Addressing the Dire situation created by Hindu Extremist groups in India

1982, you come home from the rice fields after working over 7 hours in a day to both of your parents excited and announcing that you will soon be moving into the Assam village of Alisingha. You don’t fully understand but the Indian government has allowed you full asylum within their nation. You make the stark journey from your home in rural Bangladesh. As you and your family make the treacherous 520 mile journey from your home in Muktagacha to Alisingha you and your siblings begin to idolize the life that you will experience in India including a proper education and no child labor. The hope that is fostered between you and your siblings as your family carries you through the journey to your new home. As a Bengali Muslim you have different ideologies from the people in your new home. As you arrive in your new home it becomes clear that this life is better than the one that you had imagined. After another year you are mostly settled into your new life in school and many other endeavors with hopes to join the local youth cricket team. Suddenly a seemingly out of the blue decision is made by the government to give you and the rest of the immigrants voting rights, your family celebrates the newfound democracy and seems welcomed. However, many people in the Assam region are of Hindutva ideology and begin to protest these newfound rights of the Bengali Muslim’s. On the morning of February 18th, 1983 you wake up and begin to prepare for school, however, it becomes clear that this morning is not like any other day. Fires have already begun in your nearby village with your fellow Mosque members laying cold and lifeless in the streets. Your father begins to round you and your siblings up in an attempt to escape. You see your door brutally bashed in as a group of 5 Hindu men wearing masks and holding guns enter your home. Your father falls to the ground with your youngest sibling in his hand, dead. Your mother attempts to gather you and your siblings but these attempts are futile. Your mother and your other siblings fall to the ground, lifeless.  You attempt to run but again you feel a sharp pain in your lower leg and fall to the ground instinctively. Narrowly surviving you have just become one of the few survivors of the Nellie Massacre. Years later you are 50 years old and attempting to get repercussions for the people that murdered your family and left you nearly crippled. This attempt to get justice is met with no consequences from the Indian government. Decades later you and other survivors as well as people passionately involved are now protesting the injustice that the Indian government has faced you with. Now this is a reality for countless Muslims across India, only hope will allow them to outrun their harsh reality. 

The Indian government needs to take immediate action against Hindu extremist groups through legal and criminal consequences to prevent the further chaos and death towards the Muslim population of the Indian subcontinent.  Throughout the existence of the Indian country since the partition of India and Pakistan via the British Empire. Hindu extremist groups have been implementing and committing harsh crimes against the Muslim population with little to no resistance from the Indian government. One of the groups at the forefront of this injustice is the Hindu Mahasabha, a group that was created in Northern India in 1915 (Mandalaparthy 1), with the intent of pushing the ideologies of harsh Hindu nationalism towards the entire country. The group as well as many other prominent groups practice an ideology of “Hindutva” which is essentially an excuse for stark Hinduistic Nationalism that parties such as the Hindu Mahasabha Practice. The political party that has reigned supreme for the past 40-50 years, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has implemented Hindutva ideologies throughout the course of their existence. Current prime minister Narendra Modi, has even shown love towards the more extremist Hindu National groups such as the Mahasabha. (Mogul, Gupta 1) One example at the forefront of this is the conference that took place in late 2022 in which a woman incited violence from a group of people in which she stated, “Her words and calls for violence from other religious leaders were met with a roar of applause from the large audience, a video from the three-day conference in the northern Indian city of Haridwar shows” (Mogul, Gupta 1). This event was detailed by CNN writers Rhea Mogul and Swati Gupta. These conferences in specific towns were met by little to no resistance from the Indian government aside from minimal arrests with nonexistent prosecution despite repeatedly inciting violence. Another prime example of the government seemingly turning a blind eye to illegal or hateful activities  was the mysterious murder of a political official and Guru that had heavily opposed the ideology of the BJP and Hinduistic nationalism. Detailed by Nikhil Mandalaparthy, an awarded writer with many other published works, and published by Religion News Service (RNS), Mandalaparthy details the investigation and stating “Baba Lal Das, the mahant of Ayodhya’s Ram Janmabhoomi Mosque and a strident opponent of Hindu nationalist groups, was mysteriously murdered in 1993 with little police or government investigation despite the severity” (Mandalaparthy 1). This shows that the ruling BJP and other government organizations are seemingly turning a blind eye to various illegal activities or malpractices within their nation due to political or religious alignment. No arrests were made due to the murder of the leader despite the clear illegal actions, this also sparked major uprisings against the lack of prosecution despite the severity of the crime. (Mandalaparthy 1) Many outside news sources attempted to reach out to Indian internal parties such as the Hindu Mahasabha and BJP prime minister’s office, primarily CNN stated “Police have not formally charged anyone with any crime. CNN has contacted India’s Ministry of Minority Affairs, the Hindu Mahasabha and Pandey, but has not received a response” (Mogul, Gupta 1) This further shows the parties inability to properly address the potential issues with their governing practices. Throughout the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule we have seen their inability or rather lack of care towards preventing further attacks caused by Hindu extremist groups. 

