The freedom movement was led by leaders who had imbibed values with democratic potential and they led the movement against colonial rule. The likes of Sardar Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Subhash Chandra Bose articulated values with inherent rights for the nation. They took the lead with great cost to their personal life. One of the examples was the inspiration derived by Jyotirao Phule was from Thomas Penn’s book ‘Rights of Man’. Ambedkar was an ardent follower of John Dewey who was steeped in democratic values.

Recently Mr. Narendra Modi went on to criticise Lord Macaulay for this transition to the values of rights, when he emphasised the traditional knowledge system as a dog whistle to highlight the concept of duty over rights.

Interestingly Modi and his ilk (Hindu Mahasabha-HMS, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-RSS) and its communal counterpart, the Muslim League both expressed the values of ‘declining classes of landlords, Nawabs and Kings’. Modi’s Hindutva has harked back to an “ancient period” where ‘Dharma’ was the core, the Dhrama which followers of Hindutva claim to be very great and the core part of Hinduism. Dharma stands for religiously ordained duties, and this includes the rigidly exclusionary system of Caste! Hindu ideologues claim that there is no equivalent of Dharma in other religions. There is Shudra Dhrama, Stree Dharma, Kshatriya dharma and what have you. At core it is caste stratification and duties which dominated the scene.

The Muslim League emerged from the nawabs/landlords and their leaders eulogised the great rule of Muslim kings, starting from Mohammad bin Kasim who ruled for some time in Sind. Their model was based on feudal values, looking down on lower levels of society. Dominant sections were blessed with the ‘divine power’ trickling down to a few feudal lords etc. Pakistan saw an initial and welcome definition of secularism by Jinnah; however, in practice, it was feudal elements that were dominant around him. After Jinnah’s death they came out openly to impose their feudal-semi feudal values on Pakistani state and society.

Even as Hindu Nationalism (read supremacism) today appears dominant in India, what is being undermined in this onward march of Hindutva politics is the concept of ‘rights’ inherent in our national movement and embodied in the Indian Constitution. This is where the non-biological Narendra Modi begins the journey to achieve the goal of undermining rights and highlighting duties.

The call for the dumping of the education system introduced by Lord Macaulay was a subtle attempt in this direction. He put it more overtly (brazenly) on Constitution Day, November 26, 2025. Modi said, “In a recent letter to Indian citizens on Constitution Day (November 26, 2025), Prime Minister Narendra Modi heavily emphasised the importance of citizens fulfilling their Fundamental Duties. He argued that performing these duties is the foundation for a strong democracy and national progress towards his “Viksit Bharat” (Developed India) vision for 2047. Modi urged citizens to place their “duties towards the nation foremost in our minds”. This aligns with his previous statements where he suggested that “rights are embedded in duties” and that “real rights are a result of the performance of duty”.

Besides, he also tweeted “On Constitution Day, I wrote a letter to my fellow citizens in which I’ve highlighted the greatness of our Constitution, the importance of Fundamental Duties in our lives…” Shravasti Dasgupta writes “While this is not the first time that Modi has laid emphasis on citizens duties, or interlinked them with rights to suggest that duties correspond to rights, the Constitution shows that such interlinking is incorrect. According to constitutional experts and political scientists, an invocation of duties, placing primacy on them above rights, is a subtle attempt to recast the Constitution, ensure compliance in a manner seen in authoritarian regimes, and signals a danger to democratic principles”

Modi went on to invoke Gandhi on this. “…and that “real rights are a result of the performance of duty,” Invoking Gandhi is totally off the mark as Prof Zoya Hasan (Prof. Emerita, JNU) says, “Gandhi often spoke of duties, but he never treated them as a substitute for rights; duties did not supersede rights. For him, duties were a moral path for individuals, while Fundamental Rights remained essential and must be protected by the state. Gandhi’s commitment to duties did not diminish rights in any way,”

Incidentally to emphasise the concept of rights, many of these were underlined during the UPA regime (2004-2014). This was through a series of enactments, long overdue. The first and major amongst these was “Right to Information Act 2005”, a mechanism to root democracy in a deeper way. This was followed by Right to Education Act 2009, Right to Food (National Food Security Act, 2013). With the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government losing power in 2014, it is the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)—dominated by the RSS-driven Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Today, in 2025 it is the third term of the NDA, today a minority government supported from the outside. With this change in power at the centre in 2014, the constitutional, rights’-based approach to public policy has gone into cold storage and duties are being made the major part of our national policies.

Even our Constitution emphasises on rights in itself. In fact, Article 21 of our Constitution, that guarantees the ‘Right to Life’ incorporates within it, the right to health, the right to education for example. The UPA Government underlined –albeit belatedly — in an appropriate way.

Today Hindu Nationalism is totally suppressing rights, like freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of expression among others. Many of these are incorporated in the wider concept of Human rights as well.

What Mr. Modi is conveying in his November 26 s letter is authenticating the suppression of the concept of ‘rights’ for all and through this relegating religious minorities to second class status, derogating questioning and dissenting citizens, academics and activists to being “Urban Naxal”. Incidentally and not surprisingly, it is the Constitutions of authoritarian states that emphasise on “duties” at the cost of rights.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

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The post Hindu Nationalism’s sectarian nationalism and its concept of ‘duties and rights’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“This report does not critique religion or its festivals. It examines whether public religious mobilisations are being used to spread exclusionary rhetoric and whether authorities are responding.”

Background: Sanatan Hindu Ekta Padyatra

Launched by prominent right-wing Hindutva leaders, the Sanatan Ekta Padyatra is being promoted as a socio-spiritual movement. Led by Dhirendra Krishna Shastri of Bageshwar Dham, the yatra was flagged off from Delhi with the stated objectives of establishing a Hindu nation, eradicating casteism, and fostering social unity. Scheduled from November 7 to 16, it passed through 422 village panchayats across Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.

As part of the campaign, seven resolutions were announced, like promoting social harmony and supporting the “grand construction” of the Shri Janmabhoomi temple. The controversy primarily stems from the first and central resolution: the demand to declare India a Hindu Rashtra. This directly conflicts with the Constitution’s commitment to a secular state and violates the guarantees of freedom of religion under Article 25 as well as equality and non-discrimination under Articles 14 and 15.

However, the publicly stated resolutions tell only part of the story. Across multiple stops in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, several speakers, including the Padyatra’s principal organisers, delivered inflammatory speeches that went far beyond calls for spiritual unity or social harmony. These speeches invoked communal conspiracy theories (“love jihad,” “land jihad”), portrayed Muslims as demographic threats, justified vigilante violence, and openly advocated for religious segregation and economic boycotts. Many of these statements raise serious concerns under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and established Supreme Court jurisprudence on hate speech and incitement. 

Details of the Hate Speech Delivered

Below is a consolidated analysis of the most objectionable statements made during the Sanatan Hindu Ekta Padyatra, grouped under 3 main themes and mapped against the relevant legal frameworks.
The reference links of the speeches, with timestamps mentioned, are given below-

Ghaziabad, Nov 3

Palwal, Nov 10

Palwal, Nov 12

Chhatarpur, Nov 14

Faridabad, Nov 8

Banchari, Nov 12

Mathura, Nov 15

Palwal, Haryana, Nov 10

Banchari, Nov 12

A.  Direct Hate Speech (Violence, Hostility, Social Boycott)

(Statements advocating violence, hostility, coercion, or social/economic boycott; calls for expulsion; explicit majoritarian supremacy)

Across multiple stops of the Sanatan Hindu Ekta Padyatra, speakers issued direct calls that clearly cross the constitutional threshold into incitement as interpreted in Amish Devgan and Shreya Singhal. In Ghaziabad (Nov 3), the speaker declared that India “should become a Hindu Rashtra” (0:39–0:42) and added that population decline “should happen to those who follow the ‘chadar’ and the ‘father’,” (1:17–1:20) a statement which the Supreme Court would classify as high-intensity dehumanising hate speech. Similarly, in Palwal (Nov 10), a public oath was taken to ensure that “love jihad and aaved dharmantaran will not be allowed” (0:20–0:27), effectively encouraging vigilantism against interfaith couples and converts. Under Patricia Mukhim, such statements, though framed as “protection,” amount to direct incitement toward unlawful acts.

In Delhi (Nov 7), hostility was escalated through demographic-war rhetoric: “tumhari sampatti tumhari hogi, kabza unka hoga” (2:30–2:44), and by invoking civilisational conflict through “ye desh Babar ka nahi, Raghuvar ka hai” (2:58–3:02). The Court in Amish Devgan specifically flagged the use of derogatory historical figures to mobilise hatred in the present. In Faridabad (Nov 10), a speaker warned: “jab desh lutega… tumhari beti love jihad mei pad jayegi… tumhara beta jis din shukravar ko jaane lagega,” (2:34–2:56) creating a direct incentive to treat Muslim men as targets of suspicion and implying moral justifications for coercive action.

Following the Delhi car blast, Dhirendra Shastri, addressing Palwal (Nov 12), asked: “yehi (Muslims) kyu aatangwadi hote hain?” (0:27–0:39), treating the entire community as terrorists. He further warned that unless Hindus united, bomb blasts like Delhi would occur “in every gali” (0:57–1:26), which satisfies the proximity test under Shreya Singhal. In Chhatarpur, MP (Nov 14), dissenters to Hindu symbols were told to “get their ticket to Lahore” (0:00–0:13), echoing classic expulsion rhetoric the Court has treated as unprotected. The chant recorded in Faridabad (Nov 8) — “tel lagao Dabur ka, naam mita do Babur ka; jo Ram ka nahi wo kisi kaam ka nahi” — directly targets Muslims through symbolic eradication. In Banchari, Palwal (Nov 12), speakers vowed to conduct compulsory “ghar wapsi” for those who had “left Sanatan” (0:29–0:46), amounting to a call for coercive reconversion, contrary to Shafin Jahan (Hadiya), which protects decisional autonomy in matters of faith.

Finally, in Mathura (Nov 15), spiritual leader Devkinandan Thakur invoked the Babri Masjid demolition (“4:20–4:50”) while urging the crowd to “move toward Mathura and Vrindavan,” hinting at mobilisation to claim the Shahi Idgah Mosque. The Supreme Court in the Ayodhya judgment warned that religious disputes must not be weaponised for incitement. These statements collectively amount to direct hate speech under Indian constitutional and criminal jurisprudence.

B. Discriminatory / Exclusionary “Othering”

(Normalising prejudice, othering minorities, delegitimising citizenship, religious tests for belonging)

Several speeches sought to redefine citizenship and community belonging in expressly exclusionary terms. In Ghaziabad (Nov 3), the speaker framed Hindu women as victims of Muslim men by warning that “our daughters fall into love jihad” (0:44–1:01), establishing a stereotype that casts Muslim men as predatory. He also suggested that Hindus “are not extremist,” implying that extremism is inherent to other communities (1:32–1:39). Such rhetorical othering aligns with what Patricia Mukhim describes as hate speech that delegitimises equal citizenship.

In Delhi (Nov 7), converts were described as outsiders: “Hindu issai mei converted hota hai toh ‘sister’ aur ‘sir’ kehlata hai… Hindu Musalman mei converted hota hai toh ‘bhai-jaan, amma-jaan’ kehlata hai,” followed by a suggestion that Hindus should first identify only as “Hindu” before any caste label (1:47–2:22). This constructs religious identity as the sole marker of national legitimacy. In Haryana (Nov 10), the crowd was asked if they want to see their children “wearing topi” or “going to church on Sunday” (0:04–0:25), depicting basic religious expression by minorities as inherently undesirable. The line “jab topi walo ki ekta ho sakti, toh tilak walo ki kyu nahi” (0:30–0:37) frames religious groups as competing blocs, contradicting the constitutional ideal of fraternity.

Kajal Hindusthani, in Palwal (Nov 10), urged the crowd to “be Hindus, buy from Hindus, employ only Hindus” (0:20–0:33), an explicit economic boycott. Section 196 of BNS emphasises that no citizen can be coerced into religious conformity; here, exclusion is extended to everyday economic life. In Chhatarpur (Nov 14), slogans like “jo Ram ka nahi, wo kisi kaam ka nahi” (0:24–0:33) reduce non-Hindus to second-class status. The DNA-testing analogy used to delegitimise dissenter’s mirrors what Amish Devgan classifies as dehumanising metaphors, which have no constitutional protection. In Banchari (Nov 12), Nagendra Maharaj’s line— “those who object to Vande Mataram or Ram should go to Pakistan or Afghanistan” (0:33–0:41)—constructs a religious test for belonging, contrary to the secular character upheld repeatedly by the Supreme Court.

Such statements normalise hostility and social exclusion, and the Court in Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan explicitly warned that such majoritarian narratives fuel discrimination and justify vigilantism, attracting Sections 196 (Promoting enmity between different groups), Section 197 (assertions prejudicial to national integration), and Section 299 (Deliberate acts, intended to outrage religious feelings).

C. Fearmongering & Demographic Conspiracy Claims

(Alarmist misinformation about population, survival, territorial takeover; invoking existential threat narratives)

A consistent theme throughout the padyatra was the portrayal of Hindus as being on the verge of demographic extinction. In Ghaziabad (Nov 3), the speaker claimed that Hindus are “khatam ho rahe hai” despite India’s overwhelming Hindu majority, and that once “Hindus do not unite, they will not be safe” (1:55–2:06). He also asserted that Hindus are declining “day by day” (1:04–1:16), ignoring census realities. This comes under spreading demographic conspiracy narratives constitutes incitement because it fosters suspicion and hostility against minorities.

In Delhi (Nov 7), the crowd was told that “20 saal baad, Bharat ka Hindu apne astitva ki ladai lad raha hoga” (0:38–), and that minorities would seize Hindu property: “sampatti tumhari hogi, kabza unka hoga” (2:30–2:44). Such claims resemble classic “replacement” conspiracy theories. When combined with militaristic lines like “na toh pad rehna hai, na kad rehna hai” (0:55–0:58), the rhetoric urges mobilisation against an imagined security threat. In Haryana (Nov 10), Partition was invoked (“Jinnah ki leadership mein… alag Pakistan bana”), followed by an analogy that if “Sanatan Dharma ke naam par” India does not become a Hindu Rashtra, it will face a “Bangladesh-like situation” where “haq kisi aur ka hoga” (1:53–2:06). The Supreme Court in Pravasi Bhalai explicitly noted that selective historical parallels are often used to trigger fear and justify majoritarian aggression.

After the Delhi blast, Dhirendra Shastri claimed that unless Hindus unite, “aisa har gali mein hoga” (0:57–1:26), and asserted that the arrested individual— “doctor, musalman… crore-o ki jaan lene ki tayaari”—was preparing mass murder, furthering the narrative that Muslims pose a blanket existential threat. Fear of demographic loss was also invoked repeatedly: in Delhi (Nov 7), the claim that Hindus have become minorities in “9 states” is factually incorrect yet presented as imminent collapse. In Banchari (Nov 12), Nagendra Maharaj warned that Hindus could be “expelled from their homes like Srinagar,” framing political developments as religious persecution.

