Hannah Ellis-Petersen: Statue smashed in spate of attacks on India’s Christian community / Sunita Viswanath: How do we break the cycle of religious violence in South Asia? / Mukul Kesavan - Magic and mayhem: The death cult at Haridwar
Festive celebrations were disrupted, Jesus statues were smashed and effigies of Santa Claus were burned in a spate of attacks on India’s Christian community over Christmas.Amid growing intolerance and violence against India’s Christian minority, who make up about 2% of India’s population, several Christmas events were targeted by Hindu right wing groups, who alleged Christians were using festivities to force Hindus to convert.
In recent years, Christians have increasingly faced harassment around Christmas but this year saw a notable surge in attacks. In Agra in Uttar Pradesh, members of right wing Hindu groups burned effigies of Santa Claus outside missionary-led schools and accused Christian missionaries of using Christmas celebrations to lure people in....
Sunita Viswanath: How do we break the cycle of religious violence in South Asia?
Over the last few months, South Asia has been caught in yet another cycle of religious violence.In October, Muslim extremist mobs in Bangladesh inflicted serious violence against the country’s Hindu minority during its most important festival, Durga Puja. The trigger? A Facebook post showing the Qur’an being placed on an image of a Hindu deity. To some Muslims, this offensive post justified attacks on Hindu shops, temples, and homes across Bangladesh.
The violence didn’t
stop here, though. In the neighboring Indian state of Tripura, Hindu extremist
groups protesting the Bangladesh violence engaged in retaliatory attacks on
the state’s Muslim minority.
Sadly, it’s all too
common for religious violence in South Asia to be spurred by incidents of
“religious offense” or “blasphemy.” Strengthened by colonial-era laws which
make religious offense a crime, sometimes punishable by death, citizens often
take matters into their own hands, leading to a bloody cycle of violence and
global headlines of mob violence and lynchings.
For those of us in the
South Asian diaspora, these headlines are painful to read. For some of us, our
friends and family back home are under threat. But unfortunately, not everyone
agrees on how to break free from this cycle…
Mukul Kesavan: Magic and mayhem The death cult at Haridwar
The gathering at
Haridwar last week called itself a Dharma Sansad. It was, in fact, Hindutva’s
natural answer to a LitFest, a HateFest. Hindutva, as Aakar Patel
has recently reminded us, has no politics, no economics, no worthwhile books,
no view of the world separate from its consuming hatred of Muslims in
particular and minorities in general. Hindutvavadis produce
hate in the same way as writers produce literature. Ergo, a conclave of Hindutva’s
godmen will be a platform to peddle the only product majoritarianism can
produce: hatred.
Swami Prabodhanand Giri, the president of the Hindu Raksha Sena, had a plan of
action that he wanted to share. “And I’ll tell you what preparations those are.
I will make myself clear, this is the solution, and if you follow this
solution, then the path is made for you... in Myanmar, Hindus were being chased
away. The politicians, government and police were just standing and watching.
They started by killing them by cutting their necks, and not only this, but
they began to cut them in the streets and eat them. The people watching thought
we are going to die, we are not going to live.”
“This is our state
now. You have seen this at the Delhi border, they killed Hindus and hung them.
There is no more time, the case now is that either you prepare to die now, or
get ready to kill, there’s no other way. This is why, like in Myanmar,
the police here, the politicians here, the army and every Hindu must pick up
weapons and we will have to conduct this cleanliness drive (safai abhiyan).
There is no solution apart from this [italics added].”…
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/magic-and-mayhem/cid/1844823
Ramachandra
Guha: The unmaking of India
Sunita Viswanath: Why I feel the need to
bring my Hinduism to the streets
Sunita
Viswanath - I refuse to cede Hinduism to those who want to make India a Hindu
rashtra
Public Appeal by Hindus for Human Rights,
USA