(2) Religious violence from Hindu Nationalist groups has been happening for decades with little to no repercussions from the government. Starting in 1947 with the initial partition of India there had been countless Muslim V. Hindu conflicts in the subcontinent, in fact, initial fights after the partition resulted in an estimated 14-28,000 casualties with the bulk of which being Muslim deaths (approximately 65%)  (Mogul, Gupta 1). After these initial conflicts following the partition, in 1969 a series of riots broke out in the Northwestern Indian state of Gujarat, these riots would become infamous and known as the Gujarat Riots of 1969. These riots began on September 18, 1969 after a group of Muslims attacked a group of Hindu Sadhus (A holy person in Hinduism) after the Sadhu’s cow had interfered with the Muslims. After these attacks the Hinduist groups took revenge on the Muslims and laid waste to a Muslim dargah (Tomb building of a vital Muslim member of clergy) (Maizland 1).  The violence primarily began in the city of Ahmedabad, and then slowly crept towards other areas, notably small cities or villages such as  Vadodara, Nadiad, Anand, and Gondal. Writers at the persecuted state “ [The protests] involved large scale massacre, arson, and looting. According to official reports, 660 people (unofficial count claimed two thousand deaths) were killed during the riot while 1,074 were injured and 48,000 (Maizland 2) lost their properties. The Muslim community suffered the bulk of the blow of these riots. Of the 660 death toll, 430 were Muslims and an estimated 32 million rupee value of property were either lost or damaged” (Persecuted 1). This shows the sheer toll that this took on the Muslim community in a comparison to the Hindu community with the Muslim population suffering 84% of the deaths despite having substantially less population in that specific region during that time period. (Mogul, Gupta 1) Following the Gujarat Riots the relationship between Hindu and Muslim groups, though uneasy, was left mostly non-violent, that is until 1989. In 1989 a series of large scale massacres took place in the Indian state of Assam and involved 14 villages including Alisingha, Kalapathar, Basundhari, Bugduba Beel, Bugduba Habi, Borjola, Butuni, Dongabori, Indurmari, Mati Parbat, Muladhari, Mati Parbt, Silbheta, Borburi and Nellie (Mogul, Gupta 1). In this specific riot was one of the most one sided with all but one of the victims being Muslim. This massacre was prompted by the choice by Indira Gandhi (3rd prime minister) to give voting rights to 4 million Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants in the Assam region of India’s eastern enclave. After being given their rights to vote the native Hindu groups of the Assam region took issue with their newfound neighbors and began to take unrest due to their Bengali Muslim religious ideologies that the Hinduist population took offense too because they viewed it as a direct attack towards their beliefs. These initial grievances were further heightened by the festivities of Muharram (First month of the Islamic calendar) and the Hindu holiday Bishari Puja (celebration of the Hindu Snake goddess). Due to these rising tensions, the locals believe that their rights to vote were being infringed upon due to the “foreigners” gaining access to voting. These tensions eventually boiled over into a mass genocide of over 2000 Bengali Muslims in this area alone. These numbers may be inaccurate due to the governments want to hide the actual death count with unofficial reports reaching over 10,000 deaths (Maizland 1). The true injustice came after these attacks, the Assam government attempted to publish an official report as well as official arrest warrants for the responsible parties. However, the Indian government rejected all arrest warrants and made no federal or state level arrests despite the severe loss of life that had taken place. The movie “What the Fields Remember” in which it goes into further detail on the grave injustice that the victims of the onslaught experiences due to solely religion. One of the potentially most infamous riots was the Anti-Sikh riots of 1984 which started due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. This assassination was carried out by the Prime Minister’s two bodyguards who awoke the prime minister from her sleep and murdered her in cold blood. This assassination was prompted by an operation known as Operation Blue Star, stated by the Persecuted “The 1984 Anti-Sikh riot started as a military operation now known as Operation Blue Star aimed to remove Sikh militants with weapons inside the Golden Temple. This operation was considered the biggest internal security mission undertaken to crush the Khalistan movement, a political Sikh movement advocating for the creation of an independent state for Sikhs” (Persecuted 1). The two bodyguards that carried out the vicious murder were both of the Sikh religion that had recently seen its holiest site be raided and have its leaders removed simply because of belief. This operation and the subsequent assassination that took place resulted in one of the largest mass violences against  a specific religion and is seemingly only topped by the Holocaust and anti-semetic movements of WWII. These riots killed an estimated 42,000 Sikhs in the span of only 2 months. (On top of this an estimated 1.3 Million people were displaced from their homes in either an effort to flee or the subsequent destruction of homes in certain areas. (Persecuted 2) These riots were met with little to no prevention from the government who was still primarily Hindu. These are only slight examples of the mass violence that has been carried out by people with Hindu Nationalist beliefs against the undeserving. 

