India: ‘If Muslims Want To Live Here, They Must Chant Jai Shri Ram’

In the Indian capital, Delhi, near the parliament, hardline Hindus chanted provocative and inflammatory slogans against Muslims and Islam during a program.

Police in the Indian capital, Delhi, say they have registered a case in connection with provocative anti-Muslim slogans on the Jantar Mantar. According to police, a case has been registered against some unidentified persons on charges of “promoting hatred between different groups”.

Deepak Yadav, a senior police officer in the New Delhi constituency, said that the program during which the hate slogans were chanted had not been sanctioned in advance and the matter was being investigated.

But human rights activists say there were large numbers of police in the area where Hindu groups chanted anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim slogans and could have stopped them if they wanted to, but they did not.

What’s the matter

On Sunday evening, August 8, some hardline Hindu organizations and their activists gathered at the Jantar Mantar, a popular site near the Indian Parliament, to protest, chanting anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic slogans. The event was organized by Ashwini Upadhyay, a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and a Supreme Court lawyer.

A video about this has gone viral on social media in which people can be heard openly saying, “If you have to live in India, you have to say, Jay Shri Ram” and also blatantly called to slaughter Muslims.

What is happening??#JantarMantar #WHAT IS HAPPENING pic.twitter.com/4tnbcFkQXJ

— Rohit Ranjan (@Rohit_Ranjan__) August 9, 2021

Condemnation of the incident

In India, hardline Hindu organizations usually use the word mullah to address Muslims scornfully. Surprisingly, these slogans were repeated several times in the presence of the police for a long time and no action was taken against anyone.

On Monday, Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim MP, raised the issue in the House, saying that there was talk of the genocide of Muslims adjacent to the Indian House and loud slogans were being chanted in support of it, but no action was taken against the culprits.

Owaisi said, “What is the secret of the growing courage of these thugs? They know that the Modi government stands by them. On July 24, the central government arrested the Delhi Police under the National Security Act (NSA). “Even then, the man was given the right to be detained. Despite this, the Delhi Police remained a silent spectator.”

When some NGOs and workers lodged a complaint against him at the concerned police station on Monday morning, the police said that a complaint has been registered against some unknown persons while all the people chanting slogans were easily seen in the video and can be recognized.

Leading social activist Shabnam Hashmi has lodged a complaint with the Parliament Street police station.

Shabnam Hashmi said that those who gathered at Jantar Mantar and organized the program belonged to strict Hindu organizations. But Ashwini Upadhyay says his program was to raise his voice against the laws of the colonial era and some people have done such things to defame him.

Silence of Indian media

Such provocations are not uncommon at a public meeting of the Indian Parliament in the capital, Delhi. However, most of the Indian media has remained silent on this, while recently when the incident of demolition of a Hindu temple in Pakistan took place, several programs were aired on it by Indian TV channels.

Last year, during a campaign against the Citizenship Amendment Act in India, police in several states arrested leading Muslim activists and some journalists on charges of inciting hatred between different communities, many of whom are still in jail.