Such narratives fall squarely within the Supreme Court’s treatment of misinformation that has a proximate connection to public disorder (Shreya Singhal). Fearmongering of this kind shifts the public mindset from coexistence to hostility, creating conditions for violence without issuing explicit violent commands.

Legal Framework

India’s constitutional and statutory framework places clear limits on speech that promotes enmity, incites violence, or undermines the country’s secular structure. Several statements delivered during the Sanatan Ekta Padyatra appear to contravene these provisions.

Constitutional Provisions

Various provisions of the Indian Constitution safeguard against hate speech and communal othering.

1. Article 14 — Equality before law

Communal othering, demographic fear-mongering, and calls for exclusion (“be Hindus, buy only from Hindus”) violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection to all communities.

2. Article 15 — Non-discrimination on grounds of religion

Calls for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, alongside statements urging economic segregation, employment discrimination, or “ghar wapsi” of all converts, contradict the constitutional prohibition against discrimination on religious grounds.

3. Article 19(1)(a) & 19(2) — Freedom of speech and its reasonable restrictions

Speech that threatens public order, incites violence, or promotes communal disharmony falls squarely within the restrictions permitted under Article 19(2).
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that advocacy crossing into incitement is not protected speech.

4. Article 25 — Freedom of religion

Sections of the BNS

1. Section 196 of BNS: Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony

(1) Whoever—

• by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic communication or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities; or Liability of owner, occupier, etc., of land on which an unlawful assembly or riot takes place. Affray. Assaulting or obstructing a public servant when suppressing a riot, etc.
  (b) commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquillity;

2. Section 197 of BNS: Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration.

(1) Whoever, by words either spoken or written or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic communication or otherwise, —

(a) makes or publishes any imputation that any class of persons cannot, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community, bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established or uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India; or

(c) makes or publishes any assertion, counsel, plea or appeal concerning the obligation of any class of persons, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community, and such assertion, counsel, plea or appeal causes or is likely to cause disharmony or feelings of enmity or hatred or ill-will between such members and other persons; or

3. Section 299: Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs. 

Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic means or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

4. Section 352: Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace.

 Whoever intentionally insults in any manner, and thereby gives provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace, or to commit any other offence, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

5. Section 353: Statements conducing to public mischief.

 (1) Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement, false information, rumour, or report, including through electronic means—

(b) with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public, or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquillity; or

(c) with intent to incite, or which is likely to incite, any class or community of persons to commit any offence against any other class or community, shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

Judicial Precedents

Indian constitutional jurisprudence has consistently sought to balance freedom of expression with the imperative of preserving public order, equality, and the secular fabric of the nation. While there is no universally accepted definition of ‘hate speech’, the Supreme Court has laid down clear principles that define when speech crosses the boundary from protected expression into unlawful incitement or communal hatred.

The foundational judgment in Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar (1962) affirmed that criminal provisions affecting speech must be interpreted narrowly. The statute is constitutionally valid only to the extent it punishes speech that has the intention or tendency to create disorder or incitement to violence or disturbance of law and order.

The Padyatra speeches, alleging demographic conquest, “love jihad,” and calling for social boycotts and vigilante resistance, demonstrate a direct intention to cause disharmony between religious groups travelling through communally sensitive regions of Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. The route’s culmination at Banke Bihari Temple, Vrindavan, a site recently embroiled in controversy, heightens the imminent potential for communal mobilisation.

A decade later, Kesavananda Bharati v. Union of India (1973) reaffirmed the inviolable constitutional commitment to secularism, equality, and fundamental rights by introducing the Basic Structure doctrine. Through this, the Court held that any attempt, legislative or otherwise, that undermines the secular character of the Republic would be unconstitutional at its core. This principle shapes the broader legal environment within which communal speech is assessed.

On debates around ‘love jihad’ and ‘illegal conversion’, the Supreme Court in the Hadiya Marriage Case (2018), held that the right to marry a person of one’s choice is integral to Article 21, and the choice of a partner lies within the exclusive domain of an individual, and is a part of the core zone of privacy, which is inviolable.

The modern understanding of hate speech was articulated in Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan v. Union of India (2014), where the Supreme Court held that

Hate speech is an effort to marginalise individuals based on their membership in a group. Using expression that exposes the group to hatred, hate speech seeks to delegitimize group members in the eyes of the majority, reducing their social standing and acceptance within society. Hate speech, therefore, rises beyond causing distress to individual group members. It can have a societal impact.

Responding to this mandate, the Law Commission’s 267th Report proposed a structured framework for understanding hate speech. Para 5.2 laid down the criteria for identifying hate speech:

(i) The extremity of the speech

(ii) Incitement

(iii) Status of the author of the speech

(iv) Status of victims of the speech

(v) Potentiality of the speech

(vi) Context of the Speech

The Court’s earlier ruling in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) further clarified that only speech amounting to “incitement to imminent lawless action” can be legitimately restricted under Article 19(2), reinforcing the centrality of context, intent, and likely consequences.

In Patricia vs State of Meghalaya (2021), the Supreme Court quashed a FIR against a journalist, concluding that the post was a genuine plea for justice and equality rather than an attempt to promote hatred or communal discord. In Amish Devgan v. Union of India (2020), the court further stated that: the mode of exercise of free speech, the context and the extent of abuse of freedom are important in determining the contours of permissible restrictions.

Aftermath of Padyatra

The Sanatan Ekta Padyatra triggered immediate political and social pushback across several states. The Azaad Samaj Party (ASP) condemned the march on constitutional grounds, arguing that India’s identity as a secular republic cannot be undermined by a public movement openly calling for a “Hindu Rashtra.” ASP formally petitioned the President to halt the yatra, while the Dalit Pichda Samaj Sanathan (DPSS) joined ASP in filing a PIL before the Supreme Court seeking a complete stop to the march and a ban on its “inflammatory” speeches. In response, Gwalior-based politician Damodar Singh Yadav announced a counter-mobilisation titled the Samvidhan Bachao Yatra, set to begin on November 16, framing it as a defence of constitutional values.

On the ground, several areas witnessed unrest directly linked to the padyatra. Samagra Bharat reported that on 9 November in Indergarh (Datia district, MP), residents gathered at Ambedkar Park and attempted to burn an effigy of Dhirendra Shastri, alleging that his speeches promoted caste humiliation and communal hatred. Members of the Hindu Sangathan retaliated with stone-pelting, leading to a police lathi-charge when tensions escalated. Locals later filed an FIR against Shastri, but authorities have taken no concrete action. A week later, on 17 November, Patrika reported a scuffle at Vrindavan’s Banke Bihari Temple during Shastri’s visit, where a confrontation between temple priests and the police resulted in torn garments and allegations that the padyatra’s politicised presence compromised the sanctity and security of the temple premises.

Broader Pattern of Impunity towards Hate Speeches

The fallout from the padyatra reflects a broader pattern in which communal mobilisation and hate speech by far-right Hindutva leaders are met with minimal institutional response. India has witnessed repeated episodes of religiously charged violence—such as the 2019 lynching of Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand, where the victim was forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram”—and mass events like the 2024 Ayodhya Ram Mandir consecration have increasingly become sites for majoritarian mobilisation. Despite this backdrop, police responses remain inconsistent, especially when politically influential individuals are involved. NDTV reports that although five FIRs were filed over two years against BJP legislator T. Raja Singh for comments such as “The Old City of Hyderabad is a mmini-Pakistan” two were closed, and the remaining three have seen no decisive progress.

Legal scrutiny has extended to Baba Dhirendra Shastri as well, with multiple complaints for delivering hate speeches in Udaipur, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. In 2023, a PIL before the Gujarat High Court sought enforcement of the Supreme Court’s Tehseen Poonawalla guidelines—requiring preventive intelligence units, immediate action against hate speech, and punitive steps against officials who fail to curb mob violence—but the petition was declined. This pattern of judicial reluctance, combined with police inaction, underscores a systemic tolerance toward inflammatory communal rhetoric, even when it directly violates constitutional guarantees and statutory prohibitions under the BNS. The result is a public environment where speeches like those delivered during the Sanatan Ekta Padyatra, openly calling for a Hindu Rashtra and targeting minority communities, continue largely unchecked, emboldening majoritarian mobilisation while eroding constitutional safeguards.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this has been worked on by Shyamli Pengoriya)

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The post The Politics of Processions: How the Sanatan Ekta Padyatra amplified hate speech in plain sight appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A broad comparative reading of speeches, videos, rallies, slogans, media patterns, complaints, and reports reveals something deeper than mere rhetorical excess. It reveals a political order that increasingly depends on the manufacture of an existential threat. The political message has fused with social fear. Social fear has fused with administrative paralysis. Administrative paralysis has fused with electoral advantage. In this fusion, the very meaning of democracy is being reconfigured: elections no longer offer competing futures but competing hatreds; political legitimacy no longer flows from representation but from the ability to summon and sustain anger.

In this transformed landscape, hate speech functions as infrastructure. It builds worlds. It shapes consciousness. It reorganises neighbourhood markets, influences police behaviour, triggers vigilante assertion, and fractures interdependence at the most micro levels. It is not ephemeral. It is lived, circulated, absorbed, and enacted. In addition, its long-term damage is not only to India’s minorities, but also to India’s democratic capacity itself. Hate becomes not only an electoral weapon but also a method of governance; not only a tactic of polarisation but also a technique of population management.

This article takes stock of this new political order. It examines the imagery and stereotypes deployed across electoral contexts; the fears they stoke; the patterns of mobilisation they generate; the administrative silences that empower them; the media networks that amplify them; and, most importantly, the differential ways in which states like Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar adapt this infrastructure to their own socio-political terrains. In Bihar especially, hate speech became a tool to reorder caste configurations—an extraordinary strategic shift with profound implications for the state’s political future.

The fundamental objective of this “Architecture of Polarisation” is two-fold: first, to successfully consolidate a majority (read Hindu) vote bank through the construction of an existential threat narrative; and second, to systematically blur socio-economic realities and caste equations—particularly in states like Bihar—by substituting governance failures with religious conflict. This piece argues that electoral hate speech has evolved from fringe outbursts into an essential, multi-stage campaign strategy, aiming to consolidate a majority vote bank by constructing a fear-driven narrative of existential threat to the majority community.

Notably, along with the article, documents containing communal and provocative speeches delivered during Delhi, Maharashtra and Lok Sabha elections has been attached separately.

CJP’s Election Hate Watch operates as a specialised monitoring system designed to track, document, and challenge hate speech that corrodes the fairness of India’s electoral process. During election cycles, CJP’s conduct daily scans of speeches, election rallies, roadshows, religious gatherings, local WhatsApp circulation, hyperlocal events, and media broadcasts. Every instance of communal incitement is timestamped, transcribed, archived, and assessed against the Model Code of Conduct, RPA, and hate-speech jurisprudence. The process is meticulous: the team captures not only explicit slurs or violent calls but also dog-whistles, coded conspiracies (“love jihad,” “land jihad,” “vote jihad”), ritualised slogans, vigilante mobilisation, and election-season communal rumours. The emphasis is on understanding how hate operates as a political technology—where it originates, who amplifies it, how quickly it spreads, and how it shapes the emotional climate of the constituency.

A core function of the Election Hate Watch is formal accountability. Each verified violation is filed with the Election Commission as a structured MCC complaint—supported with evidence, legal references, URLs, transcripts, and explicit analysis of how the speech violates electoral norms. As complaints accumulate, CJP identifies deeper patterns: repeat offenders who face no consequences; fringe groups that act as advance agents of polarisation months before polling; the transition of hate speech from local agitators to star campaigners; the silence or selective inaction of District Magistrates; and the seasonal spike in anti-minority mobilisation whenever elections approach. The Hate Watch therefore does more than document abuse—it exposes the systemic, cyclical nature of hate-mongering during elections and highlights how institutional indifference enables its escalation.

The National Template of Hatred: How stereotypes become strategy

Across every state examined—Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar, and during the Lok Sabha campaign—one encounters a startlingly consistent repertoire of imagery. It is a set-piece performance, travelling effortlessly from district to district, from rallies to WhatsApp forwards, from street-corner speeches to prime-time studio screens. The central character of this repertoire is the Muslim figure cast entirely outside the domain of citizenship: the eternal infiltrator, the calculating seducer, the demographic schemer, the territorial conspirator, the economic parasite, the cultural invader.

Protagonists employed to spew this hatred by the ideological majoritarian formation that most benefits from it, the RSS led-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are the constitutional CEOs of the party’s most polarised states (Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Uttarakhand). The carry forward or trickle down circulation of this hate is then by local level, recognised functionaries of far right formations, closely allied with the regime.

The term “infiltrator” is the axis around which this ecosystem revolves. It appears not merely as an insult but as a political doctrine. Hatred does not operate by merely expressing dislike; it operates by constructing the “Other” as an enemy so dangerous that even constitutional protections must bow before national survival. The infiltrator trope achieves this by collapsing legal categories—foreigner, migrant, refugee, citizen—into a single undifferentiated target. A Muslim man walking with his daughter to school becomes indistinguishable from a Bangladeshi terrorist. A Muslim vendor selling tomatoes becomes indistinguishable from a Rohingya infiltrator. This collapse is not a misunderstanding; it is a deliberate political intervention that renders all constitutional protections fragile.

Alongside the infiltrator, we see the proliferation of “jihad” conspiracies. These conspiratorial logics—love jihad, land jihad, population jihad, vote jihad—are a masterstroke of rhetorical engineering. They allow entirely ordinary, mundane aspects of life—love, marriage, land purchase, childbirth, voting—to be reinterpreted as part of a sinister plan. The beauty of a conspiracy theory is not that it is credible but that it is expansive. It can absorb anything, interpret everything, and justify whatever violence follows. For electoral actors, this is strategic gold.

This vocabulary is supplemented by dehumanising metaphors: termites, snakes, demons. Dehumanisation functions as the precursor to violence, lowering the psychological barrier between rhetoric and action. The use of such animalistic vocabulary across Maharashtra and Lok Sabha speeches shows a clear attempt to create a moral universe in which harming the target feels like cleansing, not cruelty.

Then there is the linguistic architecture of purity and contamination. In Delhi, vendors are forced to display saffron flags or publicly assert their Hindu identity. The underlying claim is that Muslim bodies carry impurity—social, cultural, or even culinary. If a Muslim vendor hides his identity, he is framed as deceitful; if he reveals it, he is ostracised. It is a no-win situation designed to make minority livelihoods precarious.

The repetition of identical metaphors across states shows a powerful truth: hate is being standardised.

The thematic trinity of existential threat

The communal campaign strategy relies on a narrow but potent set of themes, which are tailored locally but consistent nationally. These themes function to dehumanise the minority community, primarily Muslims, and position them as a singular, monolithic threat that transcends local governance issues.

1. The ‘Infiltrator’ and Citizenship Trope: Stoking demographic fear

Across Bihar, Maharashtra, and the Lok Sabha campaign, the core message is that the opposition parties are enabling “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and “Rohingya refugees” to undermine the nation’s security and steal local resources.

