Busted! The Delhi High Court strongly questioned the lack of empirical evidence for these claims, pointing out that the government’s decision to bury them inside was a sensitive law-and-order call that could not be challenged over a decade later on mere “personal views.”

Background

On September 24, 2025, the Delhi High Court heard a PIL seeking the removal of the graves of two Kashmiri separatist leaders: Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) founder Mohammad Maqbool Bhatt and Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal Guru. Both were sentenced to death and executed in Tihar Jail – Guru in February 2013 and Bhatt in February 1984. They were both buried in the jail premises after performing the last rites according to the Islamic principles, a sensitive decision taken by the government to prevent law-and-order disturbances that may have arisen from public burials.

The petition, filed by Hindu right-wing organisation ‘Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh’ argued that Bhatt and Guru, acting under the influence of “extremist Jihadi ideology,” orchestrated acts of terrorism that gravely threatened India’s sovereignty. The Sangh President, Jitendra Singh Vishen, had previously written to President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, urging them to shift the graves “to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean or to a secret place in the jungles of Amazon” in order to curb “Jihadi mentality” and free the “holy land of India” from the graves, dargahs, and mausoleums of terrorists.

Their plea sought directions to the authorities to remove the graves from Tihar or, as an alternative, to relocate the mortal remains to a secret location to prevent “glorification of terrorism.”

What is the Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh? What purpose does its petition serve? And what larger narrative does it seek to construct? The answers begin to emerge once we look closely at the claims made in their plea.

Claim #1:

The presence of these graves, the petition stated, has turned Tihar jail into a site of “radical pilgrimage” where extremist elements gather to pay homage and venerate convicted terrorists.

Busted – a wild claim without evidence!

In the aforementioned letter, Vishen wrote that the two convicts have become “heroes of the society with a jihadi mindset” and are worshipped as religious leaders by young men who bow before their graves. “People of Jihadi society make fun of the law and order of the country by doing criminal activities day in and day out to offer prayers at the graves of the above two terrorists, and are also popularizing Central Jail Tihar as the graveyard/mausoleum/dargah of the above two terrorists,” the letter claims.

The Delhi High Court pressed the petitioner to produce data showing that people visit the graves to pay homage. Observing that no material had been produced to support the claim aside from stray social media posts, the Court asked, “Where is the empirical data? We cannot act on news clippings.”

Claim #2:

The construction and continued existence of the graves inside a state-controlled prison, counsel for the petitioner argued, was a ‘health hazard’ and a ‘nuisance’ as people are committing crimes to go to the jail and pay homage. 

Busted – legally and factually wanting! 

The Court rejected the argument that there was a ‘nuisance’ within the meaning of Section 398 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act (1957). Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya said, “This provision is made for any kind of nuisance to be removed. Not for the removal of a grave if that grave has been put in with the consent of the authority which owns the land. Jail is not a public place. Jail is a place owned by the State established for a specific purpose of incarceration.”

The Court further emphasised that the government’s action to bury the bodies within the prison was based on a sensitive political and law-and-order situation. The Court could not overturn a policy decision made by the State in an area of its specific and sensitive competence, especially not 12 years later and on unsubstantiated grounds.

Claim #3:

 The graves are unlawful and violate Delhi Prisons Rules 2018, which states that the remains of executed prisoners must be disposed of in a manner that prevents glorification and maintains prison discipline, argued the petition.

Busted – no law prohibits cremation or burial inside the jail!

The Bench corrected the misinterpretation of Rules 895 to 897, remarking that, “if a body has to be transported outside the prison, it has to be done with all solemnity. It doesn’t say that each body has to be taken outside prison.”

Claim #4:

The existence of the graves not only “undermines national security and public order,” but also “sanctifies terrorism in direct contravention of the principles of secularism and rule of law under the Constitution of India,” the petition states.

Busted – no constitutional rights or fundamental rights infringed!

The Court dismissed such a broad constitutional claim. “Tell us which law has been infringed and which fundamental rights of yours have been infringed by this. Something you wish cannot become the subject matter of a PIL,” the Court said, underscoring that the judiciary’s role is to address rights and statutes, not to legislate on personal views. “I like this, you like something else. These are not matters to be taken in courts.”

The High Court further maintained that such policy decisions lay with the government, not the judiciary. “Government decided to have the burial in jail keeping these issues in mind. Can we challenge that 12 years later?” the Bench asked.

“Somebody’s last rites are to be respected.”

Pattern of Post-Mortem Erasure

The petition frames its demand for grave removal as a continuation of an “established state practice,” asking the court to treat the graves of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt the same way as those of Ajmal Kasab and Yakub Memon, “where every precaution was taken to prevent glorification.”

However, these earlier episodes do not add up to a clear, uniform practice, but a patchwork of administrative choices driven less by due process and more by political spectacle. Administrative powers, court orders and enforcement measures are deployed unevenly, creating a de facto policy that singles out sites linked to Muslim history for agitation, removal, demolition or public shaming.

The petition’s insistence the state follows an “established practice” is undercut by its own example. In September 2022, BJP MLA Ram Kadam shared photos showing marble slabs and LED lighting “adorning” the grave of 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon. A political row erupted: the BJP accused the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition and Shiv Sena leadership of having “beautified” the grave and warned it could become a ‘mazar;’ Shiv Sena leaders countered that the cemetery was privately managed and charged the BJP with trying to divert attention and inflame communal tensions ahead of civic polls. The episode illustrates how these disputes are rarely about procedure, law, or even history – rather, they are exercises in narrative-building and political opportunism.

