India: no country for Muslims
A sense of fear has settled into Muslims of every social class and region, the ever-lurking idea that they are unsafe, that they must adjust to second-class citizenship
A rising tide of hate is surging through India, of toxic speech and attacks on religious minorities, mostly Muslims. A permissive environment that tacitly or openly encourages hate speech and assaults is actively, even aggressively, fostered by the majoritarian anti-minority ideology of the country’s political leadership. Muslims are systematically demonised as sexual predators, as being sympathetic to terrorism and as people who slaughter and eat cow, which is held sacred by many Hindus. Most hate attacks on Muslims are never publicly condemned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is otherwise extremely voluble on Twitter and public addresses. This has fostered widespread social legitimisation of anti-Muslim prejudice, hate speech and hate crimes.
Modi is facing a perfect storm in Gujarat. Can he weather it?
Of course this is not the first time in India’s history that minorities are being attacked. Grave incidents of mass violence against minorities recurred through the 70 years of India’s freedom. But these attacks, often deadly and brutal, were still bound by geography and by time – they occurred in a particular area, had a beginning and an end.
To protest against this, and to declare solidarity with Muslim and Dalit victims of hate attacks, I recently undertook with other peace workers what we described as Karwane Mohabbat, or a Caravan of Love. Travelling through eight provinces, from east to west India, we met the families of those killed in hate attacks, sought forgiveness and shared in their suffering. We discovered that such attacks had become commonplace across India, and very few are being reported.
In almost every one of the 55 families we met on our journey, police registered criminal charges against the victims, accusing them of being cow smugglers and openly protecting the attackers. In some cases, police even killed the victims of hate attacks. Muslim victims held little hope about any possibility of justice in the current climate. Another troubling feature of many lynch attacks was the filming of the attacks by the perpetrators, or their supporters. They uploaded and widely circulated these gruesome videos on social media, effectively turning lynching into a public spectacle – as public entertainment.