• Commonality- The threat to resources and identity: The core claim across all these elections is that “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and “Rohingya refugees” are being enabled by opposition parties to usurp local resources, jobs, and land, thereby changing the demography of border districts. This rhetoric is deployed to stoke the fears of demographic replacement and economic dispossession.

• Top-down amplification: This is not limited to local functionaries; it has been mainstreamed by the highest-ranking “Star Campaigners.” The Prime Minister, for instance, used the term ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) in Bihar, alleging demographic changes in border districts and announcing a mission to deport them to prevent the theft of livelihoods and resources from the youth of Bihar. In the Lok Sabha campaign, the same narrative was used to claim the opposition planned to redistribute the country’s wealth to these “infiltrators”.
• Targeting indigenous communities (Jharkhand): In Jharkhand, this narrative was explicitly used to divide and mobilise the Adivasi and indigenous communities. BJP leaders accused the ruling JMM-Congress coalition of enabling these “infiltrators” to settle illegally, thereby “stealing” resources, jobs, and land from the Adivasis. The rhetoric successfully frames the election not as a choice on development, but as a defense of indigenous culture and territory against an external Muslim threat.
• Delhi and Maharashtra: Local leaders in Delhi utilised the same language, warning residents that if the opposition won, the city would “turn into Dhaka” and that the opposition was busy making Aadhaar cards for these “Bangladeshis”. In Maharashtra, the demand for NRC/Janta NRC was raised with the promise to throw out all Bangladeshis/Rohingya.

The fear stoked: This theme directly stokes the fear of demographic replacement, economic dispossession, and national security compromise, making the electoral choice one of survival rather than policy.

2. The ‘Jihad’ Conspiracy Matrix: Fuelling moral panic and segregation

The term ‘Jihad’ is weaponised as a prefix to various social and economic activities to generate a state of perpetual moral panic within the majority community.

Certain instances of hate speech targeted Muslims in Bihar are as follows:

1. Raghunathpur, Bihar

Assam CM & BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma says, “Before I came to Raghunathpur, I thought I would see Lord Ram, Lord Lakshman and Goddess Sita, but I was told that there are many Ram, Laxman and Sita here and there is also Osama. So I asked, who is Osama? This Osama is like the earlier Osama Bin Laden. We have to ensure the elimination of all Osama Bin Ladens in the state. What was Osama’s father’s name? He was called Shahbuddin…”

2. Keoti, Darbhanga, Bihar

Top themes from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s campaign speech: “Bihar’s security is being compromised by letting ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) into Bihar’s land — these are the same people who divide you on caste lines, invite ghuspaithiya (infiltrators), play with your faith, and then work to undermine national security. We must not allow these ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) to enter. Just as Article 370 was ended in Kashmir and Pakistani elements were pushed out, we will remove ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) from our border areas, seize the property of anyone involved in criminal activities, and distribute that property among the poor — the NDA government will do this. Elect NDA candidate Shri Murari Mohan Jha again; do not allow any element that shelters ghuspaithiya (infiltrators), breeds anarchy, or insults Mithila’s culture during festivals and celebrations.”

3. Hajipur, Vaishali, Bihar

Top themes from Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s campaign speech delivered virtually at a public rally: “Should ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) have the right to be on Bihar’s electoral rolls? I know your answer — it should not be. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took out a ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao’ yatra in Bihar, because all these parties fighting elections against us see these ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) as their vote bank. And I believe these ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) are snatching jobs from our youth, taking a share of the poor’s grain, and making the country insecure. Rahul ji, hold as many ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao’ yatras as you want — we will pick out every infiltrator from Bihar and the country and send them out, and we will also work to remove their names from the electoral rolls. This is the decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party, this is the decision of the NDA.”

4. Harsidhi, Purvi Champaran, Bihar

Top themes from CM Pushkar Singh Dhami’s campaign speech: “We have taken strict action against counterfeiters, religious conversion, riots, and against ‘love jihad,’ ‘land jihad,’ and ‘thook jihad.’ Additionally, to curb the operation of illegally functioning madrasas and religious extremism, we have decided to dissolve the Madrasa Board in Uttarakhand. In the coming days, only those madrasas in Uttarakhand that teach the syllabus prescribed by our education board will operate. After winning Bihar, these same measures will be implemented here to ensure its safety. Who do you stand with? Will you stand with the BJP-NDA that puts the national interest above all, or will you stand with those who support ghuspaithiya (infiltrators)? Will you stand with the Uniform Civil Code, or with those who bring Shariat laws and openly give license to the oppression of women?”

5. Chapra, Saran, Bihar

Key themes from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign speech: “Remember this — the RJD and Congress, drowned in appeasement and vote-bank politics, can do nothing except protect ghuspaithiya (infiltrators). These ghuspaithiya (infiltrators) have become their maai-baap (masters). They have invested all their political strength in saving them.”

This matrix directly translates into violence against vulnerable sections and the enforcement of social and economic apartheid. A BJP Councillor in Delhi, for instance, not only demanded a Muslim vendor display his name but also installed saffron flags on Hindu vendors’ stalls to facilitate identity-based commerce, explicitly propagating the slur that the “other community” spits on food.

3. Dehumanisation and Direct Incitement: The slur-to-violence pipeline

The final, most dangerous thematic stage involves the deployment of dehumanizing language that makes violence against the target community palatable and justified.

• Dehumanising slurs: Instances include a BJP member inside the Lok Sabha using Islamophobic and threatening slurs like “terrorist” and “pimp” against a Muslim MP. A BJP leader in Maharashtra, Nitesh Rane, threatened to burn someone and other leaders openly called for gruesome violence, threatening to “kill you like Insects” and chanting, “Danda uthao, Lande baghao“.
• Incitement to violence: Rallies in Maharashtra, led by figures like BJP MLA T Raja Singh, have featured anti-Muslim slurs and direct incitement. In one instance, a leader threatened to “burn someone,” while others openly chanted, “we will also cut people here and throw them in drains”. Another leader explicitly threatened, “we will kill you like Insects”. The CM of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, while delivering a speech in Bihar, likened a person to “Osama Bin Laden” and explicitly called for their “elimination”. This constant use of extreme rhetoric (e.g., “cut people here and throw them in drains”) serves to normalise a climate of hostility, making actual violence against vulnerable sections an anticipated outcome. This rhetoric aims to condition the public to accept violent elimination as a righteous act.

The Emotional Infrastructure of Fear: How hate speech manufactures threat

Hate speech may appear to be about anger, but its true currency is fear. Anger mobilises crowds; fear sustains movements. Across states, four carefully constructed fears appear repeatedly.

The first is economic fear. In poor, agrarian states such as Bihar—or in working-class belts of Maharashtra—the rhetoric focuses on infiltrators stealing government benefits, occupying land illegally, taking jobs, receiving welfare they do not deserve. This rhetoric is powerful because it taps into real economic frustrations but diverts them away from structural inequality and towards minorities. It converts legitimate anger over unemployment or deprivation into communal resentment.

The second is cultural fear. This fear takes the form of a narrative of civilisational decline. Hindu culture is portrayed as under siege; traditions are framed as endangered; festivals are depicted as battlefields. Rituals like Chhath Puja—once shared by communities—become arenas of policing and communal signalling. What was once a festival of rivers and devotion becoming a theatre of antagonism.

The third is demographic fear. It appears most explicitly in national-level speeches during the Lok Sabha campaign. By exaggerating Muslim fertility and framing demographic change as a Muslim conspiracy, politicians create a sense of population panic. Demographic fear is one of the most potent tools of ethnic majoritarianism globally—it transforms the majority into a frightened minority in their own imagination.

The fourth is sexual fear. Women’s bodies become sites of communal anxiety. “Bahu-beti ki izzat” rhetoric casts Muslim men as sexual predators and Hindu men as protectors. It converts women’s autonomy into a communal battlefield and legitimises violent moral policing. This fear is especially weaponised in Maharashtra, where love jihad rhetoric saturates both street-level speeches and high-profile rallies.

Together, these fears produce a moral panic in which majoritarian self-defence becomes not only political strategy but civic virtue.

The operational playbook of mobilisation and division

The communal escalation follows a meticulous, three-stage operational pattern designed to build momentum while providing plausible deniability to the main political party.

The three-stage escalation model: A remarkable consistency emerges across state after state: hate speech follows a three-stage escalation pipeline. This pipeline is not theoretical. It is empirically visible across the Maharashtra file, the Delhi dossier, and Bihar’s hate-speech archive.

In the first stage, fringe actors begin the work of seeding hatred. These actors are often small, semi-obscure organisations—vigilante groups, local religious fronts, hardline cultural outfits. They operate without restraint, testing the boundaries of permissible speech. Their role is to sow the initial seeds of anxiety.

In the second stage, local political leaders elevate these narratives. Their speeches are strategically targeted, naming places, identifying supposed threats, and calling for exclusion or boycott. They do the work of translating fringe slogans into electoral messaging.

In the third stage, national leaders adopt the same rhetoric. This is the most crucial moment, where language becomes law-like, carrying the weight of authority. When senior ministers repeat terms like “infiltrator”, they confer legitimacy on the entire ecosystem. What begins as street-level rumour becomes a central campaign theme.

This pipeline ensures that hate speech does not remain marginal. It becomes mainstream political messaging, producing a nationwide vocabulary of resentment. (Read: Elections 2024: The lead up to the first two phases of voting have seen far right leaders deliver anti-Muslim hate speech across India and April: CJP’s hate watch campaign analyses several hate incidents reported across the country in the last week)

Stage 1: Fringe elements get active (the groundwork)

The process begins 3-4 months before the elections with dedicated far-right organisations laying the groundwork.

• In Maharashtra, groups like the Sakal Hindu Samaj and Hindu Janjagruti Manch organise Hindu Jan Akrosh rallies, peddling the most extreme versions of the ‘Jihad’ conspiracies, including calls to take up arms. In Bihar, it was the “I Love Mahummad” campaign that led to chaos and violence.
• In Bihar, groups like the Bajrang Dal and VHP host events where convenors openly reject slogans of communal harmony and urge Hindus to take up weapons (shastra) to defend their identity. This fringe content serves as an ‘out-of-syllabus’ test balloon for later, more moderated main-party rhetoric.

Instances from Bihar:

1. Gaya, Bihar

Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), Matrushakti, and Durga Vahini conducted Durga Ashtami and Shastra Poojan (weapon worship) programs at multiple locations. During the event, women brandished weapons and raised religious slogans.

2. Kaimur, Bihar

Bhagwati Shukla, national president of Rashtriya Sanatan Sena, speaking at a religious conference organised by the group, promoted the anti-Muslim conspiracy theory of “love jihad” and falsely claimed that over 3 lakh Hindu girls are killed every day in its name. He also declared that they will cut those who slaughter cows.

3. Bettiah, West Champaran, Bihar

During a Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Foundation Day event, leader Ambarish Singh made anti-Muslim remarks, claiming Muslims seek separate laws and identity. He said those who refuse to say “Bharat Mata ki Jai” “may be citizens but are not our brothers,” mocked slogans of communal harmony, and linked the VHP’s mission to ending “love jihad,” cow slaughter, and religious conversions.

4. Bhagwanpur, Vaishali, Bihar

At a Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Sthapna Diwas event, Bajrang Dal state convenor Prakash Pandey rejected slogans of communal harmony and spread anti-Muslim conspiracy theories around “love jihad,” “land jihad,” religious conversions and cow slaughter. He also urged Hindus to take up weapons (“shastra”) to defend their identity.

Stage 2: Local leaders build-up (the designated agitators)

The next stage involves “designated agitators”—one or two individuals per state who consistently make hateful statements. These leaders test the boundaries of acceptable rhetoric and generate the initial media traction.

Instances:

1. Maharashtra- Nitesh Rane peddles conspiracy theories and threaten violence in Dongri. Caught on camera threatening to burn someone and peddled conspiracy theory of ‘land jihad’

https://cjp.org.in/nitesh-rane-peddles-conspiracy-theories-and-threaten-violence-in-dongri-thane

2. Maharashtra- CJP files complaint before Maharashtra Police against serial hate offender Kajal Hindustani. In complaint, CJP urged to take strict action and seek prosecution under sections 196, 197(1), 352 and 353 of the BNS, 2023 for communal, hate speech

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-complaint-before-maharashtra-police-against-serial-hate-offender-kajal-hindustani

3. Maharashtra- CJP lodges additional police complaints against Nitesh Rane and Ashwini Upadhyay for hate speeches. Incendiary remarks by Nitesh Rane and Ashwini Upadhyay span multiple locations in Maharashtra

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-lodges-additional-police-complaints-against-nitesh-rane-and-ashwini-upadhyay-for-hate-speeches

4. Maharashtra- Hindu Jan Akrosh rally in Mumbai sees conspiracy theories being peddled against Muslims. Leaders like Nitesh Rane, made speeches calling out ‘Jihadis’ and accusing people of bringing in ‘Bangladeshis’, and ‘Rohingya’ to conduct riots

https://cjp.org.in/hindu-jan-akrosh-rally-in-mumbai-sees-conspiracy-theories-being-peddled-against-muslims

Stage 3: Star campaigners take over

Once the ground is polarised and the themes are established, the main national leaders (PM Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Yogi Adityanath) step in, adopting the subtext of the hate speech—shifting from local incitement to national security and resource threat—to legitimize the narrative and reach a mass audience. This also involves the tactic of “catching” one or two Maulanas to make statements that fit the narrative, ensuring the rhetoric is framed as a response to minority aggression (e.g., the use of Imran Masood’s statement in Bihar).

Blurring caste equations and weaponising Dalits

A key analytical dimension in Bihar and the Lok Sabha elections is the calculated effort to fracture social justice coalitions by pitting Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs against Muslims. A critical function of communal hate speech is the calculated effort to blur Caste Equations/Realities and divert attention from governance failures.

• The reservation theft narrative: This is achieved by framing any potential minority benefit (like reservation for backward Muslims, as done in Karnataka) as a direct theft of resources earmarked for Dalits, Scheduled Castes (SCs), and Scheduled Tribes (STs). Senior leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah, systematically framed any potential reservation for Muslims as a direct theft from Dalits, Adivasis, SCs, and OBCs. The explicit claim that Congress would take reservations “out from the Dalits… and give it to Muslims” is designed to create a zero-sum communal conflict, fracturing the socio-political alliance built on caste-based identity and social justice.
• Diverting from joblessness and poverty: By focusing campaign energy entirely on ‘Infiltrators,’ ‘Love Jihad,’ and ‘Reservation Theft,’ the political discourse successfully diverts attention from the real issues plaguing Bihar, such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of development.

Communalising shared public and festival spaces

The strategy of division extends to hijacking shared cultural symbols and spaces.

• Festival polarisation: Festivals traditionally celebrated by both communities are being communalised, such as Chhath Puja in Bihar, where the use of VHP stickers is a new tactic to stake exclusive claim over shared cultural rituals.
• Economic segregation: The use of festivals or local gatherings to enforce economic boycotts and social separation (e.g., the paneer vendor incident in Delhi).
• Infiltrating secular institutions: Even educational institutions are being targeted, with reports of Hindutva activities like Gaushalas and Shobha Yatras being brought into college campuses like IIT-B in Mumbai, symbolically mirroring the ‘Land Jihad’ narrative in cultural and academic domains.

