Mujib Mashal, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar
Feb. 8, 2022, 12:04 a.m. ET
HARIDWAR, India — The police officer arrived at the Hindu temple here with a
warning to the monks: Don’t repeat your hate speech.
Ten days earlier, before a packed audience and thousands watching online, the
monks had called for violence against the country’s minority Muslims. Their
speeches, in one of India’s holiest cities, promoted a genocidal campaign to
“kill two million of them” and urged an ethnic cleansing of the kind that
targeted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
When videos of the event provoked national outrage, the police came. The
saffron-clad preachers questioned whether the officer could be objective.
Yati Narsinghanand, the event’s firebrand organizer known for his violent
rhetoric, assuaged their concerns.
“Biased?” Mr. Narsinghanand said, according to a video of the interaction. “He
will be on our side,” he added, as the monks and the officer broke into
laughter.
Once considered fringe, extremist elements are increasingly taking their
militant message into the mainstream, stirring up communal hate in a push to
reshape India’s constitutionally protected secular republic into a Hindu state.
Activists and analysts say their agenda is being enabled, even normalized, by
political leaders and law enforcement officials who offer tacit endorsements by
not directly addressing such divisive issues.
Image
A statue of the Hindu god Hanuman at Dasna Devi temple in Ghaziabad,
India.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
After the monks’ call to arms went viral, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his
top leaders remained silent, except for a vice president with a largely
ceremonial role who warned that “inciting people against each other is a crime
against the nation” without making a specific reference to Haridwar. Junior
members of Mr. Modi’s party attended the event, and the monks have often posted
pictures with senior leaders.
“You have persons giving hate speech, actually calling for genocide of an
entire group, and we find reluctance of the authorities to book these people,”
Rohinton Fali Nariman, a recently retired Indian Supreme Court judge, said in a
public lecture. “Unfortunately, the other higher echelons of the ruling party
are not only being silent on hate speech, but almost endorsing it.”
Mr. Narsinghanand was later arrested after he ignored the police warning and
repeated calls for violence. His lawyer, Uttam Singh Chauhan, said his speeches
may have been a reaction to anti-Hindu comments by Muslim clerics.
Mr. Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party did not respond to requests for
comment.
“Does the prime minister or home minister need to address every small, trivial
issue?” said Vinod Bansal, a spokesman for the World Hindu Council, a party
affiliate. “The accused have already been arrested. The secular groups will
always highlight such incidents, but not when Hindus, Hindu gods and goddesses
are under attack.”
The hate speech is stoking communal tensions in a country where small triggers
have incited mass-death tragedies. The monks’ agenda already resonates with
increasingly emboldened vigilante groups.
Vigilantes have beaten people accused of disrespecting cows, considered holy by
some Hindus; dragged couples out of trains, cafes and homes on suspicion that
Hindu women might be seduced by Muslim men; and barged into religious
gatherings where they suspect people are being converted.
Image
The chief priest at Dasna Devi temple, Yati Narsinghanand, has called for
violence against Muslims. A sign bearing his image warns Hindus to have at
least five children or see their lineage destroyed. Credit...Saumya Khandelwal
for The New York Times
In recent weeks, global human rights organizations and local activists, as well
as India’s retired security chiefs, have warned that the violent rhetoric has
reached a dangerous new pitch. With right-wing messages spreading rapidly
through social media and the government hesitant to take action, they are
concerned that a singular event — a local dispute, or an attack by
international terror groups such as Al Qaeda or the Islamic State — could lead
to widespread violence that would be difficult to contain.
Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, a nonprofit group, who raised
similar warnings ahead of the massacres in Rwanda in the 1990s, told a U.S.
congressional briefing that the demonizing and discriminatory “processes” that
lead to genocide have been well underway in India.
In an interview, he said Myanmar was an example of how the easy dissemination
of misinformation and hate speech on social media prepares the ground for
violence. The difference in India, he said, is that it would be the mobs taking
action instead of the military.
