The Scroll
How Modi-backed Hindutva rhetoric is fuelling the ethnic cleansing of Uttarakhand?
Extremist organisations project the hill state as the ‘holy land’ of Hindus and Muslims a ‘polluting presence’ unleashing a battery of ‘jihads’. –
By Harsh Mander
India’s most populous hill state Uttarakhand is in unprecedented turmoil. It is the first state in India in which an influential and popular campaign for ethnic cleansing has gathered ominous momentum: a battle for the expulsion of all Muslims from the state. This crusade is tacitly supported by the state government.
These alarming fractures in the state have mostly escaped national attention because not much blood has been spilt. But barely below the surface, Uttarakhand smoulders with communal temperatures ratcheted to perilous levels.
Uttarakhand has not witnessed significant communal tensions between its religious communities in the past. Its ruptures have much more pivoted on caste. Uttarakhand probably has a higher proportion of Brahmins than any other state, estimated at around 20% of the population. The sometimes violent movement for the separation of Uttarakhand from Uttar Pradesh to create a separate state in the 1990s was substantially sparked off by the decision of the Mulayam Singh government to extend reservations in government jobs to members of the other backward classes. Muslims widely supported the demand for the separate hill state.
Muslims constitute around 14% of the state’s population. The present canvassing for the ejection of the state’s Muslim population rests on three pillars. The first of these is the premise of the pristine sacredness for Hindus of the hill state, polluted by the presence of Muslims. The second is claims of the exclusive indigeneity of Hindus in this holy land, threatened by the surge of Muslim outsiders who are rapidly and dangerously altering the demography of the state. The third is the alleged inherent perfidy of Muslims, evident in the battery of jihads that they are unleashing on hapless Hindu residents of this sanctified land – population jihad, love jihad, land jihad, mazaar jihad and, most recently, vyapar jihad. Mazaar refers to mausoleums and vyapar to trade.
These arguments are propagated vigorously by an extensive network of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its family of Hindutva formations that have expanded to remote mountainous corners of the state. There are 1,400 shakhas or branches of the Sangh in Uttarakhand and plans are underway to double the number in the next two years. Sangh workers explain that their work is cut out for them: they must warn the Hindu people of the dangers that Muslim residents of the state pose to the purity of the Dev Bhumi.
The hatred against Muslims is fuelled and legitimised by Hindu religious leaders in saffron, who do not desist even from calls for mass rape and genocide. Their discourse is amplified exponentially by right-wing publications, the social media and a widely communalised local press. All of these get embedded into ruptured social and economic relations by calls for boycott, expulsion, and occasional acts of violence against Muslims.
But what has most decisively inflamed anti-Muslim sentiments in the hill state is its elected political leadership. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has for 33 years of his life of 45 years been a dedicated worker of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He was a political lightweight when he was suddenly installed as chief minister in 2021. His importance to the Sangh became further apparent when he was re-elected as chief minister even after he lost his assembly seat in the state elections in 2022.
He was later elected from a seat vacated by a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator. He regularly presses all the buttons that craft the toxic mythology of the Muslim in the state of Uttarakhand as outsider, jihadi and enemy.
Six months after he became chief minister, a notorious Dharm Sansad, literally a religious parliament was organised in Hardwar, from December 17 to 19 in 2021. Speakers urged people to keep “sharpened swords” ready at home to kill “intruders”. Another held up the Myanmar persecution of the Rohingya as a model for the state, and called for a “safai abhiyan”, or cleansing drive, in which the police, army and leaders would also take up arms against the enemy within.
Yet another speaker called for 100 soldiers to kill two million Muslims to “reduce their population”. But the state police dealt with these incendiary and patently criminal calls for genocide with kid gloves. The Quint observes that prominent among those who made hate speeches in the Dharma Sansad of 2021 were Prabodhanand and Darshan Bharti, who continue to freely spout hate and instigate violence in Uttarakhand even today.
First, take the casting of Uttarakhand as the holy land of the Hindus. The argument is that the Abrahamic religions have their holy lands – Muslims have their Mecca and Christians their Vatican. It is claimed that people of other religious faiths are not allowed into these two holy sites. There is, in fact, no such restriction in the Vatican and the Vatican is sacred for Catholics, not all Christians. The Hindutva project, in many ways, is trying to mimic the Abrahamic faiths, such as by propounding a central deity (Ram), a central text (the Gita), and now a single and exclusionary holy land. All of these are at odds with the extraordinary pluralism of the Hindu faith.
The modelling of Uttarakhand as the holy land of Akhand Bharat (as Hindutva publications declare) is of course highly contestable. Only one of the Char Dham or four pilgrimage sites that devout Hindus believe they must visit at least once in their lives, Badrinath, is in Uttarakhand. The others are Dwarka in Gujarat, Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and Puri in Odisha. Each of these sites – and indeed most states in India – can claim to be holy for Hindus.
Today it has become commonplace to describe Uttarakhand as Dev Bhumi or the Land of the Gods, not just in popular discourse and tourism hype but also in official documents. Even in a matter as prosaic as accomplishments in vaccination – as pointed out by Caravan – does the prime minister refer to Uttarakhand as Dev Bhumi. He underlines its special sacredness by his frequent – and extravagantly photographed – visits to Badrinath.
The Uttarakhand government legislature passed a statute that doubled the maximum punishment for “forcible” religious conversions from five to ten years. Dhami declared that the state needed a more stringent anti-conversion law since Uttarakhand is “the country of the gods” and acts like religious conversion are “detrimental to us”.
The elevation of Uttarakhand into the sacred land of Hindus is twinned with a demand as a corollary for the barring of Muslims from living or trading in the vicinity of religious sites. This has become a common chorus across the family of Hindutva organisations and many BJP leaders. But this appears more the thin edge of the wedge; the maximalist objective of many is to expel Muslims from the entire “holy” state.
The campaign to expel Muslims from Uttarakhand is in fact of much older vintage. Madan Mohan Malviya, founder of the Hindu Mahasabha, had constituted Ganga Sabha in the early 1900s. It campaigned to restrict Muslim presence near Har ki Pauri in Haridwar. Ujjwal Pandit, an office-bearer of the Ganga Sabha told reporters that even today, the bye-laws of the Haridwar municipal council prohibit non-Hindus from running any business or buying a house, and from the sale of alcohol, cigarettes, and meat and eating meat within four kilometres north and south of Har Ki Pauri, reported the Caravan.