Targeting religious and political spaces

• Religious sites: Speeches included promises to remove mosques from Kashi and Mathura if the BJP wins a supermajority in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The destruction of the Babri Mosque was openly glorified in Maharashtra.
• Parliamentary attacks: A Muslim MP, Kunwar Danish Ali, was called a “terrorist, pimp” by a BJP member, Ramesh Bidhuri, inside India’s parliament.
• Political rivalry: Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma made a deeply communal remark in Bihar, linking a local leader to Osama Bin Laden and his father to Shahabuddin

Instances from Bihar:

1. Gaya, Bihar

At a government event inaugurating development project, Prime Minister Narendra Modi targeted those he referred to as “ghuspaithiya” (infiltrators), alleging demographic changes in Bihar’s border districts. He asserted that infiltrators would not be allowed to steal livelihoods and resources from the youth of Bihar and Indian citizens, and announced the formation of a demography mission to deport each “ghuspaithiya” from the country.

2. Barauni, Begusarai, Bihar

Home Minister Amit Shah delivered a speech targeting those he referred to as “ghuspethiya” (infiltrators). He questioned whether they should receive voting rights, be included in voter lists, or be entitled to free food rations, employment, housing, or medical aid, claiming that Rahul Gandhi prioritises them over the people of Bihar. He further alleged that “ghuspethiyas” serve as vote banks for opposition leaders and vowed to remove each one of them.

3. Dehri, Rohtas, Bihar

Home Minister Amit Shah delivered a speech targeting those he referred to as “ghuspethiya” (infiltrators). He mocked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s campaign as a “Ghuspethiya Bachao Yatra” and asked attendees whether infiltrators should have voting rights, access to free rations, jobs, housing, or medical aid. He alleged that infiltrators are receiving these benefits instead of Indian youth, warning that if the opposition wins, “every house in Bihar will have only ghuspethiyas.”

4. Danapur, Patna, Bihar

Top themes from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s campaign speech: “The INDI Alliance has started a new campaign– development vs ‘burqa’. When Bihar and its youth are talking about development, Congress and RJD are trying to expand their reach through ‘burqa’. Should they be allowed to conduct fake polling? Should ‘foreign ghuspaith’ (infiltrators) be given a free hand to rob the poor, Dalits, and citizens of Bihar? Anywhere in the world, one must show their identity and face, but they want to let anyone vote without revealing their faces.”

From Rhetoric to Rupture: How hate speech reorders everyday life

Across Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar, hate speech produces concrete, lived consequences. It reorganises public space. It transforms markets into segregated zones. It forces everyday interactions to become declarations of identity.

In Delhi, the pressure on Muslim vendors to display saffron flags is not simply symbolic. It is a form of coercion that destroys anonymity, exposes vulnerability, and renders economic life contingent on communal compliance. In Maharashtra, boycott campaigns led to assaults on shops, disruption of livelihoods, and humiliation of workers. In Bihar, rumours about “Bangladeshi vendors” have triggered spontaneous harassment of ordinary labourers. Panchayat resolutions in various states have attempted to exclude Muslim traders from local markets—a practice that mimics apartheid structures where economic participation becomes conditional on identity.

Violence follows predictably. Mob assaults, harassment of couples, vandalism of shops, threats to imams, surveillance of Muslim-majority localities—these are not “law and order incidents”. They are direct outcomes of a discursive environment engineered for hostility.

When hate speech saturates public space, violence becomes not a deviation but an expected response. A society trained to see neighbours as infiltrators is a society primed for confrontation.

The Systemic Enablers: Media and institutional inaction

The final, critical piece of the pattern is the widespread belief that the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) is a functionally dead instrument, a perception reinforced by consistent inaction on complaints against powerful figures. The piece must highlight that despite the existence of electoral laws and the MCC, enforcement remains critically weak, thus encouraging repeat offenses.).

1. The media multiplier and the digital battlefield

The media ecosystem acts as a critical force multiplier, ensuring maximum saturation of the divisive narratives.

• The role of media in propagation: The media acts as a critical force multiplier. The search results confirm that social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, X) are key instruments for amplifying and mainstreaming hate speech, with top BJP leaders’ speeches often live-streamed across official accounts.
• AI-generated content and deepfakes: As anticipated, the Bihar election has become a test case for the use of AI Deepfakes, hate posters, and malicious Bhojpuri songs, “blurring the line between propaganda and parody”. The attempt to create an AI Deepfake targeting Colonel Sofia Qureshi and falsely linking Trishul drills to the Bihar polls is a clear example of using sophisticated technology to manufacture a crisis narrative.
• “Paid” hardliners: A crucial pattern is noted: the existence of “paid” Muslim hardliners whose provocative clips are used by the political machinery to validate the “existential threat” narrative. This creates a false equivalence, framing the majority community’s rhetoric as a justified defensive reaction. 

2. The MCC Paradox: A functional impunity

One of the most troubling revelations across states is the consistent institutional inaction. MCC complaints filed by civil society groups in Maharashtra resulted in little to no prosecution. Delhi administrators took no meaningful action against blatant hate speech. Even where the Election Commission issued notices, follow-up was weak.

The paralysis is not bureaucratic inefficiency—it is political choice. District Magistrates, legally empowered to act suo-moto, routinely fail to intervene. Police forces often behave not as neutral protectors but as silent spectators or selective enforcers. Voting-day advertisements—clearly illegal—continue year after year with complete impunity.

The absence of enforcement does not merely fail to stop hate speech. It incentivises it. (Read: From Welfare to Expulsion: Bihar’s MCC period rhetoric turns citizenship into a campaign weapon)

• Lack of consequence for star campaigners: The most damning evidence comes from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, where the Congress party explicitly petitioned the Supreme Court, stating that the Election Commission’s (ECI) “continued silence” on complaints of hate speech and MCC violation against the Prime Minister and Home Minister amounted to a “tacit endorsement” of their statements and was a form of “invidious discrimination”. The Supreme Court was eventually forced to direct the EC to decide on these complaints.
• The DM’s suo-moto power failure: District Magistrates (DMs) possess the suo moto power to initiate action against violations of law and order, including hate speech, without waiting for the ECI’s directive. The consistent failure of DMs to utilise this power effectively creates a security vacuum and raises a fundamental question: What is the purpose of the MCC if its own local enforcement arms refuse to exercise their legal authority?
• The silence period violation: A consistent tactical violation is the use of full-page newspaper advertisements on the day of voting—a direct breach of the legally mandated “silence period”. Complaints are filed every year, yet nothing ever happens, turning a legal restraint into a predictable, unpunished final campaign flourish. Complaints were explicitly filed against the BJP, MNS, and the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) in Maharashtra for silence period violations, specifically citing political ads in major newspapers. (Read: How BJP is accused of violating 48 Hours-Silence Period even on Poll Day?)

How MCC violations become a license for electoral hate: One of the most disturbing features of India’s contemporary electoral landscape is not merely the explosion of hate speech, but the near-total collapse of institutional response to it. The Model Code of Conduct—once regarded as a moral compass and a boundary-marker—is now little more than a symbolic pamphlet. Across Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and during the 2024 Lok Sabha cycle, repeated, documented, and widely circulated instances of explicit hate speech, communal incitement, and even direct calls for violence were flagged to the Election Commission of India with urgency and precision. Yet the ECI’s response oscillated between silence, non-committal notices, or bureaucratic platitudes. This selective inertia has effectively rewritten the MCC: instead of a code meant to regulate elections, it has become a code that politicians can violate with impunity once they understand that consequences are unlikely, uneven, or easily deflected. The absence of deterrence becomes a form of permission.

The judicial system’s response—especially from constitutional courts—has only deepened this institutional void. High Courts routinely dismiss or defer petitions concerning hate speech at election time, often on procedural grounds, or by sending complainants back to the very authorities that have already refused to act. Even more worrying is the Supreme Court’s posture, which has increasingly adopted a stance of non-intervention, repeatedly expressing “helplessness,” “constraint,” or “reluctance” to issue proactive directions. This judicial passivity is not neutral. By refusing to treat communal hate as an urgent constitutional injury, the courts inadvertently normalise its presence in electoral politics. When the highest court of a democracy signals that it cannot act unless someone else acts first, hate becomes embedded as an acceptable mode of political communication.

This institutional abdication has profound consequences for the democratic process. It creates a political marketplace in which the loudest, most inflammatory actors gain the greatest advantage. It rewards radicalisation, emboldens repeat offenders, and silences vulnerable communities who lose faith in the very institutions meant to protect them. The MCC becomes a decorative façade, the ECI a passive spectator, and the judiciary an absentee guardian. What remains is a hollowed-out electoral field where hate speech does not merely occur—it thrives under the protective cover of institutional silence. When the state signals that hate is politically useful and legally inconsequential, it corrodes not only public discourse but the constitutional foundation of elections themselves. In such a climate, communal propaganda is not an aberration; it becomes the new grammar of democratic participation.

Some of the MCC complaints sent by CJP during these four election cycles may be read here, here, here and here.

Bihar: The strategic communalisation of caste politics

Bihar stands out for a deeper, more consequential transformation. Unlike Maharashtra or Delhi, where communal polarisation has been cultivated for years, Bihar has historically been governed by caste equations. Political coalitions were built on OBC solidarity, Dalit assertion, and the arithmetic of caste-based identities. Muslims, though electorally significant, were integrated into caste-based alliances rather than positioned as central antagonists.

In the recent Bihar cycle, hate speech has been weaponised to redraw this landscape. The infiltrator narrative is used to redirect OBC and EBC economic frustrations toward Muslims. Hate speech in Bihar functions not merely as communal rhetoric but as caste engineering. By portraying Muslims as beneficiaries of welfare schemes, as land-grabbers, as demographic threats, hate speech fractures long-standing solidarities between marginalised castes and Muslim communities. The constructed rhetoric also blurs or diminishes issues of caste deprivation and discrimination of the most marginalised where the systemic exploiters are from the dominant ‘Hindu’ fold.

This transformation is visible in the communalisation of Chhath Puja, one of Bihar’s most syncretic cultural spaces. It is visible in the circulation of AI-generated videos designed to provoke OBC anger. It is visible in the increasing recruitment of Dalit and OBC youth by Hindutva groups seeking to expand their caste footprint.

In Bihar, like elsewhere, hate speech is not simply dividing communities. It is restructuring them.

Democracy in Decline: The erosion of rights, citizenship, and public reason

The cumulative effect of election hate speech is the erosion of India’s constitutional framework. Hate speech violates Articles 14, 15, and 21 by producing inequality, discrimination, and insecurity. It corrodes the idea of citizenship by creating a two-tier system: those who belong fully and those who must constantly prove their belonging.

The damage is not simply legal. It is epistemic. Hate speech erodes the ability of citizens to think democratically. The utter failure of constitutional institutions, conceived as safeguards –be it the constitutional courts or the infamous Election Commission of India (ECI) to act decisively and punitively ensures further impunity and normalisation. Result: hate speech and its impact, crowds out substantive debate, reduces governance to identity warfare, and delegitimises political disagreement. In such an environment, elections cease to be democratic practices and become theatres of domination.

Conclusion: Reclaiming democratic integrity

The analysis demonstrates that the current surge in electoral hate speech is neither random nor reactive; it is the product of a highly organised, multi-layered, and financially supported political architecture designed to achieve communal mobilization.

India’s contemporary elections reveal a political landscape where hate speech is not an aberration but an organising principle. It structures campaigns, mobilises voters, reorganises identities, and shapes governance. It transforms neighbours into enemies and turns public space into a battlefield. It reorders caste politics in places like Bihar. It destroys livelihoods in places like Delhi. In addition, it legitimises violence in places like Maharashtra.

Most dangerously, it normalises a new political order in which fear is the principal currency of power.

India now stands at a critical juncture. If hate remains the central grammar of elections, then elections themselves cease to be instruments of democratic renewal. They become mechanisms of social control. The future of India’s democracy depends not merely on recognising this transformation but on confronting it with legal, political, and moral urgency.

Hate is not a speech act.

It is a system.

Moreover, systems do not collapse on their own—they must be dismantled.

The pre-election hate machinery that turned Maharashtra into a communal battleground:

Capital city became a laboratory for pre-election communal polarisation:

2024’s election rhetoric and weaponisation of hate across India:

References:

https://www.outlookindia.com/elections/hate-speech-surges-in-bihar-polls-the-return-of-communal-and-caste-divides-in-campaign-rhetoric

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/cpim-slams-pm-modi-for-remarks-against-tamil-nadu-during-bihar-poll-campaign/article70224918.ece

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/ahead-of-bihar-polls-union-minister-and-begusarai-mp-giriraj-singh-sparks-controversy-2805440-2025-10-19?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://news.abplive.com/elections/pm-modi-speech-purnea-congress-rjd-yatra-infiltrators-bihar-election-2025-bihar-sir-1800488?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2025/Oct/22/political-islam-undermined-hindu-faith-largely-overlooked-in-history-cm-yogi

https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/09/24/indian-muslims-not-equal-abp-show-allows-hate-speech-slurs-as-ragi-vs-pathan

https://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/mumbai-hindu-groups-call-for-restricting-non-hindus-from-garba-venues-citing-love-jihad-concerns-during-navratri

https://cjp.org.in/mtra-elections-on-cjps-complaint-on-an-mcc-violation-fir-has-been-registered-against-kajal-hindustani-for-hate-speech

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-stands-against-hate-seeks-preventive-action-against-hate-driven-events-in-maharashtra

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-complaints-to-the-maharashtra-election-commission-over-communal-posters-featuring-up-cm-yogi-adityanath

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-highlights-mcc-violation-urges-maharashtra-election-commission-to-act-on-hate-speech

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-complaint-against-bjp-mns-and-ss-shinde-faction-silence-period-violations-in-maharashtra-elections

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-5-hate-speech-complaints-before-ceo-maharashtra-as-violated-mcc

https://sabrangindia.in/hindutva-enters-mumbai-college-campuses-gaushala-shobha-yatra-in-iit-b-restriction-to-freedom-of-speech-at-tiss

https://sabrangindia.in/chhattisgarh-maharashtra-sc-directs-police-to-ensure-no-hate-speech-by-bjp-mla-raja-singh-hindu-jan-jagruti-samiti-rallies

https://cjp.org.in/bjp-mla-t-raja-singh-at-mira-road-hurls-anti-muslim-slurs-incites-violence-at-rally-permitted-by-bombay-high-court

https://cjp.org.in/hindu-jan-akrosh-rally-in-mumbai-sees-conspiracy-theories-being-peddled-against-muslims

https://sabrangindia.in/is-mumbai-becoming-a-hotbed-of-hate

https://sabrangindia.in/bjp-mla-nitesh-rane-leads-hindutva-rally-in-govandi-demands-demolition-of-illegal-masjids-and-madrasa

https://sabrangindia.in/environmental-interest-converted-into-communal-tension-madras-high-court-refuses-to-quash-criminal-case-against-bjp-state-head-annamalai

https://cjp.org.in/hindu-jan-akrosh-rally-in-mumbai-sees-conspiracy-theories-being-peddled-against-muslims

https://sabrangindia.in/ground-report-protests-erupt-in-assam-after-portrayal-of-muslims-as-criminals-in-rally-by-bodoland-university

https://cjp.org.in/cjp-files-complaint-against-bjp-leader-nazia-elahi-khan-over-hate-speech-in-delhi/

https://sabrangindia.in/cjp-calls-for-electoral-action-against-bjp-leaders-hate-speech-at-rohini-chetna-event/

https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/01/21/denial-and-deflection-how-the-bjps-bidhuri-walked-off-when-asked-about-crude-remarks

https://www.indiatvnews.com/delhi/delhi-assembly-elections-2025-police-registers-over-1100-cases-of-mcc-violations-model-code-of-conduct-detained-35516-people-latest-updates-2025-02-07-975130

The post The Orchestrated Extremism: An analysis of communal hate speech in India’s election cycle (2024–2025) appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute   India into a      SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all;

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this 26th day of November 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.”

