A Muslim man sells biscuits in Madhya Pradesh. Image for representation.
Credit: iStock Photo
On October 2, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its update on ‘India’s collapsing religious freedom conditions’.
It highlights the killing, beating, and lynching of individuals by vigilante groups, the arbitrary arrest of religious leaders and the demolitions of homes and places of worship of the minority community. The report describes these incidents as constituting “particularly severe violations of religious freedom”.
The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the US Congress to monitor religious freedom across the globe. India routinely rejects its non-actionable annual reports as “motivated and biased” and based on “misinformation and flawed understanding”.
Responding to the latest USCIRF update on October 3, India described it as a “malicious report”. It suggested that the organisation will be “well advised to utilise its time more productively on addressing human rights issues in the United States.”
Despite these responses to criticism from abroad, the promotion of Islamophobia under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre and in the states is undeniable.
Take the case of the marginalisation of businesses run by Muslims by forcing identity tags on them. The Supreme Court had overruled such orders passed by the police in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Uttarakhand for this year’s ‘Kanwar yatra’ — where devotees carry holy water from the River Ganga to their local temples. The court had ruled that such orders may only be initiated under provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and not by the police.
To overcome this ‘legal infirmity’, on September 24, the UP government using the Food Safety and Standards Act made it mandatory for food establishments to prominently display to the customers the names of the ‘operator, proprietor, manager, and other relevant personnel’.
Inspired by UP’s decision, a minister in the Congress state government of Himachal Pradesh, Vikramaditya Singh announced that every eatery and fast-food cart in the state will have to display the owner’s identity card. He claimed that the decision would allay public "apprehensions" about the rising numbers of migrants (read, Muslims) into the state.
Although he was upbraided by his party and the state government withdrew the order, it is clear that Islamophobia and fear of demographic change — through the alleged ‘hyper-fertility’ of Muslims — are themes that now spill across political lines.
Recently, a BJP leader in Madhya Pradesh (MP) urged organisers of the Navratri garba pandals to set a “gau mutra (cow urine)”- sipping test for those entering the venue. This would prevent, he thought, Muslims from participating in the garba dance with young Hindu women. In previous years, the practice in MP was to weed out undesirable participation in the festive dance by checking aadhaar cards.
The Navratri festival also brings with it moral surveillance by non-State Hindutva organisations like the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad — especially in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The communal tension is heightened by the latent fear that Muslim boys will deceptively seduce young Hindu women leading to relationships that Hindutva fear-mongers call ‘love jihad’. Every year these organisations demand that no opportunities for ‘love-jihad’ should be created by the garba pandals, and often intervene to identify Muslim youngsters trying to enter garba venues and beat them up.
‘Love jihad’ is a coinage that has now moved from rabble-rousers to the honourable courts with Justice Ravi Kumar Diwakar, Additional District and Sessions Judge of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, expanding upon the nefarious designs of ‘love-jihad' in a 42-page order. Its main objective according to him is to establish dominance over India by 'anarchist elements of a particular religion' by waging a demographic war funded by an international conspiracy.
His court order awarding life imprisonment to a Muslim man for raping a Hindu woman spelled out the modus operandi: “The crime of illegal conversion of Hindu girls by trapping them in love through love jihad is being carried out on a large scale by a rival gang, i.e. syndicate, by brainwashing people belonging to the weaker sections of non-Muslims, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and OBC communities, women and children and by speaking ill of their religion, by making derogatory comments about the gods and goddesses, by applying psychological pressure and by luring them with various types of temptations like marriage, job etc., so that conditions like Pakistan and Bangladesh can be created in India too.”
The judge has yet to be pulled up by the superior judiciary for promoting such fears.
The USCIRF references to bulldozers demolishing Muslim properties claiming that they were illegal structures is also a well-established fact. The BJP has even flaunted the bulldozer as a symbol of the fast-track justice it provides in its election campaigns in some north Indian states.
The Supreme Court of India had to step in to stop ‘bulldozer justice’ earlier this year. The court was approached by several people from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan — all BJP-ruled states — where their properties had been demolished as punishment for unproven crimes. The court ruled that no one can “misuse the law and indulge in any constitutional infirmity.”
In a further ruling on October 1, the court emphasised that mere accusations and convictions cannot be a ground for demolition of a citizen’s property and that it would formulate guidelines applicable across the country to prevent this.
The Supreme Court has also been called upon to address cases of hate speech against religious leaders in the garb of ‘Dharam Sansads’ (religious parliaments). Some of these congregations even called for a Muslim genocide.
The fact is that there has been a growth in Hindutva’s culture of intimidation of Muslims in India, especially across the BJP-ruled states. The BJP stokes Islamophobia and fears of demographic transition and religious conversion because in more than a decade in power at the Centre, the BJP government has not been able to tackle the issues of youth unemployment, growing income inequality, ethnic violence, terrorism, and the security and stability of India’s borders.
The fear is that other political parties will see the usefulness of fomenting Hindu ‘fear’ of an imagined increase in the Muslim population and a demographic transition, to help them with elections.
(Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.