The discourse of religious leaders and members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh family of organisations is belligerent and raucous in their call to expel Muslims. Hindu priest Anandswaroop is pugnacious in his ranting. “If the entry of non-Hindus is not banned, then Hindu priests will take to the streets,” he threatened. “Members of the Muslim community are creating a ruckus here, spreading non-vegetarianism, throwing meat and cow meat in the Ganga to defile it [sic]. If we don’t take note, then it will become Kashmir. There should be one state for Hindus at least.”
Ajendra Ajay, senior BJP leader, alleged that instances of “love jihad” and other crimes have increased in Uttarakhand because of an influx of people belonging to “a certain religious community”. This community, he claims, “secretly” constructs its places of worship which leads to communal tension, and this he describes as “land jihad”.
“The hill districts are getting empty and people are migrating… [while] those belonging to a particular community are occupying every place here,” he said. “This is also a big threat to national security…”
“There is an international conspiracy to make Dev Bhumi hell,” echoed Prabodhanand, president of the Hindu Raksha Sena. He urged Chief Minister Dhami to be “vigilant” because there is “a growing jihadi population in Uttarakhand...They even attempted to desecrate our holy pilgrimage sites” he alleged, and “to hold namaz there”. Darshan Bharti, founder of the Devbhoomi Raksha Abhiyan, asked in the same tenor, “Do you want Dev Bhumi to be the land of gods or the land of shrines and mosques?”
In the Hindutva worldview the new-found elevated sacredness to Hindus of Uttarakhand privileges Hindu inhabitants in their claims of special belonging to the state. These assertions are further invigorated by Hindutva claims that the Hindu inhabitants of the state are its indigenous inhabitants, in contrast to the alleged “foreignness” of Muslims. Muslims I spoke to in Uttarakhand were at pains to maintain that Muslims have lived in the hills and valleys of the state from as far back as the 13th century.
They point also to Haldwani, the second-largest city in the state, that this was primarily a Muslim town adjacent to the military cantonment. It is only in recent decades that Hindus have built and populated the new city of Haldwani. Muslims in the state mostly run small businesses like fruit and vegetable stores, barber salons, and motor repair garages. Many trace their residence in the state back at least two or three generations. Some Muslims are doubtless recent migrants into the state, but the Constitution defends the right of Indian citizens to travel to and work in any part of the country.
Claims of indigeneity of Hindus and foreignness of Muslims are buttressed by allegations of a systematic dark Muslim conspiracy to skew the population ratios of the state by a massive and organised influx of Muslim migrants. Even Dhami never tires of decrying what he describes as disturbing demographic changes of a steep and unnatural rise in the population of a “certain community”.
He is not restrained by the fact that he does not offer concrete data to support his claim of an exceptional rise in the ratio of Muslims in Uttarakhand. The 2011 census recorded a ratio of nearly 14% people of Muslim identity in the state. This was an increase of only around 2% from the 2001 census, reflecting the natural increase in population and possibly some small numbers of migration from other states.
Also, even if there is indeed a rise in the population of Muslims in the state, why should this be viewed as a matter of worry or a threat by the government and other residents of the state? After all, Muslims are also equal citizens of this diverse and pluralist country and have the right to settle in any part of the country that they choose (except some remote sensitive areas populated by particularly vulnerable communities).
Still, alarmist reports are rife in the right-wing media. OpIndia, for instance, claims that security agencies are anxious about a sudden surge in the Muslim population in several districts of Uttarakhand, behind which they see a “specific conspiracy”. Although there has been no census since 2011, the report claims that Muslim populations have more than doubled since then.
Dainik Jagran goes even further, claiming that security agencies reveal that these illegal settlers are attempting to build a premeditated corridor connecting Uttarakhand, Bangladesh, Bihar, Nepal, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab, and ultimately Pakistan.
These claims of conspiratorial changes in demography in the state are further grist for anti-Muslim propaganda. Gajraj Singh Bisht, former state general secretary of the BJP in Uttarakhand, declares that “initially, these Muslims would come to hold your feet. They will then beg you with folded hands. But, when their count grows from one to ten, they will not even let you access their streets” .
The claimed duplicity of Muslims is not restricted to their alleged population jihad. Hate propaganda against Muslims (encouraged and amplified from the top) is also of love jihad. The construction of the Muslim male as a sexual predator goes back to the Partition riots. But the hate mythology of love jihad is of more recent origin, dating to the 2000s, fabricated in right-wing publications, pamphlets and social media.
Hindutva propagandists allege that love jihad is a conspiracy by Muslims fuelled by petrodollars from the Gulf. In this imagination, Hindu women are assumed to lack both agency and discernment, and Muslim men as being shifty, devious and devoid of finer sentiments of love and care. Good-looking Muslim men are trained to entrap young Hindu girls and women into romantic and sexual relations and marriage. They coldly and cynically lure these hapless and naïve Hindu girls into sex and marriage with the sole intention of converting them to Islam and producing through their bodies, large numbers of Muslim children.
In just a few years, love jihad has become the staple of social media forwards and is the main rationale offered for lynching and hate attacks in many parts of the country after cow protection. It has become today the core of the hate propaganda that feeds the calls for the expulsion of Muslims from the state of Uttarakhand.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath was the first among heads of governments who publicly declared war on love jihad, instructing his police force to be vigilant to prevent and punish such misdemeanours. He then passed what he described as a law against love jihad, criminalising religious conversions by women for marriage. This statute in effect, as observed by political scientist Ajay Gudavarthy, regulates Hindu women and criminalises Muslim men. The chief minister made an unsubtle threat of violence against Muslim men in relationship with Hindu women, “I warn those who conceal their identity and play with the honour of our sisters and daughters, if you don’t mend your ways, your final journey will begin”.
Many BJP-ruled chief ministers followed in the trail blazed by Adityanath. Prominent among them is Dhami, who frequently thunders against love jihad, often in implied support of civilian vigilante action against claimed crimes of love jihad.