RSS demanded Manu Smruti as the Constitution

The two underlined ideals merely formally added in 1977, ‘Socialist and Secular’, only strengthened the resolve of the Constitution of India would apply to a non-sectarian polity with only the people of India, all of its people, sovereign. How many Indians however know that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that has today affected a stranglehold on Indian politics and democracy, through its political appendage, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) had, at the time, mourned the birth (coming into effect) of the Indian Constitution? Outraged when the Indian Constituent Assembly (CA) adopted a democratic- Secular Constitution under the supervision of Dr. BR Ambedkar, their organs protested.

We know that when the Constituent Assembly of India passed the Constitution on November 26, 1949, the RSS organ Organizer came out with an editorial on November 30, 1949 titled ‘Constitution’ declaring its firm rejection of Constitutional Values:

“The worst about the new Constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bhartiya about it…There is no trace of ancient Bhartiya constitutional laws, institutions, nomenclatures and phraseology in it…Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.”

How fundamentally, the RSS denigrates the Constitution of India can be gleaned through the following statement of the most prominent ideologue of the RSS, Golwalkar:

“Our Constitution too is just a cumbersome and heterogeneous piecing together of various articles from various Constitutions of the Western countries. It has absolutely nothing which can be called our own. Is there a single word of reference in its guiding principles as to what our national mission is and what our keynote in life is? No!”

[MS Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1996, p. 238.]

By demanding Manusmriti as “constitution of India”, RSS, in fact was following the belief of its darling Hindutva icon, VD Savarkar who had declared long back:

“Manusmriti is that scripture which is most worship-able after Vedas for our Hindu Nation and which from ancient times has become the basis of our culture-customs, thought and practice. This book for centuries has codified the spiritual and divine march of our nation. Even today the rules which are followed by crores of Hindus in their lives and practice are based on Manusmriti. Today Manusmriti is Hindu Law”.

[VD Savarkar, ‘Women in Manusmriti‘ in Savarkar Samagar (collection of Savarkar’s writings in Hindi), vol. 4, Prabhat, Delhi, p. 416.]

The faith of RSS brass in Manusmriti, naturally, leads them to believe in Casteism too which gave birth to the debased practice of Untouchability. For RSS Casteism is the essence of Hindu Nationalism. Golwalkar did not mince words in declaring that Casteism was synonymous with the Hindu Nation. According to him, the Hindu people are no one but,

“The Hindu People, they said, is the Virat Purusha, the Almighty manifesting Himself. Though they did not use the word „Hindu‟, it is clear from the following description of the Almighty in Purusha-Sukta [in the 10th book of Rig Ved] wherein it is stated that the sun & the moon are His eyes, the stars and the skies are created from his nabhi [navel] and Brahmin is the head, Kshatriya the hands, Vaishya the thighs and Shudra the feet. [Italics as in the original text] This means that the people who have this fourfold arrangement, i.e., the Hindu People, is [sic] our God. This supreme vision of Godhead is the very core of our concept of „nation‟ and has permeated our thinking and given rise to various unique concepts of our cultural heritage.”

[Golwalkar, M. S., Bunch of Thoughts, collection of writings/speeches of Golwalkar published by RSS, p.36-37.]

What kind of a Hindutva civilization the RSS wants to build by enforcing the laws of Manu, can be known by having a glimpse of the laws prescribed by Manu for the lower castes, Untouchables and women. Some of these dehumanizing and degenerated laws, which are presented here, are self-explanatory.

A selection of Laws of Manu denigrating Dalits/Untouchables

1. For the sake of the prosperity of the worlds (the divine one) caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his thighs and his feet. (I/31)
2. One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudras, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes. (I/91)
3. Once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of ‘low origin’. (VIII/270)
4. If he mentions the names and castes (jati) of the (twice-born) with contumely, an iron nail, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red-hot into his mouth. (VIII/271)
5. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears. (VIII/272)
6. He who raises his hand or a stick, shall have his hand cut off; he who in anger kicks with his foot, shall have his foot cut off. (VIII/280)
7. A ‘low-caste’ man who tries to place himself on the same seat with a man of a high caste, shall be branded on his hip and be banished, or (the king) shall cause his buttock to be gashed. (VIII/281)

As per the Manu Code if Sudras are to be given most stringent punishments for even petty violations/actions, the same Code of Manu is very lenient towards Brahmins. Shloka 380 in Chapter VIII bestowing profound love on Brahmins decrees:

“Let him never slay a Brahmana, though he has committed all (possible) crimes; let him banish such an (offender), leaving all his property (to him) and (his body) unhurt.”

A selection of Laws of Manu demeaning Hindu women

1. Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males (of) their (families), and, if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control. (IX/2)
2. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence. (IX/3)
3. Women do not care for beauty, nor is their attention fixed on age; (thinking), (It is enough that) he is a man, ‟ they give themselves to the handsome and to the ugly. (IX/14)
4. Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through their natural heartlessness, they become disloyal towards their husbands, however carefully they may be guarded in this (world). (IX/15)
5. (When creating them) Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct. (IX/17)

[The above selection of Manu’s Codes is from F. Max Muller, Laws of Manu, LP Publications, Delhi, 1996; first published in 1886. The bracket after each code incorporates number of chapter/number of code according to the above edition.]

The reproduced parts of the Manu Code above need no further elaboration and commentary. They are too glaringly venomous, fascist and derogatory of marginalized sections, the Untouchables who are referred to as Sudras by Manu. Perhaps this was the reason that the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche who contributed immensely to the growth of totalitarian ideas in Europe in the 20th century, fell in love with this work.

It is to be noted here that a copy of Manusmriti was burnt as a protest in the presence of Dr. BR Ambedkar during the historic Mahad agitation on December 25, 1927. Dr Ambedkar called upon Dalits to commemorate each December 25 as the Manusmriti Dehen Diwas (Manusmriti burning day) in future. In fact, Brahmanism as basis of the RSS world-view is the original Fascism in the history of human civilization.

[https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/manusmriti-dahan-divas-protest-staged-at-collectorate/article30396588.ece]

RSS’ deep hatred for democracy

It is true that when RSS faced the wrath of the Indian State when Sardar Patel was the home minister of India it criticised the detention laws without trial. In an editorial in Organizer it wrote:

“Section 21 and 22 providing for detention without trial reduce all the wordy assurances about liberty, equality and fraternity to just near meaningless verbiage.”[Organizer, November 30, 1949]

But once in power the RSS-BJP rulers led by the present leadership have returned to Hindutva’s Fascist and Nazi heritage. They have converted Indian democratic-secular polity into a totalitarian Hindutva oligarchy where any kind of dissent is treated as anti-national and anti-Hindu. It is the continuation of hatred for democracy as decreed by Golwalkar as early as 1940. Golwalkar while addressing the 1350 top level cadres of the RSS declared:

“RSS inspired by one flag, one leader and one ideology are lighting the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land.”

[Golwalkar, M.S., Shri Guruji Samagar Darshan (collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi), Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, nd., volume 1, p. 11.]

November 26, 2025

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

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On the 50th anniversary of India’s formal ‘Emergency’, how the RSS betrayed the anti-emergency struggle

The post November 26: How RSS mourned the passage of India’s Constitution by the Constituent Assembly appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The matter might have ended at this stage requiring the respondents to file a counter affidavit. However, the matter cannot be treated to be so simple inasmuch as this Court is deluged with such matters on the basis of First Information Reports being filed left and right by the authorities and complainants under the provisions of the Act, 1955. (Para 15)

In this case, officers intercepted the transportation of nine living and healthy progeny of cows within Uttar Pradesh. Even though a slaughter or transport across state lines was not in issue, the owner of the vehicle was charged under Section 3, Section 5A, and Section 8 of the 1955 Act and Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

In determining that no offense had occurred, the Court ordered protection for the petitioner and went even further, directing the Principal Secretary (Home) and Director General of Police to personally file affidavits explaining this misuse pattern. The bench also asked for an explanation as to why the State has not issued a formal Government Order (GR) to carry out the Supreme Court’s binding directions from the judgment in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India (July 2018) to prevent mob violence and cow vigilantism.

The Preventive Measures mandated by the apex court in the Tehseen S. Poonawalla  case have been encapsulated in this action-oriented pamphlet widely disseminated by Citizens for Justice and Peace that may be read here.

For over a decade, CJP has systematically documented and intervened against the abuse of the “cow protection” laws. Since 2017, CJP’s legal and advocacy teams have tracked the rise of mob vigilantism, along with its legal facilitators, all over India — fact-finding, litigation, and public education being the methods of doing this work. Investigations like India: The New Lynchdom (2018, CJP) and Cow Vigilantism: A Tool for Terrorising Minorities (2020, CJP) have mapped hundreds of instances where such laws have reportedly been used to sanction mob, extrajudicial violence, and have documented how the criminal justice system has been captured, even driven, by majoritarian agendas. Against this background, this becomes an important moment of judicial awareness of what CJP and other human rights defenders have been implementing for years.

It is important to note that this order is not limited to a single petitioner. It represents a judicial and legal recognition that the ongoing misuse of the 1955 Act occurs as part of a broader culture of impunity that encourages vigilantes, criminalizes livelihoods, and undermines the rule of law.

Statutory Background of the UP Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act, 1955

The 1955 Act was made to ban the killing of cows and their offspring and to control the transport of cows, all for the purpose of implementing Article 48 of the Constitution. The Act defines three regular aspects, where slaughter is banned under Section 3, transport within U.P. out-of-state is restricted under Section 5A, and punishment of three to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment and fine of ₹3–5 lakh is introduced under Section 8 for violations. Section 2(d) defines “slaughter” as “killing by any method whatsoever, and includes maiming and inflicting physical injury which in the ordinary course will cause death.” This definition shows that there must be some form of harm that would ultimately lead to death.

The Court emphasised that this requirement is routinely overlooked. It quoted Kaliya v. State of U.P. (2024 126 ACC 61), in which the Allahabad High Court cautioned that the conveyance of cows or calves in Uttar Pradesh does not invoke Section 5A since it only prohibits transport outside of that state. It also relied on the case of Parasram Ji v. Imtiaz (AIR 1962 All 22), a 1962 decision from the Allahabad High Court, which held that there is a difference between mere preparation and an attempt to slaughter. Preparation does not constitute an offence under the Act if the cow is tied up, for example. By citing Parasram Ji, the Bench emphasized that there was more than sixty years of settled law that the police were ignoring.

In this case, where slaughter, maiming, or interstate transportation was not charged, none of the violations applied. The judgment reminded us again of the Court’s own earlier warnings. In Rahmuddin v. State of U.P.(Criminal MISC. Bail Application No. – 34008 of 2020), the Court noted that the Act was being “misused against innocent persons” when it mentioned the meat was recovered, but often claimed all the meat to be cow meat without a laboratory test. In Jugadi Alias Nizamuddin v. State of U.P. (Criminal MISC Anticipatory Bail Application U/S 438 CR.P.C. No. – 182 of 2023), bail was granted before an arrest, as only cow-dung and a rope were recovered, but it was branded a “glaring example of misuse of penal law.” These rulings serve the greater purpose of demonstrating the number of mechanical FIRs that are being registered, even before investigation, and the abuse and incarceration that innocent people continue to experience.

Ambiguous legal provisions and ineffective procedural safeguards enable police overreach and selective police power against certain communities, mostly Muslims and Dalits. Consequently, the findings of the Allahabad High Court lend judicial authority to what human-rights defenders have been calling, for a long time, a systematic abuse of “cow-protection” laws.

This detailed legal explainer prepared by CJP in 2018 de-constructs how such laws have become a source of victimization.

The Court’s reasoning: From Casual FIRs to Vigilantism

After concluding that there was no offence made out, the Bench stated it was “deluged with such matters” resulting from indiscriminate First Information Reports (FIRs) under the 1955 Act (para 15). It directed the Principal Secretary (Home) and the DGP to show cause why the officers continue to lodge these FIRs in spite of the clear judicial precedent, in particular, the cases of Kaliya and Parasram Ji refer to cases in para 15. The Court required that the affidavits submitted by the officers included relevant affidavit material as to the taking of proposed disciplinary action by the State against the complainants and police personnel for making unwarranted FIRs, and if not, the Court required explanation for why the State did not issue a formal “Government Order” to legally preclude any such future FIRs, which served, in proportion, to undue disadvantage of cost in furthering the FIR towards frivolous case of prosecution.

In a serious observation, the Bench did not merely engage in procedural fault-finding; it also uncovered a more pervasive social consequence:

Yet another connected aspect of the matter under the garb of the Act, 1955 is vigilantism which is being practiced by various persons. Why we say this is because a few days back, a Bench of this Court was seized of a matter in which the car of the person was stopped by vigilantes and thereafter, it was not traceable. (See- Criminal Misc. Writ Petition No. 9152 of 2025 Inre; Bablu Vs. State of U.P and Ors). In the said writ, instructions have been called for by the Court. Violence, lynching and vigilantism is the order of the day. (Para 30).

The Court relied on Bablu v. State of U.P. (W.P. No. 9152 of 2025), where vigilantes encircled a vehicle, which later went missing, to illustrate how misuse of the statute invites disorder. Moreover, it established the illustration of occurrence within the wider phenomenon of “mob violence” by linking directly with the reasoning of the Supreme Court in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India that “vigilantism cannot, by any consideration, be allowed to take shape… it ushers in anarchy, chaos and disorder.”

National Legal Framework: The Tehseen S. Poonawalla Mandate

In the case of Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India, the Supreme Court remarked on the very real and concerning increase in lynchings and violence related to cows. The Court, speaking through Chief Justice Dipak Misra, A.M. Khanwilkar, and D.Y. Chandrachud, found that lynching was “a failing of the rule of law and of the lofty ideals of the Constitution itself.” The Court noted that State agencies have the “primary responsibility” to protect against cow-vigilantism or any type of mob violence.

