An imam stabbed and shot to death in a mosque that was then burned to the ground. A young doctor, walking home, set upon by an armed mob who thrashed and molested her. A railway officer, boarding a train, prowled the carriages for his targets and shot dead three men. The incidents, which all took place in India this week, were seemingly unconnected, yet the victims were united by a common factor: they were all Muslim.
Since the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) came to power in 2014, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, incidents of sectarian violence targeting the Muslim minority, who make up about 14% of the population, have become increasingly frequent.
Hardline vigilante Hindu rightwing groups, emboldened under the Modi regime, have carried out sustained persecution and lynchings of Muslims and held a growing number of rallies and marches platforming anti-Muslim hate speech and genocidal calls to violence. In BJP-controlled states, Muslims have been described as “intruders”, faced discriminatory policies and had their homes bulldozed.
Yet, as India heads towards an election next year with Modi expected to win a third term, many fear such flares-ups of violence will continue to worsen as the pursuit of electoral victories splinters society further down religious lines. Modi has so far remained silent on this week’s events.
“Since this government came into power for a second time in 2019, this kind of violence has accelerated noticeably,” said Neera Chandhoke, a fellow at the Centre for Equity Studies in Delhi. “I’m scared at what’s happening to our society. My worry is that as we get closer to the election, there will be more of these incidents, it will be more funeral pyres and burial grounds.”
Last Friday, as she was coming home from work, 23-year-old Zarin Khan, a physiotherapist from Madhya Pradesh, a BJP-ruled state, ended up in hospital after she was set upon by a mob of four Hindu men. According to her account, they began beating her and attacking her with bats and iron rods, tearing off her hijab, molesting her and shouting religious insults at her. As she pleaded for help they laughed and told her: “You can’t do anything, the administration is ours.”
On Monday, it was the names of Modi and Yogi Adityanath, a hardline Hindu monk who is also a BJP chief minister, that were called out by a railway officer, Chetan Singh, as he committed what many have categorised as a hate crime. After Singh boarded a train bound for Mumbai, he first shot his supervisor and then marched through the carriages and singled out three Muslim men, their religion identifiable by their names and beards, and shot them dead.
“They operate from Pakistan,” Singh can be heard saying in a video circulated of the incident as he stood over the bloodied body of 48-year-old Mohammad Asgar, a bangle-maker who was travelling to find work. “If you want to live in India, you must vote for Modi and Yogi.”
For Asgar’s brother, Mohammad Sanaullah, 36, the killing was beyond comprehension. “It is clear that he was attacked because he was Muslim,” he said. “If my brother can be killed like this, how can I feel safe? How will any Muslim feel safe? This all can be stopped if the government wishes to. But do they want to stop it? I doubt it.”
Similar grief gripped 25-year-old Shadab Anwar. Late on Monday night, his brother Mohammad Saad, 22, an imam, was murdered in a mosque in Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi, by a rightwing Hindu mob of more than 100 men. Police had been standing watch around the mosque at the time and yet the attack on the young cleric was clearly merciless, according to Anwar, who later viewed the body.
“He was attacked brutally,” said Anwar. “His chest was torn. There were several bullet wounds and deep cuts, apparently inflicted by a knife. Even his hands had received cuts.”
Anwar had spoken to his brother less than half an hour before the attack and Saad had assured him he would be safe because of the police protection at the mosque. But at midnight the electricity was cut and not long after the mob descended.
They killed Saad and shot two others, severely injuring them. Four Hindu men have been arrested over the killing. “Where and how will we feel safe?” said Anwar. “This all happened in an urban area, near India’s capital, and in the presence of police.”
The mosque, one of the few places for Muslims to pray in the city, was reduced to blackened rubble, yet the mosque manager, Mohammad Aslam Khan, 58, said he could not return to see the damage. “I am too afraid,” said Khan.
The attack on the mosque and Muslim businesses was deemed to be revenge for an incident earlier that day, after an annual rally organised by the hardline far-right Hindu organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) – which has links to the BJP – through the Muslim-majority district of Nuh, was met with violence from Muslims.
The police and the state government, run by the BJP, have since faced criticism for allowing the rally to take place. According to accounts, as it went through the town, weapons including guns were brandished and anti-Muslim slogans were raised by a VHP cadre. In retaliation, a large crowd of Muslims began throwing stones and setting alight vehicles to stop the march, many having gathered after word spread on social media that a notorious Hindu rightwing leader, who stands accused of murdering two Muslim men in February and burning their bodies, was present.
It quickly erupted into all-out violence, with three mosques vandalised, and two home guards officers killed. The Hindu temple in the town remained untouched.
In a speech by the VHP general secretary, Surendra Jain, before the rally began and captured on video, he said the region was “Hindu land” and referred to Muslims variously as “cow slaughterers”, “Hindu murderers”, “Bangladeshi intruders” and Pakistani spies. He said: “Hindus will not rest in peace, nor let anyone rest in peace till victory is achieved.”
Sandeep Singh, 35, was among several non-Muslim residents of Nuh who said they had always lived peacefully with their Muslim neighbours and described the march as a deliberate provocation by outsiders.
“They came here in the name of a rally but it seemed like they were provoking the Muslims,” he said. “When I saw the mob coming, many with swords and some holding pistols, I rushed inside my house. Then there was firing and commotion outside.” The police, he noted, were walking just behind the VHP mob before the clashes began.
Speaking to local media, the police chief Narendra Bijarniya said: “We never imagined such large-scale violence could happen. There have been shortcomings, no doubt, that’s why the violence happened.”
VHP leaders have denied inciting any violence. According to the BJP chief minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, the clashes were a “big conspiracy” by those who planned an attack on the VHP march. In towns surrounding the area, families reported that dozens of young Muslim men had since been picked up from their homes by police, and hundreds of homes of largely poor migrant Muslim families were bulldozed by state authorities on Thursday, reportedly for “encroaching on government land”.
In the aftermath, police struggled to contain the tensions. On social media, Hindu rightwing leaders put out calls to incite more violence on Muslim towns and in one nearby village of Manesar, VHP leaders held a meeting where it is alleged they called for Muslims to “leave as soon as possible”.
The unrest soon spread further afield to Gurgaon, a city that is both a gleaming multinational tech hub and a hotbed of hardline Hindu nationalist politics where Muslims have faced sustained harassment over their right to pray in the open.
As well as the mosque, Muslim restaurants, shops and homes were burned and migrant Muslim families living in Gurgaon reported being threatened by mobs and told to leave the city immediately, and others were refused work.
“Many Muslims working in the area have been told to not come to work,” said Mohammad Saleem, 45, a migrant worker from Bihar living in Gurgaon. “The owner of the store is scared to employ me now, even my wife was told to not report to work. A vicious atmosphere is being created.”