There are things I wish I could un-see. Among them is a recent viral social media video from India’s tea-growing state of Assam, where the ruling Bharatiya Janata party has mounted an eviction drive against Muslims it deems “illegal settlers”.
In the deeply disturbing footage, heavily armed state police, ordered to demolish huts built mainly by impoverished Muslims on public land, open fire on a villager running towards them armed only with a bamboo stick. The man, later identified as Moinul Haque, a 30-year-old father of three, falls to the ground, and is beaten by police with batons. He lies unmoving, blood from an apparent bullet wound to his chest spreading across his white vest.
Then, a burly civilian, later identified as a photographer hired by local officials to document the demolition drive, runs and stamps on the dying man, punches him, and backs away. Moments later, he takes another running leap, lands on Haque and again punches him. Finally, cops pull him away, and the video ends.
It is tempting to see such brutality as a reflection of poor police training and the aberrant behaviour of an unhinged individual. But just as George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer reflected America’s deep-rooted problems of racial inequality and police violence, the barbarity in Assam is a window into India’s growing culture of hatred, violence and impunity.
India never fully recovered from the 1947 partition along religious lines, and communal prejudices run deep. In the past, political leaders sought to dampen animosities, with public campaigns stressing communal harmony and unity in diversity. But the ruling Bharatiya Janata party — and the rightwing Hindu nationalist organisations at its base — are fanning old hatreds, demonising the Muslim minority as a threat to the Hindu majority, and suggesting violent remedies.
In recent years it has branded interfaith relationships between Muslim men and Hindu women as “love jihad”, a conspiracy to erode Hindu’s numerical superiority. Muslims’ slightly higher fertility rate is depicted as “demographic jihad”, while the spread of Covid-19 was initially blamed on a Muslim “corona jihad”. Even when touting their welfare programmes, BJP leaders use communal dog whistles. Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, claimed that subsidised food was previously monopolised by “those saying ‘abba jaan’,’’ a sly reference to Muslims.
In recent months, rightwing Hindu extremists have held incendiary anti-Muslim rallies in and around the capital, calling for the elimination of Islam from India. With Covid receding, verbal hostilities are threatening to boil over, as they did during deadly Delhi riots in February 2020. In Chhattisgarh state this week, several thousand rightwing Hindus, armed with swords, lathis and other weapons, marched through a Muslim neighbourhood, attacking people and vandalising cars and homes.
Chronicling India’s deepening climate of hatred can carry a high price, especially for Muslim journalists. Siddique Kappan, a Delhi-based Muslim reporter, has been in jail for a year, accused of sedition, terrorism, and “inciting Muslims” after writing about police brutality and other sensitive topics for news outlets in his home state of Kerala. Media organisations see Kappan’s arrest as a sign of the criminalisation of journalism.
Muslims aren’t the only victims of the culture of impunity. On Sunday, a vehicle allegedly owned by a junior home minister rammed into farmers protesting the government’s controversial agricultural laws. Four farmers were killed — another shocking video — while four others, including the minister’s driver, were killed in a furious melee afterwards. Days before the deadly incident, the minister had warned farmers in a viral video that he would “discipline them in two minutes” if they failed to “change [their] acts”.
Violence is begetting violence. In troubled Muslim-majority Kashmir — under direct rule by New Delhi since June 2018, five civilians, mostly Hindus, were gunned down by unidentified assailants in the capital, Srinagar, in the past week. India’s devastating cycle of hatred, bloodshed and grief shows no sign of abating.
India needs a George Floyd moment
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