Another Holi has come and gone, revealing in its wake – once again – the deepening wounds of a society and State in crisis.
Hindu festivals once celebrated the colours of the world’s original rainbow nation, although aspects of this rose-tinted view were always contentious (many Dalits point out that the celebration marking the burning of Holika, an asura king’s sister, legitimises violence against women from marginalised communities). Never without blemishes, the nation’s festive seasons were, still, a reasonable example of multicultural coexistence.
India’s festivals now squarely reflect the ever-deepening radicalisation of the majority, the protection and empowerment of Hindutva goons trying to terrorise Muslims and other minorities and separate Hindu and Muslim, and the abandonment of the rule of law.
Last week, I wrote about the gradual slide of the police in some northern cities into vigilantism –beating and parading Muslims, forcing them to chant slogans praising the cow and the supposed guardians of the law. This week, I’d like to address the pressure on the police from down below and up high, from the masses and the people they elect, to follow a bullying, majoritarian agenda that effectively discards the requirements of the law and the Constitution and intends to cleave Hindu from Muslim.
To me, the most vivid video of India’s breakdown this past week came from the mob trying to use a traditional shimga – a tree trunk with a bulbous head – as a battering ram against the gates of a mosque in Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra, a state rapidly descending from progressiveness and a general congeniality into anti-Muslim ferment. The tradition is that the trunk is laid at the steps of the mosque, but that, from all accounts, escalated into an attack this year.
The saving grace was that the police in the video appeared to be trying to prevent an invasion. Later, the police dismissed the attack as being – in the words of The Hindu – “aggressive sloganeering” and said the “misleading reel” had been deleted. You can watch it here.
It was unclear why the mob was allowed near the mosque. Perhaps I said that wrong: most Hindu festival processions these days, whether to celebrate Lord Ram’s birthday or Dushera, are somehow allowed to march past mosques, often stopping before them to play pounding music, hurl abuses, throw crackers or colours and generally offer provocation.
Tarpaulin coverings
In the restive town of Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh, which appears to be setting yet another template for the evolution of the Hindu rashtra with demolitions of Muslim properties, a claim on a medieval mosque and excavations, mosques were covered with tarpaulin – undoubtedly a fair policy for peace in the view of the administration. It would not do, after all, to crack down on lawbreakers; better to round up possible victims.
In Aligarh, Hindu fundamentalists threw colours on a covered mosque anyway, adding the usual sloganeering and loud music.
Instead, Muslims are frequent targets of crackdowns, with cases filed against them in Bharatiya Janata Party-run states for daring to be victims of lynching and abuse and doing provocative things like praying, running businesses, building homes or living.
Last week, I wrote about a police officer in Sambhal who asked Muslims to stay home if they thought the colours of Holi, which comes once a year, corrupted their religion. A few days later, a Muslim man wrote this, “Bakri Eid comes only once a year. Those who think that seeing meat and blood corrupts religion should stay home.” He was promptly locked up. You can watch his apology here.
The Sambhal police, meanwhile, joined in Holi celebrations, and an Uttar Pradesh minister said those who had a problem with Holi colours should leave India..
In such a febrile atmosphere, it was no surprise to hear Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the BJP in West Bengal threaten to “throw Muslim MLAs out” of the state assembly when his party was elected. At least he was direct – like so many Hindutva figures once regarded as fringe elements calling, without consequence, for the ethnic cleansing of Muslims.
This may be more truthful than saying that the party believes in standing with everyone and ensuring progress for everyone, sabka saath sabka vikas, but practising quite the opposite.
History tells us that an apartheid state, of the kind Adhikari envisages, evolves from bottom up until it is formalised from the top down. This apartheid, or separateness, is more evident every day in India, enforced by Hindu fundamentalists and the police and drafted into law. Almost every BJP state now has anti-conversion or cow-slaughter laws – many non-BJP states also have the latter.
So deeply set is the idea of separating Hindu and Muslim that even a seemingly confident Congress government in Karnataka has not repealed that state’s anti-conversion law, despite promising it would. Instead, it’s being used to harass minorities, as the Newsminute reported in October 2024.
Anti-conversion laws have been weaponised to harry and lock up minorities (here, here, here, and here). Food is not a matter of free choice, interfaith love has effectively been criminalised, and Muslim merchants are routinely turfed out of Hindu fairs.
In April 2022, Article-14 reported how Hindu fundamentalist organisations had pressured temple committees across Karnataka to keep Muslim traders out of about 60 fairs and had escalated their demands to a ban on halal meat. As the BJP government of the time either endorsed or silently approved such illegal and unconstitutional intimidation, the police stepped aside, placing at risk close ties developed over centuries between Hindus and Muslims.
Savarkar’s statement
Apartheid may sound like a strong word, but the concept of separating Hindus and Muslims is not new. Vinayak or “Veer” Savarkar, the beloved ideologue of the Hindu right, wrote in 1923: “Nothing can weld peoples into a nation and nations into a state as the pressure of a common foe. Hatred separates as well as unites.”
That common foe for Savarkar was primarily Muslims, although he was antagonistic to Christians as well. With Savarkar’s ideology now mainstreamed, the ruling party, its adherents, and elements of the State are combining to give it life.
I’m often asked, is there hope? I like to say there always is. The priests of a famed temple in the holy city of Varanasi recently rejected a demand by a Hindu fundamentalist group to boycott Muslim artisans. “Those making such demands want to hurt Muslims financially, but we respect every religion and every person,” one of the priests was quoted as saying in The Telegraph. I also saw this video of a joint Holi and Ramzan celebration.
I cannot shake the feeling that these are straws in a rising ill wind, fingers stuck into a dam threatening to come apart.
I can only hope I am wrong.
A version of this column was first published as an editorial note in Article-14.
