Court allows Hindu supremacists to probe 800-year-old mosque
A Karnataka court ruled in favor of a demand made by the violent Hindu supremacist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), allowing the group to conduct a survey of the 800-year old Malali mosque in Mangaluru city. The VHP has falsely claimed that remnants of a Hindu temple are located in the mosque.
In accepting the extremist group’s petition, the court also trampled over the rights of the historic mosque’s management, who had filed a plea to protect the mosque from being probed.
Hindu supremacists across India have demanded surveys of historic mosques, circulating the propaganda claim that all Muslim structures were built on the remains of Hindu temples. In Uttar Pradesh’s Gyanvapi mosque, Hindu supremacists who ludicrously claimed that the mosque’s ablution fountain was a representation of the Hindu deity Shiva were allowed to seal off the fountain from Muslim use.
The historic Shahi Idgah mosque has also been a target of Hindu supremacists in Uttar Pradesh, who have been demanding for years that the mosque be demolished to make way for a Hindu temple.
Calls to halt release of anti-Muslim Bollywood movie for peddling false claims
A formal demand to ban an upcoming Bollywood movie, “The Kerala Story,” has been lodged with India’s federal ministry of information and broadcasting. The film has been slammed by journalists, activists, and filmmakers for peddling overtly anti-Muslim propaganda through its blatantly false claim that over 30,000 Hindu women were converted to Islam and made to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Journalist Aravindakshan B.R. demanded in a letter to the federal ministry and India’s film certification board chairperson that the film be banned unless the makers provide evidence to back their claims.
Aravindakshan also sent out petitions to Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who responded by directing the chief of state police to take appropriate action.
“If the movie The Kerala Story is released in theaters or [streaming] platforms with false information, it will have bad consequences in society,” the journalist said in his letter to the chief minister.
The makers of the film, without providing evidence, have claimed that the film is based on real-life events. Its false claim that 32,000 Hindu women are “buried in deserts of Syria and Yemen” has been circulated as fact by Hindu supremacists on social media, further demonizing the already-marginalized Muslim community.
Modi government announces anti-Muslim citizenship policy in nine states
The Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Union Ministry of Home Affairs has announced a move to give citizenship rights to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians hailing from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, living in nine states across India.
However, Muslims whose families have been living in India are denied similar citizenship rights outright, and Muslim minorities fleeing genocide in countries such as Myanmar are also excluded.
In a report, the ministry stated that the district magistrates of 31 districts and the home secretaries of nine states have been given powers to grant Indian citizenship to the mentioned religious groups.
The nine states are Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Maharashtra.
The move to provide certain religious groups fleeing persecution with citizenship while subjecting Muslims to persecution and discrimination is reminiscent of the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which BJP officials have stated will go into effect after a new round of vaccinations for the Covid-19 pandemic is completed.
