected very often. The violence is perpetrated by Hindutva forces.
Since after Independence, the hate crimes are continously committed against minorities.
During 1964, Kolkata riots between Hindus and Muslims had left over a hundred people dead, 438 people were injured. Over 7000 people were arrested. 70,000 Muslims have fled their homes.
During the 1969 Gujarat riots , it is estimated that around 630 people lost their lives.
In Hashimpura massacre that took place in 1987, during the Hindu-Muslim riots in Meerut city in Uttar Pradesh, when 19 personnel of (PAC) allegedly rounded up 42 Muslim youth from the Hashimpura Locality took them in truck to the outskirts where they were shot and their bodies were dumped in water canals.
The destruction of the Babri Mosque by the Hindu nationalists led directly to the 1992 Bombay Riots. Several scholars have likewise concluded that the riots must have been pre-planned, and that Hindu rioters had been given access to information about the locations of Muslim homes and businesses from non-public sources. This violence is widely reported, orchestrated by Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist group led by Bal thackeray.
Since partition, Muslim community has been subject to sectarian violence. In Gujarat in 2002 an incident described as an act of Fascistic state terror, when Hindu extremists carried out acts of violence against the Muslim minority population.
Despite the secular fabric and religiously tolerant constitution of India, broad religious representation in various aspects of society including the government, the active role played by autonomous bodies such as NHRC of India and National Commission for Minorities, and the ground-level work being out by NGO'S. Desultory and sometimes deliberate acts of religious violence tend to occur as the root causes of religious violence often run deep in history, religious activities and politics of India.
India’s descent into primordial sanguinary is disturbing. This is not just because the victims are usually minorities, Overwhelmingly Muslims and Dalits reason enough to be disturbed. The hate crimes against multi-faith communities is not only going to impacts Minorities, but also India as a whole and these roots are hampering the progress of the country. So Let us take a pledge, Being a citizen of this country to kick out such hate mongers from the society and to stop these despicable acts.
[Shazia Banoo is Law student from Jammu University.]
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