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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Rising Hindu nationalism leaves Muslims fearful in India’s holy city | |
By Rhea Mogul, Aishwarya S. Iyer, Kunal Sehgal and Will Ripley, CNN | |
Updated: | |
1:34 AM EDT, Wed May 1, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
The sun glistens on the Ganges as Hindu devotees bathe in the holy | |
river’s waters, and the Muslim call to prayer reverberates through | |
the dusty air. Varanasi, an ancient city of temples and gods, is � | |
spiritual capital. And here, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s | |
political stronghold, tensions between the two faiths are escalating. | |
When chose this holy city as his constituency a decade ago, it was | |
the perfect setting for him to meld his party’s political and | |
religious ambitions. Having risen to power on a promise of� | |
development and anti-corruption, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now | |
stands accused of turning India – a nation constitutionally bound to | |
secularism – into a Hindu rashtra, or homeland. | |
As Sana Sabah celebrated the Muslim festival of Eid with her family in | |
Varanasi, she raised these fears with trepidation in her voice. | |
“It’s scary that someone like Modi … is not only celebrated but | |
validated,” the 33-year-old entrepreneur said. The Hindu-nationalist | |
right wing, she said, “is not even trying to hide it anymore. And | |
it’s troublesome.” | |
With in the world’s most populous nation, a significant portion of | |
its more than 200 million strong Muslim population express fear at the | |
prospect of Modi’s re-election. Vying for a rare third term in power, | |
he is defending his seat in the traffic-clogged, diverse city of some | |
1.7 million people. | |
Yet, 10 years after his ascension, many of Varanasi’s Muslims feel | |
neglected, even betrayed, especially now as a centuries old-mosque | |
becomes the latest flashpoint in a case that tests India’s secular | |
fabric. | |
Local Muslim leader Syed Mohammad Yaseen, 78, feels the government is | |
failing to protect his community, which he says is feeling increasingly | |
vulnerable and fearful of hate crimes in today’s India. | |
“The worst will happen (if Modi gets reelected),” he said from his | |
office in Varanasi. “We are tolerating these things, maybe one day | |
there can be change. But we are hopeless.” | |
‘We hide our names’ | |
Modi’s BJP has its roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a | |
right-wing paramilitary organization that advocates Hindu supremacy | |
within India – though the party has repeatedly said it does not | |
discriminate against minorities. | |
“There is not one welfare scheme where religion, or community, is | |
used as a base to discriminate,” said BJP Varanasi leader Dileep | |
Patel, referring to the government’s welfare programs. “The prime | |
minister’s schemes (programs) apply to our Muslim brothers, Hindu | |
brothers, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis, who have, without any | |
discrimination, benefited from Modi.” | |
There is no doubt that Modi’s decade in power has been | |
transformative. India has arrived on the world stage, inching ever | |
closer to global-power status, boasting the fastest-growing major | |
economy, and making great strides in technology and space. | |
But there is also no doubt that religious polarization has increased. | |
have been appointed to top positions in key government institutions, | |
giving them the power to make sweeping changes to legislation that | |
rights groups say unfairly target Muslims. Textbooks have been | |
rewritten to downplay the history of India’s ancient Islamic rulers, | |
cities and streets with Mughal-era names renamed and Muslim properties | |
have been demolished by authorities for and as punishment for alleged | |
rioting. | |
In 2019, Modi removed the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir –� | |
India’s only Muslim-majority state – bringing it under the direct | |
control of New Delhi. That same year, his administration passed a | |
controversial citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants, giving | |
rise to deadly riots. | |
Nasir Ali recalls the evening, weeks after the law’s enactment, when | |
right-wing Hindu mobs gathered near his home in New Delhi, chanting | |
anti-Islam slogans, attacking property and harassing residents. He was | |
bringing his sister home from a hospital in a taxi. He felt safe, he | |
said, because “this was the capital, Delhi, and it was daytime.” | |
But as his taxi approached the streets, Ali saw the mob. “Among them, | |
there was a man who took out his pistol and fired at me. He started | |
chanting ‘Jai Shree Sri Ram’ (a Hindu religious slogan) and | |
ran away,” says Ali. | |
Ali says he believes he was shot because of his Muslim faith, and said | |
it was a neighbor who pulled the trigger. | |
He attempted to file a police complaint at his local station against | |
the alleged perpetrators, a 2021 Delhi court order seen by CNN shows. | |
But the police did not register his complaint, nor properly | |
