Attacks on Minorities: Inherent Trait of Hindutva Politics
M A Baby
DURING India’s anti-colonial freedom struggle, progressive forces in the country argued that our diversities should be celebrated and a modern democratic India ought to be formed. However, this was objectionable to the right-wing forces, particularly the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), due to their commitment to Hindutva.
Our independence movement was a united movement of the people of the country. However, for people like Savarkar for whom Hindutva and Indian nationality were inseparable from each other, this unity was antithetical to their goals. Therefore, while addressing the 24th session of the ABHM – held at Kanpur in 1942 – Savarkar outlined the strategy of the Mahasabha's ‘responsive co-operation’ with the British colonisers.
It was in the very same Kanpur, that the first plenary session of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) was held, ten years later. The circumstances which led to the formation of the BJS, including the ban on the RSS subsequent to the murder of Gandhi, is widely known. When the BJS was formed, it adopted an eight-point programme that largely formed its ideological core. One among them was the development of a single Bharatiya culture.
To the BJS, promoting national unity meant, ‘nationalising all non-Hindus by inculcating in them the ideal of Bharatiya culture’. Though it had declared that its objective was to work for a Bharatiya Rashtra, and not a Hindu Rashtra, the latter was so defined as to stand for the former. Denying the cultural diversity of India, the Jan Sangh raised the slogan of ‘one country, one culture, one nation’, and asserted that all those who did not accept this one culture had imbibed ‘anti-national traits’.
Therefore now, under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the successor of the BJS, it is no surprise that attacks – both systemic and physical – on minorities are carried out on an everyday basis. According to the RSS, Muslims, Christians and Communists are India’s internal threats. During the 2020 communal riots in Delhi, we saw BJP leaders giving open calls for violence against minorities. The recent arrest of two nuns from Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh has once again brought the issue in sharp focus.
The nuns were accompanying three young women to place them in convents in Agra as kitchen helpers with a monthly salary between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000. Despite being over 18 years of age, the women even had consent letters from their parents. Yet, charges were filed against the nuns under Section 143 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Section 4 of the Chhattisgarh Religious Freedom Act (1968). It has become a crime in India to give employment to those in need!
In 2018, a Christian mission hospital was vandalised and critical life support systems were disrupted by a mob in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. During the Christmas season of 2021, the St Joseph's Church in Chikkaballapur, Karnataka, which was more than 150 years old, was attacked. During the Christmas season of 2022, tribal Christians from Narayanpur and Kondagaon in Chhattisgarh had to flee en masse, owing to the series of attacks in their villages.
The 1998 gang rape of four nuns in Madhya Pradesh, the murder of Graham Staines and his two young sons in Odisha in 1999, the Kandhamal riots of 2008, etc., have received wide coverage. Since May 2023, Manipur has been on the boil. According to data compiled by the United Christian Forum (UCF), reported incidents targeting Christians have surged from 127 cases in 2014 to 834 in 2024. A 147.14 per cent rise, over a period of just 10 years.
This unnatural growth lays bare the systematic and escalating campaign of intimidation against the minority communities in the country. The Supreme Court even had to issue a notice to the union government regarding the repeated attacks against Christian communities in the country. Over the last decade or so, Muslims in the country have been facing even more violence, under one pretext or the other.
97 per cent of the incidents related to cow vigilantism, have been reported since 2014 when the BJP came to power. The names of Pehlu Khan from Rajasthan and Junaid from Haryana can never be forgotten. According to Human Rights Watch, mob lynchings and hate crimes have become more frequent since 2014. According to India Hate Lab’s report, hate speech against minorities jumped 74 per cent in 2024, numbering 1,165 such instances.
It has also been noted that instances of hate speech spike during election years. 98.5 per cent of the recorded hate speeches target Muslims and nearly 80 per cent of them occur in states governed by BJP or its allies. Three BJP ruled states – Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra – accounted for nearly half of the total hate speech events last year and the BJP themselves organised 340 of those events!
In Uttar Pradesh, the chief minister himself led the months-long series of attacks, with his words. Last year, a sitting judge of the Allahabad High Court said, “I have no hesitation in saying that this is Hindustan, this country would function as per the wishes of the majority living in Hindustan. This is the law”. He was speaking at an event organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on the ‘Necessity of a Uniform Civil Code’.
The nuns were arrested in Chhattisgarh not because of any formal complaint or police investigation. All it took for the arrest was a Train Ticket Examiner (TTE) at the railway station to contact local Bajrang Dal members. Led by the Bajrang Dal activists, a public mob intimidated the nuns and subsequently they were arrested under trumped up charges. Yet, the country’s home minister stated in the Rajya Sabha that no Hindu can ever be a terrorist.
Just a day after that comment, all accused in the Malegaon blast case have been let off by an NIA Court. This travesty of justice is an ominous sign of the impunity that Sangh Parivar goons will have in the coming days in our country. It also points to the accuracy of the CPI(M)’s assessment in its 24th Party Congress, that the push to impose a reactionary Hindutva agenda and the authoritarian drive to suppress the opposition and democracy displays neo-fascist characteristics.
