Hindu vigilantes increase attacks on India’s Muslims
Opposition lawmakers cite ‘climate of fear’
One April afternoon, a group of men clad in saffron scarves barged into a house in Meerut, 40 miles northeast of here, and dragged out a young Muslim man and a Hindu woman. Their offense: They were an interfaith couple in love.
The men, part of a group called the Hindu Youth Brigade, beat the man, videotaped the incident, then handed him over to police for charges of obscenity. The traumatized woman, who wept and covered her face with her scarf, was let off with a warning.
“We are not against love, but this guy changed his name (to a Hindu one) to mislead the girl. Let police investigate,” said Nagendar Pratap Singh Tomar, chief of the brigade.
The Meerut incident April 12 is the latest example of Hindu vigilantes attacking Muslims in this overwhelmingly Hindu country after the gains made by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in elections in March.
Several similar attacks have occurred since March, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose an anti-Muslim firebrand, Yogi Adityanath, to be chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, the heartland of the nation’s Hindu population.
On April 13, another interfaith engaged couple in Meerut was attacked in the street by brigade members. The Muslim woman faced verbal abuse while her fiancé, a Hindu, was beaten for protesting.
Also in April, two dairy farmers returning from a cattle fair in a northern state were attacked by vigilantes, leaving one dead and the other seriously wounded. Cows are considered sacred by Hindus, who make up 80% of India’s population of 1.3 billion.
“We had purchased the cows legally for dairy farming, but our vehicle was intercepted by these men, and they beat us up so badly that my neighbor died,” Azmat Khan, 27, from a remote village in Haryana, said from his bed.
India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, said Muslims feel a deep sense of dread since Modi, a Hindu nationalist, took office in 2014.
“For the last 30 months, a climate of fear and insecurity is cre- ated by repeated, deliberate, divisive and provocative statements,” said Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a member of parliament and spokesman for the Congress party. “They are seeking to impose a single uniform ethic ... whether it is in relation to food, dress, culture or thinking.”
Modi’s party strongly disagrees. “There has been an attempt by rival parties and sections of the media to stoke a persecution complex among minorities based on rare, isolated events,” BJP spokesperson Narasimha Rao said. “Propaganda by vested interests has miserably failed because it is unreal, fabricated and fictional.”