Outrage has erupted over videos of Hindu religious leaders in India advocating for the mass killing of Muslims, prompting calls for action.
Last week’s event in Haridwar, Uttarakhand state, in which attendees advocated for mass killings and the use of firearms against Muslims, prompted Indian police to open a hate-speech probe.
According to a video that went viral, a speaker at the rally warned the crowd that the mass killing of Muslims would not result in them going to jail.
“Even if just a hundred of us become soldiers and kill two million of them, we will be victorious … If you stand with this attitude only then will you able to protect ‘sanatana dharma’ [an absolute form of Hinduism],” the woman said.
At least one member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was present at the meeting (BJP). Since coming to power in 2014, the party has been accused of pushing radical Hindu nationalists to persecute Muslims and other minorities, which it denies.
Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim MP, stated that the incendiary remarks in the video were a “clear case of incitement to genocide.”
The event has elicited no response from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
According to reports, the woman in the video also said that Indians should “pray to Nathuram Godse,” the Hindu hardliner who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
Prabodhanand Giri, the head of a hardline Hindu outfit who is frequently photographed with senior BJP members, called for a “cleaning” and for those there to be “ready to die or kill.”
“Like Myanmar, the police, politicians, the army, and every Hindu in India must pick up weapons and do this cleansing. There is no other option left,” he is heard to say.
The BJP dismisses charges that its agenda is to turn ostensibly secular and multicultural India into an ethnic Hindu nation.
The police chief of Uttarakhand state, Ashok Kumar, said such crimes would not be condoned. He went on to say that a lawsuit had been filed under Indian legislation that bans inciting hatred between various religious communities. Such offenses can result in a three-year prison sentence.
Kumar said the case was registered as soon as a formal complaint was made. The case names only one person, a former Muslim who converted to Hinduism, and other unknown people.
Since Modi, a lifelong member of a fundamentalist Hindu party, came to power, many Muslims believe they have been increasingly targeted and threatened.
The president of India’s largest socio-religious Muslim organization, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, accused the government of turning a blind eye to anti-Muslim hate speech.
Maulana Mahmood Madni sought “serious steps” against the criminals in a letter to several officials. “They have presented a threat to the country’s peace and communal unity,” he stated.
The Wilson Center’s Michael Kugelman chastised the Indian government for its silence.
“Not a peep, much less a condemnation, from the gov’t. Sad truth is that this deafening silence isn’t the least bit surprising,” he tweeted on Thursday.
Christians have also been subject to violence and harassment, with the BJP government in the southern state of Karnataka this week becoming the latest to introduce legislation outlawing “forceful” religious conversions.
