The effect of religious polarisation and hatred spread in India can be seen in these recent videos, which have gone viral, showing a Hindu police inspector kicking a Muslim saying namaz on Friday, 8th March 2024 in Delhi
Ever since the BJP came to power in 2014 state and media sponsored venomous propaganda and atrocities against the Muslim minority have spiralled, and has become a continuous and regular feature in many parts of India. The coming parliamentary elections have further escalated it.
One is reminded of the massive state sponsored propaganda against Jews in Germany after Hitler came to power in January 1933, which ultimately led to the Holocaust. Just as the Nazis painted all Jews as devils, so also Muslims are often depicted as fanatics, anti-nationals and terrorists in India.
Modern propaganda is such a powerful thing that if applied systematically for long can convert good people into devils.
In Nazi Germany the Holocaust could not have happened in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. The Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed, was preceded by years of propaganda by Goebbels, Streicher and others against the Jews day in and day out by various means, which converted ordinary men and women, who were otherwise perfectly normal and decent, into beasts who murdered millions of people..
For instance, Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp where 1-2 million people ( mostly Jews ) were sent to gas chambers, when asked during his interrogation at Nuremburg whether he was normal, replied ” I am entirely normal. Even during this extermination work I led a normal family life ”.
Similarly, in India after the BJP came to power in 2014 virulent propaganda against Muslims has been carried on throughout thereafter, painting them as terrorists, fanatics, rapacious invaders, jihadists, and anti-nationals. Consequently, much of Indian society, which is 80% Hindu and only 15-16% Muslim, has been polarised on religious lines, and various forms of atrocities on Muslims have been continuously going on. They have been lynched, beaten up for not saying ‘ Jai Shri Ram ”, marginalised in politics, their mosques as in Varanasi and Mathura under attack, and they are discriminated against in getting jobs etc
A video went viral some time back of a Hindu lady teacher in a school in Muzaffarnagar, UP, telling the Hindu boys in her class to slap a Muslim 8 year old boy
Countless such incidents can be narrated. Venom against Muslims has been spouted by people like Yati Narsinghanand etc who incited Hindus to take up arms against Muslims.
So the act of a police inspector in Delhi kicking a Muslim saying namaz is not an act in isolation. It shows how much the minds of tens of millions of Hindus have been poisoned by virulent, continuous propaganda against Muslims in India
Many Hindus have supported the police inspector on the social media, saying that Muslims have no right to block a public road.
However, two questions arise (1) does a policeman have the right to kick a namazi when other non violent means were available (2) many ‘kaavariyas’ take out 200 km yatras annually blocking roads at several places, often for several hours ( whereas namaz takes only about 45 minutes ).They are not stopped,and instead the authorities drop petals on them by helicopters. Similarly, ‘shobha yatras’ are taken out by Hindu organisations often blocking roads, but they are not stopped. Is this not discrimination against Muslims ?
In Gurgaon also Muslims were harrassed for saying Friday namaz in public places, but RSS shakhas are often held in public parks and other public places, and no one intervenes.
Muslims like to offer Friday namaz in a mosque. But in view of the manifold growth in population since 1947 there is a great shortage of mosques, and the authorities usually prevent building new ones, although they have no right to do so, as I held when I was a judge of the Allahabad High Court.in Mohd Sharif Saifi vs State of UP, writ petition 43403 of 1998 decided on 28.1.1999
It seems that from a dejure secular state, India has turned into a defacto Hindu state, with minorities, particularly Muslims, at the receiving end.
