Adityanath, Chief Minister of UP, Calls 200 Million Indian Muslims Terrorist Sympathizers

Anti-Muslim hate speech in India continues to proliferate at dangerously high levels, with mainstream politicians making explicitly Islamophobic comments. Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state and a known Hindu supremacist, is the latest politician to spew venom by saying that “20% of the voters” – a clear reference to India’s Muslims –  “sympathize with mafias and terrorists.”

 

His bigoted remarks came barely a day after legislative elections were announced for his state, which is India’s most populous with over 220 million residents. During Adityanath’s five-year rule, the state’s Muslims have faced unprecedented persecution from not just Hindu extremist groups, but the government itself, with the police killing scores of Muslims and arresting thousands on false criminal charges, officials illegally razing mosques, and the government illegally seizing and auctioning properties owned by Muslims.

“Eighty percent of supporters will be on one side while 20 percent will be on the other,” Adityanath said at a campaign rally on January 10. “Eighty percent will move forward with positive energy whereas 20 per cent have always opposed and will oppose further.” 

Adityanath’s government has given a free rein to Hindu extremists, who have attacked, assaulted and lynched Muslims and widely engaged in hate speech. Under his government, Uttar Pradesh was listed by India’s National Human Rights Commission for three years in a row as the state with the most human rights violations in India.  

Public Lawsuit Filed In Supreme Court Seeks Independent Probe Into Calls For Genocide

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continue to stay silent and even justify the nationwide calls for genocide against Muslims, a public lawsuit has been filed at the Supreme Court of India seeking an independent court-monitored investigation into the spiralling hate speech.

 

The petition seeks to take action against the speakers at a Hindu religious meet held in the north Indian city of Haridwar during December 17-19, 2021, where saffron-clad self-styled Hindu monks called for Hindus to take up weapons and commit a genocide of two million Muslims. 

“These hate speeches consisted of open calls for genocide of Muslims in order to achieve ethnic cleansing. It is pertinent to note that the said speeches are not mere hate speeches but amount to an open call for murder of an entire community,” said the petition. It also pointed out the total lack of police action against the hate speakers.

The petition also listed the consequences of such hate speech: “The proclamations made at the events are widely available on the internet and qualify as both extreme hate speech and also as ‘violent speech inciting targeted killings of Muslim citizens’…  the contents of the speech feed into an already prevailing discourse which seeks to reimagine the Indian Republic as exclusivist, and that which has no space for other cultures, traditions and practices.”

Both the Haridwar event as well as an oath-taking event in Delhi, during which Hindu extremists swore to “kill and die” to turn India into a Hindu state, reiterated the Hindu extremist aspiration to turn India into a state for Hindus alone, the petition stated. “The two recent events of Haridwar and Delhi have gone even beyond the calls for structural violence and urged ‘physical cleansing’ of Muslims,” the petition said. 

The speakers at the Haridwar event, including extremist leaders Yati Narsinghanand Giri, Swami Prabodhanand Giri, Sadhvi Annapoorna, and others, are yet to be arrested.

Hindu Man Who Created App To Auction Muslim Women Says He Feels No Remorse

Bulli Bai, an app that was designed to “auction” Muslim women, humiliate them, and inundate them with online harassment, has continued to be defended by Hindu extremists. Neeraj Bishnoi, a 21-year-old engineering student who created the app, has told the police after his arrest that he “has no remorse” for what he did.

The police have said Bishnoi was “highly radicalized” by Hindu extremism, which has now become mainstream in India. On social media, Hindu nationalism apologists have flocked to the defense of Bishnoi and the three other youth arrested for creating Bulli Bai. 

 

“A prank is a prank is a prank. Sulli apps was a nasty prank which has been overblown waaay out of proportion,” tweeted one account. 

“A hindu extremist? Rampant cases of Love Jihad murders… blasts across the country… Azan forced noise pollution… Name this extremism too, maam?” tweeted another user in defense of the extremists. 

The radicalization of Hindus against Muslims, especially among the young, runs deep in India. Children waving swords and tridents as speakers called for a Muslim genocide were reported at the Haridwar hate speech assembly. In Uttar Pradesh, Hindu youth were indoctrinated into the Hindu supremacist ideology through multiple oath-taking events shortly after the Haridwar event, swearing “to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra (nation).”

Faculty, Students At India’s Top Management Institutes Write To PM Modi Saying His Silence Emboldens Hate-Filled Violence 

Dozens of professors and students belonging to the prestigious Indian Institutes Of Management (IIMs) have written an open letter to Prime Minister Modi, criticizing his silence on the many incidents of hate crimes against minorities that have occurred in the past few weeks.

 

Signed by 183 people, including 13 faculty members of IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bengaluru, the letter says: “Your silence on the rising intolerance in our country… is disheartening to all of us who value the multicultural fabric of our country. Your silence… emboldens the hate-filled voices and threatens the unity and integrity of our country.”

The letter adds: “There is a sense of fear in our country now – places of worship, including churches in recent days, are being vandalised, and there have been calls to take arms against our Muslim brothers and sisters. All of this is carried out with impunity and without any fear of due process.”

Modi has yet to respond to any of these hate crimes, further emboldening Hindu extremists and increasing the possibility of a Muslim genocide.