(3)Sri Lankan government officials are heavily ignoring the attacks and offenses that Hindu extremist groups are committing against their population. In 2019 there was a series of vicious bombings in Colombo, the country's economic and populational capital. These attacks were carried out by Hindu extremists that had been unsatisfied with the government's new allowingness to allow christian and Muslims into their government. The Initial reports detailed the attacks starting  08:45 (Military Time),  Sunday the 21st of April detailed a series of 6 nearly simultaneous attacks against Easter Sunday masses primarily in the capital city, Colombo. Later a 7th attack was committed nearly 5 hours later by Hindu groups yet again at a Muslim run zoo in the capital city killing another 5 people. The eighth attack was a bomb detonated near a police raid of a prominent Hindu leader’s complex outside of Colombo that killed 3 police officers in the process. The final attack was 2 correlated arson cases carried out against two Muslim convenience stores in the capital and resulted in another 2 deaths each. The death toll according to the BBC’s Joseph Cameron ``The official death toll had reached 359 by Thursday. However, the Sri Lankan government then revised the figure down, blaming a calculation error (Cameron 1). This “miscalculation” is most likely not true and simply an effort to hide the true issue that this presented for the Sri Lankan population. Due to a supposed lack of communication “Security services had been monitoring the group responsible, but the prime minister and the cabinet were not warned, ministers said” (Cameron 2). The general population of Sri Lanka was never told what truly happened and who was responsible. Minimalist arrests were made in order to prevent these attacks despite the death toll, with Sri Lankans stating “Four years have gone, still no one has been punished for this brutal attack. It is really disgusting. We need to know who are the real culprits and their motives,” said Ruwan Fernando, 47” (Mandalaparthy 1).  These statements were made during a protest in the capital taking place earlier in 2022, many of the people were still furious due to the lack of federal punishment from the government. The group says that they  “blamed the government for not taking adequate measures to deliver justice for the victims of the bombings and punish those responsible” (Mandalaparthy 1) These protests had reached numbers in the thousands by their peaks but were still met with little to no repercussions from the federal government. These attacks should not lay dormant with no action taken from any federal groups and need to be stopped to prevent further attacks of this nature.

