Under Hindu nationalist leaders, sectarian violence flares in India
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A pile of burnt vehicles in Nuh on Aug 1, after violent communal clashes in the region in Haryana state near the Indian capital New Delhi.
PHOTO: AFP
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NEW DELHI – India saw two acts of religious violence this week which, though uncoordinated and unrelated, are uncommon in the country under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure.
Mr Modi has reconfigured India’s style of government such that it can openly embrace a Hindu identity while demonising and restricting expressions of other faiths.
In the early hours of Monday, on a train bound for Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, a police officer took up his service rifle, fatally shot his superior and then killed three unarmed passengers. All three of the passengers were Muslim men, according to Indian news reports.
Audio from mobile phone videos of the incident filmed inside the train is muffled, but it sounds as if the officer, Chetan Singh, says in Hindi: “If you want to live in Hindustan, you must vote for Modi and Yogi.”
Using an antiquated name for part of South Asia, he appeared to be advocating support for India’s foremost Hindu politicians: Mr Modi, and Mr Yogi Adityanath, the leader of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.
The violence occurred on the same day as a march led by a Hindu nationalist organisation passed through the Nuh region in Haryana state. It is one of the few northern Indian districts in which Muslims are a majority.
The rally, which a Hindu vigilante wanted in the killings of several Muslims had promised to join, dissolved into street fighting, which then gave way to a full-blown riot that spread towards Delhi
As shops, vehicles and a mosque were set ablaze, at least five people were killed, including the mosque’s junior imam, police said.
These scenes have emerged at an awkward time for the country as it prepares to host the Group of 20 summit of industrial and emerging-market nations in New Delhi in September.
Mr Modi has been promoting an economy-focused “India growth story” around the world and has received leadership accolades in France
Far away from Monday’s violence, ethnic hatred has also been erupting in the north-eastern state of Manipur
Mr Modi and Mr Adityanath, and indeed the whole nationalist movement led by Mr Modi, are widely understood to stand on the same side of any conflict that pits India’s Hindus – who make up almost 80 per cent of the country’s population of 1.4 billion – against its Muslims, who make up its largest minority, at roughly 14 per cent.
Mr Adityanath speaks for “law and order” but also talks about “feeding bullets, not biryani” to Muslim troublemakers.
And although Mr Modi tends to be much subtler, on the campaign trail he has said of violent rioters that “we can identify them by their clothes” – meaning the salwar kameez (loose trousers and tunic) favoured by South Asia’s Muslims – and will punish them accordingly.
After national forces were sent in to put out the fires in the aftermath of Monday’s Hindu nationalist march – some of which had been set just a dozen kilometres from New Delhi – police shut down the Internet across much of the affected region, along with schools and public events.
By midday on Tuesday, the authorities had announced that the rioting was over, with 25 or 30 people arrested. But further skirmishes and fires were reported later in the evening.
“Somebody has poisoned the society,” the state’s home minister told an Indian wire service, implying that Muslims were behind the violence. “Somebody engineered the situation.”
The local elected representative Chaudhary Aftab Ahmed, who is Muslim, disagreed, attributing the riots to “administrative and police failure”.
Mr Modi, a popular leader across most of India, has been affiliated with the country’s Hindu nationalist movement since he first stepped into public life.
His leadership of Gujarat state during ethnically driven massacres in 2002, which killed more than 1,000 mostly Muslim people, was a defining role, to his critics and his devotees.
In 2017, as prime minister, Mr Modi elevated Mr Adityanath, a Hindu monk known for his dog-whistle abuse of Muslims, to the leadership of Uttar Pradesh, which is home to about 45 million Muslims.
As in Manipur, where resentful members of a Hindu majority have raged against a non-Hindu minority, so in the case of this week’s episodes between Hindus and Muslims has it been clear that the government stands closer to one side than the other.
Mr Adityanath, who has often been touted as a potential successor to Mr Modi, dons the saffron robes of a Hindu monk as he leads India’s most populous state. And his deputies frequently commission helicopters to shower rose petals on Hindu religious processions.
On Tuesday, in the same state where police officer Singh killed the Muslim passengers in the prime minister’s name, Mr Modi took part in an elaborate Hindu ceremony – and said nothing about the killings.
The Hindu nationalist group that led Monday’s march, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, has also spearheaded a campaign to replace a mediaeval mosque with a temple to the Hindu deity Ram.
It is expected to celebrate the temple’s unveiling before the conclusion of Mr Modi’s re-election campaign in 2024.
On Monday, in a podcast interview with an Indian news agency, Mr Adityanath threw his support behind an effort to demolish another famous mosque to clear the way for building a Hindu temple. He also made comments that made plain his view of the place for India’s two biggest religions.
“The country will be governed by Constitution and not by sect or religion,” he said, in comments aimed at Muslims. “Your sect, your religion may be your way – but inside your home, inside your mosque and your place of worship, and not for demonstrating on the road.” NYTIMES