The same year, a few months later, the spotlight shifted from Mumbai to Satara where the administration demolished structures around the 17th-century tomb of Afzal Khan, the Adil Shahi general slain by Chhatrapati Shivaji. Officially, the drive was framed as the removal of “unauthorised constructions,” with Hindu nationalist groups alleging that the Hazarat Mohammad Afzal Khan Memorial Society was expanding the tomb and glorifying an “enemy of Swaraj” in “Shivaji’s own land.” The demolition was carried out on the 363rd anniversary of Khan’s death and was seen as a major “win” for the Hindutva groups. The Supreme Court later sought reports on whether due process had been followed, but by then the demolition was over. Again, we see how the graves, memory, and history of Indian Muslims are but props in electoral theatre.

In March 2025, following the release of Bollywood film Chhava, a far-right campaign demanded the demolition of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s tomb in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar with VHP-Bajrang Dal warning of a “Babri-like” repeat if the tomb was not removed. The agitation set off communal riots in Nagpur, leaving over 30 injured and 40-year-old welder Irfan Ansari dead.

Is it possible to tell history as the story of one side, while erasing the other? What happens when stories are pared down to black and white, heroes and villains, holy and savage, us and them? Do they still hold memory, or do they begin to serve a purpose beyond remembering? When history is stripped of its layers, nuance, and its many voices, when what remains is defaced textbooks and demolished tombs, are we left with memory — or with propaganda?

Conclusion

The Vishwa Vedic Sanatan Sangh has been party to over 170 cases linked to Hindu majoritarian causes across the country, including the Gyanvapi mosque dispute. Its litigation is driven by an ideology of historical revisionism – recasting India’s past as a story of continuous “foreign aggression” by Muslims and Christians, against the “native” Hindus (a claim categorically debunked by the Indo-Aryan Migration Theory). The purpose is to erase every trace of “foreign” (“enemy”) religious groups in order to establish the Hindu Rashtra.

In the end, demands for post-mortem erasure are not grounded in law, empirical evidence, or constitutional principle. They are acts of disinformation and political theatre, designed to delegitimise the cultural and historical existence of India’s largest religious minority. The campaign to target graves of Indian Muslims – rulers or convicts (or, most frequently, of ordinary citizens and local communities) – is a campaign to deny dignity even in death, and to eternally remember the deceased, and by extension their entire community, as the “perpetual other.”

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this Hate Buster has been worked on by Raaz)

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The post The Politics of Memory: Controversy over graves of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Claim: Indian yogis built the Baalbek Temple in Lebanon.

Busted! Sadhguru’s website claims, without citing any sources, that Indian yogis built the Baalbek temple in Lebanon. While trade and culture exchanges between India and countries across the globe have taken place for millennia, there seems to be no available record to point towards Indian builders of the Baalbek temple in Lebanon.

CJP is dedicated to finding and bringing to light instances of Hate Speech, so that the bigots propagating these venomous ideas can be unmasked and brought to justice. To learn more about our campaign against hate speech, please become a member. To support our initiatives, please donate now!

Figures like Sadhguru have also reportedly contributed to the spread of misinformation. Jagadish “Jaggi” Vasudev, better known as Sadhguru, is a self-styled spiritual leader and founder of the organisation Isha Foundation. In 2019, he was in the news for having called a Muslim student ‘Talibani’ when he was delivering a talk at the London School of Economics. While he later clarified that it was a joke, and that it was a term used in India to call someone being ‘overly-enthusiastic.’ Following this, he was also seen supporting the Citizenship Amendment Act brought forth by the BJP government in 2019 which has been termed by many as anti-constitutional and anti-Muslim. He has also often praised PM Modi, most recently being regarding the inauguration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Uttar Pradesh in January 2024. He also termed the Ram Temple’s inception as ‘a resurrection of a damaged national spirit’. News reports allege that he has over 300 spiritual centres located around the world. Interestingly, the headquarters of his foundation, which is a 50-acre property in Coimbatore has been accused of being built illegally according to a report by NewsLaundry.

His influence seems to be vast with over 12 million followers on Instagram presently, he has boasted of devotees such as Hollywood actors Will Smith and even Mathew McConaughey, according to a report by Vox News from 2022.

On Sadghuru’s website, an article on his website ‘Isha’ named Baalbek Temple – Lebanon’s Ancient Yogic Connection has claimed that the Baalbek monument in Lebanon and suggested that the temple was constructed by Indian yogis and labourers. The writer, who is described as a female ‘meditator’, describes her ‘realisation’ that the temple was built by Indian yogis during her visit.

Later, Sadhguru’s official Facebook page has also posted this claim, in 2017. The post reads, “In Lebanon, there is a temple in Baalbek which is over 4,000 years old. Children in Lebanon schools study that Indian labour, elephants, sculptors and yogis constructed this. It is a massive temple. Some of the foundation stones weigh three hundred tons. Sculptures of lotus flowers are hanging from the ceiling. Obviously, there are no lotuses in Lebanon; it was sculptured by Indians. Every Lebanese child knows this. Has any #Indian child heard about it?”

The author claims that the temple had lotus engravings, which he suggests are not found in the area, “Some curious facts about the Baalbek temple are that you will see stone lotuses carved on the temple’s ceilings. That is intriguing, because there are no lotuses in Lebanon. But when I later came to India, I saw that the lotus is the most common symbolism of spirituality here.”