In paragraph 40 of the judgement, the Supreme Court gave a thorough set of preventative, remedial, and punitive directions: every district must appoint a nodal police officer (not below the rank of Superintendent) for oversight for prevention of mob violence; identify sensitive areas; establish fast-track courts for lynching cases; develop compensatory schemes for victims under Section 357A of the CrPC; and identify negligent officials and hold them accountable.

Despite these unequivocal mandates, however, the Allahabad High Court found that Uttar Pradesh had taken no action to meaningfully operationalise the Supreme Court directions. It found that a circular issued by the DGP on 26 July 2018 could not substitute for a Government Order issued under Article 162 of the Constitution, as such an order would reflect Government policy. The Bench thus required an explanation for the non-compliance and required affidavits showing compliance, on the basis that the lack of the Government Order undermined the prevention and punishment framework contemplated by the Supreme Court.

Notwithstanding these clear directions, the Allahabad High Court noticed that Uttar Pradesh had taken no decisive steps toward operationalizing the guidelines. Its finding was that a circular issued by the DGP on 26 July 2018 was not an adequate alternative to a Government Order issued pursuant to Article 162 of the Constitution. Only a Government Order could adequately reflect the policy of the Government. The Bench mandated a rationale of non-compliance and required affidavits evidencing compliance, noting that, absent an order from the Government, the preventive and punitive framework envisaged by the Supreme Court simply could not be accomplished.

Constitutional Implications: Articles 14, 19, and 21

The aggressive and arbitrary usage of the 1955 Act violates the equality, liberty, and due-process guarantees of the Constitution. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law, and this equality is violated when FIRs are lodged with no basis in fact or when officers exercise their discretion to target only particular communities. The equal protection principle is breached when FIRs are lodged “left and right” (para 15) when there are no fundamental elements of an offence. Therefore, non-arbitrariness, which is at the heart of Article 14, is violated.

Article 19 protects against arbitrary seizure of vehicles or criminalizing intra-State cattle transport, colloquially known as the “anti-cow slaughter provisions,” which interfere with unreasonable restrictions on the lawful trade, profession, and movement of citizens. Kaliya v. State of U.P. explicitly clarified that intra-State transport is not an offence. It is clear how restrictions on engaging in an occupation, profession, or trade when they are established directly restrict citizens’ economic liberty.

Under Article 21, the arbitrary actions are a further deprivation of liberty and dignity without due process of law. In Rahmuddin, the Court noted that accused persons languish in prison because meat samples are rarely sent for analysis and dispose of the need for due process. The combination of legal negligence and social malice undermines the conception of equal citizenship and uses the protection of cows as an excuse to persecute people. The High Court, accepting that using the 1955 Act has “wasted precious judicial time” (para 41) and that citizens should not have to “spend valuable money and time” to seek relief, demonstrates that this violation is both an individualized violation and a burden on the judiciary.

As CJP’s analyses have frequently stated, police impunity and informally inflicted violence contribute to the sense that “there are two sets of citizens: one protected by the law and the other punished by law.”

The judgment’s call for the most senior officials to be held individually accountable brings back an important idea behind constitutional governance: that executive negligence in the enforcement of the fundamental rights of every citizen cannot be excused by the silence of an institution. When the authorities of the State ignore orders made by the Supreme Court and allow vigilantes to act, the authorities of the State cease to execute their constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law.

Misuse, Vigilantism, and the Rule of Law

The Allahabad High Court’s ruling in Rahul Yadav exposes that the U.P. Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act has transitioned from a regulatory instrument to a tool for arbitrary prosecution. The Court explicitly points out that “under the garb of the Act is vigilantism,” giving judicial voice to what human-rights reporting has documented for some time—that the selective enforcement of cow-protection laws legitimizes mob violence to the detriment of threatened communities.

In reports like Divide and Rule in the Name of the Cow, CJP documents how false charges of cow slaughter/transport have been aimed at Muslims and Dalits. Sabrang’s investigations show that even after Tehseen Poonawalla, most States have not yet implemented mandatory measures as required, such as putting in place effective nodal officers or monitoring hate crimes regularly. This collection of ground reports gives both the socio-legal context to what the High Court has now acknowledged formally: the misuse of the 1955 Act has become institutionalized.

The Bench’s instruction that the Principal Secretary (Home) and DGP provide personal affidavits marks a moment when the judiciary will demand institutional accountability, not just individual relief. Whether this results in real change will depend on what the State does, if it finally issues the long-overdue Government Order required by Tehseen S. Poonawalla and takes corrective action with respect to the errant officials.

The abuse of the 1955 Act, therefore, remains a legal and moral paradox—a law intended to protect life but used under circumstances that inhibit liberty, equality, and the viability of constitutional democracy.

The judgment in Rahul Yadav v. State of Uttar Pradesh can be read here

The judgment in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India can be read here

The judgment in Kaliya v. State of U.P. can be read here

The judgment in Parasram Ji v. Imtiaz, can be read here

The judgment in Rahmuddin v. State of U.P. can be read here

The judgment in Jugadi Alias Nizamuddin v. State of U.P can be read here

The judgment in Bablu v. State of U.P. can be read here

Related:

Cow Vigilantism: The primary cause of persecution of Muslim minority in India

India: The new Lynchdom

Right wing groups indoctrinate Hindu youth to wield Trishuls to protect religion, cows

Cow vigilantism, a tool for terrorising minorities?

SC urged to formulate guidelines to curb Cow Vigilantism

Cow Slaughter Prevention Laws in India

Divide and Rule in the Name of the Cow

28 States and UTs have appointed nodal officers to curb hate speech in compliance with 2018 Tehseen Poonawalla verdict :Union Home Ministry to Supreme Court

“Vigilantism is not permissible, needs to be checked”: SC, following up Tehseen Poonawalla case

Several steps forward but miles to go in the battle for a hate-free India: Supreme Court in 2023

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This excerpt, the fourth and the last d in a series of four that Sabrangindia is publishing, looks at the methodology employed by the conspirators and killers of four rationalists, including Gauri Lankesh. The editors remain thankful to the author and to Westland Books for permission to publish this excerpt.

CHAPTER 20

The Nameless Group

In 1986, the Kannada novelist, U. R. Ananthamurthy wrote a nuanced essay about religion and superstition titled “Why Not Worship in the Nude?” (Its title is a reference to a controversial Hindu sect whose adherents pray unclothed.) The essay teems with complexities and questions, including the following: “Haven’t I become what I am by de-mythifying, even desecrating, the world of my childhood? As a boy growing up in my village, didn’t I urinate stealthily and secretly on sacred stones under trees to prove to myself that they have no power over me?”

The essay was little known until June 2014, when M. M. Kalburgi referred to the quoted passage in a speech. This time it landed in a political climate that hungers to be offended, and this passage of Kalburgi’s speech attracted wide media attention. But the media (including Sanatan Sanstha’s daily newspaper) immediately got two things very wrong: first, it was reported as Kalburgi describing his own childhood experience, not referring to Ananthamurthy; second, it was reported that he’d urinated not on sacred stones but on Hindu idols, a far more grievous act of desecration. Some even claimed that Kalburgi had urged his audience to urinate on idols. A brief, contextless video clip of this bit of Kalburgi’s speech played repeatedly even on mainstream TV news channels and circulated widely online.

It was this episode—this garbled reporting of a literary reference that Kalburgi made once—that motivated his assassins to murder him, the SIT found. The killers didn’t care about, and never read, the hundred books he wrote. They were indifferent to his stance on the Lingayat issue. His entire life’s work and thought were reduced for them to this one misunderstood moment, then whipped up into an offense so intolerable that they could not permit him to live.

Dabholkar and Pansare seem to have been murdered for more obvious reasons: their insistent campaigns against superstition, which right-wing Hindu groups saw as a direct threat to their religion and culture. But why did they murder Gauri?

In India it is common for police complaints to be filed against people for “hurting religious sentiments,” a phrase that is perhaps unique to India and that is frequently invoked in the news media. The relevant law, Section 295A, is obviously well meaning: religion is a volatile subject in India, so a disincentive to needless religious provocation seems wise. In practice, though, Section 295A seems to have encouraged a very vocal minority from all religions to develop a hair-trigger sensitivity to any potential insult (including satire, legitimate criticism, unintended implications, and innocent misstatements), and even to seek out opportunities to be offended, because the law seems to enshrine an actual right not to be offended, at least when it comes to religion.

In its charge sheet, the SIT concluded that the assassins’ motivation for killing Gauri was very specific: a single speech she gave, in Kannada, at a Communal Harmony Forum event in Mangalore, on August 2, 2012. “What is this Hindu religion?” she said in the speech. “Who is the founder of this religion? We know the founder of the Christian religion and its holy book, we know the Muslim religion and also its holy book, likewise about the Sikh religion, the Buddhist religion, Jain religion, but who is the founder of the Hindu religion?…This is a religion without a father and mother and it does not have a holy book. It never existed, and it was named only after the British, can it be called a religion?”

A video clip of this speech circulated widely on YouTube and WhatsApp with the caption “Why I hate secularism in India.” And the SIT found that as each new member of the assassination team was inducted into the conspiracy, the ringleaders would show them this particular clip, often repeatedly, as the primary motivator of their will to kill. They told their recruits that in making these remarks, Gauri had “caused great damage” to Hinduism, and that further harm will befall Hinduism “if she is permitted to continue to speak this way.”

In December 2016, Gauri herself posted a link to the video, writing, “I am facing a case because of this speech. I stand by every word I said.” Police had booked her for what she said in the speech, not under Section 295A, but under Section 153, incitement to riot (although there had been no riot). A court hearing in the case was scheduled for September 15, 2017, ten days after her death. Her friend Vivek Shanbhag told me he saw this clip circulate much more widely on social media after her murder—“certainly to convey that this is justified.” These re-postings were often captioned with lines like of course killing is wrong, but look at what she said.

It wasn’t important to the killers even how influential their targets were. They themselves had mostly never even heard of Gauri until they were shown this video. The important thing was whether the target had done or said something—even a single quotation, and ideally captured on video—that could crystallize outrage against the target. It turned out that it wasn’t about suppressing unfavorable journalism, and it wasn’t about the Lingayat debate. (The killers didn’t care about vote-bank politics.) It was because the killers simply believed they had a duty to kill those who had, in their view, intolerably insulted Hinduism, regardless of their stature and influence. As the Sanatan Sanstha book Kshatradharma Sadhana put it, the seekers had to slay the evildoers.

Beyond that imperative, it seemed to me that the killers weren’t strategic at all in their choice of target, although Gauri’s friend Shivasundar disagreed with me. “I think they have multiple strategies,” he said. “One of the strategies is to kill the local problematic people. They may not be high profile, but they are an immediate impediment. Writing in local languages, immediately they’re a threat. They did not think that Gauri would have so much national and international attention, because they didn’t do much homework on Gauri, I don’t think. So this actually blew up beyond their imagination. It boomeranged. But other people in the target are local, state- level kind of leaders. I think that is the new strategy, assassinating these kinds of people.”

There is no concept of blasphemy in Hindu scripture. It’s an idea that comes from the Abrahamic tradition. Christianity and Judaism seem to have retreated from it, by and large. But Hindutva has adopted it; in recent years Sanatan Sanstha has been agitating for an Indian anti-blasphemy law. Hindutva hard-liners, in defense of their touchiness, often point out how touchy many Muslims are over any negative comments on Islam or Muhammad, which is of course true. But it’s a strange thing to aspire to the touchiness of the most insecure Muslims. A great deal of Hindutva seems to be geared toward imitating the most reactionary qualities of the religion (Islam) and the country (Pakistan) that they claim to hate the most.

It’s important to note that the current level of Hindutva sensitivity is a recent development. Gandhi was assassinated not because of particular things he said but because the Hindu right wing thought that he’d used his enormous influence over the future of South Asia to “appease” its Muslim population en masse and thereby, supposedly, give away half the country (in the form of Pakistan). The author of the Indian Constitution, B. R. Ambedkar, converted to Buddhism in 1956 along with hundreds of thousands of his fellow Dalits. “I am ecstatic! I have left hell—this is how I feel,” he said the next day. “Because of the Hindu religion, no one can progress. That religion is only a destructive religion.” Those words haven’t stopped the BJP and RSS from attempting to co-opt his legacy in the hopes of attracting a Dalit following. K. S. Bhagawan, the next person the assassins planned to kill, pointed out to me that he’d been saying inflammatory things about Hinduism for decades; only recently did anyone threaten to murder him over it.

Still, several of Gauri’s friends and colleagues told me that while obviously she deserved no harm for anything she said, they didn’t honestly like that she could be so pejorative about Hinduism instead of reserving her criticism for Hindutva. “I really think that the way Gauri, or some of us, or many such people addressed these issues was not correct,” said H. V. Vasu— a progressive activist whose secular credentials are impeccable. “You may be an atheist, but there are people who are religious. And especially when irrationality is growing, and more and more people are going to the other side—even common people who are actually voting for an ideology that oppresses them. Then what approach should you take? You should stick to your ground in fighting for democratic rights, secularism, all that is true. But people do need God. Even when Marx said that religion is opium, there were other sentences attached to it—he said that religion is the heart of the heartless world and the soul of the soulless world. There’s so much suffering and insecurity in this world. You must acknowledge that people have spiritual needs.”

On New Year’s Day 2012, in the northern Karnataka town of Sindagi, six young men were arrested for hoisting the national flag of Pakistan on the flagpole in front of a local government office. The men were members of the fringe Hindutva group Sri Ram Sena; their intention was to whip up tensions with the local Muslim population. The man who actually hoisted the Pakistan flag was a twenty-year-old college student named Parashuram Waghmare. Five years later, he would shoot and kill Gauri Lankesh. The ringleaders of the group who conspired to kill her recruited him precisely because of the initiative he’d shown in the flag-hoisting incident.

Waghmare had never heard of Gauri until those conspirators told him they wanted him to kill her and showed him the video of her speech. But Gauri, oddly enough, had heard of Waghmare. His flag-hoisting escapade was notorious in Karnataka. In the January 28, 2012, issue of Gauri Lankesh Patrike, she even wrote about it for her lead editorial. “It has been proven now that patriotism, nationalism, and religiousness are simply a few table topics” to Hindutva activists, she wrote. “Their true agenda has been to instigate communal hate between different religions of India through acts of terrorism.” She called Waghmare and his accomplices “Hindu hooligans.” Her next issue’s cover story was an investigation into the flag-hoisting incident by one of her reporters.

But another group was already rising, one that Gauri knew nothing about yet. I derived all of the information in the following account of that group from the 255 pages of statements of the accused included in the SIT’s charge sheet, as well as newspaper articles by Johnson T. A. of The Indian Express and K. V. Aditya Bharadwaj of The Hindu, who are universally considered the two most accurate and reliable reporters on the assassination of Gauri Lankesh. At the time I’m writing this, the trial against these suspects is ongoing, and every sentence that follows should be presumed to include the word “allegedly.”

