Parading hate, virulence at the doorsteps of Muslims: How Hindutva has weaponised religion

During the festival of Ram Navami last week, scores of towns and cities across nine states in India – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka (all ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party), and Delhi and West Bengal – were engulfed in stone pelting, bloodletting, aggressive sloganeering and arson, ignited by mobs in militant processions. Hundreds more lurched at the edge. When I was writing this, communal fires were yet to be doused in West Bengal and Bihar.

“Routes of Wrath”, a sterling report by a group of lawyers and other citizens (led by lawyer Chander Uday Singh and with a foreword by retired Supreme Court Justice Rohinton Nariman), scrutinises the worryingly similar rash communal violence during Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti in April last year.

The report, released on March 18, detects recurring patterns that show these incidents are systematically orchestrated to terrorise and provoke Muslims, cause extensive damage to their properties and shrines, and through these, construct a bitter communal fracture.

A template for violence, hate

A careful study of the findings of their report helps illuminate the source of the fires that once again have been ignited across the land this year.

The report records in April 2022 the destruction through burning and looting of at...

Read more