Hindutva hardliner Prabodhanand speaks of love jihad as an international plot against the sacred Dev Bhumi. “Protecting sisters and wives in Dev Bhumi has become harder... This is not a single girl’s story [sic]. Many girls are being targeted in Uttarakhand,” he declared, according to The Quint. At a press meeting on June 5, he alleged, “Love jihad incidents are on the rise in Dehradun as well. Their goal is to make Dev Bhumi look like Kashmir... To prevent this from happening, each of us must take action. The Jihadis have crossed the border and are now targeting Hindu women.”
Reema Chauhan, a Hindutva politician from Roorkee in Uttarakhand, said in a widely circulated video, “I want to request the people of Uttarakhand to wake up before something like this occurs to our daughters in Uttarakhand... These jihadis disguise themselves as barbers, carpenters, vegetable dealers, or scrappers and infiltrate Uttarakhand. They entice our daughters and then either kill or abduct them”.
Amid the heat and dust raised against love jihad, the political leadership, the police officialdom and the entire Hindutva enterprise seem unperturbed and unconstrained by the fact that few of the Muslim-Hindu alliances actually proved to be of Muslim men forcing or tricking Hindu women into the relationship. Most turn out to be consensual, or occasionally of crimes of trafficking or rape that had nothing to do with any organised communal conspiracy.
There is cynical doublespeak in the official pronouncements around love jihad even in Uttar Pradesh. When questioned in the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly, the official reply laconically contradicted the fiery public statements of the chief minister.
An incident that briefly drew national attention was in the Uttarkashi town of Purola. A host of right-wing organisations claimed that a local Muslim man was caught trying to abduct a minor Hindu girl in a shocking incident of “love jihad”. Posters came up around the town demanding the ejection of all the Muslim residents of Purola. Shops and homes were ransacked and 41 Muslim families fled from the town.
But Newslaundry journalist Anmol Pritam spent a week in the town investigating and uncovered a very different story. The minor girl of 14 was an orphan, raised by her uncle Rakesh (name changed). Two men, one Hindu and one Muslim, Ubed Khan and Jitendra Saini, tried to kidnap her presumably for trafficking, but the girl was rescued on time. Rakesh said that he filed a complaint with the police, who acted fairly and arrested both men.
But a local journalist tried to persuade Rakesh to be silent about the Hindu kidnapper, and complain instead that the girl was lured away by a Muslim man in a love jihad conspiracy. He refused, but this did not constrain local Hindutva organisations to leap in and manufacture this into a crime of love jihad, resulting in violence and the exodus of Muslim families from the state.
On May 29, hundreds joined a rally in the town in which hundreds chanted “drive away the love jihadis. Drive away the Muslims. Muslim rule won’t be tolerated.” They added, “Muslim mukt Uttarakhand chahiye” – We want a Muslim-free Uttarakhand. On June 5, posters were pasted outside their shops that warned “all love jihadis” to leave the town, signed by the Dev Bhoomi Raksha Abhiyan.
A Muslim resident later lamented to reporters from Caravan, “They forgot all our names and the only name they remembered is jihadis. All Muslims were turned into jihadis” Muslim residents said that even as mobs tore down the sign-boards and banners of their shops, the police stood by passively. They sought the intervention of the sub-divisional magistrate, but he was gruff and unsympathetic.
The Reporters Collective recounts that posters soon appeared also in many other villages and towns asking Muslims to vacate their shops. A local BJP leader declared, “Love Jihadis are informed to vacate their shops before the mahapanchayat on June 15. Time will decide the repercussions of not doing so [sic].”
Rallies were held in many parts of Uttarkashi – in towns of Barkot and Chinyalisaur and villages of Naugaon, Damta, Barnigad, Netwar and Bhatwari – against Muslims. All of them warned darkly of the dangers to women and children from the alleged Muslim conspiracy of love jihad.
Dhami significantly chose this time to reiterate his firm resolve of “stern action” against love jihad incidents, which he claimed had risen alarmingly. This amounted to a dog whistle, signalling tacit support to vigilante violence and threats beginning with Purola. Communal temperatures were raised alarmingly, threatening to erupt with the proposed mahapanchayat calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the entire region. Pressure that was mounted from respected civilian voices outside Uttarakhand succeeded in compelling the state administration to disallow the mahapanchayat.
But the state administration took no effective action against the outpouring of hate speech that continued. It looked away as incendiary slogans were raised: “Jihadiyon ko jo dega sharan, unki behen betiyon ka hoga haran” (those who give shelter to jihadis, their sisters and daughters will be kidnapped) and Hinduon ko jagana hoga, Jihadiyon ko bhagana hoga” (Hindus need to be awakened, jihadis need to be chased away).
Purola is not the first town in Uttarakhand where the call was made for ethnic cleansing, and it is not the last. A similar campaign to drive out Muslim residents had been tried in at least three other towns – Ghansali, Augustyamuni and Satpuli. After the successful forced exodus of many Muslim families from Purola, local Hinduta organisations joined hands to force Muslims to leave the state in Barkot, Uttarkashi and Haldwani.
Uttarakhand BJP leader Yashpal Benam felt compelled to cancel his daughter’s wedding to a Muslim man after his resolve led to outrage and calls for his boycott. Darshan Bharti of the Devbhoomi Raksha Abhiyan had declared, “We are becoming victims of ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’. The Pauri Garhwal chairman... is inviting Muslims to his daughter’s wedding. What a shame.”
Another alleged jihad that Dhami often warns against is “land jihad”. If a non-Muslim is inhabiting, or cultivating, or running a shop on government land, this is dubbed by him simply as an encroachment. But if it is a Muslim who is occupying government land, the official discourse completely changes. This is then given a sinister hue of a religious conspiracy, a jihad.
Addressing a conclave of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in Haridwar in April this year, Dhami reiterated that “Illegal encroachments in the name of land jihad will not be allowed to vitiate the atmosphere in Uttarakhand”, adding that “a particular community had illegally encroached land and raised structures in the border areas of the state which are being removed as part of a drive”.
This campaign by the Uttarakhand administration against “land jihad” encroachments by Muslims has wreaked particularly devastating consequences on the Van Gujjars. The Van Gujjars are a vulnerable forest-dwelling pastoral nomadic tribe, whose undoing for the present regime is that they are of Muslim religious faith. Their habitats and traditional grazing lands and fields are now being appropriated by the state either for grand “development” projects like hill highways or handed over to the private sector.
