communal myths

A Cobrapost and Gulail investigation reveals how the RSS–VHP–BJP combine and their splinter groups use violence, intimidation, emotional blackmail, duplicity and drugs to split up Hindu–Muslim married couples. These organisations claim Muslim men entice and marry Hindu girls in the name of “love jihad”. The groups target not only Hindu girls and women who marry outside their religion, as it is commonly believed, but also their Muslim or Christian partners. The investigation reveals that there is a systematic effort towards using love jihad to polarise communities along communal lines.

"Mohammed Afsar and his family were fast asleep on Friday night, when at 2 a.m. three people raided their shanty in Okhla’s Joga Bai Extension and asked for identification. Two women and a man, armed with lathis, had landed at 40-year-old Afsar’s place looking for ‘illegal Bangladeshis’. “I kept telling them I hadn’t done anything while they ransacked my home,” said the rickshaw-puller. “I showed them my voter card and my Aadhar card, but they kept saying that I was an illegal migrant from Bangladesh who was here to explode a bomb,” he said.

"The fragile and unstable peace in Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) of Assam has once again been ruptured. The recent massacre of Muslims of East Bengali descent in Kokrajhar and Baksa districts of BTAD on 1st and 2nd May has already taken toll on 46 lives; with many people still missing, the dead count might go up.

'The much-awaited census data on the population of religious groups is out and the good news is that , contrary to gleeful speculation in the usually suspect circles, it doesn’t bear out apocalyptic theories about a Muslim population “bomb” waiting to go off that Hindus must counter by producing more children. Behind the headline that Muslim population grew by 24 per cent in the decade 2001-2011, the real story is that there was a marked decline in the rate of growth over the previous decade.