It’s not about one Ram temple
Twenty-five years ago, three domes of a medieval mosque in a UP town came crashing down. Throughout the 20th century, Hindu supremacists had fought a long battle to change the character of the nation.
Twenty-five years ago, three domes of a medieval mosque in a UP town came crashing down. Throughout the 20th century, Hindu supremacists had fought a long battle to change the character of the nation.
In these troubled times, the world’s two largest democracies – India and the US – are increasingly becoming hostile, threatening places for people with Muslim names.
Karwan e Mohabbat, which started its journey at Nagaon in Assam on September 4, travelled across the country, offering atonement and solidarity to families battered by hate violence. The journey is a small tribute to the valiant love of Mahatma Gandhi’s last and finest months.
The Karwan-e-Mohabbat – a caravan of love – set out from Nagaon in Assam on September 4, 2017, and concluded its travels on October 2, 2017, in Porbandar, a small coastal town in Gujarat where 148 years ago Mohandas Gandhi was born.
Most targets of such attacks are Muslims. IndiaSpend, in a rapid survey of reported cow-related attacks since 2010, found that over half of those attacked and 86 per cent of those killed were Muslims.
On a bumpy bus journey from Giridih to Ramgarh in Jharkhand, trying to type my short update for today. My heart very weighed down in a day with many reminders of why this Karwan was important to attempt.
It is eight years since communal violence swept the second poorest, deeply-forested district of Odisha, Kandhamal. We must not allow the erasure of this hate violence from public memory, because the suffering and displacement of the tribal and Dalit Christians targeted by the communal violence…
Every communal massacre in India is marked by the stain of impunity. Impunity means the assurance that those who plan and execute the slaughter and rape of innocents, and the loot and arson of their homes and businesses will ultimately escape all punishment.
In Mewat, Haryana, the traditional cheer of Eid ul Zuha was muted this year, overcast by clouds of fear. Four out of five residents of the district are Muslims. Outside Jammu and Kashmir, Mewat has the highest ratio of Muslim residents except Dhubri in Assam.
Three men have been marched to the gallows in recent years in India. All three were convicted of terror crimes. By contrast, I cannot recall a single person awarded the death penalty for communal violence since Independence.