For all of living memory, they have trekked with their animals through the forested upper reaches of the state, while some are gradually semi-settling in shifting agriculture. Today they are suddenly illegalised as encroachers in the forests, their tiny temporary settlements razed, their modest graves demolished. They have been reduced to desperate destitution and their always precarious survival is threatened as never before. Instead, a caring state could have mapped and protected their migratory routes, their traditional breeds, their forest dwellings and their shifting cultivation sites
The state administration also announced a drive against encroachments of religious structures on government and forest land. Many of these were mazaars, or small shrines of Muslim saints. BJP spokesperson Manvir Singh alleged that most of these had come up when the Congress ruled the state. Dhami saw in these yet another kind of jihad, for which he coined the word mazaar jihad, as though the mazaars, too, were a conspiracy by Muslims. In an interview to Panchjanya, a weekly closely associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Dhami claimed that more than 1,000 unauthorised mazaarsﾠwere built on forest land in the state as part of the “mazaar jihad”.
Upon the chief minister’s announcement, the state administration dismantled many of these 1,000 mazaars, unmindful that these were places sacred to local Muslims – and many Hindus – many more than a 100 years old. Caravan reporters write of Thapli Baba ki Mazar, a mazaar estimated to be a 150 years old. The caretaker of the mazaar said that they were not even given the chance to collect the remains of the body that had been laid to rest there. The majority of the devotees of the mazaar were Hindu. What were razed as mazaars in the forests were also small graves of the forest dwelling Van Gujjars. On forest lands, the administration also encountered Hindu temples, but these were not described as the outcome of any conspiracy or jihad.
“This is a new Uttarakhand”, the chief minister declared. “We will not let land jihad thrive in Dev Bhumi”. He added, “We will demolish illegal mazaars in Uttarakhand…no one should even think about encroaching on land here, let alone doing it”.
Yet, despite the chief minister’s frequent assertions about his government’s commitment to fight land jihad, these are the official responses to a right to information application filed by The Wire to the state government:
Does the Uttarakhand government maintains data of land sales and purchases on the basis of the religions of the sellers and purchasers?
“No,” the government replied.
How does the government of Uttarakhand define the term “Land Jihad”?
“Information unavailable”.
How many cases of “Land Jihad”, however defined, have been reported in the past 5 years in Uttarakhand?
Religious gatherings rife with genocidal hate speeches continue unabated. For instance, on April 20 this year, at a “Dharm Sabha” in Chakrata, Rakesh Tomar Uttarakhandi, founder of the hardline Hindutva organisation Rudra Sena, declared, “We are here to warn the Jihadis...You people do love jihad, land jihad … Do you think we will stay silent?”
Hardliner Prabodhanand called for an economic boycott of Muslims. “The business of Uttarakhand is no longer in our hands”, he claimed, according to The Quint. “A Kashmiri company... a terrorist has taken over the Char Dham Yatra contract... Some have salons, others have flower stores, and still others have eateries. And, you know, they don’t provide you food unless they urinate and spit on the food. It is part of their jihad.”
In many towns and villages, calls are being made to boycott Muslim shops and petty traders. Their success in small businesses is now being described as one more form of jihad, called vyapar jihad or a business jihad. Hindu residents of the state are also being harried to not rent their properties to Muslims for trade, and even as homes.
Another right-wing worker Radha Semwal Dhoni again demanded a boycott of Muslim vendors. “Why do you come here?” she wanted to know. “ Do you want to sell us vegetables that have been spat on?”
Durgeshwar Lal, a BJP legislator from Purola, declared, “There is a plot... There are agencies that fund [Muslim traders]... The native people can’t afford to pay Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000, but these people who come make fancy shops, can pay ‘pagdi’ [lease] and can pay Rs 20,000-25,000 rent.” Bharti added, “They should not be permitted to trade. They have eyes on our daughters, land, and business. We ask every responsible Uttarakhand resident to boycott them.”
Prabodhanand boasted to reporters, “There are no Muslims in Kangri village. You’ll be shocked to know that they’ve rented a barber shop in front of Balaji Dham for Rs 2,000 per month... When I found out, I called the shop owner and told him he had two hours to get the shop vacated or else I’d have him leave.”
It is not as though there is universal support among the Hindu residents of the state for this campaign for boycott and expulsion of Muslims from the state. After all, despite the much-hyped call to expel Muslims from Satpuli, Ghansali and Augustyamuni, there are no reports of actual Muslim exodus from these places. Even some of the Muslim families who left Purola have returned.
The chief minister announced district-level committees to fight “land jihad”, but not much has emerged from this. As a local activist told me, “The Sangh strategy is to throw a lot of things on the wall and seeing what sticks, then to build on that, then getting stuck when it is opposed, withdrawing, then trying again, and so on.” With the chief minister leading much of this, there is of course impunity, but impunity does not guarantee success.
Still, when black crosses were drawn on Muslim shops in Barkot, a Muslim resident said to Caravan reporters, “I have read Hitler’s history. That’s how he had marked out Jews. It is the same strategy. That’s how we are being identified.”
During the journey of the Karwan-e-Mohabbat to Uttarakhand, many Muslim residents spoke to me of their anguish at being labelled as hateful dangerous conspirators in a variety of ways. “Words we rarely heard in the past have now become weapons against us – Dev Bhumi, love jihad, land jihad”, one of them said.
But an even more humiliating and despicable charge awaited them, and this was that they “rape cows”. It is as though they are saying to Muslims: women are our property, you are stealing them through love jihad. Cows are our mothers, you are raping them.
Mohammed Nafees, a carpenter, knocked on the door of his employer to recover his dues in early June, near Haldwani. Instead of paying him, his employer claimed loudly that he had raped a cow. A crowd gathered quickly, tonsured his head, blackened his face and thrashed him brutally. The police arrested Nafees. Local newspapers and publications close to the Sangh-BJP, like Organiser and OpIndia, ran shrill stories and commentaries decrying him for his contemptible act as though it had been proved.
The headline that the Organiser ran was “Islamist tried raping gau mata, Hindus shave his head”. Their report claimed that such assaults on cows are becoming commonplace, and sought a stringent law to punish these evil acts[
The cow was later medically examined and it was proved that she had not been sexually assaulted. The police released the Nafees, but took no action against the man who had made false accusations, nor members of the mob that almost beat him to death. I found nothing in the Organiser and OpIndia retracting their earlier story, let alone apologising for it.
