During the festival of Ram Navami last week, scores of towns and cities across nine states in India – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka (all ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party), and Delhi and West Bengal – were engulfed in stone pelting, bloodletting, aggressive sloganeering and arson, ignited by mobs in militant processions. Hundreds more lurched at the edge.
“Routes of Wrath”, a sterling report by a group of lawyers and other citizens (led by lawyer Chander Uday Singh and with a foreword by retired Supreme Court Justice Rohinton Nariman), scrutinises the worryingly similar rash communal violence during Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti in April last year.
The report, released on March 18, detects recurring patterns that show these incidents are systematically orchestrated to terrorise and provoke Muslims, cause extensive damage to their properties and shrines, and through these, construct a bitter communal fracture.
by Harsh Mander
12/04/2023