Hyderabad: October is the festival season in India. While it is always a joyous occasion, the month was also unfortunately marked with incidents of hate and communal fights between Hindus and Muslims India. As part of Siasat.com‘s efforts to track hate-crime against minorities and marginalised groups, here is a list of such incidents that were reported on different days from across India:
October 1: As the country celebrated Garba, Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain district members of the right-wing Bajrang Dal claim that it had handed over three “non-Hindus” to the police for allegedly entering a Garba venue by hiding their identities.
October 2: Savli town in Gujarat’s Vadodara district experienced communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims which threw stones at each other. The incident took place on October 1 after there was a heated argument over installing community flags over electric poles. Soon the argument snowballed into a stone-pelting incident. Around 36 people from both communities were arrested.
On the same day, in Karnataka’s Udupi district, a massive rally of 10,000 workers was carried out by the right-wing organisation Hindu Jagarana Vedike. Calls for a “Hindu Rashtra” were made and some workers were spotted carrying swords even as the state police walked alongside them. Udupi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Raghupathi Bhat was also spotted at the rally.
October 3: The Mandsaur district administration in Madhya Pradesh bulldozed three Muslim houses claiming that those were built illegally. The incident was preceded by a clash between a 14-year-old Muslim boy Salman Khan and a 32-year-old Hindu man Shivlal Patidar during the seventh day of Navratri.
Shivlal had complained to Salman’s grandfather over the teenager’s alleged rash driving. The grandfather was seated close to a Garba pandal. A heated argument soon turned into a fight. Police reached the spot, and detained three Muslims while arresting four more in a late-night search. The next day, the houses were bulldozed.
On the same day, in Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah, a “singer” Dharmendra Pandey asked Hindus to be prepared to take up arms for what he termed a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. “The Prime Minister has tested you by asking you to hoist a flag on your houses, beating thalis and lighting lamps. You should all keep a sharpened sickle in your homes and the sisters should sharpen their tongs – you may need this when Modi ji gives a call for Hindu Rashtra,” Pandey said in a viral video.
In the Kawardha district of Chattisgarh, clashes broke out on the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi (birth anniversary of the Prophet Muhammed) over the hoisting of green crescent flags. According to Free Press Journal, members of a right-wing organisation Hindu Sena reportedly took out flags and tore them up grossly offending Muslim sentiments.
This story was originally published in siasat.com . Read the full story here