The French newspaper Le Monde said that the Indian opposition parties condemned, in a joint statement, the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the words and actions of those who promote sectarianism after the violence that affected Muslims north of the Indian capital last weekend, and said that this silence is an eloquent testimony to the fact that These private armed gangs enjoy official sponsorship.

The newspaper pointed out that dozens of armed police and paramilitary forces still surrounded Jahangirpuri, north of Delhi, a poor area where a Hindu majority and a minority of Muslims coexisted, each in his own colony, before he overran hundreds of men wearing saffron shawls, armed with swords and pistols. Carrying flags, Muslim enclaves in a Hindu procession on the occasion of Hanuman Jayanti.

On the main street - says Sophie Landren, the newspaper's correspondent in New Delhi - Muslim-run shops closed, and the mosque remained a witness to the weekend violence in its courtyard filled with stone blocks, saffron flags and broken glass.

Last Saturday - as the reporter recounts - the Hindu extremist hymn "Jai Shri Ram" (Peace be upon God Ram) resounded through the Muslim enclaves at a Hindu religious festival. Several people were in it, and stores and cars were burnt, before the police intervened late to restore calm.

"Hindu came from outside. They only came to provoke our society. They organized 3 processions where they threaten us with their swords and ask us to sing to their god Ram. Politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party were in the procession. They used the time of prayer to put up flags Saffron on the gate of the mosque and attacked the Muslims who were inside it with stones.


frequent massacres

The police quickly drew opposite conclusions about what happened - says the reporter - and according to the inspector who was sent to the scene, there was a “peaceful demonstration to commemorate Hanuman Jayanti, which was obstructed by Muslims when the procession passed in front of the mosque, and 20 Muslims were arrested, local officials from the Bharatiya Party added Janata fuels the fire by blaming the "Bengali and Rohingya" illegal immigrants residing in the area.

The correspondent said that these events are reminiscent of the massacres that devastated the northeastern districts of Delhi in February 2020, killing 54 people, when hundreds of ardent Hindu extremists destroyed Muslim enclaves, and the police concluded that it was a conspiracy orchestrated by the students.

However, the Jahangirpuri violence - as the reporter says - is not an isolated thing in India, which is in the grip of its own demons, as attacks against Muslims have been increasing for several weeks across the country, without the government nor the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi interfering in any way.

In the southern Indian state of Karnataka, the government, led by Hindu nationalists, banned veiled girls from attending schools, and then defended the decision of some temples to ban Muslim merchants during religious holidays, the reporter tells.

In Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Goa, religious processions in April were an occasion for hate demonstrations.

In Madhya Pradesh, these processions burned a mosque and dozens of homes, and in response, the Bharatiya Janata government ordered the demolition of homes and shops that do not belong to Hindus, but to Muslims accused - without any form of trial - of being involved in the violence, and indeed 16 houses were bulldozed And 29 shops with bulldozers, according to the correspondence.


The authorities are exacerbating the tension

"What has changed since Narendra Modi took office is that Muslims are always the ones who spend months in prison," says journalist Tavlin Singh of the Indian Express. Of these events, she said, "We are deeply disturbed by the way issues related to food, dress, faith, festivals and language are being deliberately used by sections of the establishment to polarize our society."

The day before the statement was issued - says the reporter - Sonia Gandhi, head of the main opposition party bloc, signed a column in the Indian Express in which she said, "A cyclone of hate, bigotry and lies is in the process of sweeping our country," as the wife of assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi wrote, "If we don't stop him (Modi) now he will irreparably damage our society, if he doesn't. We simply cannot and must not allow this to continue. As a people we cannot stand idly by and watch peace and pluralism sacrificed at the altar false nationalism.

Although relations between Hindus and Muslims have remained fragile and tense since the 1947 partition of India by the British Empire, the rise to power of the nationalists in 2014 exacerbated societal tensions, especially as Narendra Modi's party leads divisively and openly defends Hindutva, a supremacist ideology that aims to He made India a Hindu nation by excluding religious minorities, particularly Muslims who make up 14% of the population with some 200 million.

Since his re-election in 2019, Narendra Modi - who is suspected of allowing the 2002 massacres in Gujarat that killed more than 2,000 people - has doubled down on decisions aimed at making Muslims second-class citizens, and xenophobic rhetoric conveyed by top leaders has led His party to unleash a wave of hatred in the country.