Deadly riots in India over new law
More than two dozen people have died, and some say a local politician is responsible for inciting violence.
NEW DELHI — To many in the eastern Delhi neighborhood where a convulsion of religious violence erupted this week, it all began with one man.
Kapil Mishra, a local politician with India’s leading Hindu nationalist party, had just lost an election. Acquaintances in the area, which now feels like a war zone, said he had been looking for a way to bounce back.
Mishra, 39, is known for his outspoken views and flexible politics. As an upper caste Hindu from a political family, he had worked for Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and risen in the ranks of one of India’s most progressive political organizations.
But several years ago he shifted allegiance across the political spectrum to the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s current governing party, which has deep roots in Hindu supremacist ideology.
On Sunday, he appeared at a rally against a group of protesters (most of them women) who were objecting to a new citizenship law widely seen as discriminatory toward Muslims. There he vented his anger in a fiery speech in which he issued an ultimatum to police: Either clear out the demonstrators, who were blocking a main road, or he and his followers would do it themselves.
Within hours, the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in India in years was exploding. Gangs of Hindus and Muslims fought each other with swords and bats, shops burst into flames, chunks of bricks sailed through the air, and mobs rained blows on cornered men.
“Kapil Mishra should be in jail,” said Rupesh Bathla, a businessman who says he has known Mishra since they were teenagers. “He started communal riots. He planted hatred in other people’s hearts.”
By Wednesday, at least 24 people had died, hospital officials said, most from gunshot wounds. Several witnesses said the live fire came from the direction of the police officers, and the dead included Hindus as well as Muslims.
Though property belonging to Hindus was burned, the destruction was much heavier on the
Muslim side.
In Muslim areas, shop after shop was destroyed and entire markets were burned down. Dozens of Muslim residents have accused police officers of standing passively by while the destruction was underway.
With the violence cooling down for the moment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hosted President Donald Trump as the fighting raged, broke his silence Wednesday after Trump had departed, urging people in a Twitter post to “maintain peace and brotherhood at all times.” He added: “Peace and harmony are central to our ethos.”
But concerns lingered among many Indians, including Hindus, that Mishra and his Hindu nationalist supporters have weaponized a very dangerous mood.
Protests against the new citizenship law, which makes it easier for nonMuslim migrants to become full-fledged Indian citizens, have flared intermittently since December. But this past week was the first time the protests turned large numbers of Hindus and Muslims violently against one another.