investigate, the court order said. | |
The local Bhajanpura Police have since disputed those findings, and the | |
case is winding its way through the legal system, with the next hearing | |
expected in September, according to Ali’s lawyer. CNN has contacted | |
Bhajanpura Police for comment. | |
The riots were described as some of the worst sectarian violence in | |
decades, leaving dozens, mostly Muslims, dead. Delhi police made about | |
800 arrests, according to a report shared by the . | |
Ali, who was blinded in one eye, now says he is wary of letting his | |
fellow citizens know he is Muslim. “We do not let anyone realize (our | |
religion),” he said. “We hide our names as well.” | |
Moments of large-scale violence like those Delhi riots often make | |
national or international headlines. But it is the day-to-day� | |
incidents which spring up all over India that many say characterizes | |
the way life has changed for so many of India’s Muslims under Modi. | |
When Usman, 28, moved from Kashmir to northwestern Rajasthan state for | |
work in 2021, he said he struggled to find a home for weeks, visiting | |
broker after broker in the city of Jaipur, who looked at his name and | |
had one remark: “This is going to be a problem.” | |
“It’s a given, a Muslim will face a struggle finding an | |
apartment,” said Usman, who asked CNN to use only his first name, | |
citing privacy concerns. “Things were bad before. Now, it’s become | |
worse.” | |
CNN has verified dozens of social media videos that paint a stark | |
picture of religious divisions. | |
In one from March this year, a policeman can be seen kicking Muslims | |
offering prayers on the side of the road in New Delhi. In another from | |
the western state of Gujarat last year, right-wing groups projected� | |
“Jai Shree Ram” on the walls of a mosque. In an incident that | |
shocked the nation in August, a railway police officer opened fire on | |
a moving train, killing three Muslim passengers and a Hindu constable, | |
while allegedly advocating for Modi’s leadership. | |
Anti-Muslim speech has also risen dramatically, a recent by the | |
Washington-based research group India Hate Lab showed, which documented | |
668 such cases in 2023. | |
BJP politician T. Raja Singh openly called for violence against Muslims | |
in an October speech in Rajasthan, proclaiming: “If they (Muslims) | |
take one Hindu girl, we’ll take 10 of theirs.” At another event, he | |
allegedly said: “You (Muslims) are half cut (circumcised), we will | |
cut you fully.” | |
India prohibits hate speech under several sections of its penal code, | |
including a section that criminalizes “deliberate and malicious | |
acts” intended to insult religious beliefs. Singh is facing a slew of | |
police investigations, including for his alleged hate speeches, but in | |
October last year he was fielded as a BJP candidate in state elections | |
– winning his seat for the third time in a row. | |
CNN has contacted Singh for a response. | |
the lack of repercussions for vitriolic comments has given extremists | |
tacit support, making them even more brazen. Many Muslims fear this | |
rise poses a danger to their communities – and worry it may only get | |
worse as India votes in this election. | |
Multiple human rights organizations, including , and the have | |
warned of continued discrimination against religious minorities, | |
particularly Muslims, over the past decade, and have repeatedly called | |
on authorities to end it. | |
BJP National Spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill has said his party is not | |
prejudiced against Muslims, and the community has benefited from | |
Modi’s leadership. “India’s constitution protects the Indian | |
democracy. No political party in country is strong enough to bulldoze | |
the Constitution, to bulldoze the will of the people,” he said. | |
Yet, critics have pointed to the lack of representation within the BJP. | |
Despite being a party that claims to represent all Indians it . | |
This week, Modi himself sparked a row over hate speech while | |
campaigning in Rajasthan, a BJP ruled-state, when he accused Muslims | |
– who have been present in India for centuries – of being | |
“infiltrators,” and echoing a false conspiracy voiced by some Hindu | |
nationalists that Muslims are displacing the country’s Hindu | |
population by deliberately having large families. | |
The speech caused widespread anger among Muslims leaders and opposition | |
politicians as well as calls for election authorities to investigate | |
the comments. BJP party spokespeople subsequently said Modi was talking | |
about undocumented migrants. | |
Reclaiming mosques | |
Shamsher Ali, a shopkeeper in Varanasi, fears for his two young | |
daughters growing up in an increasingly polarized India. Ali looks back | |
at his childhood – a time when, he says, Muslim-Hindu camaraderie was | |
the norm. | |
Muslims haven’t felt this level of fear in years, Ali says. | |
“So much hate has been sown that people now look at each other with | |
suspicion … the tensions have become so bad that a Hindu and a Muslim | |
