Just one day before UK Minister visited a JCB factory in the state of Gujarat in India, North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) moved in with bulldozers to raze homes, shops, properties, and Masjids mostly belonging to Muslims in the Jahangirpuri area of Northwest Delhi. Even though NDMC claimed that it was an “anti-encroachment” drive to remove illegal encroachments, the drive was aimed to destroy shelters, Masjids, and businesses of Muslim residents in the area. This becomes evident from the fact that most of the people at the wrong end of the bulldozer were Muslims. The “anti-encroachment” drive took place just one day after communal clashes broke in the area. On Saturday, 16 April, a Shobha Yatra was taken out by Hindu groups on the occasion of Hanuman Jayanti. Since Jahangirpuri has a sizable Muslim population, communal clashes broke out in the area.
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What happened in Jahangirpuri was not an isolated incident. It was a repeat of what had already taken place in many other states of India, including Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. A bunch of Hindu fanatics organize processions on Hindu festivals and deliberately choose the route of the procession through Muslim neighborhoods. The participants in these processions can be seen brandishing swords, and firearms and holding saffron flags. They are also seen chanting anti-Muslim slogans, hurling insults at Muslim bystanders, and issuing threats to Muslims. There also have been incidents where such processions surrounded various mosques and planted Saffron flags on their gates. And these incidents eventually lead to communal flare-ups, violence, and riots in these areas. However, this is followed by government action- arresting of the suspected rioters who mostly happen to be Muslims and then the anti-encroachment drives whose victims are also mostly Muslims.
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Hindu festivals have now become scary for Indian Muslims. Days before the Jahangirpuri incident, stones were hurled at a Ram Navami procession in the Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh. The following day, the state government moved in with bulldozers to destroy the properties of suspected rioters. They destroyed 45 properties belonging mostly to Muslims. There were no court proceedings, and the accused were not convicted in a court of law. No respect was shown towards the principle that everyone is innocent till proven guilty. The district administration of Khargone defended their action arguing that “the main idea behind the move is to instill fear of financial losses among the accused” and that the properties were illegal.
It is not that communal clashes have occurred for the first time in India. These are a regular affair, but the state used to be neutral in most cases. Ever since BJP came to power in India in 2014, the neutrality of the state in communal clashes has been questioned. If videos and visuals coming out of places, where communal violence happened, are to be believed, the police chose sides and, in some incidents, can even be seen helping the majority community by attacking the minority community. Further, most of the accused arrested in this case are Muslims. Therefore, the state has lost its neutrality. What is also frightening is that civil society and opposition in India have remained silent about this carnage of Muslims. The fact is that the current ruling government has mainstreamed right-wing ideology and the median voter supports Hindutva ideology. For political advancement and electoral success, all parties have to peddle some sort of Hindutva. BJP and other right-wing parties accuse the secular Congress party of doing Muslim appeasement disguised as secularism. As a result, Congress and various other state parties that have a similar ideology to that of Congress have shifted towards soft-Hindutva. Therefore, the opposition has failed to come up with a strategy of its own to counter Hindutva.
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The electoral rise of Hindutva parties is disconcerting for Muslims. Hindutva for a century now has been seeking to unite Hindus against Muslims. Hindus today are told that Muslim rulers have oppressed Hindus in India for centuries and hence Indian Muslims are a threat to Hindus. “Hinduism is under threat” is a factoid that has been fueling this most contrived sense of threat in the country. The population growth of Muslims in India is being provided as evidence that the Muslim population is growing faster than the Hindu population because they want to reduce Hindus to a minority in their own land. Further, inter-religious marriages between a Muslim man and a Hindu woman are also used to endorse this kind of threat from Muslims. It is alleged that these marriages are “Love Jihad” that Muslims wage on Hindus. The Hindutva ideology alleges that by making Hindu girls fall in love with them, young Muslims convert these girls to Islam. Even when Covid initially spread in India, Muslims were accused of Corona-Jihad because allegedly they intentionally spread Covid in India to harm India’s image. There have also been instances when BJP leaders blamed Muslims for food shortages because they have more birth rates as compared to Hindus. It is a dog whistle to stop the population growth of Indian Muslims. What is scarier is that political scientists argue that BJP is the rise of the second dominant party system in India. The ideology of the BJP has been mainstreamed and all other parties will have to adjust around its ideology and stay as much closer to it as possible. Therefore, political advancement of any kind in such an environment will essentially mean othering of Muslims. The future for Muslims in India is bleak.
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As Johnson’s visit to the JCB factory came just a day after the JCB razed Muslim houses and properties, it shows how ignorant the world has been on the issue of Muslims in India. The kind of violence unleashed on Muslims in India is a repeat of the question that India faced at the time of partition: where do Muslims of India belong? Several activists and scholars have pointed out that the kind and the sequence of events are eerily reminiscent of many genocides in the world. They suggest India is warming up to a genocide. How many more Muslim lives will it take for the world to wake up from its deep slumber on the plight of Indian Muslims?