The essay on the website then goes on to point towards the idea that Indian yogis may have built the temple.  Furthermore, she claims that the stones at the temple were very large (“eight hundred tonnes each”) and thus must have required elephants, which she suggests do not exist in West Asia, to transport such massive slabs of stone.

However, while the author does not seem to provide any details or dates of these events she suggests or “realises” and merely notes from her own observations during the visit and fails to cite any historian or scientist. Furthermore,  her observation that there were no elephants in West Asia seems to be misplaced, as it has been recorded by scientists that the region around Syria was noted to have elephants that went extinct around 8 century BCE.

Furthermore, according to the factual historical record outlined by UNESCO on its website, the Baalbek complex which is located at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range was a huge cultural institution during Roman times and served as a prominent sanctuary within the Roman world. UNESCO’s description of the site stated that it had Roman origins.

Temple of Jupiter (Baalbek) – Source: Britannica.com

 While, not much is known about the temple from before its Greek conquest in 323 BCE, it was reportedly a significant model of Imperial Roman architecture and has its own history as it was dedicated to the Roman Triad of Heliopolis which consisted of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Furthermore, UNESCO’s documentation reveals that the Roman constructions were superimposed upon earlier ruins, which included remains of the Phoenician tradition. Sadhguru’s attempt to reshape history that is surrounding Baalbek contradicts established historical facts and risks distorting the significance of cultures and traditions from different parts of the world. The Temple was dedicated to three gods of Roman mythology – Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, which were, as per UNESCO, a part of a Phoenesian cult. The Phoenicians were a Semitic group that were found in the region of Levant, near east of the Mediterranean Sea.

Hence, apart from this piece written by the author for the organisation’s website ‘Isha’  there is little mention of the Indian presence at the temple that was found while conducting this research. While cross cultural exchanges have taken place between India and the globe, from Greeks to the Chinese, it is difficult to ascertain and certify these by layperson observations by religious figures.

Claim: Australia’s original name was Astralaya.

Busted! Sri Sri Ravi Shankar  has been claiming that during the time of the Mahabharata, there was a Sanskrit origin for the name Australia, Astralaya – which means armoury. However, Australia’s name means southern land in Latin, due to its position vis a vis the rest of the world. There is no evidence that points towards Astralaya ever being the name according to official records.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is the founder of the Art of Living Foundation. He is from Papanasam, Tamil Nadu. In 2023-2024, his foundation, Art of Living, has signed several MOU’s with the government in relation to environmental concerns, farmers’ concerns, substance addiction. As per Financial Times, in 2024, Shankar was part of a team of leaders who led an anti-corruption campaign against the then prime minister Manmohan Singh of Congress. According to a 2016 article about him, The Quint reported that his AOL foundation is mired in several controversies, namely that the foundations buildings are built on encroached land in Karnataka. In 2010, he was also accused by an NRI of taking his 15 acres of land. Shankar is endorses by leaders globally, so much so that his foundation has even been praised by the US president Joe Biden. Shankar’s X page, where he regularly posts about his global engagements, has about 4.1 million followers at present.

 He has reportedly done so by linking it to the term “Astralaya” (Astra-Alaya) which supposedly translates to armoury. In an undated video posted on YouTube uploaded in 2021 by a page called NRI Affairs, the spiritual leader responds to a person’s question and tries to concoct the idea that Australia had ties to India Hindu heritage, saying, “Do you know the country, Australia? Where did its name come from? Australia (armoury) in Mahabharata became Australia.”

History provides a different narrative. The national library of Australia which holds historical records pertaining to the land and nation, informs us that the name “Australia” was actually coined by English explorer Matthew Flinders to describe the continent on a map. Prior to Flinders, the landmass was referred to as ‘Terra Australis Incognita,’ a term which means unknown Southern land in Latin. Here, the word Australis which means Southern.

Prior to the name Australia, the land was named ‘New Holland’ by the incoming Dutch immigrants to the land in the 17th century. However, both these names are admittedly named by white Anglo-Saxon colonialism that dominated and plundered the habitats of indigenous people in Australia. The advent of European colonialism did not just result in cultural changes and domination of the whites but also led to a decline in the population of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. When the Europeans arrived Australia was declared as ‘terra nuilis’, a land that belonged to no one or wasteland. This shows how little value the Europeans gave to the indigenous as they sought to colonise and inhabit the land.

However, before the Europeans arrived, the territory now called Australia was known by several different names among its Indigenous peoples, reflecting the multitude of languages and cultures across different regions, according to the National Library of Australia. Each of these names had spiritual significance to the land. The act of Indian spiritual leaders to make such claims seems to be another, deliberate or otherwise, means of erasure of aboriginal history, culture, presence.

While there is an undoubtedly western, Anglo-Saxon domination behind this interpretation, and indigenous aboriginal insights need to be factored in, Indian market gurus take on the term is certainly fallacious.

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The post Busted: Exploring the origins of Australia as ‘Astralaya’ and the potential Indian Yogi influence on Baalbek Temple in Lebanon appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Busted! Mughal rulers were like any kings and rulers, and there was nothing from history that points to them being sinister, with an anti-Hindu plan, as right-wing trolls attest.

The Mughal Empire was a dynasty that ruled over the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th to the mid-19th century.

First and foremost, though dynasts from a feudal era, the Mughal dynast settled here, brought their culture, assimilated. A vast section of Indians collaborated under their rule and remained wedded to their original faiths. The gross domestic product of Mughal India in 1600 AD was estimated at about 24.3% the world economy, the second largest in the world. By this time the Mughal Empire had expanded to include almost 90 per cent of South Asia, and enforced a uniform customs and tax-administration system. They did not, technically or otherwise “loot” the country even though a vast section of India’s artisans, farmers and working class lived on poor means as under the rule of other rulers who were neither Mughal nor Muslim.