The founder of the assassination organisation that murdered Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M. M. Kalburgi, and Gauri Lankesh was Dr. Virendra Tawade, an ENT surgeon who had been a longtime member of Sanatan Sanstha. Tawade had led Sanatan Sanstha’s protest campaign against Dabholkar’s anti-superstition organization, MANS—one medical doctor versus another. Tawade founded the assassination group at the urging of Shashikant Rane, alias Kaka, the top editor of Sanatan Sanstha’s newspaper, Sanatan Prabhat. In 2010 or 2011, Rane convened a meeting at the Sanatan Sanstha ashram in Goa with Tawade and two other Sanatan Sanstha members: Amol Kale and Amit Degwekar. Amol Kale was a leader of the Sanatan Sanstha’s offshoot Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and served as a salesman of the organization’s publications. Amit Degwekar lived at the Goa ashram and worked as a promoter and proofreader of Sanatan Prabhat. His roommate at the ashram had died in 2009 when he accidentally detonated his explosives while attempting to bomb the festival in the nearby town of Margao.

Dr. Tawade was founding the new group, Rane told Kale and Degwekar at the meeting, because “Hindu dharma is in trouble.” The law would clearly not protect their interests, so they needed to take the law into their own hands. Hindu youth must be gathered, a sense of revolution must be instilled in them, and they must carry out the religious work of destroying evildoers. Dr. Tawade was not giving the organization a name, Rane explained, because a name would only make it easier for the police to identify and thwart them. Rane would remain in his role at Sanatan Sanstha and help fund the new nameless group (until he died in 2018, inconveniently for the SIT). The other three men at the founding meeting—along with two other early members of the group, Sujith Kumar and Vikas Patil—would henceforth disassociate themselves from Sanatan Sanstha. Degwekar would serve as liaison between Sanatan Sanstha and the new, nameless group, as well as its treasurer.

Over the next few years, as they enlisted dozens of recruits, the Nameless Group developed a strict set of protocols. To aid focus and avoid mistakes, chant mantras every day. When mistakes occur, write them down. When meeting other members of the Nameless Group, don’t request or share anything personal, including line of work, and especially don’t ask or offer names or personal phone numbers; only call other members using specially assigned burner phones. Everyone would be assigned a code name, numbers would be written in a cipher, and all references to criminal activities would be conducted in code words.

It’s important to note that the co-conspirators barely knew one another. They often didn’t have fluent languages in common because they came from several different states. They met at bus stands, wearing caps to recognize one another, and at training camps in remote areas, where they received practical education in weapons (guns, petrol bombs, IEDs) and subterfuge (how to mislead the police; how to endure police torture). It’s only after they were arrested that most of them spent much time with one another.

One member was a used-car salesman. One was a goldsmith. One ran a fragrance shop; another ran a computer-assisted design company. One was a civil contractor and former elementary school teacher. One worked as an astrologer and Ayurveda specialist. One sold incense sticks; another was a vegetable vendor. The day job of another, incredibly, was personal assistant to a Congress Party legislator. One was a motorcycle mechanic, who, more to the point, was also a skilled motorcycle thief. The mechanic said that when Dr. Tawade met the new recruits, “he filled our heads with all his thoughts. He kept emphasizing the point that if we did anything for dharma, our family would be safe in all the seven lives to come.”

Sharad Kalaskar, who was selected to shoot Narendra Dabholkar, worked as a farmer. After Kalaskar committed the deed, on August 20, 2013, Dr. Tawade told him that he would be uplifted in all seven births, that he would go to God as Arjuna (one of the warrior heroes of the Mahabharata), and that even though he had committed a big “event”—their code word for “attack”—the police would not catch him because God’s grace was upon him.

Around that time, several members held a meeting to brainstorm whom they might kill next. One new recruit—Mohan Nayak, who served as a leader of the Karnataka branch of the Sanatan Sanstha offshoot HJS—made a list that included a supposed Naxalite, a Muslim politician, and Agni Sreedhar. A more senior member explained to him that he should not include Muslims, Christians, or politicians on the list; their priority, he explained, should be Hindus by birth who had become traitors to Hinduism and who were therefore threats to their own faith. Such people were bigger threats to the faith than Muslims. Nayak got the idea and suggested a different name: Gauri Lankesh.

But that would wait. On February 16, 2015, the Nameless Group killed Govind Pansare. On August 30, 2015, they killed M. M. Kalburgi; for this killing, the shooter was Ganesh Miskin, alias Mithun, who would go on to drive the motorcycle for the Gauri Lankesh assassination.

On June 10, 2016, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Dr. Tawade for Dabholkar’s murder—three years after Dabholkar’s murder and two years after the CBI had taken over the investigation from the Maharashtra police. After the arrest, Rane, the editor of Sanatan Sanstha’s newspaper, summoned Tawade’s deputy, Amol Kale, to the Goa ashram and made him the new head of the Nameless Group. “You take up the lead of the dharma work and continue,” he said. “We’ll provide you with all the assistance from time to time.”

In June 2016, the group’s main recruiter, who goes by the alias Praveen, showed the other senior members the video clip from the speech Gauri had delivered in Mangalore in 2012, in which she ridiculed Hinduism for not having a “mother or father.” In the last week of August they called a meeting with several junior members of the group, at which they discussed the Sanatan Sanstha book Kshatradharma Sadhana and each drew up lists of evildoers. They soon coalesced around Gauri as their next target. Kale’s diary revealed the group’s code name for their plot to kill Gauri: Operation Amma (“amma” meaning “mother”).

Kale introduced a different operational style to the Nameless Group. Whereas Tawade’s plots were straightforward—case the victim’s house, then show up and shoot him at an opportune time—Kale’s plot against Gauri was much more elaborate and compartmentalised, with separate teams running each facet of the operation. They were more careful than ever, but also more confident.

In October 2016, the Nameless Group enlisted Parashuram Waghmare. They had been particularly impressed by Waghmare’s arrest for hoisting the Pakistan flag. They told him there was someone who needed to be murdered and urged him to meditate and pray. That same month, the group’s mechanic stole the Hero Honda Passion Pro motorcycle that the hit team would use for Gauri’s murder and gave it to Amol Kale.

Meanwhile, Kale gave Gauri’s office address to two of the younger recruits—Ganesh Miskin and Amit Baddi—and assigned them to do reconnaissance. In late March they traveled to Bangalore, stayed at the house of a friend (lying to him that they were in town for work), borrowed the friend’s motorcycle, and tailed Gauri for a couple days. In April they met Kale again, gave him her home address, and reported that she lived alone. The best time to kill her, they said, would be when she gets out of her car to open her house’s gate. Throughout the summer of 2017, these three men were crawling all over her neighborhood for weeks, continuing to study her movements, surveying all lights and CCTV cameras near her house, practicing multiple variations on routes, absorbed invisibly into the traffic of Bangalore. In July they brought Waghmare on a reconnaissance visit to Bangalore, but blindfolded him so that he’d know as little as necessary.

Throughout that summer the group also did firearms practice at a remote farm shed owned by one member, using a polystyrene mannequin as their target. They mostly used air pistols because real bullets were in short supply. Between shooting and karate they did meditation and yoga.

In June 2017, they recruited the final member of the team: K. T. Naveen Kumar, the one who slipped up first and gave them all away. That month, at the annual Sanatan Sanstha convention in Goa, he gave the impromptu speech, about the need to use weapons to protect Hindu dharma, that had so impressed his fellow convention goers. The HJS spokesperson Mohan Gowda then introduced him to Praveen, the Nameless Group’s recruiter. When they first met, Naveen Kumar gave Praveen two bullets, but came up empty when the group asked him again and again for more. Naveen Kumar talked big, but those two bullets were his only apparent contribution to the plot.

In the second week of August 2017, members of the Nameless Group stayed in the Bangalore suburbs for several days. There Kale gave them their assignments. Waghmare was assigned to shooting. Miskin was to drive the motorcycle on “event” day and to be the backup shooter—and also to shoot anyone who tried to interfere with the assassination. Baddi was to wait in a van en route to Gauri’s house to help the hit team with their clothes and guns, to retrieve the guns and clothes from them immediately after the “event,” and then to bring the guns and the motorcycle to the city of Belgaum. Kalaskar, who shot Dabholkar, was to continue training Waghmare and Miskin in shooting and to collect the guns from Baddi in Belgaum. A member named Bharat Kurne, code-named Uncle because he was a family man, was assigned to cook for the hit team, to ensure they got out of town on a bus on the night of the “event,” to bribe police if necessary, and to help keep the hit team’s minds “stable” by leading them in meditation and prayer.

After shooting practice, Waghmare selected the gun that he was most comfortable with, which happened to be the same gun that shot Pansare and Kalburgi. Miskin told Waghmare that he shot Kalburgi in the forehead and Waghmare should shoot Gauri in the forehead, too. Baddi advised Waghmare to chant God’s name while shooting, as is recommended in the Sanatan Sanstha book Kshatradharma Sadhana.

On September 2, 2017, Kale and another member traveled to Bangalore along with the hit team’s clothes, two guns, and twenty-five bullets. For the week of the murder, the Nameless Group had set up two hideouts in the southern suburbs of Bangalore. The core hit team—Waghmare, Miskin, Baddi, and Kurne—stayed together. When Waghmare was brought to that hideout, on September 3, the others again blindfolded him so that he wouldn’t know where it was.

September 4, 2017, was the day they chose to kill Gauri. The hit team woke up early to pray for an hour or two. Kurne cooked them lunch. As the time for the “event” approached, he instructed the hit team to use the toilet, to eat little food, and to carry cash. At around 6:30, Miskin gave Waghmare a pistol and kept one for himself. On the way to Gauri’s house, they stopped to put on their second layer of clothes and cover their faces with handkerchiefs and put a fake license plate on their motorcycle and load their guns. They arrived at the park near Gauri’s house at around 7:45. They waited there until 8:00, and then Waghmare walked over to Gauri’s house and found that she was already at home.

On September 5, 2017, they tried again, following the same plan and arriving at the park near Gauri’s house at around 7:50. When Gauri’s car appeared, taking a right turn by the park, Miskin pointed her out to Waghmare. They followed her on the motorcycle. When she got out of her car to open her gate, Waghmare stepped down from the motorcycle, aimed his gun at her head, and fired, striking her twice in the abdomen. She screamed and ran. He fired two more bullets, one of which struck the wall of her house, the other hitting her below the right shoulder. Meanwhile, Miskin turned the motorcycle around. He and Waghmare fled, stopping to reverse their disguises on the way back to the hideout. The gun was out of Waghmare’s possession fifteen minutes after the murder; he passed it to Baddi, who passed it to Kale, who wrapped it up and put it in a red suitcase, which went into a storage space rented for that purpose. At the hideout, Kurne was waiting for the killers with their luggage to get them to the bus out of town.

Half of the accused conspirators were outside Bangalore on the day of the assassination and only learned of its success the next day. On September 7, at a construction site in Belgaum, Kale met the core assassination team— Waghmare, Miskin, Baddi, and Kurne. He fed them chocolates and gave Waghmare 10,000 rupees, or around $150. Waghmare soon spent it all, 4,000 rupees of it on hospital treatment for nasal problems.

By October 2017, the Nameless Group had turned to the next item on their list: the assassination of Professor Bhagawan. In the first week of November 2017, most of the conspirators met at Kurne’s farm for further training and discussion of plans. As usual, their training session alternated between weapons training and dharma talks, prayer, and meditation. Despite the successful assassination in September, Kale appears to have been increasingly frustrated with his co-conspirators. He reprimanded one for not being in Bangalore to help during the “event.” He was angry at two others because he assigned them to do reconnaissance for three days on a social activist in Pune, but they came back with nothing.

Meanwhile, Praveen, the group’s recruiter, had been calling K. T. Naveen Kumar about the plot to kill Bhagawan, again asking him if he could procure more guns and bullets. Naveen Kumar told him he’d do literally anything to protect dharma and bragged, implausibly, that he could get guns from the late bandit Veerappan’s gang with a week’s notice. It was these phone calls that the SIT intercepted, giving them their big break and beginning their series of arrests.

In December 2017, led by Kale, ten members of the Nameless Group met in Pune to organize a bomb attack on the Sunburn Festival, an electronic dance music event, because they considered it contrary to their idea of Hindu culture, but they abandoned the plan after two members accidentally got caught on CCTV cameras while doing advance reconnaissance. The following month, Kale organized an attack on movie theaters showing the historical epic Padmaavat, because it is, as Kalaskar put it in his statement, “a misrepresentation of the history of Hindu kings” and might encourage Muslim men to pursue Hindu women. “We intended to cause loss of property and create an atmosphere of fear,” he said. In this they were successful: the group exploded bombs at two movie theaters. No one was hurt, but panic broke out and screenings of the film were canceled.

Around this time, Naveen Kumar asked the senior members of the group to meet him in Davanagere because, he said, the “things” had arrived for killing Bhagawan. When they arrived, Naveen Kumar gave them the runaround for a while before admitting he still had no guns—there was apparently “no signal” from “his side” because “they did not trust us enough.” Kale was furious. After this, Naveen Kumar never again picked up their calls.

On February 19, 2018, Naveen Kumar was arrested. The senior members of the group had an urgent meeting in Madgaon. They decided to collect their weapons stashes and move them to a safer place, to shave any facial hair, to wear glasses and caps, and to hide out for a while in a different house. But Kale assured the other conspirators that the arrest of Naveen Kumar wouldn’t affect them; they should meditate and pray and prepare for more dharma work. While in hiding, Kalaskar accidentally shot himself in the hand while cleaning a gun.

On May 20, 2018, Praveen, the group’s recruiter, was arrested; police found twenty-two phones, and many more loose SIM cards, in his kitchen, along with his diary and a copy of the book Kshatradharma Sadhana. The next day, police arrested three others, including Kale, while they waited for Praveen at a bus stand; they didn’t yet know of his arrest. In Kale’s possession police found twenty-one phones, plus three diaries at his home. In the possession of Degwekar, the group’s treasurer, they found several envelopes of cash, totaling over 150,000 rupees, that had been withdrawn from a Sanatan Sanstha bank account, along with the passbook for that account. Degwekar claimed that the money was subscription payments from readers of Sanatan Sanstha periodicals. Police found that the various diaries referred to over two dozen collaborators with the Nameless Group in Karnataka and dozens more in Maharashtra—over sixty arms-trained and

radicalised recruits total (most of whom had not yet participated in any hit jobs). Intelligence agencies immediately put as many of them as they could under surveillance if they didn’t yet have the evidence to arrest them. These recruits mostly came from a tri-state area: southwestern Maharashtra, Goa, and northern Karnataka. The annual Sanatan Sanstha convention in Goa, it seemed, was their central recruitment hub, where they sought out young men with violent tendencies and a history of communal incitement.

After learning of Kale’s arrest, the members at large destroyed their burner phones. Mohan Nayak destroyed the bomb gelatin he was storing for future attacks. Kalaskar, the member who’d shot Dabholkar and who’d helped train Gauri’s killers, burned his phone and his three diaries, which included his notes on how to make guns and bombs. On June 11, Waghmare was arrested.