“You have to stop it now,” he said, “because once the mobs take over it could
really turn deadly.”
The Dasna Devi temple in Uttar Pradesh state, where Mr. Narsinghanand is the
chief priest, is peppered with signs that call to prepare for a “dharm yudh,”
or religious war. One calls on “Hindus, my lions” to value their weapons “just
the way dedicated wives value their husbands.”
The temple’s main sign prohibits Muslims from entering.
Image
At the Dasna Devi
temple, a placard read: “This is a holy place for Hindus. Entry of Muslims is
forbidden.”Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
The monks’ anger is rooted in a sense of internalized victimhood that dates to
the founding of India’s republic after independence from British rule in 1947.
When Pakistan was carved out of India in a bloody partition that left hundreds
of thousands dead, the Hindu right was incensed that the founding fathers
turned what remained of India into a secular republic.
They celebrate a Hindu hard-liner’s assassination of Mohandas Gandhi — a
renowned symbol of nonviolent struggle, but to them a Muslim appeaser. Pooja
Shakun Pandey, a monk at the Haridwar event, has held re-enactments of Gandhi’s
assassination, firing a bullet into his effigy as blood runs down.
The forces that shaped the ideology of Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, have
slowly risen from the fringes to dominate India’s politics.
Image
Hindu nationalists put
garlands on a statue of Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, in
2020.Credit...Smita Sharma for The New York Times
Mr. Modi, the prime minister, spent decades as a mobilizer for the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, the century-old right-wing organization to which Mr. Godse
belonged. Mr. Modi’s party sees the group as the fountainhead of its political
ideology and has relied heavily on its vast network of volunteers to mobilize
voters and secure victories.
When he was chief minister of Gujarat, Mr. Modi saw firsthand how unchecked
communal tensions could turn into bloodletting.
In 2002, a train fire killed 59 Hindu pilgrims. Although the cause was
disputed, violent mobs, in response, targeted the Muslim community, leaving
more than 1,000 people dead, many burned alive.
Rights organizations and opposition leaders accused Mr. Modi of looking the
other way. He rejected the allegations as political attacks.
Image
Prime Minister
Narendra Modi paid homage at a memorial to Gandhi in New Delhi on Jan. 30, the
anniversary of his killing in 1948.Credit...Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images
After he rose to the country’s highest office in 2014 on a message of economic
growth, there was hope that Mr. Modi could rein in the fury. Instead, he has
often reverted to a Hindu-first agenda that inflames communal divides.
In 2017, Mr. Modi picked Yogi Adityanath, a monk who had started a youth group
accused of vigilante violence, to lead Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state
with more than 200 million people.
In his saffron robe, Mr. Adityanath has legislated a ban on religious
conversion by marriage, an idea that he calls “love jihad,” in which Muslim men
lure Hindu women to convert them. His group has served as moral police,
hounding interfaith couples and punishing anyone suspected of disrespecting
cows.
As Mr. Adityanath campaigned for re-election, the group held a meeting in New
Delhi around the same time as the monks’ event. With a picture of Mr.
Adityanath behind them, attendees took an oath to turn India into a Hindu
state, even if it meant killing for it.
Image
Swami Amritanand, an
organizer of the event in Haridwar where monks called for violence, defended
Mr. Narsinghanand: “He said nothing wrong.”Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The
New York Times
Mr. Adityanath’s office would not address his current relations with the group,
but said the chief minister “had nothing to do” with the meeting.
Dhirendra K. Jha, a writer who has studied the rise of Hindu nationalism, said
he worried that extremists now dominate India’s politics in such a way that
those who call for violence feel protected.
“Unless this is dealt with, the kind of consequences that may happen — I can’t
even imagine, I don’t dare to imagine,” said Mr. Jha.
The choice of Haridwar as the venue for a bold call to violence was strategic —
the city attracts millions of visitors annually, often for religious festivals
and pilgrimages.
