India: Violence against Muslims and Christians has risen since the BJP came to power in 2014

Frontline
Print edition : July 06, 2018

Cover Story

The minority situation
There is method in the madness
Venkitesh Ramakrishnan

A protest march in Mumbai on May 9.
Violence against Muslims and Christians has risen since the BJP came to power in 2014, and the pattern and modus operandi of the attacks reveal a systematic programme to marginalise and subjugate them.

Filipe Neri Ferrao, the Archbishop of Goa and Daman, caused quite a stir this year with his annual pastoral letter. Ferrao’s 15-page letter, which is ...

THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD SUDHEESH MINNI lives in the rather obscure village of Ayikkara near Koothuparamba town in Kannur district of Kerala, thousands of kilometres from Gurugram and Faridabad in the National Capital Region. He does not have any inclination for the affairs of Archbishops Anil Couto and Filipe Neri Ferrao of Delhi and Goa respectively. But there is a sense of horrific deja vu that Sudheesh experiences when he comes across news of Ramzan prayers held in open spaces in Gurugram and Faridabad being disrupted by Hindutva outfits guided and inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar.

Archbishop of Delhi Anil Couto. He expressed concern about India's future as a secular republic. - Meeta Ahlawat

The concerns expressed by the Archbishops about India’s future as a secular republic on May 25, the very day the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government completed four years in office, have a special relevance for Sudheesh. As an active pracharak of the RSS until about four years ago, he has a more involved and intricate understanding of the diverse mechanisms that go into the assaults of varied Hindutva outfits on minority communities and the mounting sense of fear and insecurity they are building up among them. Sudheesh’s perception is that these rampant attacks have intensified across different parts of the country, especially north India, in the past six months as part of an unequivocal aggravation of the Hindutva game plan. “What India is witnessing at the moment is an intensified advancement of a systematic programme to subjugate and marginalise the Muslim and Christian communities,” he said. [ . . . ]
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