Call it a taste of India.  Specifically Modi ruled India.  On the evening of Saturday, September 17 a mob of about 300 young Hindu men went on a violent rampage on the streets of Leicester, United Kingdom.  They were armed with sticks and bats.  “You had bands of RSS thugs in balaclavas and hoodies, screaming and throwing bottles at us,” a Muslim witness told the news organization Middle Eastern Eye.  “…these guys came down like a military unit, and we were left wondering, like, where the hell these guys came from.”

Founded in 1925 the RSS is a far right, anti-minority paramilitary organization that drew inspiration from European fascism.  In the last eight years the RSS has reached the zenith of its power in India and abroad.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi and many of his ministers are lifelong members of the RSS.  The Leicester mob’s identification with far-right religious nationalism of Indian origin was unmistakable.  They were chanting a slogan which has become shorthand for proclaiming adherence to Hindutva or the ideology of Hindu supremacy and hatred of India’s Muslim minority.  In BJP ruled India the words chanted by the Leicester mob are the prelude to the lynching of innocent Muslims who are singled out solely on the basis of their religious identity.  In recent years “Jai Shri Ram” (Victory to Lord Rama) have often been the last words an Indian Muslim hears as he is bludgeoned to death in the national capital region, in the state of Uttar Pradesh or Haryana, or wherever the BJP rules.  In practically all these cases of lynching, the majoritarian bias of the police and legal system ensures the perpetrators get away with murder.  In the Leicester outbreak the Hindutva provocation led to retaliation by young Muslim men.  One of them scaled the wall of a Hindu temple and set fire to the saffron flag that symbolizes Hinduism.

In India the Hindutva ideology has been on an upward trajectory since the rise to power of PM Narendra Modi in May 2014.  The implementation of majoritarian rule of the Hindutva variety has accelerated under the second Modi government that came to power in May 2019.  Since attaining freedom from British rule in 1947,  independent India has aspired to fulfill its constitutionally mandated duty to maintain a secular and pluralist democratic polity.  Despite many backslidings–some of a horrific nature–the ideal of secular democracy and political equality for all Indians regardless of religion was never abandoned or disowned.  But now pre-Modi India is headed for the dustbin of history.  Backed by its panoply of enablers–billionaires who have fattened on the regime’s largesse, well-heeled, Modi-adoring diaspora, subservient judiciary and media, obedient investigative and enforcement agencies, the Hindutva state roars forward at full throttle hell-bent on its fell mission of dismantling remaining vestiges of secular and pluralist democracy and stripping Muslims, India’s largest religious minority, of their democratic rights.  In the majoritarian Hindutva state Hindus are preeminent.  Muslims are expected to lead a lowly, degraded existence dependent on the goodwill and sufferance of the Hindu majority.

Every day it seems a new front is breached in the ongoing war on secular, liberal democracy. Even dissent of the non-threatening variety has been criminalized.  As the days, weeks, months and years go by, Modi-ruled India descends ever deeper into the terrifying abyss of communal (anti-Muslim) hatred, political violence and lawlessness.  Depredations come at a fast and furious pace.  In June the heroic human rights lawyer Teesta Setalvad was arrested and charged with fabricating evidence in a case from the anti-Muslim pogrom that took place in Gujarat in 2002 on the watch of then Chief Minister Modi.  Her arrest took place after a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed a Gujarat 2002 case and accused her of keeping the pot boiling for ulterior reasons.  In other words she was guilty of seeking justice for the victims of Gujarat 2002!  Indeed–to use the elegant language of the Supreme Court–Teesta Setalvad had kept the pot boiling.  She was fiercely opposed to the all but nation-wide amnesia about the horrific crimes of Gujarat 2002.  She has been called India’s most hounded activist.  The hounding of Teesta Setalvad started soon after PM Modi came to power.  Then there is the case of Bilkis Bano whose exemplary persistence through several long years resulted in hard-won convictions and life sentences for some of the criminals of Gujarat 2002.   On August 15 the government of Gujarat granted remission to eleven men convicted of gang raping then pregnant Bilkis Bano and murdering seven of her family members.  Her three-year-old daughter was killed instantaneously when she was smashed to the ground.  As the rapists and murderers, the criminals convicted of unspeakable brutality, stepped out of prison they were received and felicitated by members of a prominent Hindutva organization.  The remission has been roundly condemned by Indians of conscience.  But in the savage Hindutva state who is listening to believers in Nehruvian and Gandhian democracy, to those who are leftist or liberal and espouse such reviled values as tolerance, inclusiveness and social justice.  A judge sitting on a Supreme Court bench that was hearing a petition challenging the remission asked “Merely because the act was horrific, is that sufficient to say remission is wrong?”   Merely because the act was horrific!–how exactly is one supposed to react to the words uttered by a justice sitting on a bench of the highest court in the land?

