- BY TUSHA MITTAL AND ALISHAN JAFRI
Late on a hot night this summer, Mohammad Ashraf paced around his house, wondering if the time had finally come for him to flee his home of 40 years. Outside his window lay the verdant slopes of the Himalayas. All of Purola, a small mountain village in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, appeared to be asleep, tranquil under the cover of darkness. But Ashraf was awake. Could he hear noises? Were those footsteps beneath his window? Did his neighbors mean to do him harm?
“I was very afraid,” Ashraf said. “My kids were crying.”
Since May 29, there had been unrest in Purola. The local chapter of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, along with several other right wing Hindu nationalist groups, had staged a rally in which they demanded that local Muslims leave town before a major Hindu council meeting scheduled for June 15. On June 5, Ashraf’s clothing shop, like the shops of other Muslim traders, was covered with posters that warned “all Love Jihadis” should leave Purola or face dire consequences. They were signed by a Hindu supremacist group called the “Dev Bhoomi Raksha Abhiyan,” or the Movement to Protect God’s Land.
This story was originally published in codastory.com. Read the full story here .