'The assault on Dalit gender equality activist Bindu Ammini, by a fervent Ayyappa devotee, reveals the fragility of the Hindu nationalist male ego and a deals a chink to the Hindutva armour... Like other nativist and anti-pluralist projects, Hindutva is premised upon the restoration of a primeval order that involves the dominance of man over woman, father over son, savarna over avarna, avarna over Dalit, fair skin over dark, state over subjects, religion over law, priest over devotee, teacher over student.
'...A little more than a month after the horrific double murder of the Dalit father and son, their family members face more threats of violent action. While the case is pending in the courts, the accused and the victims’ families in the village of Shirol in Mudhol taluk, Bagalkot district, are forced to live within spitting distance of each other. The accused meanwhile are out on anticipatory bail... Angered that they were being instructed by a lower caste man, a group of men allegedly came to their house that evening, beat up both men and women of the family and destroyed their things.
'The rampant issue of mob lynchings is absent from electoral campaigns of political parties in poll-bound Jharkhand – a state that has of late become infamous for the violence of rampaging mob. The state has witnessed 22 such killings between March 18, 2016 and September 22, 2019, for alleged smuggling or slaughtering of cows and over child-lifting rumours. It is also of concern that barring a few incidents of mob lynching, most incidents have occurred in remote rural or small town areas.
[A profile of Delhi based lawyer and prolific social media hate-monger, Prashant Patel Umrao, admirer of Godse and Hitler. He has on multiple occasions called for genocide against Muslims with tweets like "Each and every Muslim has to be butchered. Every mosque has to be destroyed". Unsurprisingly, he has friends in the BJP rushing to his defense.]
'The Congress government in Madhya Pradesh has released funds worth Rs 7 crore for the development of the much-hyped ‘Ram Van Gaman Path’ in the state after the Supreme Court verdict cleared the path for a Ram temple in Ayodhya on November 9. The state government’s move is being perceived as the ruling party’s attempt to woo Hindu voters after the announcement of construction of 1,000 cowsheds, hike in honorarium of priests, priest welfare fund, revamp of Ujjain’s Mahakal temple and a separate trust for temples and rivers.
'...In their book ‘Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India’ published in 2018, political scientists Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma demonstrated that Indian political parties and voters are strongly and consistently ideological. As part of the book’s quantitative work, they constructed an index of “the politics of recognition”, which looked at voter responses to questions relating to key issues of identity in successive rounds of post-election National Election Studies conducted by the Lokniti programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).
'On November 10, a day after the Babri Masjid verdict was pronounced, the topic #SuspendMadhuKishwar started trending on Twitter in India in response to the inflammatory tweet posted by Madhu Kishwar, which has now been removed by Twitter, presumably after many users reported the tweet.
The Supreme Court judgment on Babri Mosque-Ram Janmbhumi dispute gave the verdict that the whole land where the mosque stood from 1528 to 6th December 1992 be given to the ‘Hindu Side’, Ram Janmbhoomi Nyas, set up by VHP. Just to recall it was demolished in broad day light by the RSS combine led by Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati on that day. As per verdict Government should make a trust which should supervise the temple construction and Muslims, Sunni Waqf Board, should be given five acres of land in a prominent site in Ayodhya.
'Like many Indians, I was glued to the television set on Saturday, awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision about the site of the Babri Masjid, an important mosque and monument of faith for Indian Muslims demolished in 1992 by right-wing Hindu nationalists. The court delivered a huge victory for the nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by awarding the land at the heart of the clash to a Hindu litigant over Muslim objections. I watched the verdict in Washington with a Muslim family from India who had migrated to the United States in 1993.
'...Last week, a UK support group for the BJP, India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, said it was campaigning for the Tories in 48 marginal seats. It also emerged that WhatsApp messages were circulating among British Hindus urging them to vote against Labour, accusing it of being “anti-India”, raising fears that tensions are being stoked ahead of the election. But when the Guardian visited the north-west London suburb of Harrow on Monday, home to the highest density of Gujarati Hindus in the UK, people criticised the BJP’s involvement.
