Muslims make up a good percentage of India’s 1.4 billion people. Violence and hate speech against Muslims and other minorities have increased under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Hindu nationalist party.
Across the Indian states this Sunday, marauding mobs of Hindu fanatics were out on the streets raising provocative slogans against minority communities, primarily Muslims, and vandalizing mosques. In some places, they carried out physical assaults.
An outspoken section of high-caste Hindus has long been peddling the misplaced religious virtues of vegetarianism and the Hindutva that are bent on establishing the supremacy of Hindus and attempting to force the rest of India to adhere to it.
In a spate of assaults directed at minorities from lynching Muslim cattle traders to the orchestrated opposition against students who wore the Hijab, the Muslim headscarf, India is dangerously hurtling down the road of shameless Hindutva.
India is a diverse country where Hindus comprise 80 percent of the population. Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, and others make up the rest of the country. Indians speak 22 official languages across regions rooted in different landscapes, customs, and traditions.
The hegemonic vision of Hindutva does not sit well with an India that has always celebrated its unity in diversity. Many, therefore, are immensely concerned about its ultimate consequences. Muslims, for that matter, already have reasons to be worried.
Hindu goons torched a mosque in India’s Gurugram city, a day after communal violence in the neighboring Nuh district in northern Haryana state. It injured 60 people and killed an Imam in the violence. The death toll from the violence now stands at a big figure.
Police have identified the Imam as Maulana Saad 19, who led prayers at the Anjuman Jama mosque in Sector 57 in Gurugram, a city of 1.2 million.
The violence erupted after a Hindu religious procession passed through the Muslim-dominated Nuh district. By evening, the violence had spilled over into neighboring Gurugram.
Citizens shouted slogans and held placards during a peace vigil organized by citizens against what they say is a rise in hate crimes and violence against Muslims in India.
India’s rising tide of Hindu nationalism is an affront to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, his great-grandson Tushar Gandhi says, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the revered independence hero’s assassination.
Nathuram Godse, a religious zealot angered by his victim’s conciliatory gestures to the country’s minority Muslim community, shot Gandhi dead at a multi-faith prayer meeting on January 30, 1948.
Godse was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a still-prominent Hindu far-right group. The RSS has not distanced itself from Godse’s actions and remains a potent force, founding Modi’s party decades ago to battle for Hindu causes.
Tushar Gandhi, one of the global peace symbol’s most prominent descendants, says Godse’s views now have a worrying resonance in India. That whole philosophy has now captured India and Indian hearts, the ideology of hate, the ideology of polarization, the ideology of divisions
Modi took office in 2014 and Tushar says his government is to blame for undermining the secular and multicultural traditions. There is no denying that in his heart, he also knows what he is doing, is lighting a fire that will one day consume India itself,” Tushar added.
Tushar Gandhi remains a fierce protector of his ancestor’s legacy of honesty, equality, unity, and inclusiveness. He has written two books about Gandhi and his wife Kasturba, and regularly talks at public events about the importance of democracy.
He has filed legal motions in India’s top court as part of efforts to defend the country’s secular constitution and determination to keep fighting. Using inherently divisive religious nationalism to produce economic growth is a fool’s dream.