(4) The groups or laws that were implemented in order to keep these groups in check have slowly been deteriorating, soon they will be nonexistent.  Throughout the reign of the Bharatiya Janata party we have slowly seen the more strict punishments for the groups that are in opposition to the Hindu centered government. Countless lynchings have been taken out against Muslims across the country for things that are legal and not immoral in comparison to the violence that they are seemingly met with.  With the conversation’s lead development writer, Sumit Ganguly stating, “During the five years while the Indian government has been led by Modi and the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party – or BJP – several Muslims were lynched on allegations of eating beef or even just transporting cattle for slaughter. As the number of attacks on Muslims grew, [Narendra] Modi mostly remained silent” (Ganguly 1). This is only one of the countless indications that the Indian government is progressively beginning to ignore threats towards muslim communities. Narendra Modi is the current prime minister of India and has seemingly been ignorant to the attacks carried out against his non-Hindu population. Differently from America’s ideology on secularism which is a strict line between church and state, India’s idea of this concept appears to be more on a “respect” for all religions and ideology of religion is seemingly capable of influencing the ideologies of government. (Ganguly 1) This ideology of secularism has allowed the ideologies of various concepts such as the aforementioned “Hindutva” to creep into the policies and laws of Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party as a whole. To further show that these groups have slowly been eliminated it is detailed by Yasmeen Serhan, a decorated writer at The Atlantic “Many of the Indian journalists, lawyers, activists, and religious leaders I’ve spoken with for this article say that the institutions on which the country once relied to keep this kind of ethnic supremacism in check—the courts, opposition parties, and independent media—have buckled” (Serhan 2). This reprehension of Muslim groups from Hindu nationalist groups has been occurring for decades, starting in 1947 a man by the name of Mohammed Ali Jinnah began a Muslim idea following a group known as the  All-India Muslim League. However, later in 1949 the leaders of this group were lynched by the groups in support of the Bharatiya Janata party and split off of the Hindu Mahasabha group, Bharatiya Jana Sangh party. This lynching led to the inevitable fall of the group with the areas that had previously supported the All Muslim League falling to the newly founded Janata group. In recent attempts to further prevent Muslims from political power “a Congressional government banned Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” [Novel detailing the life of the prophet Muhammad] even before Iran had issued the fatwa against Rushdie. On another occasion, it overturned an Indian Supreme Court judgment that had granted alimony to a Muslim woman. Members of the Muslims orthodoxy were outraged with the decision, as they deemed it to be an affront to their religious beliefs” (Ganguly 2). These further developments all seemed conveniently well timed with the attacks and even genocides of Muslim groups across the nation. 

(5)The Indian government has taken heavier repercussions against the Muslim and other religious groups in comparison to the Hindu extremist parts of their population. With prominent Muslim leaders being consistently being attacked simply for their religious beliefs opposing that of the central government. Stated by Nikhil Mandalaparthy, a prominent writer ““Swami Agnivesh, an outspoken critic of Hindu nationalism and caste who fought for the rights of many marginalized communities in India, was repeatedly attacked by Hindu nationalist mobs on multiple occasions” (Mandalaparthy 1). These Hindu nationalist mobs that are seemingly left unchecked, well are being left unchecked due to the government’s alignments with their Hindu-ccentric beliefs, ideologies and practices. One example of this is a recent series of events that played out in the Indian city of Khargone. The issues that had occurred had happened when a mob of Hindu nationalists began yelling slurs and other hateful language towards a nearby Mosque as they broke their Ramadan fast, this harassment was supposedly met with the throwing of objects by both groups. These led to a series of attacks between Muslims and Hindus in the nearby areas leading to an initial death toll of 23 from these attacks (19 of which Muslim) (Serhan 3). Following these attacks all eyes had turned to the Indian government to see what their plan of action was to reprimand the responsible parties and groups that had led to deaths. Stated by Hari Kumar, a  reporter in the New Delhi bureau of The New York Times, “After the battle government officials tore down a large muslim neighborhood near where the events took place while the Hindu groups were left with little to no repercussions despite questionable or incorrect decisions from both responsible parties” (Kumar, Mahsal, et al. 1). These actions misplaced an estimated 42,000 people including many families and resulted in a series of large protests in the nearby city of Indore ((Kumar, Mahsal, et al. 1). These decisions were hastily made primarily by a sole Hindu governor who most likely did not want to see his Hindu population suffer despite their wrongdoings against the Muslims. These unfair repercussions are large occurrences, as well as upsetting and harming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. 

