'The festival of colors, Holi is here and soon all over one message is set to boom across – ‘Bura na maano, Holi hai (It’s Holi, take no offense).” However, we have been slow to realize what a travesty of consent the above slogan is. Starting by being normalized through Bollywood, the idea of a woman’s consent washed off faster that the color on her. From then to now has come such a time that this festival is now been given a communal colour by the right-wing saffron brigade. We tell you why the celebration of Holi in its current form is a threat to women throughout India...'
'Four images have been shared hundreds of times in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts alongside a claim that they show a Muslim restaurant owner in the Indian city of Coimbatore mixing impotency pills in biryani before serving it to non-Muslim customers. The claim is false; the photos were taken from online sources unrelated to the restaurant; police in Coimbatore said there was “no truth” in the claim...'
'Joe Biden's presidential campaign has appointed a former aide to Hillary Clinton as senior advisor on Muslim American engagement following revelations that his predecessor has close ties to India's right-wing Hindu government. The appointment of Farooq Mitha, a longtime Biden supporter and former Muslim advisor to the Clinton campaign in 2016, comes after weeks of pressure to remove Amit Jani as coordinator given his strong ties with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party...'
'On March 6, 2020 several right-wing Twitter users in India tweeted screenshots of a tweet that called for 'butchering Hindus', from an account of an individual who claimed to be a correspondent with Al Jazeera and also claimed to have worked with The Wire, in the past. BOOM investigated the claim and found the account to be spurious with both organisations outrightly rejecting the claim that the person behind the account was in any way connected to them...'
'In a bizarre statement, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and parliamentarian Ramesh Bidhuri has said that using “namaste” as a greeting prevents contamination from the Covid-19, but using “adaab” does not. “Greeting people with a namaskaar is India’s heritage,” Bidhuri told ABP News. “Experts have suggested it should be used as a greeting to prevent contact in order to avoid the coronavirus, but not adaab, because it directs the rays of the air into the mouth.”'
'...On the night of February 25, the mob that attacked her family had not only come armed with sticks and rods but also with acid that left her 52-year-old husband, Mohammad Wakeel, with severe burns on the face and body. “We were on the terrace as stones were being pelted from the streets. Our house was also set on fire. There was so much smoke that we could not see when acid was thrown at us,” said Mumtaz...'
'Calling suspended AAP councillor, Tahir Hussain a "terrorist", BJP MLA Sangeet Som has said that people like Hussain "should be shot dead publicly". "Aise log (Tahir Hussain) aatankwadi hai, aise logon ko chaurahe par khada karke goli maar deni chahiye (Tahir Hussain is a terrorist. He should be made to stand on a crossing and shot dead)," Som told reporters on Thursday...'
'About 20 kilometers east from Delhi’s border with Uttar Pradesh lies Dasna, a small town in Ghaziabad. Muslims are a majority in Dasna but it is also home to one of the shrillest voices in the Hindutva ecosystem - Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati. The chief priest of Devi Mandir at Dasna, Narsinghanand is also the leader of a Hindutva organisation called Hindu Swabhiman and president of the Akhil Bharatiya Sant Parishad... On number of occasions, his name has come up in connection with raising the communal tensions in western Uttar Pradesh, including the areas adjoining Delhi.
'A tweet by Tulsi Gabbard, the only woman remaining in the US presidential race, about experiencing “Hinduphobia” in the US has added fuel to escalating communal tensions in India. “Unfortunately, Hinduphobia is very real,” Gabbard wrote, “I've experienced it directly in each of my campaigns for Congress & in this presidential race."...'
'On February 27, Hindu nationalist blog OpIndia published a “ground report” on the riots in North East Delhi, claiming that a temple was “forcibly occupied” and “attacked” by “frenzied Islamist fundamentalists”. The article was shared by BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya, and retweeted by the Twitter handle of BJP Assam. R Jagannathan, the editorial director of Swarajya, also retweeted the piece. Newslaundry hit the ground to verify the claims made in the report, and they turned out to be false...'