Besides, the Mughal dynasty has left an indelible mark on the region’s history, culture, and architecture. However, when it comes to the present age, several labels are thrown at the Mughals, and they are being called out for being particularly ‘anti-Hindu’. However, historians offer another perspective to view the past that is contrary to this communal perspective.

For instance, in an interview with Teesta Setalvad from November 2015 , acclaimed historian D. N. Jha argues that while Mughal rulers, like rulers across the world in that day and age, destroyed temples, it was not with a religious intent that we witness today. The reasons for the destruction may have been political and related to the empire. Churches and sometimes, even mosques were subject to such destruction. Jha cites that the raiding of the acclaimed Somnath Temple was not purely religious but for the mass wealth that the temple had stacked. Thus, historical records seem to be different from what is claimed by politicians and critics who seek to paint Mughals with a communal paintbrush. On the contrary, while there is evidence of demolition of temples, there is also evidence of official encouragement by the state to indigenous Indian traditions and scholarship.

A review by Harbans Mukhia for The Wire of the book, ‘Mughal Samrat Akbar Aur Sanskrit’ (2012) written by Pratik Kumar Mishra, points out how the book states that history cannot be seen as ‘Hindu versus Muslim.’ The book by Misra also posits that Akbar, amongst other kinds, used to give a number of grants to many Pandits for Sanskrit scholarship. Mughal kings such as Shahjahan were noted to celebrate art beyond faith, for instance, Jagannatha Paṇḍita (1590-1670) was a famous Sanskrit poet, musician and literary critic from Telangana, according to Y. S. Walimbe. He was present at the courts of the emperors Shahjahan and Jahangir. Several Mughal kings and their relatives, such as Dara Shikoh, eldest son of Shahjahan, and Aurangzeb’s uncle Shaista Khan were known to have learned Sanskrit. Shikoh had also reportedly worked with Sanskrit scholars to translate the Upanishads.

So, should we consume propaganda without question, and believe that all the rulers of the Mughal Empire were mad barbarians whose official policy was to destroy the Hindus? The fact that kings patronised Sanskrit scholarships, arts, and literature and invited famous Hindu scholars of these arts to preserve, and not destroy, such art in their courts does not seem to support this theory.

Akbar meeting some Jesuit priests. By Chester Beatty. Source: Sutra Journal.

Claim #2: Mughal kings destroyed a significant fire temple called Ateshgah in Azerbaijan.

Busted! Mughals did not rule the land of Azerbaijan, Mongols did. While they share the same dynasty, the Mongols and Mughals were different, as the latter also shared a Turkic ethnicity and were offshoots of the Mongol empire. Secondly, the remains of the temple are speculated to have been destroyed by industrialists searching for gas and oil in the 19th century, and not the Mughals!

This video from Kreately Media argues that Mughals destroyed a centuries old statue of Ganesh at the fire temple in Azerbaijan, but interestingly the Mughals as we know them never ruled Azerbaijan. Kreately Media is an online media portal, describes itself on its website as ‘Pro-Hindutva organisation’ and a platform that “allows you to speak up in support of dharma.”

The Ateshgah Temple of Azerbaijan contains a lot of layers of history, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. While it is primarily, however, a Zoroastrian temple, it contains Greek, Persian and Zoroastrian ruins, as well as evidence of links with India with Punjabi and Sanskrit inscriptions. It houses an eternal flame which Parsis revere around the world. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Indian travellers and pilgrims also made their way to the site and added their deities to worship at the site, according to The Hindu. It was even visited by the late external affairs minister from BJP, Sushma Swaraj in 2018.

Source: Baku City Tours.

Thus, as social media claims such as these make an attempt to go global and attribute crimes of barbarity to Mughal kings in nations outside of India, they yet again fail to check in with history. Let us take a trip down in the past to check the facts.

The Mongols were known for their diverse tolerance and pluralism, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. At one point of time, they had people of all faiths, including Jewish, Muslims, and Christians in their armies. Gulegu Khan himself was not known to have adhered to religion, but historical archives suggest that he may have had an interest in Buddhism. However, it was not the Mughals who ruled Azerbaijan, but the Mongols.  According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Mughals and Mongols are not the same group even though the Mughals were descendants of the Mongols. The former got their name by mispronouncing the word Mongol and are actually ethnic Turks according to a paper by Nicholas F. Gier published by the University of Idaho. The Mongol empire 300 years after the death of Chingiz Khan (1162-1227), was split into four, one of which was the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent.

Therefore, the region was initially under Persian rule under the kingdom of Sasanians in the 3rd century CE, according to Britannica. Thereonwards, it was ruled by Arabs from the 7th to 11th century, and after which it was succeeded by Turkish nomads, who were later defeated by the Mongols, led by Hulegu Khan. Thus, following the Mongols, and not Mughals, who ruled for 300 years, the region was conquered by the Persian Safavid dynasty. The dynasty ruled till the 18th century, by the time it was for the Russian empire to take over as it was beginning to consolidate and encroach into Azerbaijan.

Furthermore, an article in The Hindu suggests that the remains of the old temple in Azerbaijan were most likely to have been destroyed by industrial development in the 19th century, when excavators were searching for oil and gas. Thereby, we can understand from this that right-wing trolls mistakenly attribute destruction of religious sites to Muslims, or whoever they consider their present enemy.