can’t even see eye to eye,” the 45-year-old said. “This | |
government is relying on driving a wedge between the two | |
communities.” | |
Meters from Ali’s shop, the Gyanvapi Mosque has become the latest | |
battleground between Hindu nationalists and Varanasi’s Muslims. | |
The mosque was built in the 17th century by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.� | |
It is widely believed a temple devoted to Lord Shiva on the same | |
site was destroyed to make way for it. A different Hindu temple was | |
subsequently built nearby in 1780 and for centuries, Hindus and | |
Muslims prayed at their respective sites side by side, the temple’s | |
gold stripes standing alongside the mosque’s white domes. | |
“Muslim women would wear their niqab (Muslim traditional dress) and | |
Muslim men with their skullcaps would frequent the Ghats nearby (a holy | |
Hindu area),” Ali recalled. | |
But now, the Gyanvapi Mosque sits at the apex of a wider legal | |
campaign to reclaim places of worship, and Hindu nationalists are | |
demanding it back. Its fate is being debated across courtrooms in | |
India, in a case that will have ramifications nationwide. | |
In May 2022, a court survey claimed to find an artifact that | |
resembled a Hindu relic inside the building. Muslims question the | |
conclusion of the survey, saying it runs counter to their own findings. | |
In January, a Varanasi court ruled that Hindus could offer prayer in | |
the basement of the mosque. | |
“Today, the police is against us. I don’t have faith in the | |
judiciary,” said Yaseen, the local Muslim leader, from his office | |
filled with documents related to the case. “They are giving judgment, | |
but not justice.” | |
Outside the temple gates, guards patrol the area. Monkeys scale the | |
walls of the complex, unconcerned by the high security and barbed-wire | |
fence that fortifies the mosque. On the streets, vendors sell marigold | |
flowers, and saffron flags fly high on shops and buildings. | |
The incident has echoes of another major flashpoint – the 16th | |
century Babri mosque in Ayodhya. It was demolished by Hindu hardliners | |
in a 1992 attack, sparking deadly riots, in an incident that helped | |
turbocharge the BJP from a fringe party to a major player. | |
Earlier this year, Modi inaugurated a vast Hindu temple on the site, | |
the culmination of a decades-long campaign and an event seen as a | |
seminal moment by India’s leader – one, y, pulled the country | |
away from its constitutionally secular foundations. | |
“(Today) is the beginning of a new time cycle,” Modi said at the | |
new temple. “After centuries of waiting, our Ram has arrived.” | |
‘Unique fabric threatened’ | |
Dressed in a saffron robe with religious beads draped around his neck, | |
Hindu priest Swami Jitendranand Saraswati doesn’t think fears | |
harbored by Muslims are substantiated. | |
“If they are saying they feel like they are second-class citizens, | |
then this makes me happy,” he said with a smile, as worshippers | |
touched his feet while bringing offerings to his small temple. | |
He believes Gyanvapi is not a mosque, but a Hindu temple, and wants to | |
see his community worship inside the walls of the building. Swami� | |
Saraswati also wants his community to reclaim some 3,000 more Hindu | |
places of worship allegedly destroyed by Mughals centuries ago. | |
“The Hindu community wants its lost self-respect back. The Hindu | |
community wants its places of worship back,” he said. | |
Amit Pandey, the general secretary of the BJP’s youth wing in | |
Varanasi, says India is a Hindu nation, and claims that all the | |
country’s Muslims “were forcibly converted and made slaves by | |
changing their religion” from Hinduism centuries ago. | |
Mainstream historians paint a much more complicated picture, where the | |
South Asian subcontinent experienced waves of migration, invasion, | |
colonialism, trading, conversion and assimilation over the centuries | |
that created the multifaith giant of today’s India. | |
But not all Hindus are supporters of a Hindu nationalist narrative. | |
Vishwambhar Nath Mishra, the priest of a prominent Hindu temple in | |
Varanasi, believes Modi’s stoking of religious tensions is ruining | |
the fabric of Indian society. Varanasi, he noted, is a spiritual | |
center, home to all faiths. | |
“All practices are allowed, and they help each other grow,” Mishra | |
said, standing outside his temple near the banks of the Ganges. | |
“Christianity, Muslims, Buddhism, Hinduism … they live here in a | |
good harmony. And if we have any differences, we sit across the | |
platform and we discuss the issues. This unique fabric has a strained | |
condition now. We have a fear that this fabric may break.” | |
The sentiment is echoed by Ali in his Varanasi shop, where he fears for | |
his community’s survival. | |
“Muslims have anyway become untouchables in this government,” he | |
said. | |
“People say leave the country, but we say we were born here. We will | |
be buried in the soil of this land. This is my country.” | |
Read more from CNN’s India election coverage: | |
. | |
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