The persecution of religious minorities particularly the beleaguered Muslim minority proceeds at breakneck speed in India.  Unchecked mob lynchings of innocent Muslims and unrelenting assault on Muslim livelihoods and everyday practices such as dietary habits, attire and forms of worship–all of this is taking place under the auspices of the enabling anti-Muslim, Hindutva state.  The targeting of Muslim lives and identity is carried out through far right vigilante activism that is aided and abetted by a majoritarian police force and by courts that have abdicated their constitutional mandate of protecting minority rights.  Muslims who resist by peaceful and democratic means are punished with prolonged incarceration under draconian, national security provisions.  As of this year, self-styled religious leaders have been calling for the genocide of Indian Muslims.  They can do this with impunity because laws that punish the promotion of religion based social conflict are not invoked.  The bloodthirsty, virulently anti-Muslim mob has become an everyday spectacle in BJP ruled India.

Hindutva street violence of the Leicester variety is an exceptional spectacle outside of India.  No wonder the world has taken notice.  It is feared Hindu nationalists now pose a global problem.  Surely the Leicestershire police would agree.  Sixteen police officers and a police dog were injured as they struggled to control the Hindutva rampage.  All the same one must recognize the violence in Leicester is a pale shadow of the mob fury that has become commonplace in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Bhimrao Ambedkar.

In India incensed, bloodthirsty Hindutva mobs have taken to assembling in their thousands and leading triumphal processions in front of mosques and in Muslim dominated areas.  Muslims are swiftly punished if they retaliate by throwing stones or otherwise opposing the Hindu mob.  The city authorities send in bulldozers and the homes of Muslim “culprits” are razed to the ground.  There is not even the pretense of due process.

The “festive” processions are marked by frenzied dancing and provocative chanting of the war cry “Jai Shri Ram.”  Loudspeakers blare out high decibel genocidal songs foreshadowing the slaughter of Indian Muslims.   “Is dharti ko khoon se hum nehlayenge, hum tujhko teri aukaat dikhayenge,” were the words of a song played repeatedly in front of the Gulbarga Mehbus Masjid in the BJP ruled state of Karnataka at recent “celebrations” of a Hindu festival.  Translated, the words mean:  we will soak this land in blood, we will show you your place.  Songs like the one that was played in Karnataka belong to the Hindutva pop genre that is used to inflame passions and propagate anti-Muslim hatred.  On the question of manufacturing hatred there is much to be learned by turning to Frantz Fanon:  “Hate is not inborn;  it has to be constantly cultivated, to be brought into being, in conflict with more or less recognized guilt complexes.  Hate demands existence and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behavior;  in a sense, he has to become hate.”  It almost seems producers of Hindutva pop have learned a thing or two from the Algerian revolutionary.

In the long run the Hindutva eruption in Leicester could prove to be detrimental to the advance of global Hindutva.  This may be more than wishful thinking.  By baring its ugly fangs in the peaceful, multicultural East Midlands city of Leicester, Hindutva has drawn international scrutiny of an unflattering kind.  At the very least street violence of the Leicester variety may not take place in the future.  The absence of the enabling ethno-nationalist state will be the crucial factor in discouraging further enactments of anti-Muslim hatred.  Less visible forms of intimidation will be pursued.  Coercive advocacy of Hindutva ideology and repression of its opposite–evidence based historical scholarship, verifiable information, critical thinking on inconvenient niceties like democratic statehood, minority rights, political equality, social justice etc–must be expected.  The vigilance of those who believe in the latter will be constantly challenged.

There remains the question of the fate of India where formerly democratic institutions have been hijacked by the ruthless Hindutva state and the political opposition has been undermined and weakened.  These days the vulnerable and defenseless Muslim minority of 200 million or so lives under the shadow of actual or impending statelessness and genocide.  As the darkness deepens across India one may find a modicum of comfort in the steadfast views of the fine journalist Siddharth Varadarajan, cofounder of the courageous news portal thewire.in:  “Since we are talking about the fate of hundreds of millions of people, there is every reason for us to be gloomy and despondent about what lies ahead. And yet, as we face the very real danger of losing our democracy, it is important for us to believe that we can and will pull ourselves back from calamity.

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