Aurangzeb the marauder of temples?

However, accusations of temple destruction remain common among the right-wing. Amongst these campaigns of declaring Mughals as exclusive-temple breakers is a figure who features widely, Aurangzeb. It is commonly asserted that he ordered the destruction of numerous temples. The incident –much touted—of his destruction of the Kashi Viswanath temple in Varanasi cannot be doubted; the only counter is that in his expansionist military campaigns he also destroyed the Mosque at Golconda Fort!

Other historical narratives also present us accounts that challenge this image of Aurangzeb of an irrational ruler. Undoubtedly a stark and sectarian believer in Islam (he levied the controversial and selective jizzia tax on a section of the people), Aurangzeb however was also engaged in acts of donating to temples. The Telegraph’s essay cites one interesting example is the Dao Ji Maharaj temple near Mathura, where Aurangzeb allocated the revenue of five villages as a donation. Additionally, he extended his support to various temples in Kashi and Mathura as well. Hence while distinct from his forbears in some ways, Aurangzeb upheld the longstanding tradition of charitable contributions to temples, a practice that had been established by preceding Mughal monarchs. A report by Scroll on Audrey Truschke’s book on Aurangzeb titled ‘Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth’, also reveals that Hindu temples flourished under his rule, and were even granted the Mughal state’s protection and Aurangzeb would ensure that this protection would be in place. The essay notes that the emperor’s goodwill towards a particular temple could be taken back, however, if the temple sought to act against the state.

Speaking to Teesta Setalvad for the India Cultural Forum in December 2015, historian Irfan Habib talks about how history has been mythologised. He cites the example of how Hindu Mahasabha started the claim that ‘we’, Indians, have been under ‘foreign rule for the past 2000 years. Muslim rulers were foreigners, and they sent wealth abroad.’ The second aspect is that they have further distorted the history of the national movement. Although they (RSS) were formed 22 years before independence, they did nothing against the English…they have no heroes, they took no part in the national movement, their leaders never went to jail except like they went by mistake. To claim ancient India or Hindu civilisational achievements, like claiming that civilisation is above every other civilisation. This took early, like creating, all kinds of scientific achievements.”

Similarly, the hateful misinformation about Muslim rulers may not just be a modern Hindutva conspiracy. Historian Ruchika Sharma in a piece on Scroll.in traces fictional accounts defaming the Allaudin Khilji, of the Delhi Sultanate, that go as far back to the 16th century, and can be traced to the Rajputs. For instance, the story of Padmavati, Sharma writes, was one such example through which the Rajput kings tried to paint Khilji as a barbarian. The Rajput kings were often spurned by the lack of patronage and finances accorded to them by the Kings, which when they would resort to such tactics and thus such depictions of kings came out due to rivalry, competing kingdoms, and even disgruntled rulers.

Anti-Mughal bias a result of anti-Muslim prejudice?

“They looted Bharat and sent our gold to Islamic countries to spread their religion,” is among the five first posts that come up if you search for Mughals on the social media site, X. Folk tales and selective narratives about Mughals and other rulers perforate the local everyday traditions.

What are these?

For example, in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh lies a temple known to people as Chhoti Kashi or Little Kashi which is called Baba Sunaasir Nath Mandir and is dedicated to Shiva. Believers recount that this is an ancient temple in which the Shivaling was installed by the deity Indira himself. The priest of this temple in Hardoi, according to News 18 Hindi, explained that during the Mughal era, Aurangzeb attempted to destroy it and he ordered his army to destroy all the temples in the country. During this period, the Mughal army also attacked the Sunaasir Nath Mandir in Hardoi. However, they couldn’t uproot the Shiva Lingam. When they tried, various creatures like insects, moths, scorpions, snakes, and wasps emerged from the Shiva Lingam, causing havoc in the Mughal army. Eventually, they had to retreat. However, while these folk tales exist, there seems to be an even more insidious side to the narratives on Mughals in India. For instance, Hindutva narratives continue to pit history as communal and argue that India’s past was one of bloody religious communalism. Pertinently, after the BJP has come to power, chapters on Mughals have been removed from history books of the NCERT (National Council for Research and Training) textbooks for class 12th students. The NCERT books are taught to students in more than 24,000 schools across the country.

Along with this, NCERT also removed portions of textbooks which talked about the 2002 Gujarat massacre and also portions on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and communalism in 2023, as per reports. This development can only point to the beginning of a one-sided view of history that also seeks to portray certain figures in a good light and others in a negative light – which makes a book more a propaganda than a piece of knowledge.

Similarly, the internet is awash with such trends about Mughals. According to a report from The Quint, the website Getdaystrends, which analyses Twitter trends in 2022, disclosed that approximately 1.97 lakh tweets in India featured the hashtag #HindusUnderAttackInIndia. This surge in the dissemination of misinformation surrounding the Mughals, with a pronounced Islamophobic tilt, that is particularly fuelled by right-wing narratives in India and abroad.

Many such selective myths exist about the Mughal Empire. Why are they relevant to us? Because not only do they distort and puncture history, they also, if left unchecked, perpetuate unfiltered hate and prejudice against modern-day Muslims in India. This distortion of historical facts also serves to undermine the rich and complex legacy of Indian history, including the Mughals, and contributes to the spread of harmful stereotypes and prejudice that curb critical thinking and critical readings of history. Thus as rulers who sought to create an empire and held onto it for years, the figure of the Mughals does not fit in the simplistic and politically motivated binaries constructed & circulated today.

