Muslims in India continue to be targeted by 'emboldened' mobs under Modi 3.0

Zakai Wali was at home after enjoying a lavish Eid meal on the evening of June 18 when her neighbours rushed over to show her a video in which her brother, 35-year-old Mohammad Fareed, was being lynched by a mob.

"Initially, I couldn't comprehend what was going on. Why was my brother beaten so mercilessly? I just rushed to the spot," Zakai told This Week in Asia.

Fareed was killed just a few weeks after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its majority in a major electoral shock.

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The results, announced in early June, had led to hopes that the violence against Muslims and other minorities that marred Modi's first two terms would die down. However, the attacks have persisted unabated while both the BJP's coalition partners and opposition parties have largely remained silent.

Fareed, a resident of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, was reportedly lynched by people whom his family said they had known for years.

According to the family, Fareed was waylaid by a Hindu mob near his home as he was returning from work. The viral video of his lynching showed the mob, armed with sticks and iron rods, dragging Fareed through the streets, beating him to death.

"Nobody helped my brother. Instead, people were making videos of his death," Zakai said. "How long do we [Muslims] have to go through these ordeals? How long will this lawlessness continue in this country?"

Mob killings driven by religious hatred have been on the rise in India since Modi and the BJP came to power in 2014. However, with electoral losses giving them a weaker majority and forcing them to rely more on their coalition partners, many were optimistic that this would mean a reduction in religious extremism.

Despite this, religiously motivated lynchings seem to have risen since Modi took office for a third time. Since June 4, six such cases have already been reported from across India, the most that have ever been reported in a single month.

On June 24, a woman was murdered in Chhattisgarh after she converted to Christianity. A group of Hindu men, including members of her family, are believed to have been behind the killing.

On June 23, a Hindu nationalist mob harassed a Muslim businessman and vandalised his shop in Himachal Pradesh after falsely accusing him of slaughtering a cow. The incident led 12 Muslim men to leave the town.

Two mosques in New Delhi were demolished in late June following a hate campaign by a Hindu nationalist extremist who labelled them "illegal".

In Aligarh, some onlookers called the police to save Fareed from the unruly mob, but he died before he could be sent to hospital. Six people were later arrested in connection to the case.

The families of those who were arrested have accused Fareed of theft, an allegation denied by his family. Police on Saturday charged Fareed with dacoity, or armed robbery.

"There must be CCTV footage of the incident if my brother was a thief. Why didn't they [the mob] hand him over to the police if he was caught stealing? Who gave these people the right to kill him?," Zakai said.

Political analysts say the targeting of minority communities will continue unabated unless the government shows they are serious about putting a stop to it.

Harsh Mander, a human-rights activist at the Centre for Equity Studies, said he had hoped the BJP's coalition partners would pressure it to end the growing mob lynching culture in the country, "but they aren't doing it".

This was a clear signal from the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - a right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary organisation closely linked to the BJP - "that their ideological war against India's Muslims is undiminished", he added.

Mander said the BJP did not see its poor performance in the general election as being a rebuke against the rise in religious extremism.

"They [the BJP] are defiantly conveying the message that ideologically our juggernaut is fully in place. Symbolically they don't have a single Muslim in the cabinet, signalling that none of India's 200 million Muslim citizens will be represented," Mander said.

According to Apoorvanand, a political commentator and professor at Delhi University who only goes by one name, the BJP's 10 years in control of the government has created an atmosphere in which those who take part in mob violence do not fear repercussions.

"People did hope that since BJP no longer has an absolute majority, the pressure on minorities would be less, but that has proved to be wrong ... the BJP in the past 10 years has emboldened these mobs to lynch people," Apoorvanand said.

"The most dangerous thing is that the police and administration also don't want to protect the constitutional rights of people."

In December, the government did pass a new law, which went into effect on Monday, that adds the death penalty as a potential punishment for mob lynchings.

Asim Ali, a political researcher at the Centre for Policy Research, said attacks on minorities fuelled low- intensity conflict between communities that could be politically beneficial.

"Though the BJP government is in a weaker alliance ... it is unlikely that its coalition partners would be concerned about Muslim lynching in the country unless it impacts their own states," Ali said.

With assembly elections coming up in the states of Maharashtra and Haryana, Ali warned that attacks against Muslims could escalate.

"Government intervention is necessary to stop these episodes, but I don't see it happening" he said, adding the government might even "encourage" such conflict.

Rights activists in India have also criticised opposition political parties for remaining silent on the lynchings.

Nadeem Khan, the national secretary of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights, an advocacy group, said the opposition's silence was deafening.

"I think this is the unfortunate part, that the political parties who asked Muslims to vote for them are today not ready to make a single statement. No big political leader from the opposition has uttered a word about these recent lynching incidents," Khan said.

One exception is the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which has condemned the spate of attacks on Muslims as "sharpening communal assaults following the setback suffered by the BJP in the general elections".

Khan, who has been documenting lynching cases in India since 2017, said 80 per cent of cases had a political connection.

"This isn't a social issue, it's a political problem with a clear backdrop. The resurgence of mob lynching alongside BJP's losses in Hindi heartland underscores its political connections," Khan said.

Human rights activist Mander also expressed disappointment over the opposition "INDIA" coalition's silence on the latest mob lynchings.

"The INDIA alliance has been very critical of the government and has spoken about all other things but not on Muslim lynchings. The opposition has an ideological battle with the BJP and targeting Muslims should have been at the centre of this battle," Mandar said.

Member of parliament Aga Syed Ruhullah urged the opposition to speak up and fulfil its promise of supporting all minorities.

"I don't want them [opposition] to speak only for Muslims but for all oppressed minorities. We must stand against lynching no matter who it happens to. We must register a peaceful protest on the roads against it," he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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