The riverbank was recently busy with seers and worshipers. Families picnicked
and took dips in the chilly water. Even as some religious authorities appeared
troubled by the calls for violence, they were reluctant to condemn them.
Image
Pardeep Jha, who
organizes a pilgrimage festival in Haridwar, said he believed in making India a
Hindu state through peaceful means. Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York
Times
Pradeep Jha, the main organizer of the city’s largest pilgrimage festival, said
he shared the vision of a Hindu state, not through violence but by urging
India’s Muslims to convert back; in such a view, everyone in India was Hindu at
one point.
“I believe we need to pursue our goals with patience, with peace,” he said.
“Otherwise, what is our difference with others?”
Mr. Narsinghanand has made a name for himself doing the exact opposite.
As he sees it, India’s Muslims — who account for 15 percent of the population —
will turn the country into a Muslim state within a decade. To prevent such an
outcome, he has told followers that they must “be willing to die,” pointing to
the Taliban and Islamic State as a “role model.”
In 2020, Mr. Narsinghanand was among the hard-liners stoking tensions during
monthslong protests over a citizenship amendment seen as discriminatory toward
Muslims. He called for violence, using the language of a “final battle.” “They
are jihadis, and we will have to finish them off,” he said.
Image
The choice of Haridwar
as the venue for a dangerous call to violence was strategic — the city attracts
millions of visitors annually, often for religious festivals and
pilgrimages.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
Riots followed in New Delhi, with 50 people killed, a majority of them Muslims.
Mr. Narsinghanand was always observant, but not an extremist, according to his
82-year-old father, Rajeshwar Dayal Tyagi.
He was a top college student, earning a scholarship to study food technology in
Moscow. There, he helped open a vegetarian restaurant for Indian students that
still operates.
Returning to India in 1996, he started a computer training institute with money
from Mr. Tyagi’s pension. He soon dedicated his life to being a monk, leaving
behind his wife and young daughter, said his father.
“I feel pained, I feel angry, it gives me stress,” his father said. “It’s not a
good idea to use harsh words against anybody.”
Despite the police warning, Mr. Narsinghanand and his fellow monks repeated
their messages of hate, including on national television and social media.
“This Constitution will be the end of the Hindus, all one billion Hindus,” Mr.
Narsinghanand said at a virtual event. “Whoever believes in this system, in
this Supreme Court, in these politicians, in this Constitution, in this army
and police — they will die a dog’s death.”
Image
Pilgrims on a bank of
the Ganges in Haridwar in April.Credit...Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via Shutterstock
When the police came to arrest an associate, he threatened the officers, who
politely urged him to calm down. “You will all die,” Mr. Narsinghanand is seen
in a video telling them.
The police arrested Mr. Narsinghanand on Jan. 15, and he was charged in court
with hate speech.
“He said nothing wrong,” said Swami Amritanand, an organizer of the Haridwar
event. “We are doing what America is doing, we are doing what Britain is
doing.”
Mr. Amritanand said the call for arms was justified because “within the next 10
to 12 years there will be a horrible war that will play out in India.”
Late last month, the monks again sounded a violent call to create a Hindu
state, this time at an event hundreds of miles away from Haridwar in Uttar Pradesh.
They threatened violence — referencing a bombing of India’s assembly — if Mr.
Narsinghanand was not released.
Ms. Pandey described their actions as defensive. “We must prepare to protect
ourselves,” she said.
To the Haridwar police, the event in Uttar Pradesh did not count as a repeat
offense. Rakendra Singh Kathait, the senior police officer in Haridwar, said
Mr. Narsinghanand was in jail because he had acted again in the city; others
like Ms. Pandey got a warning.
“If she goes and says it from Kolkata, it doesn’t count as repeat here,” Mr.
Kathait said.
Image
A statue of Gandhi in
New Delhi. Gandhi is a symbol of nonviolent struggle around the world, but to
some Hindu monks, he is a Muslim appeaser.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The
New York Times
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