Kalaskar still had the guns. After Waghmare’s arrest, Kalaskar met with the Sanatan Sanstha lawyer Sanjeev Punalekar. To cover their tracks, they had an elaborate method of meeting: Punalekar’s assistant placed an ad in Sanatan Prabhat seeking a security guard, and Kalaskar answered the ad, whereupon the assistant took him to meet Punalekar at his office. Punalekar asked Kalaskar whether Gauri’s murder could be tied to Kale or Tawade, and he asked about the location of the guns. Two days later they met again, and Punalekar told him to destroy the guns used for killing Gauri along with their remaining stash of guns and bombs. “He also asked me how long it would take to make new guns,” Kalaskar said in his statement, “and he said he would pay the cost for making guns.” Punalekar asked Kalaskar extensively about the Dabholkar murder and “various cases,” and told him not to worry.

I will note here that the account of Kalaskar’s conversations with Punalekar in the above paragraph comes directly from a statement that Kalaskar dictated and signed before a magistrate, which means that it is admissible as evidence in court. Later, in 2019, the Central Bureau of Investigation would arrest Punalekar in connection with Dabholkar’s murder. The SIT investigating Gauri’s murder said they considered Punalekar a “person of interest” in that case for advising Kalaskar to destroy the guns, but they did not arrest him.

On July 18, 2018, Mohan Nayak was arrested. On July 23, Kalaskar disassembled the guns in his possession, including those used in Gauri’s murder, then, with the help of Punalekar’s assistant, threw the guns’ slides and barrels into Vasai Creek, near Mumbai, which empties into the Arabian Sea. He kept the remaining gun parts for making new guns, calculating, apparently accurately, that only the slides and barrels were ballistically identifiable. Over the next three weeks, the SIT arrested seven more members of the Nameless Group, including Kalaskar, Kurne, Miskin, and Baddi.

On August 19, 2018, the Maharashtra Anti-terrorism Squad raided the house of the assistant of the Sanatan Sanstha lawyer Punalekar and found an enormous cache of explosives, plus sixteen complete pistols and many partially made pistols and pistol parts. The ATS concluded that most of these pistols were made or obtained after the arrest of Naveen Kumar six months before, which suggests an alarmingly rapid rearmament of the Nameless Group, even while their members were being arrested. In the past the group had lain low for as long as two years between hits, to let things cool down. Kale apparently wanted to accelerate the group’s work, to assign multiple simultaneous assassination plots and bombings to several teams. The bust also implied that the group had grown large enough that it was possible that enough members remained free to regroup and kill again.

On August 20 and September 8, two more members were arrested. Now only two of the eighteen men charge sheeted for Gauri’s murder remained at large, both of them senior members of the Nameless Group. “Sanatan Sanstha has no connection with these killings. Due to propaganda by the Communist Party, the misunderstanding about us has been created,” said a Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson on September 6, 2018, the day after the first anniversary of Gauri’s death. “Violence was never, is never and will never find any place in the mission of Sanatan Sanstha, which believes in working in a constitutional manner.”

(The first excerpt was published some days ago and may be read here. The second excerpt may be read here.

The third excerpt was published too and may be read here. This is the fourth and concluding excerpt that we will be pulishing.)

Note from the Editors: We would like to express our heartfelt solidarity with the family of Gauri Lankesh, Indira Lankesh, Kavitha and Esha Laneksh, who have with pathos and determination built on the gaping vacuum created by Gauri Lankesh’s assassination. Gauri was also a close and dear activist friend of Sabrangindia’s co-editor, Teesta Setalvad.

Related:

Rationalist Murders: Slamming CBI’s shoddy probe & failure to nab masterminds, Pune court slams attempt to “finish off Dabholkar’s ideology”

10 years since Narendra Dabholkar’s murder, protest in Mumbai, SC asks CBI to look into ‘larger conspiracy’

Firing at the Heart of Truth: Remembering MM Kalburgi

Teesta Setalvad On Assault On Reason

Death of a Rationalist: Govind Pansare

Contrasting two lists: one with “facts” on right-wing deaths, the second, targeting other writers after Gauri Lankesh

Storms battered her from outside, but she stood, an unwavering flame: Gauri Lankesh

Honour for killers of Gauri Lankesh and MM Kalburgi in Karnataka, public felicitation and terms like “Hindu tigers” for accused Amit Baddi and Ganesh…

Protest in Karnataka as activists condemns felicitation of Gauri Lankesh murder accused by right-wing groups

Murderers or Martyrs? The dangerous glorification of murdered Gauri Lankesh’s accused by Hindutva groups

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The post How the noose tightened: understanding modus operandi of killers who took the life of journalist-activist, Gauri Lankesh appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The victim, Aasif Babu Multani, and his cousin Mohsin, both residents of Multanpur in Mandsaur, had travelled to Bhilwara’s Lambia Raila cattle market on September 15 to purchase oxen and buffaloes for their fields and dairy business. As reported by Indian Express, in the early hours of September 16, as they drove home, their pickup van was chased, forced off the road, and surrounded by 14–15 men who dragged them out and beat them mercilessly.

According to Mohsin, who managed to escape by hiding in nearby woods, the mob kept shouting “gau taskar” (cow smuggler) as they rained blows on Aasif. The report of The Hindu provides that “They didn’t even ask questions. They saw cattle, saw Muslims, and decided we were smugglers,” he said. The assailants also allegedly seized ₹36,000 in cash, snatched purchase receipts, and used Aasif’s phone to call his family, demanding an additional ₹50,000 to spare his life.

Aasif was first taken to Bhilwara’s Mahatma Gandhi Hospital with severe head injuries and later referred to Jaipur’s Sawai Man Singh Medical College for neurosurgery. He succumbed to his injuries on September 20. He leaves behind his wife, a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and an eight-month-old son.

His brother, Manju Pemla, broke down while speaking to The Hindu: “My brother’s only ‘crime’ was that he was Muslim and transporting cattle. There wasn’t even a cow in the van—only oxen and buffaloes. They killed him because of who he was.”

Police response

According to abplive, Bhilwara Superintendent of Police Dharmendra Singh confirmed the arrest of five individuals and the registration of an FIR under several provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including attempt to murder, unlawful assembly, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt, and extortion. A parallel case of alleged cow smuggling has also been filed against the victims.

According to the report, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been constituted to probe the case using CCTV footage and digital evidence. Officials say the SIT will also examine whether personal enmity, extortion, or a roadside altercation played a role. However, family members insist that the attackers are part of organised cow-vigilante groups well known for harassing cattle traders.

Despite the arrests, Pemla pointed out that several accused specifically named in the FIR remain free. “The men Mohsin identified from social media videos are roaming around. Until they’re caught, we cannot feel safe,” he said.

Aasif’s death underscores a chilling pattern—where mob violence around cattle transport blends religious prejudice with criminal opportunism, leaving ordinary farmers and their families shattered.

The killing, reported in the inside pages of national dailies also reveals a sombre normalisation of such targeted vigilante driven violence; something that is almost accepted as a norm!

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The post Madhya Pradesh Muslim man lynched in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara over cattle transport; family alleges religious targeting & extortion plot appeared first on SabrangIndia.

SSR has been claiming that he has no interest in the world of politics and his main concerns are spiritual. He has a vast empire under “Art of living” and the amount of property amassed by him, like the property of most of the god men, is immense. It is a paradox. Most of them preach that the wealth, the World is an illusion and one should not run after it. As it happens, they themselves amass huge amounts of real estate and other wealth. SSR introduced Sudarshan Kriya as the key component of his teachings and attracted millions of followers. SSR has also founded ‘Art of Living’ with systemic formulations which appeals to many.

He had organised a cultural festival in 2017 in which there that caused substantial ecological damage to the river Yamuna. The Ecological tribunal imposed a fine of crores on SSR, which he refused to pay. When the ‘RSS propped up’ Anna Movement supposedly against corruption became prominent, SSR was very active in support from one side and another god man Baba Ramdev was active in support from another!

The other god man who has very close links to the BJP/RSS is Baba Ramdev. He began as a yoga teacher and graduated to become a very successful entrepreneur, with the Patanjali brand. His closeness to those in power has helped him to expand his business empire exponentially. His yoga shows are the point of attraction for millions. During Covid, he took full advantage of the misery wrought in by Corona to launch his brand, ‘Coronil’, violating the medical norms of introduction of new drugs. His brand was launched by two Central Cabinet Ministers, Harshvardhan and Nitin Gadkari. His abuse of modern science and allopathic medicine was so brazen that the Indian Medical Association took him to court and he was forced to apologise. His anti- Muslim rhetoric while launching his product similar to Rooh Afza, again landed him in trouble and he profusely apologised again! His proximity to the centre of power is a big safety umbrella for him in minting money and spreading hate against Muslims.

There are many others babas and suchlike who have been dominating the scene. Among these is Bageshwar baba, Dhriendra Krishna shastri, a young man in his twenties whose claim to fame that he ‘tells the past’ of people e. His bluff was called out by the activist against blind faith Shyam Manav. When Manav challenged him in Nagpur, he hurriedly wound up his camp there and ran to Bageshwar. Mr. Narendra Modi calls him his younger brother. Now he is planning a Hindu Gaon (Village) where only Hindus will be settled.

There is no direct relation between these godmen and RSS, that much is true. As far as the agenda of RSS is concerned, the godmen are in unison and are in sync with the agenda of RSS that espouses Hindu Rashtra accompanied by a strengthening of the hierarchy of caste and gender which should be birth based.

Godmen are not the traditional clergy associated with priest craft. They have devised their own methods to attract the people. Something from the traditional knowledge, something from their own imagination, they do coin the phrases which become central to their identity. Their confidence in their craft is remarkable and they generally are very effective speakers.

There is however a dark underbelly to this tribe. There was murder of Shankarraman in the Ashram of “Shankaracharya Jayendra Sarswathi and he was accused of murder of an ashram worker, Shankararaman. In Satya Sai Baba’s Prasanthi Nilayam also there was a murder case. When Jayendra Sarswati was an accused in murderer case Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Asaram Bapu sat on a protest. Gurmeet Ram Rahim carried on with his dark activities and a journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati was killed for exposing his black deeds. Finally with difficulty law caught up with him and currently he is in jail, but out most of the time on parole.”

There was also this murder of two young boys in the Ashram of Asaram Bapu. The present prime minister was a visitor to ‘Bapu’s Ashram’ and former PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee also associated with Asaram Babu in 2013 in Lucknow. In the 2014 Haryana Elections Gurmeet Ram Rahim asked his followers to vote for BJP. After the victory many from the Manoharlal Khattar Cabinet went to seek his blessings. Currently he is in jail –in theory – though most of the time, he is out on parole. Interestingly the jailor who has been giving him parole has also joined the BJP immediately after his retirement.

These are just the few from the vast World of Baba’s, all with assorted titles. There is a similar phenomenon in Pakistan too, where some Maulana-like characters with charisma draw huge crowds of devotees. We also know of Benni Hinn who through his hypnotherapy draws large crowds.

It could be argued that the RSS has large numbers of progeny who also propagate and assert the goal of Hindu Rashtra through their actions and teachings. Many of these god men also promote Hindu Nationalism at an ideological level without being part of the official ‘RSS combine’. Their impact on society is deep and with social insecurities rising, these objective conditions lead many into the arms of these god men, who have a great amount of protection from the state and the social eco-system. Many hagiographical books have also been published on these characters.

Only few serious, analytical studies on them are readily available. Surely more in-depth studies of individual godmen and this phenomenon is the need of our times. At a time when such phenomena has a field day, rationalists like Dr. Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh have been murdered.

Sad but true, most murderers are also getting away with the crime.

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Undermining religious freedom: Proffering ‘integral humanism’ as a right wing defence

The post Sectarian nationalism and god men: Sri Sri Ravishankar attends the 75th Birthday of the RSS chief appeared first on SabrangIndia.

They argued that such participation, along with the playing of Bollywood songs, would hurt the sentiments of Sanatan Dharma. The group warned authorities that if communal tensions escalated, the responsibility would lie with the administration.

 

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Communal flashpoints around festivals: a pattern repeating itself

Communal tensions around festivals are no longer isolated flare-ups but part of a disturbing, repeated pattern in several parts of India. In recent years, especially in BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh, Gujrat and Madhya Pradesh, right-wing groups have targeted Muslim youth and artists for participating in Hindu cultural events such as Garba during Navratri. Last year in n Jhansi, artist Baby Imran was barred from performing despite being invited, with the event’s electricity cut off as she began.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, Bajrang Dal members disrupted a dandiya celebration over a Muslim youth allegedly carrying chicken, while in Dewas, Hindu Jagran Manch threatened non-Hindus with violence if they didn’t leave the event. In Guna, Muslim youths were physically assaulted and handed over to police—one even beaten on video for resisting expulsion.

These incidents reflect a larger pattern of orchestrated exclusion and hate, masked as protection of religious sentiments. Festivals, once symbols of unity, are now flashpoints of division. This rising intolerance not only alienates minorities but also corrodes India’s pluralistic spirit. If left unaddressed, it risks normalising communal hatred as a part of public celebrations.

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The post Navratri: Communal demands mark pre-festival protest in Jabalpur appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Patriotic Indians must not forget that majoritarian far right rulers are using the Indian Tricolour to camouflage their questionable, anti-national project of converting democratic-secular-egalitarian polity of India into a theocratic Hindu state. It is not difficult to understand their ultimate motive or “real project” if we go back in history to when India attained Independence from colonial rule.

On the very eve of independence, the English organ of the RSS, Organiser, in its issue dated August 14, 1947, expressed brazen hatred against our Tricolour in the following words:

“The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it will never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country.”

Even after independence it was the far right, RSS which refused to accept it as the National Flag. Golwalkar while denouncing the choice of Tricolour as National Flag in an essay titled ‘Drifting and Drifting’ [penned around 1970 which appeared in Bunch of Thoughts, collection of writings of Golwalkar], wrote:

“Our leaders have set up a new flag for our country. Why did they do so? It is just a case of drifting and imitating….Ours is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of our own? Had we no national emblem at all these” thousands of years? Undoubtedly we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds?

[Golwalkar, M.S., Bunch of Thoughts, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore (RSS publication), 1996,    pp. 237-238.]

So the RSS hatred for Tricolour has been, is perennial. If it was denigrated on the eve of Independence, this Guru of the Hindutva gang continued spreading venom against it even after many decades. RSS has never withdrawn this anti-national article, it is available in the latest edition of Bunch of Thoughts printed in 2022.

RSS despite the use of all dirty tricks against Indian polity has not been able to turn patriotic Indians against this symbol of joint sacrifices and struggle. RSS as master demagogue and fraudster is using the Tricolour till the time Indians fall prey to its anti-national game of undoing democratic-secular-egalitarian polity of India.

On a more serious vein, on Saturday August 16, 2025, this tweet (on X) from Maharashtra has so far not elicited any criminal action from the police. Denigrating the national flag is a felony under Indian law.

Take a closer look at the White colour, it is evident that SOMEONE HAS STEPPED ON THE NATIONAL FLAG pic.twitter.com/PJHOrTBjeN

— Raju Parulekar (@rajuparulekar) August 16, 2025

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The post Indian tricolour & the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh appeared first on SabrangIndia.