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The post Uncovering Historical Truths: Were the Mughals anti-Hindu? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In their preparation to terrorise couples on February 14 celebrated as Valentine’s Day, right wing groups were seen getting some sticks ready to use as weapons to harass these couples. This practice of moral policing and deeming Valentine’s Day as an influence of western culture and subversion of Indian ‘Sanskriti’ (culture), has been widely deprecated.

The Shivsena in Madhya Pradesh were making preps by oiling sticks so that they could beat up couples found hanging around on Valentine’s Day

Hindu supremacists in MP, India, are preparing their sticks to beat up those who dare to celebrate Valentine’s Day! Hug the Cow but not Human? pic.twitter.com/4xaQDb5ZfI

— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) February 13, 2023

However, should that deter you from celebrating this day of love or just generally celebrating your love for anyone, from any caste, religion, race, ethnicity, gender? The answer is an absolute no and of course everybody knows that the Constitution does not put any kind of restrictions on one’s freedom to love. So here’s a little reminder that no matter what they try to feed you with ‘Love jihad’ or comments discrediting LGBTQIA+ community, the Constitution is here to protect you.

Article 14: The Constitution provides equality before law for all individuals within India. Without going into the technicality of these words, it basically means all laws are applicable to all persons equally and they will be protected equally by the law of the land

Article 15: Prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth

Article 19: All citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression

Article 21: probably the most important and most widely interpreted right in the Constitution is the right to life and life with dignity.

Dr. BR Ambedkar famously wrote in his widely read book, ‘Annihilation of caste’:

“…The real remedy [against untouchability] is inter-marriage. Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin, and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount, the separatist feeling—the feeling of being aliens—created by Caste will not vanish…Where society is already well-knit by other ties, marriage is an ordinary incident of life. But where society is cut asunder, marriage as a binding force becomes a matter of urgent necessity.”

While he wrote in support of intercaste marriages, the philosophy is equally applicable to inter faith marriages too!

The courts of law have been instrumental in interpreting these rights bestowed upon the Constitution for the people and from these interpretations, have emerged such iterations that need to be reiterated on this day when people like to celebrate love.

In September 2018 when the Supreme Court decriminalized section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, paving way for decriminalizing gay sex and upholding freedom to love, irrespective of the gender, thus upholding Article 15 and Article 21, among other rights. The country witnessed utter jubilation when this judgment was pronounced. A petition for legalizing same sex marriage is pending before the Supreme Court and one can be hopeful that CJI DY Chandrachud who was a part of the bench that decriminalized section 377 will once again bring in a new era of loving freely and equality, by legalizing same sex marriages.

In April 2018, when the Supreme Court upheld freedom of religion as well as right to love as they wish, while upholding marriage of Hadiya to a Muslim man as her father had dragged her to court for converting to Islam and then marrying a Muslim man.Hadiya had converted to Islam of her own accord and had thereafter fallen in love with a Muslim man but Hadiya unwarrantedly became the face of ‘love jihad’. She fought on as Kerala High Court annulled her marriage when finally the Supreme Court upheld, among other things, one’s right to love which the court said was a ‘central aspect of identity’.

“The right to marry a person of one’s choice is integral to Article 21 of the Constitution. The Constitution guarantees the right to life… Intrinsic to the liberty which the Constitution guarantees as a fundamental right is the ability of each individual to take decisions on matters central to the pursuit of happiness.”

The court even interpreted the right to life as liberty to pursue happiness!

“Intrinsic to the liberty which the Constitution guarantees as a fundamental right is the ability of each individual to take decisions on matters central to the pursuit of happiness… Nothing can be as destructive of freedom and liberty. Fear silences freedom.”

In February 2021, the Supreme Court upheld the right to marry a person of choice as a fragment of Article 21 and observed that perhaps intermarriage was the way forward so that caste and community tensions may reduce. The court also reiterated that “the consent of the family or the community or the clan is not necessary once the two adult individuals agree to enter into a wedlock and that their consent has to be piously given primacy.”

The bench comprising Justices SK Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy held that “Intimacies of marriage lie within a core zone of privacy, which is inviolable and even matters of faith would have the least effect on them”

In October 2022, the Delhi High Court observed that freedom of choice in marriage is an intrinsic part of personal liberty and questions of faith have no bearing on the freedom to choose a life partner.

Two years ago, Citizens for Justice and Peace held a day long webinar on Valentine’s Day in 2021 which was hosted by Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mewani where he said, “These laws (anti-conversion laws) suggest upper-caste people are the sole arbitrators of everything. These laws validate Brahmanical patriarchy by controlling the sexual freedoms of women. These “Love Jihad” laws are turning India into a ‘Romeo Squad-driven’ country. People who marry inter-caste or inter-faith have contributed greatly to India’s progress. We should celebrate love”.

There is no such thing as Love Jihad

The coinage of the term gained national prominence in 2009 and its origins can be traced back to Kerala and the coastal belt of Karnataka. According to the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, by October 2009, up to 4,500 girls in Kerala had been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls had been converted in Karnataka alone.

On June 25, 2014, then Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy informed the state legislature that 2,667 young women had converted to Islam in the state since 2006. However, he stated that there was no evidence for any of them being forced conversions, and that fears of ‘love jihad’ were “baseless.”

“The narrative of Love Jihad seeks to popularize the myth of Hindu culture as under siege, Hindu women as vulnerable, and justify the Hindu male as the protector-aggressor,” says Angana Chatterji of the Centre for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley.