Muslims across Uttarakhand are grimly contemplating their futures in the state.
As Muslims are warned to leave Uttarakhand or face violent consequences, many are no longer able to trust the local police administration to protect them from violence. They are quietly fleeing their homes and the lands where many were born and raised, where they have studied, played and worked to raise their families, writes NewsClick’s reporter.
Some continue to resist, resolved that they will not allow anyone to expel them from their homeland. “Where all will they drive us out of?” said one person. “Today they drove us out of [Uttarakhand]. Tomorrow, they will drive us out of India.”
Mohammad Ashraf is among the few Muslims in Purola who decided to stay on, despite all the threats. This, despite the memories that haunt him of that terrible midsummer night when his neighbours turned against him. “I was very afraid, my kids were crying,” he said.
But still he asked reporters from Caravan: “Why should I leave? Everything I have is here. This is my home. Where else will I go? I thought this is my janambhoomi and karambhoomi” – the land of my birth, land of my toil – “now the day I leave from here will be the day I am wrapped in a funeral cloth. Whether they burn my home, or my shop, or kill me, I will stay here.”
But this has not been easy. He was forced to negotiate the terms of his continuance in the state. There is no mosque in the town, so people used to gather for Friday prayers and on Eid to pray collectively on the terrace of his home. But Hindu residents demanded in a “peace meeting” with the sub-divisional magistrate that he ends this practice of collective prayer.
Ashraf agreed. Muslims will now pray alone and only behind closed doors in the privacy of their homes.
A resident of Barkot who took the painful decision to leave his homeland forever grieved, “My brother [who stayed back] said when his kids go out to play in the park, the others’ parents call their kids back in. He has also been asked by people, ‘When will you leave?’ How can we live there? It is as if everyone is dead. There is so much hate.”
He was born in Barkot and lived his entire life there. Many of his closest friends were Hindus. He said his heart aches. No one has called him even once to ask how he is faring.
No one has asked him to return.
Published on Nov 03, 2023
Ethno-Religious Cleansing in India
By Parker Harrison Sears
Executive Summary
India is the homeland of one of the greatest advocates of peace that this world has ever known. Yet, this does not mean that the Indian people will always follow Mahatma Gandhi’s preaching or continually pursue secular policies. Recent events suggest that a majority of Indians have once again deviated from Gandhi’s secular preaching. The purpose of this research is to investigate the origins of civil and human rights violations that are occurring in India’s Assam district and have the potential to metastasize throughout all of India. This conflict involves two main religions that diverse ethnic groups in India follow. The majority religion that Indians follow is Hinduism, and the second largest is Islam. What makes this conflict ethno-religious is that neither Hinduism nor Islam pertains to one ethnic group; rather, they represent ideas that can be adopted by any human being who finds them attractive.
The conflict between these two factions resides in the confines of India’s boundaries. But geopolitical influences shape this situation and risk escalation between India and her Muslim neighbors. The Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) is a Hindutva nationalist party that seeks to recreate India as a Hindu-dominated state. India is composed of a 79.8% Hindu population, with Muslims making up 14.2%, Christians representing 2.3%, and Sikh as 1.7% of the population. The remaining 2% follow other or unspecified religions.[1] The Hindutva ideology of BJP members emphasizes Muslims as a foreign element needing to be purged from Indian society. With India rising in importance to the United States, this topic must be watched closely so American policymakers know the nature of the BJP and Narendra Modi with whom we ally ourselves.
This paper attempts to explain the complicated relationship between Hindus and Muslims as well as analyze its roots, which date back to before British control. Through this historical lens, one can find the prerequisite for conflict and for peace. Then, the analysis shifts to current events where some of the previous themes manifest themselves in societal violence. Upon completing an analysis of the roots, drivers, and actors within this conflict, the paper then suggests potential paths to deescalate and prevent further violence.
Background
Some historians blame Muslim-Hindu tensions on British colonial rule, which used a divide-and-conquer method to retain its empire. No doubt, the British did not help mend divisions, but they did not create the rift between Hindus and Muslims either. This feud dates back to the eighth century, when Muslims began exploring eastward. As the Islamic empire grew, subsequent invasions of Punjab took place between the tenth and twelfth centuries which “eventually led to the formation of the Delhi Sultanate.”[2] Yet, consolidated Muslim control of Indian territory took place in the fifteenth century with the establishment of the Mughal Empire. As descendants of Genghis Khan, Mughals lived in Turkestan and converted to Islam while “keeping elements of their Far Eastern roots.”[3] After the initial bloodletting that occurred during the Mughal conquest, most rulers enforced a lenient form of Islam that tolerated local religions. This period of relative tolerance then ended when Aurangzeb became Emperor.
Aurangzeb’s rule was known for the implementation of Sharia law and military expansion. With Shariah law came taxes that dhimmi had to pay. The first taxed land and was known as Kharaj, while the second, known as Jizya, taxed per capita income. This deviation from previous Mughal rule sparked widespread discontent while the Hindu majority were treated as second class citizens. Those who did not convert to Islam experienced hardship and oppressive measures. Therefore, when the British and French arrived, Hindu kingdoms often “fought back… supported by the French and the British.”[4] Once Islam imprinted itself on Indian territory and cultural sharing began, the fates of these two ethno-religious groups became intertwined. Some Indians converted because Islam offered a chance to shed class discrimination from the caste system, while some elites converted to retain their wealth and prestige.
Ethnic relations regarding superiority date back to this period. Muslims were initially brutal; however, so were many Hindu people who murdered Muslims indiscriminately. Both sides committed atrocities against each other, like the Nellie Massacre where Hindus murdered thousands of Muslims. Being an ethno-religious conflict, this issue becomes unclear in regard to a group being ethnically superior or more Indian or Muslim than another. Evident when “the Muslim elite of West Pakistan saw the Bengalis of East Pakistan, even when Muslim… to be a culturally and racially inferior group,”[5] ethnicity was of importance, despite sharing similar beliefs. Because of intermarriage with darker-skinned, shorter Hindus, these people are not as clearly connected to the “non-Indian West Asian ancestry common among the post-Mughal Muslim elite.”[6] Indians do not have it any differently, because Hindutva nationalism excludes ethnic Indians if they follow Islam. One could trace their lineage on the Indian peninsula for several generations, yet they could still be viewed as a foreign element needing to be purged.