(6) Due to a person’s religion they are not given the necessary resources and opportunities to thrive financially as well as being oppressed by the Indian government. In India since their partition we have seen sparse conflicts between Hindu nationalists and the mostly innocent Muslim population of the country. Aside from these unfair punishments and ignorance of violence it appears that the Indian government is making repeated attempts at stagnating the population and economic prowess of their Muslim minorities. The Hindu groups and people at the forefront of the Indian political world appear to want to keep their “Hindutva” ideology at the top of the precipice of the Indian political world via keeping Muslim groups down in order to avoid them having even the slightest chance at advancing towards a brighter future and potentially powerful positions. With certain Hindu figures even calling for a cleansing or reduction of Minority populations. According to Rhea Mogul, a South Asian Writer for CNN Digital Worldwide “In 2015, Sadhvi Deva Thakur, then a senior member of Parliament, caused widespread controversy when she told reporters Muslims and Christians should undergo forced sterilization to control their population growth” (Mogul, Gupta 1). This ideology of a potential cleansing is certainly frightening for the Muslim and other minority religious groups. This want to potentially decrease or limit the population of minorities puts the aforementioned idea of Hindu government officials wanting to suppress their Muslim population on the forefront. At this point it almost seems as if the Hindu nationalist government is making an attempt to hide their Muslim population especially considering laws passed such as a law covered by the council of foreign relations, Lindsay Maizland stating “States have increasingly passed laws restricting Muslims’ religious freedoms, including anti-conversion laws and bans on wearing headscarves in school” (Maizland 1). These limitations of religious expression are further detriments to the ability for Muslims to show their personality rather than blending in with the mostly Hinduistic crowd that surrounds them.  As well as this, one of the cardinal requirements for having a prosperous minority is representation within the government, however, as stated by Linsay Maizland, “The representation of Muslims in parliament has stagnated: after the 2019 elections, Muslims held just 5 percent of seats. That’s partly due to the rise of the BJP, which by mid-2022 had no Muslim members of its party in parliament” (Maizland 1) These limitations have led to other worrying statistics such as the average household income being 70% less for Muslims in comparison to Hindu groups (Maizland 1). These statistics show the utter disparities in not only wealth but also political and social prowess within their own country. 

Since the partition created by the British in 1947 to today we have seen the abuse and mistreatment that Muslim communities are facing in places that are meant to feel like their home. Nevermind the grave injustices committed in acts such as the 1948 Hyderabad Massacre, the 1964 Calcutta massacre, the 1970 Gujarat riots, the 1970 Bhiwandi riots, the 1980 Moradabad riots, the great 1983 Nellie massacre, the 1985 Gujarat riots, the 1987 Hashimpura massacre, the 1989 Bhagalpur violence, the 1992 Bombay riots, the 1993 Pangal massacre, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the 2006 Vadodara riots, the 2006 Malegaon bombings, the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, the 2014 Assam violence, the 2015 Ballabhgarh riot, the 2018 Bihar riots, the 2020 Delhi riots (Mandalaparthy 2) and the thousands of other homicides committed. These grave injustices have led to over 194,000 deaths of Muslim men, women and children throughout the country. However, nothing is done to the people responsible,(Mandalaparthy 1) the families of the deceased left craving for justice that will never be served. So is this religious allignment of the government truly an adequate reason to not stop the members responsible for the stark genocide of hundreds of thousands? These series of grave injustices require immediate repercussions from the Indian government in order to prevent these nationalistic and unjust events caused by Hindu extremist groups to provide closure for the families of those deceased. 

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newstimes.com/news/politics/article/sri-lankan-protesters-demand-justice-for-easter-17910131.php 

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