Hate Wave In Communal India

Provocative clerics, frenzied mobs and the widening fault lines of communal India.

- PR Ramesh and Ullekh NP

Sitting inside a tea shop not far from Darul Uloom Deoband, Rasheed, a mechanic, can’t hide his anger as he sips tea with vigorous slurps as if to beat the biting cold. “Allah ko badnaam kiya,” he growls, justifying a recent protest in this part of northwest Uttar Pradesh against Kamlesh Tiwari, a self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist ‘neta’ based in Lucknow who made derogatory remarks about Prophet Muhammad on Facebook. The moustachioed Rasheed has no doubt whatsoever that Tiwari is a ‘BJP neta’. The skullcap-wearing 30-year-old also has no idea that the statements that Tiwari made, contemptible as they are, were made in response to an attack on members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by Samajwadi Party strongman Azam Khan, who called them ‘homosexuals’. “We came to know about Tiwari’s blasphemy from our community leaders,” says Rasheed, referring to clerics of the noted seminary nearby where thousands of students come to study Islam. Rasheed doesn’t know that it was in Deoband that a case was filed against Tiwari (which led to his arrest and detention) and insists on identifying him as a “well-known RSS leader” though police confirm that he was not associated with either the RSS or the now-defunct Hindu Mahasabha. Rasheed then claims that there was stone-pelting at the protest venue, injuring Deoband Municipal Board chairman Maviya Ali, though the latter himself confirms that he was hurt by a loudspeaker that fell on his head.