‘Love Jihad’ is a conspiracy theory of the right-wing, which claims that Muslim men feign love to non-Muslim, especially Hindu women to induce them to convert to Islam with an intention to increase their population. However, what is pertinent is that no official agency has come forward with a definition or any data to substantiate the claims.

And hence, there is no such thing as ‘Love jihad’ because love is love is love. So love all and love freely, because the Constitution says so.

Related:

“BE WISE AND IN LOVE” – THE SOVEREIGN

HERE’S HOW CJP TRACKS HATE CRIMES AGAINST THOSE WHO DARE TO LOVE

#LOVEAZAAD CELEBRATE LOVE, NOT HATE

LOVE AZAAD! WHAT DOES FREEDOM TO LOVE COST IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA?

The post Hatebuster: Is it Love Jihad or just love? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Claim: On November 21, a video shared by Priti Gandhi, national social media in-charge for the BJP, where a man was being interviewed about the Shraddha Walker murder case. The man can be heard saying that it was normal for Aaftab, the accused in the Shraddha muder case, to cut Shraddha’s body into 35 parts. In fact, if a man is angry, they can even cut the body into more than 35 parts. When asked about him hometown, the man replies by stating that he is from Bulandshehar and his name is Rashid Khan.  

Priti Gandhi had shared the video with the caption, “Meet Rashid Khan from Bulandshahr. He strongly believes that it is absolutely normal for Aftab to have chopped Shraddha into 35 pieces. Where are we headed?”

The video and the tweet can be viewed here: (20) Mohammed Zubair on Twitter: “Vikas Kumar was caught by Bulandshahr Police today, He pretended to be Rashid while speaking to a YouTube Channel.” / Twitter

Busted!: On November 25, the Bulandshahr Police notified that the man in the video has been arrested and his real name is Vikas Kumar. Vikas Kumar was pretending to be Rashid Khan while speaking to the YouTube Channel who was conducting the interview. While his video was re-shared by many right wing organisations and supporters, the fact has surfaced that he is not Rashid Khan.

Related:

Hatebuster: 80% of interfaith marriages do not end up in murder!
Hate Buster! Kolkata cop was not killed by mob protesting Nupur Sharma’s anti-Prophet comments
Hate Buster: Conspiracy theories about Taj Mahal collapse, yet again
Hate Buster: Nope! Eating from Muslim-owned restaurants does not cause impotence
Hate Buster: Harsha Jingade’s sister does not support calls to boycott Muslim businesses
Hate Buster: Why is the right wing so scared of Sai Baba of Shirdi?

The post Hatebuster: The real identity of the man supporting the accused Aaftab revealed! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Claim: The speaker in the video, Gautam Khattar, claims that 99.9% of the Muslim men have been involved in wooing innocent Hindu women and getting them to fall in love with them. The speaker then says that out of all these women, 80% of them have been murdered or raped, and the remaining are living in hell.

Busted! There are no such official statistics that are released by any authority or body or even any organization to support the baseless claims being made by Khattar. The National Crime Records Bureau, every year, releases a Crimes in India report that documents crimes committed against women, but they are not classified on communal basis.

These number have just been stated to push the communal agenda, instill fear in the minds of the public and create disharmony in our country.

The case referred to here by the speaker is a gruesome case of murder which has been given a communal color by the hindutva groups. From a case of violence and murder of a woman, this has now been presented as a lesson for all those Hindu women who choose to cross the societal bars of segregating people based on their castes, beliefs and faiths.

The video

In the video, the speaker, Gautam Khattar, is seen referring to recent case of murder of Shraddha Walkar by her boyfriend, Aaftab Poonawala. In this particular case, the boyfriend and girlfriend were living together as a couple, and got into a fight. As a result of it, the boyfriend strangled the girl and later chopped up her body into 35 pieces. Since the couple belonged to different faiths, the speaker in the video can be heard comparing this aforementioned case to a case of love jihad. To make his case, he quotes certain percentages. As stated by him, 99.9% of the Muslim men have been involved in wooing innocent Hindu women and getting them to fall in love with them. He goes on to say that such Hindu women are suffering today, and are victims. The speaker then says that out of all these women, 80% of them have been murdered or raped, and the remaining are living in hell. In furtherance to this, he says that for all this, neither the Muslim man nor the Hindu girl’s parents are to be blamed, as they try to stop her. But, as the girl believes in her advanced thinking, she breaks her relation with her own family and goes on to enter into a live-in relationship with the Muslim man. Connecting again with the case, the speaker says that the girl then goes to Delhi, earn and eat on their own and indulge in the drama of love. After a few days, the same girl is then stuffed in the fridge after getting murdered.

The video can be viewed here: (20) Dr. Prachi Sadhvi on Twitter: “ध्यान से सुनना https://t.co/yPlkLp3lPU” / Twitter

While it can be deduced from the facts of this cases that this is just a case of crime committed against women, a communal color is being given to the same.

India sees multiple cases of crimes against women on a daily basis. From molestation and abuse to rape, domestic violence, and dowry death, crimes against women have been on the rise. While some of these cases are covered by mainstream India, based on the caste, creed and religion of the woman, the case of Aaftab Poonawalla and Shraddha has been dissected by the media to propagate Muslims under the bad light.

To bust this myth that only Muslim men indulge in killing a woman in such a horrifying manner, we have made a list of crimes committed against women in the recent past, wherein the perpetrator was not a Muslim man.

• Just a few days post the aforementioned murder case,  Abhijit Patidar, alleged to have killed Shilpa Jharia by slitting her throat, shot a video with the victim’s body and posted it on social media. In the shocking video he posted on social media, Abhijit says, “Bewafai Nahi Karne Ka” (do not be unfaithful). He then lifts a blanket to reveal a woman lying in bed, with her throat slit.