Drivers of conflict
When the British arrived in India, they found the contextual precursor needed for their divide-and-rule strategy. There was a rift ready to be exploited, and exploit it they did. Evidently, when the British left India in 1947 and partition of territory commenced, these very same tensions escalated from “a squabble about the division of assets after partition… to bitter conflict over the future of disputed princely states such as Hyderabad, Junagadh, and Kashmir, [to] the struggle for limited, precious irrigation water.”[7] The drivers of conflict resided not only in historic disputes, but in the practical implications that arose from Indian independence. Upon rumors of partition, ethnic cleansing became a force used to create majority populations in areas where boundaries were to be set. Unsurprisingly, it was “the Muslim League National Guard (associated with the Muslim League) and the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (a voluntary Hindu nationalist group), who instigated violence and persecution of other religious communities.”[8] These instigative groups were then astonished by the scale and brutality that occurred when people used this opportunity to settle old scores, rob, rape, and destroy property.
As time pressed forward, new disputes arose, while old ones persisted. Much of the conflict in the Assam district is influenced by geopolitical factors such as the conflict in Kashmir or the refugee crisis in Myanmar. These issues influence Hindu nationalist policies and provide a path for further conflict and violence, as well as continual destruction of civil rights. Thus, it is important to analyze the origins of conflict in Kashmir and how it affects ethno-religious tensions in India.
Kashmir and Jammu have a Muslim majority population, where territorial claims extend from both Pakistan and India. For a while, this territory acted semi-autonomously under “Article 370— [which,] for the past seventy years allowed the state to make its own laws.”[9] Unfortunately, in 2019, India removed article 370, thereby revoking Kashmir and Jammu of their special status. Narendra Modi then moved paramilitary forces into this area while “detain[ing] at least two influential politicians and cut[ting] off internet access.”[10]
This move follows another aggressive move by the BJP party in 2018 when it attempted to pursue a legal path of deporting 1.9 million Muslims in the Assam district. The BJP has made illegal immigration a core issue to rally nationalist sentiment. This particularly vitriolic form of nationalism caters exclusively to majoritarian politics rather than acknowledging the existence of ethnic Indians who have followed Islam since the Mughal empire. Democracies tend to avoid mass murder or ethnic cleansing; however, majoritarian tyranny can be just as destructive as ideological authoritarianism. A constant struggle in democracy is to cultivate a societal and governmental structure that forces majority and minority parties to respect the rights of each other. If a democracy fails, one can expect violations of property rights, citizenship status, and, in extremes, deportation or mass terror. As stated earlier, both Muslims and Hindus practiced ethnic cleansing upon Indian independence.
Currently, the BJP relies heavily on using legal means to deport or cleanse an area of Muslims. Its strategy uses the National Register of Citizens, which “is a list of people who can prove they came to the state by 24 March 1971”[11] combined with the Citizen Amendment Act, which grants a path to citizenship for Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and Hindus who entered the state before December of 2014. The consequence of this nefarious combination is that “Muslims would primarily bear the punitive consequences of exclusion from the NRC which could include ‘statelessness, deportation, or prolonged detention.’”[12] The first iteration of this list excluded Bengali Hindus; however, the Bharatiya Janata Party was quick to revise this list by allowing non-Muslims to avoid detention and a path towards citizenship.
Since the implementation of the CAA and the NRC, there have been widespread protests and civil unrest. The National Commission for Minorities lists complaints received on a community and subject-based level. Its findings illuminate an increase in complaints from 2017 to 2020 from the Muslim community. In comparison to other minority religions, Muslim complaints outweigh all of the other minority communities combined. More specifically, from 2019 to 2020, the National Commission for Minorities recorded 1,233 Muslim complaints, 129 Christian, 106 Sikh, 44 Buddhist, 5 Parsi, and 51 Jain complaints. Other religious groups tallied 104 complaints.[13] The National Commission for Minorities does not specify the nature of these complaints, nor does it provide information on how these complaints have been managed. On the “Status of Complaints” page of its website, it lists the number of new complaints, along with the number of complaints disposed of, and then the number of pending complaints. Not knowing whether the root of these issues have been solved or what action was taken to resolve them, the generic term “disposed off [sic]” leaves much to be desired.
Goals and Means of the Bhartatya Party
The aspirations of the BJP are not limited; rather, its goals extend from the Assam district to India as a whole. Although the NRC targets Muslim refugees in eastern India, BJP officials have hinted at a nationwide expulsion of foreign entities. The ideological context of Hindutva nationalism “views India as a Hindu state (with its definition of Hinduism inclusive of Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs) and Islam as a foreign and invading religion.”[14] The ideological framework denies legitimacy to Muslims who have lived in India for generations or have intermarried. Any effort to expel the entire Muslim population from India would result in deporting or detaining those who have had ancestors in India for generations. Although the NRC targeting sets 1971 as its target date, “the BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) Yogi Adityanath… promised in 2005 to cleanse India of other religions, calling this the ‘century of Hindutva.’”[15] The aspirations of the BJP party were clearly articulated when “A BJP member of the UP Legislative Assembly further argued… that India will become a purely Hindu nation by 2024 and all Muslims who do not assimilate to Hindu culture will need to leave the country.”[16]
What started as a predominantly legal attack on the rights of Muslims living in India transformed into the use of violence as a means of expelling Muslims. Bharatya Janata Party members often used dehumanizing rhetoric and hate speech to incite violence from the general population. Whereas some violence was provoked without the government’s heavy hand, other cases arose directly from government-sponsored action or lack thereof. In one example, the stark difference was evident when protestors in front of Jamia Millia Islamia University suffered from “police… us[age] [of] teargas to disperse protesters at the university, [they] even enter[ed] the library and hostels, beating students and some staff.”[17] This followed a case where “the police did not take action when a government supporter shot at students protesting outside the [same] University in Delhi.”[18] The use of terror comes at the behest of BJP members, like Kapil Mishra, who in a demonstration called for the police “to ‘shoot’ the protesters, [and] posted a video in which he gave an ultimatum to the police, threatening to take the matter into his own hands if the police did not clear the roads of protesters.”[19] Much of this violence results from the ideology that emphasizes the foreign insurrection of Islam in India.
