The Sangh Parivar has unleashed severe attacks on the country's religious minorities

The Sangh Parivar has unleashed severe attacks on the country's religious minorities, the Muslim and Christian communities. It is carrying out fierce communal propaganda through social media, and it is such propaganda that encourages the attacks. In BJP-ruled states the government gives the attackers every protection, while false cases are filed against the victims. Human rights organisations have reported 300 incidents of violence against Christians and their places of worship in the first nine months of 2021. Those from Adivasi and Dalit communities are the main victims. Prayer meetings have been attacked again and again. These vile attacks are carried out in the name of religious conversion.

Brutal attacks on Muslims are carried out continuously through campaigns about cow protection and 'love jihad'. In Tripura, Muslims and their mosques were attacked, and those who reported these attacks were trapped in cases under the UAPA. Another incident took place in Gurgaon near the capital, where the Sangh Parivar disrupted Muslims' prayers. In Madhya Pradesh, Muslim street vendors are threatened and chased away. In Assam, poor families who have lived and farmed on land for years are forcibly evicted for the sole reason that they are Muslims. In Uttar Pradesh, cases under the National Security Act against Muslims are widespread.

Attacking people on the basis of their religion is unconstitutional, but the BJP governments pay no heed to that. The media released a picture of a man stamping on the chest of Moinul Haque, who fell after being shot by police in Dholpur village in Darrang district, Assam. It was Bijoy Bania, a photographer accompanying the police team, who did this cruel thing. That is how deeply the Sangh Parivar has planted hatred of Muslims in others' minds. The attacks are carried out on the allegation that Muslims in Assam are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They are all poor people who came from Bengal and have lived for generations in Assam by farming and working.

The attacks the Sangh Parivar is carrying out on Muslims in many parts of India are planned. Not only physical attacks and killings but cultural and historical attacks are also widespread. Many cities and places were given Muslim names in the time of Muslim kings, and the Sangh Parivar is now trying to erase all of that completely. The RSS wants every trace of the Mughal period wiped out. This is rewriting the history of India. These moves aim at the Hindu Rashtra Savarkar envisaged.

Renaming has been widespread in Kashmir since 2019. On August 5, 2019, Kashmir's statehood was taken away and it was turned into union territories, and the special status Jammu and Kashmir had was also taken away. In October 2019 the Chenani-Nashri tunnel was renamed the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee tunnel. This was not done at the demand of the Kashmiri people. The cricket stadium named Sher-e-Kashmir (Lion of Kashmir) was renamed the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium, and 'Sher-e' was cut from the name of the Sher-e-Kashmir Convention Centre. The name Sher-e-Kashmir, the Lion of Kashmir, was given to Sheikh Abdullah. Founder of the National Conference and Chief Minister of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah was the leader who heroically resisted Pakistan's attempt to seize Kashmir after the partition of India and Pakistan. 'Sher-e-Kashmir' is the name the people gave him for his patriotism.

Christians are attacked too: severe attacks on Christians are taking place in many parts of India. The cruellest of these is the experience of Father Stan Swamy. Police arrested Stan Swamy branding him a Maoist and made him the 16th accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, though he had never in his life been to Bhima Koregaon. He was a human rights activist who worked for the welfare of Adivasis in their habitats in central India, and he became a thorn in the side of the state. He was accused of converting Adivasis. In the end the priest died from the torment of jail. More than three hundred attacks on the Christian community and its places of worship have been reported from various parts of the country this year, most of them in UP. Filing cases against both attackers and victims is a tactic of the UP police. In all these incidents, cases were registered both against the armed Sangh Parivar attackers and against the innocent people they attacked. The victims were made accused on the charge of carrying out religious conversion. Uttar Pradesh has an anti-conversion law, brought by the BJP government and aimed at the Muslim and Christian communities. Christian communities were also attacked in Shahjahanpur in UP, and similar incidents took place in the towns of Kanpur, Bareilly and Prayagraj. The media pretend not to see any of this. In Gurugram near Delhi, the Samyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti, a front of 21 Hindu organisations, stopped the Friday namaz that Muslims usually hold, and held a Govardhan puja at the spot where the namaz was disrupted.

A new dispute in Mathura: with only a few months left before the UP election, the Sangh Parivar has already begun trying to turn Mathura into a land of conflict. It was the Hindu-Muslim polarisation they deliberately created that brought the BJP victory in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2017 UP Assembly election. With another Assembly election approaching, they are travelling the same path. Farmers and workers are in agitation across the country. Problems such as rising prices and unemployment have plunged the whole people into misery, and the Modi government takes no step to solve people's problems of livelihood. The central government has also been a total failure in fighting Covid. In this situation, the BJP has suffered setbacks in elections in some states, and it views the coming Assembly elections in UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab with anxiety. Its attempt is to divert public attention by creating communal conflict.

Kerala is safe for all: Kerala is a place where people of all sections can live with a sense of security. The reason is the firm positions and actions of the LDF government, which stands firm on secularism. During UDF rule the Sangh Parivar tried to create riots in Kerala. The activities of extremist forces such as the SDPI also damage communal harmony. Some positions the Muslim League has taken recently are similar to the Sangh Parivar's policy of using places of worship for political interests. Any land can advance towards development and growth only by strengthening the people's unity. A stand must be taken against every kind of communalism. To build the firm unity of the toiling people, workers and farmers, strong movements must be built around the people's problems of livelihood.

Com. Elamaram Kareem MP