• In the same week as the Aaftab case, Priyangi Singh was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai after having suffered multiple fractures to her spine, a head injury and paralysis below the waist in the assault by her boyfriend, 25-year-old Amey Darekar, on the 13th-floor terrace water tank of a common friend’s building in Dahisar.

• In September 2022, Nineteen-year-old Ankita Bhandari, a receptionist at Vanantara resort owned by now-expelled BJP leader Vinod Arya’s son Pulkit Arya, was found dead in a lake. She was murdered for having refused to succumb to pressure by the accused for indulging in prostitution.

• In September 2020, a 19-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped in Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh, by four upper caste Hindu men. She died two weeks later in a Delhi hospital. Initially, it was reported that one accused had tried to kill her, though later in her statement to the magistrate, the victim named four accused as having raped her. The victim’s brother claimed that no arrests were made in the first 10 days after the incident took place. After her death, the victim was forcibly cremated by the police without the consent of her family, a claim denied by the police.

• In January 2018, an 8-year-old Muslim girl, Asifa Bano was abducted, gang raped, and murdered by six men and a juvenile, in the Rasana village near Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Known as the Kathua rape case, all the perpetrators were Hindu and the victim had been targeted because of her religion.

• In 2017, Rajesh Gulati was found guilty of murder and causing disappearance of evidence by the Dehradun court. He had murdered his wife and chopped her body into 70 pieces.

To bring forth the prevalence of domestic violence in India, here are some eye-opening statistics on the same. The fifth NFHS round (2019-21) shows that 31.5% of Indian women in the 18-49 age group have experienced physical and sexual violence at least once.[1] The NFHS data further shows that multiple factors affect the likelihood of such violence against women- such as age, education, income, etc. While 18.3% of women aged between 18 and 19 have suffered sexual or physical violence either in the last year or in their lifetime, this number increases with the age of the women (to 35.3%) till the 30-39 year age group. It does come down slightly in the 40-49 age group (35.2%). Compared to urban women, rural women are much more likely to have experienced physical or sexual abuse. Higher levels of education and income do contribute to a reduction in the likelihood of physical violence against women, but they do not completely eradicate it, as the Shraddha case demonstrates.[2]

The World Health Organisation’s Global Database on the Prevalence of Violence Against Women provides a consolidated global database on the prevalence of intimate partner violence in 158 countries of the world.[3] These numbers are based on the latest national level surveys conducted during the period 2000 to 2018. WHO data shows that 18% of Indian women aged between the ages of 15 to 49 suffered at least one form of intimate partner violence in the preceding 12 months. This figure puts India in the 33rd highest spot within 156 countries for which a comparable estimate was available.

To put things in perspective, Indian women are less susceptible to intimate partner violence than women in Bangladesh (23%) and Afghanistan (35%), but more susceptible than Pakistan (16%), Nepal (11%) and Sri Lanka (4%), and major industrialised nations in the world. If one looks at the percentage of women who have suffered intimate partner violence in their entire lifetime, these numbers are higher. About 35% of Indian women aged between 15 and 49 have experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence in their entire lifetime, placing India in the 33rd position among 151 countries (for which a comparable estimate was available).

The post Hatebuster! Aaftab Poonawalla- Shraddha murder case had nothing to do with religion! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh draw closer, fake news and edited videos are circulating faster than election pamphlets. The latest fake/ edited video that had the potential to create communal tension was being shared by politicians and influencers on social media on Friday, February 4. In the 20 second clip, of a Samajwadi Party workers rally in favour of SP candidate Munindra Shukla, contesting from Bithoor. In the video which is being widely circulated on social media platforms, the audio is “Cycle ko pehchan ke… Pakistan banana hai,” which roughly translates to, “recognise the cycle [SP symbol] Pakistan has to be made”

साइकिल पर बटन दबाना है, पाकिस्‍तान बनाना है।

ये नारा समाजवादी पार्टी के समर्थक कानपुर में लगा रहे है।

वैसे ये कोई ज़्यादा आश्चर्य होने वाली बात नहीं है।
ये इनकी असली सोच है।

pic.twitter.com/N3Q8OwboKz

— Y. Satya Kumar (@satyakumar_y) February 4, 2022

However, Munindra Shukla, the SP candidate has busted the claim, the slogans he said are “‘Mati Chor Bhagana Hai’ or ‘soil thief has to be sent away/ dismissed’. He posted a video on Facebook to say this slogan was fake and used to divide the voters. He also shared a statement by a District Election Officer, ARO-210  on February 4 2022 saying the original video was examined by the forensic team and did not have any mention of “Pakistan” and dismissed the allegations made by the right wing..

This slogan is being used here for Abhijit Singh Sanga, the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) MLA from Bithoor assembly seat who has been accused of illegal soil mining, Shukla told fact check Altnews, accusing the BJP of manipulating the video to make it sound “Pakistan banana hai’. Interestingly, Navbharat Times Uttar Pradesh, also shared this as ‘news’ but claimed it could not confirm the video. Others including Aaj Tak, Asianet, Prabhat Khabar also published reports with similar claims.

Related

BJP yet to deny if the man who shot at Asaduddin Owaisi was a member

Will Bulandshahr gangrape-murder case take the Hathras route?

The post HateBuster: Pro-Pakistan slogans raised in Samajwadi Party rally, claim rightwingers appeared first on SabrangIndia.