Hindutva ideology uses radical Islamic terrorism as a means to demonize the entire Muslim community and provide an impetus for reciprocal violent action. The geopolitical struggle over the special status of Jammu and Kashmir provides ample propaganda for the BJP to use. As seen recently in November of 2020, the Hindustan Times reported “it… found that terrorists were planning a ‘major attack’ on the anniversary of the 26/11 terror attack”[20] in which four terrorists were neutralized by government forces. Without question as to whether their cause is just or not, it is clear that violence is used to perpetuate more violence. To break the cycle of violence, there must be a nuanced discussion that attacks the generalization of total evil belonging to the other side. Peacekeeping must describe the history of oppression as antithetical to Indian values, be it Muslim or Hindu. Statements made by radical leaders on both sides must be undermined, like such statements where a “BJP leader described some protesters as ‘rabidly indoctrinated Islamists,’ an assertion that can lead to arbitrary arrests and terrorism allegations.”[21] The BJP uses this rhetoric as a means to pursue ethnic cleansing on the Indian peninsula.
As alluded to earlier, the long-term goal of the BJP is to cleanse India of its Muslim element by the year 2024. The dual use of terror and “a nationwide NRC, which… would be implemented before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections promised that… the government would ‘selectively throw out all infiltrators.’”[22] If the premise of re-election resides on that promise, then one must watch for an increase in state-sponsored violence towards Muslim communities in the months leading up to the election. The BJP has received international criticism for its actions; however, it claims that “immigration issues” are subject to domestic jurisdiction.
Prevention of Atrocities and Process Towards Peace
The path to peace is not without grief and strife. Trauma already exists where atrocities were committed, and this trauma has to be confronted and resolved if peace is to reach both communities. When the usage of terror tactics incited “mobs chanting nationalist slogans, armed with swords, sticks, metal pipes, and bottles filled with petrol, rampaging through several neighborhoods in northeast Delhi, killing Muslims and burning their homes, shops, mosques, and property,”[23] it becomes difficult to rectify these acts of barbarism. Currently, tensions show no sign of disbanding any time soon. However, there are promising paths that those who seek to prevent further escalation can follow.
First and foremost, one must start deconstructing Hindutva ideology and combat the notion that India must be a Hindu nation. As previously stated, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains face minimal persecution and are allowed to exist within the Hindutva paradigm. If Muslims are truly “infiltrators” and foreign agents, then why was the Taj Mahal built during the Mughal Empire by Muslims? If Islam is a foreign element, then why was the most iconic structure in India built by Muslims during a time of peaceful coexistence? Peace seekers should emphasize the communal peaceful cohabitation that took place between the Muslim and Hindu populations during some stages of the Mughal empire. Up until the rule of Aurangzeb, these two peoples meshed in a relatively peaceful manner that allowed for each to practice their own beliefs freely without facing persecution, violence, or intrusion.
Combining this argument with an alternative form of Indian nationalism could produce promising results. Thanks to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, there exists an alternative peaceful form of nationalism that can be exalted. Currently, some call Modi the “father of India,” which juxtaposes Gandhi as the “father of India.” By comparing the two leaders, one can disparage Modi because of the pure nature of Mahatma Gandhi’s movement. Whereas one group promotes violence and religious superiority, the other uses religious arguments that emphasize the connection between all religions of the world. Mahatma Gandhi studied comparative religious studies and argued “that all religions were true and yet every one of them was imperfect because they were ‘interpreted with poor intellects, sometimes with poor hearts, and more often misinterpreted.’”[24] This helps undermine Modi’s religious credibility by emphasizing that true sons and daughters of India follow Gandhi’s religious preaching. Indian nationalism has these aspects existent in society, but they need to be emphasized, argued, and heard.
Twitter and social media spread information faster and to a wider audience than newspapers have in the past. On Twitter, there was a speech by Tejasvi Surya, who is the National President of the Bharatya Janata Party Youth movement (or Yuva Morcha), in which he argued “We will not let this Islamisation happen, this is our resolve… This is the time of Hindu Hruday Samrat Narendra Modi. [Muslims] will be nothing here.”[25] This speech largely targets Asaduddin Owaisi, who is a member of the Lukh Sabha or Indian lower house, as well as belonging to the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party. This party does not support Jihadist terrorism. Regardless, Owaisi has been targeted as a separatist who is the avatar of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the nationalist who established Pakistan. In response, Kavitha Kalvakuntla (@RaoKavitha) a member of Telangana Rashtra Samithi party, responded by saying, “Hyderabadis love Biryani, we don’t care about religion.”[26] Biryani is an Indian dish brought by Muslim Mughal traders which further emphasizes the unremovable cultural ties that only occur through consensual cultural assimilation. Peacekeepers must find politicians on both sides who preach tolerance and provide a feasible counteroffer to radical groups. By discouraging terrorism and hate speech on Twitter and promoting aspects of culture that already exist, one can start to work away from violence and towards peace.
The refugee crisis in Myanmar gives reasonable doubt towards the ill intentions of the BJP, as illegal immigration is a legitimate issue for modern states. Yet, there are many ways to combat illegal immigration that fall short of outright deportation of all refugees. The Bharatya Janata Party currently uses the NRC and the CAA to oust undesirable refugees and claims that this is the best way to approach this issue. A different, humane, and ordinary policy that nations use is to set quotas and limits on how many refugees a country will accept from neighboring nations. These policies should be free from religious or ethnic discrimination and pursue equal opportunity for each refugee chosen to receive asylum benefits. To circumvent solving this driver of conflict would be detrimental to the peace process. Peacekeepers should engage local politicians on these issues and help promote this policy.
In addition, peacekeepers should emphasize the fratricidal nature of Hindutva nationalism. As alluded to, some Indians converted to Islam between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Through pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing, many ancestral Indians will be harmed, lose property, and lose their ties to the homeland. What is called Hindutva, therefore, is not Indian nationalism but a form of Hindu fascism derived from a perception of superiority, irrational xenophobia, or fear of foreign contamination. In reality, these so-called foreign elements are the opposite of what the Hindutva ideology claims them to be.
