In the previous week, a spate of assaults by triumphant Hindu nationalist mobs in opposition to minorities, mainly Muslims, has raised fears throughout India of non secular tensions flaring following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s consecration of a temple in Ayodhya that was seen in some quarters as an emblem of Hindu vengeance in opposition to India’s centuries-long oppression by Muslims.

Modi’s social gathering has pushed for a extra explicitly Hindu imaginative and prescient of India’s identification in distinction to the post-independence leaders who noticed the nation extra as a secular, multicultural democracy.

From northern Uttar Pradesh to southern Telangana, every of the assaults in a minimum of six Indian states adopted a near-identical sample: They erupted after males on bikes and jeeps waved Hindu nationalist saffron flags, blared loud devotional music from audio system and chanted the slogan “Jai Shri Ram,” or victory to Lord Ram, as they drove by Muslim neighborhoods.

Modi’s consecration of controversial Hindu temple caps years-long campaign

In every case, the violence both instantly preceded or adopted the spiritual ceremony presided by Modi himself on Monday. In a hovering deal with from the temple premises, the prime minister, a staunch Hindu nationalist, congratulated residents for efficiently “untangling a historical knot” and constructing a “brighter future.”

The 71-acre temple complicated is constructed on the web site of the demolished Babri mosque that Hindu nationalists say was itself constructed on high of a razed Hindu temple within the sixteenth century and served as a reminder of Muslim domination over the bulk Hindu subcontinent so long as it stood.

The mob assaults within the final 4 days have raised uneasy parallels to December 1992, when a Hindu mob agitating for the Ram temple in Ayodhya tore the Babri mosque down, sparking nationwide spiritual riots that killed greater than 2,000 individuals, largely Muslims. Mumbai was notably hit onerous by rioting, and months later, the Muslim mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim carried out revenge assaults that killed a whole lot in early 1993.

Irfan Engineer, director of the Mumbai-based Center for Study of Society and Secularism, a nonprofit based after the violence of 1993 to check riot-affected areas and propagate peaceable coexistence, in contrast the Hindu nationalist processions in Muslim neighborhoods to wartime marches carried out by occupying militaries “for establishing control.”

“Muslims are slowly accepting that they must gulp down every insult because even the mildest reaction will invite trouble from the state,” he stated.

Inside the vast digital campaign by Hindu nationalists to inflame India

In visuals circulating broadly on social media in current days, saffron-flag-wielding mobs have been seen pelting outlets promoting meat with stones or clothes shops with apparently Muslim enterprise names. The provocative marches by Muslim neighborhoods have prompted Modi’s critics to warning in opposition to rising Hindu triumphalism below his watch.

The worst of the clashes came about in a suburban neighborhood north of Mumbai referred to as Naya Nagar. The battle began the night earlier than Monday’s temple consecration ceremony, when a Hindu motorbike procession was stopped with barricades put up by Muslim residents.

The state of affairs escalated when Nitesh Rane, a lawmaker from the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, demanded that the barricades be eliminated and threatened to “find and kill” those that blocked the Hindu processions.

Muslim residents then threw stones at one other procession that handed by their neighborhood the following day.

Rane blamed the clashes on Muslim refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh and referred to as in authorities bulldozers as punishment. “Naya Nagar is not the new Pakistan,” he instructed reporters on Tuesday at a information convention. “We know very well what needs to be done there and how many bulldozers are needed.”

Rane couldn’t be reached for remark.

Bulldozers then got here by and destroyed illegally constructed buildings belonging to 55 shopkeepers in Naya Nagar and one other Muslim-majority neighborhood. As of Thursday, an unsure peace has prevailed with 13 arrests, largely of Muslims, in response to native officers.

Tariq Chaudhary, a Muslim scholar, was driving his father’s truck round 8 p.m. on Tuesday close to Mumbai when a mob of greater than 200 younger males charged at him armed with iron rods and wood sticks and shouting, “Hail, Lord Ram.” They smashed the truck’s windshield, dragged him out and rained blows and kicks on him earlier than shifting on to a different automobile. Tariq suffered quite a few cuts and bruises on his face, arms and again. His co-worker suffered a head damage and obtained 4 stitches at a neighborhood clinic.

“In Ayodhya, they said Lord Ram belongs to us all,” Chaudhary stated by phone. “Does Lord Ram teach them to drag Muslims out, beat them with sticks and force them to say, “Hail, Lord Ram”?

Even although stories in native media have trickled on this week of clashes in small cities and on school campuses, police have not often made arrests or filed instances in opposition to Hindus and sometimes punished Muslims or dissidents as a substitute. One exception was in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh state, the place police arrested three males for changing a inexperienced Islamic flag on high of a mosque with a saffron banner.

On a number of campuses, heated debates have erupted over the temple inauguration, and in two cities, college students had been crushed or harassed once they tried to prepare screenings of “Ram ke Naam,” or “In the Name of God,” a 1992 documentary movie that delves into the controversial historical past behind the Hindu nationalist marketing campaign to construct the temple in Ayodhya.

After college students at a movie faculty in Pune promoted the documentary screening, a gaggle of greater than 20 males barged onto campus on Tuesday, scuffled with college students and set their posters aflame.

The police briefly detained six of these concerned earlier than releasing them. On Wednesday, they filed a grievance in opposition to six of the organizers of the screening for “outraging religious feelings” and appearing in opposition to “national integration.”