NEW DELHI: Indian police on Tuesday arrested six people, including a ruling party leader, for chanting anti-Muslim slogans at a rally in the capital.
Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a Supreme Court lawyer and former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, was allegedly part of a group of over 100 Hindu right-wing leaders participating in the “Bharat Jodo Andolan” (Unify India Protest) that called for violence against Muslims during the demonstration at a site less than a kilometer from India’s parliament.
“All the accused have been detained in a late night operation,” a senior New Delhi police officer told the media, adding: “They have been identified using footage from the event.”
Videos circulating on social media since Sunday showed protesters chanting inflammatory slogans, including: “When Muslims will be slain, they will chant Lord Ram’s name,” and “If you (Muslims) want to live in India, you must say Hail Lord Ram.”
Others called for “mass genocide” against India’s largest minority group, which constitutes about 14 percent of its 1.3 billion population.
But, in a video message prior to his arrest, Upadhyay questioned the veracity of the footage implicating him.
“I have submitted a complaint to the Delhi Police to examine the video which went viral,” he said. “If the video is authentic, then strict action should be taken against the persons who were involved in it.”
The BJP also asked whether the group belonged to the party.
“Are they from the BJP? I am not sure about that,” BJP spokesperson Sudesh Verma told Arab News. “Pseudo-secular people are trying to bring in the BJP to suit their narrative. We are against hate crimes. If some slogan-shouting etc happened that falls in the category of hate speech, strong action should be taken against miscreants.”
The videos have caused outrage on social media with activists, including the All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice (AILAJ), urging the Supreme Court to take action against the group for their “open call for genocide.”
“The crimes are an attack on secularism and other constitutional values,” the AILAJ said on Tuesday. “Statements calling for the elimination of an entire religious community come within the internationally accepted understanding of genocide, and there is a need for court-monitored investigation and prosecution.”
It called on all legal professionals to recognize the “grave danger our nation is facing at the hands of Hindutva majoritarian organizations baying for genocide.”
The group’s open call for violence is a stark reminder of a similar rally last year, when BJP leaders used provocative and vitriolic speeches against Muslims who were protesting the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which eventually became law.
It led to religious violence in East Delhi that led to the deaths of more than 50 people, mostly Muslims, and also led to a huge loss of property and livelihood opportunities for the community.
Under the CAA, members of Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi and Christian minorities who moved to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before Dec. 31, 2014, are eligible to become citizens. Muslims are excluded.
The legislation is part of the government’s proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) initiative, which is designed to identify “genuine citizens” of India. If any non-Muslims are left out of the NRC, they will not be declared stateless because the CAA would protect them — a privilege denied to Muslims.
Activist Zikra Mojibi, who was part of the anti-CAA protests, told Arab News: “There is a supportive hand of the government in spreading and triggering genocidal speeches and inciting violence. It’s a matter of shame to witness this level of hatred and clear call for genocide in such close vicinity of the parliament.”
Dr. Hilal Ahmed, from the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, said he did not have much hope from the “politics of arrest which contribute to anti-Muslimism.”
“What you call communal speeches in the rally is basically ‘anti-Muslimism’ — the political tendency to reduce everything to Muslim identity simply to assert rigidly defined conceptions of nation and nationhood,” he told Arab News. “This is based on a strong conception that Muslims are to be envisaged as a necessary evil. They are ‘necessary’ because their very existence is needed to claim Hindu victimhood. They are, on the other hand, to be seen as ‘evil’ so as to present Hindutva as a way out.”
Prof. Apoorvanand Jha, from Delhi University, said that Sunday’s slogans were part of a series of anti-Muslim events in the capital and outside and he asked how the ruling party had “allowed such majoritarian agenda to flourish without check.”
“Such slogans were being shouted for quite some time across India for the last seven years, but the audacity of those people to come to Jantar Mantar and do that has shocked people,” Jha told Arab News. “This is an ongoing process, and these people have become emboldened. They know that the people who practiced anti-Muslim politics are occupying high offices in Delhi and other places. This is an incentive.”
He welcomed the arrests which, he said, had been done under pressure.