Finally, one must bring those officials who stir up hate speech for political purposes to justice and put them on trial. The problem with India’s independence is that many of the elite on both sides who incited violence then were elected into office or kept positions of power or influence. Without putting them and those who committed atrocities on trial, the scars stay open. These scars in particular have been open since the Muslim invasion and have been perpetuated by violence on both sides. A historic study incriminates both Hindus and Muslims of wrongs towards each other but also shows time periods where communal existence did not allow violence and persecution. Clearly, existence does not have to include ethnic cleansing and mass murder.
Warning signs of further escalation
War tends to expedite or hasten ethnic cleansing attempts. Whether it be war with China or war with Pakistan, both of these scenarios can fast track the expulsion and killing of Muslims. Currently, the state’s role in violence is to encourage and incite ethno-religious conflict. The scale and type of violence being committed indicate a lack of a structured state plan of exacting violent measures. If the Indian government were to use its full capabilities, then violence would be far more coherent, structured, and deadly. Yet, this does not mean that there is no state hand in this matter, as there is guilt in being silent and abetting these crimes. Being a democratic society, an event like war can provide a path for the State to play a larger role in ethnic cleansing. During war, the state can increasingly act with fewer consequences and in a planned manner, making violence far more efficient and widespread.
If war were to break out between Pakistan and India, the greater Muslim population can face immense persecution as they become more clearly defined as “enemies of the State.” Fear of insurrection, sabotage, terrorism, and other actions could offer an incentive to remove Muslims from office and further attack their communities or detain Muslims in general. An example from history is when America, a democracy bound by the rule of law and restrictions on power, still succumbed to detaining Japanese prisoners during World War II. In this case, however, these camps and restrictions resulted in small civil rights abuses and not mass murder. In a country like India where there is a majority who share a border with the adversary, one could find little moderation, influenced by the resurgence of historic hatred. In the frenzy of war, civil protections tend to fade, whereas any solution that leads to total victory preoccupies the minds of civilians and leaders. The choice to detain or expel a group of people seems easier than to debate the nuance of civil protections for a population that is viewed as foreign and capable of spying for the enemy.
War with China could remove factors that inhibit the BJP’s capability to pursue state-ordered ethnic cleansing. In this case, the dependent factor would be India’s allies, namely the United States. With President elect-Joseph Biden coming into office, it is rumored that U.S. values such as human rights may rise to the surface of the international agenda. However, this topic must be balanced by U.S. security risks, which raises into question whether the U.S. will stay silent during the ethnic cleansing of Muslims to retain a defense alliance against China. Typically, the United States jettisons idealism in times when national security is at risk. Yet, to ignore it could result in losing the moral high ground, which is an important battlespace against rising revisionist powers like China and Russia. If India feels confident that there will be little international scrutiny for its actions, then this state could pursue aggressive measures to achieve its nationalist goal.
Another event to watch attentively is the 2024 parliamentary elections. If the BJP finds itself losing popularity, then the party could amplify its measures to follow through with its campaign promise. Hindutva nationalism plays a large factor in the BJP’s electoral success. Since elections bring an upswell in human passion, a political leader can seize this fervor and use it to inflict damage on party enemies or groups of people. History has shown that elections can ignite conflict, such as when the south seceded upon Abraham Lincoln’s election, which sparked the American Civil war.
Whether it be the 2024 elections, a potential war with either Pakistan or China, peacekeepers must watch India closely. It takes one catalyst to allow greater implementation of ethnic cleansing where the State has a significant role. Even the children of a saint-like Gandhi can succumb to the worst aspects of human nature (and have). It is well-documented that humans have two faces: humans are capable of being both virtuous and malevolent.
Endnotes
[1] “South Asia: India” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 28 November.
[2] “Religions – Islam: Mughal Empire (1500s, 1600s).” BBC, BBC, 7 Sept. 2009.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Khan, Razib. “The Blood on Brown Hands Is a Legacy of All of History.” Gene Expression, WordPress, 2 Mar. 2019.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Bennett, Frederic M. “Muslim and Hindu.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 Feb. 1958.
[8] World Peace Foundation. “India: Partition.” Mass Atrocity Endings, Tufts University, 7 Aug. 2015.
[9] Maizland, Lindsay. “Kashmir: What to Know About the Disputed Region.” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, 7 Aug. 2019.
[10] Lawler, Dave. “India Leaves Kashmir in the Dark as It Erases Special Status.” Axios, 6 Aug. 2019.
[11] “Citizenship Amendment Bill: India’s New ‘Anti-Muslim’ Law Explained.” BBC News, BBC, 11 Dec. 2019.
[12] Akins, Harrison. “Legislation Factsheet: The Citizenship Amendment Act in India.” USCIRF, U.S Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2020.
[13] National Commission for Minorities, (Ministry of Minority Affairs), Government of India.
[14] Akins, Harrison. “Legislation Factsheet: The Citizenship Amendment Act in India.” USCIRF, U.S Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2020.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Bajoria, Jayshree. “‘Shoot the Traitors.’” Human Rights Watch, 16 June 2020.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Sarkar, Shankhyaneel. “Nagrota Encounter: Terrorists Were Planning Major Attack on 26/11 Anniversary.” Hindustan Times, 20 Nov. 2020.
[21] Bajoria, Jayshree. “‘Shoot the Traitors.’” Human Rights Watch, 16 June 2020.
[22] Akins, Harrison. “Legislation Factsheet: The Citizenship Amendment Act in India.” USCIRF, U.S Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2020.
[23] Bajoria, Jayshree. “‘Shoot the Traitors.’” Human Rights Watch, 16 June 2020.
[24] Nanda, B.R. “Resistance and Results.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Sept. 2020.
[25] Sudhir, Uma, and Deepshikha Ghosh. “Every Vote For Asaduddin Owaisi A Vote Against India: BJP MP Tejasvi Surya.” NDTV.com, NDTV, 23 Nov. 2020.
[26] Sajjad Ahmad Khan INC (@SajjadA06226593), 23 November, 2020.
Parker Sears is pursuing his Masterﾒs degree in Statecraft and International affairs with a specialization in Conflict Prevention. He graduated from Assumption College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Political Science and History. Parker hopes that his paper will shed light on a region of increasing geopolitical importance and will help peacekeepers prevent greater atrocities before they occur.
Published on December 23, 2020
https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2020/12/23/ethno-religious-cleansing-in-india/
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