Hindu extremists lynch Muslim man to death over false allegation of cow theft
In the latest case of brutal anti-Muslim lynchings, a violent mob of Hindu extremists in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Assam state lynched a Muslim man by beating him to death over false allegations of cow smuggling.
14 Hindu extremists responsible for the murder have been arrested so far. The victim, Naju Ali, was hospitalized and later succumbed to his injuries.
Hindu extremists who murder Muslims in the name of halting beef consumption are known as cow vigilantes. As Hindu extremism continues to grow in popularity, violent attacks, and mob lynchings against Muslims on the false allegation that they were buying and consuming beef have grown disturbingly common.
Despite this alarming spike in violence, the federal government does not collect official statistics on the number of such crimes.
Church arsoned, vandalized by Hindu extremists in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh
A church in Hindu supremacist BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh state was vandalized and arsoned by Hindu extremists. A resident of the area said that churchgoers found the word ‘Ram,’ the name of a Hindu deity, written on the church wall. The extremists reportedly entered the church by removing a window net and lighting a fire inside.
The church is reportedly connected to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States.
With the implementation of anti-Christian laws across India, hate crimes against Christians have increased, with Hindu supremacist groups attacking Christians, vandalizing their properties, and driving them out of their homes.
According to data collected by the human rights organization Federation of Indian American Christians (FIACONA), last year, there were 1,198 cases of verified violence against Christians in India, a 157% increase from the previous year. The report “directly attributes” the increase in these incidents “to the propaganda by the BJP government officials accusing Indian Christians of large-scale ‘forced’ conversion.”
Since 2017, minorities panel received most complaints from Muslims in Uttar Pradesh
According to the national government’s own data, 71 percent of total complaints relating to hate crimes and discrimination received by the National Commission for Minorities since 2017 are from the Muslim community alone, with most of them hailing from Hindu supremacist BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh state.
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, has emerged as one of the most Islamophobic administrations in India since its hardcore Hindu rightwing chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, came to power in 2017.
According to government data, of the total 10,562 complaints from all minority communities – including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and other groups – 7,508 complaints pertain to the Muslim community alone. However, the number of complaints that go unreported across India is much higher.
The vast majority of these complaints were made by Muslims living in Uttar Pradesh each year. For example, during the current fiscal year (2022-23), of the recorded 1,279 complaints from the Muslim community, 662 have been from Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh is a hotbed of violence against Muslims and other Indian minorities due to the popularity of Hindu extremism in the state, especially as extremists are directly encouraged by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including Adityanath himself.
According to the Hate Crime Watch database, Uttar Pradesh accounts for nearly a third of all hate crimes despite comprising only 16.5% of India’s population The database reported that between 2009 and 2018, UP accounted for 61 of 278 hate crimes based on religious identity. In July 2019, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) reported that between 2016 and 2019, 869 of 2,008 cases nationally related to “harassment” of minorities — a broad term that includes lynchings — were reported from Uttar Pradesh.
