"On Raksha bandhan — the Hindu holiday when sisters tie colourful, sacred threads on their brothers’ wrists — newspapers in Mumbai ran photographs of a slight, smiling girl with prosthetic arms tying rakhis on two wiry, young men. The girl’s name is Monika More, 16, and in January the wheels of a packed commuter train had sliced off her arms when she slipped between a platform gap. She survived because the men, brothers Nasim Chaudhary, 25, and Amjad Chaudhary, 24, jumped onto the tracks and rushed her to a hospital.
"Dharma Jagran Manch, a wing of Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh (RSS), launched a weeklong campaign from Sunday during which they will tie Rakhis to Hindus and administer them the oath to fight against ‘love jihad’, in which Hindu girls are allegedly converted to Islam or other communities for marriage. While appealing for support to stop ‘love jihad’, the manch workers will also tie Rakhis to Hindu girls, requesting them not to fell prey to such youths who lure them to convert their religion.
"In riot-hit Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, it's important to read the writing on the wall. On an old building near the railway station is scrawled, 'Dharam bechne ka paap na kare.'(Don't commit the sin of converting.) Barely a kilometre away, the portly Baba Rijakdas reiterates the warning. "Young Hindu girls get easily carried away by Muslim boys here. They don't understand they are being exploited," he claims. Rijakdas' disciples revere him for his 'expertise' in 'rescuing' Hindu women.
'“Hindu mahilaon ka apmaan, nahi sahenge, nahi sahenge, (We will not tolerate the humiliation of Hindu women)” a handful of well-dressed city dwellers who descended on Sarawa village, 60 km east of Delhi, shouted outside the tumbledown house of a 20-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and forcibly converted to Islam. Rakhi Tyagi, who led the women, said she was the Uttar Pradesh State general secretary of the Mahila Morcha, the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)...
The recent Lok Sabha polls had shown that an election could be won “without Muslim support” and it was time the minority community learnt to respect Hindu sentiments, VHP chief patron and senior RSS leader Ashok Singhal has said. Narendra Modi — an “ideal swayamsevak” — would deliver on the Hindutva agenda unlike the first NDA government, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad supremo and one of the longest serving senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders told HT in an exclusive interview. The right-wing Hindu leader, who had a front-row seat at Modi’s swearing-in, said “tables had turned”.
"In the last decade, the voices claiming Kashmir as an integral part of India have not only grown shriller, but more pervasive too. It should, however, not come as a shocker as a country that aspires to become a superpower is supposed to be more assertive in terms of wielding its authority and power in the region.
But Kashmir, even according to India’s constitution is a ‘disputed territory’ and the more than two-decade-old bloody conflict in the region has so far claimed at least 70, 000 human lives, including civilians, Kashmiri and foreign militants and government forces.
"Among the foremost grievances against Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which grants special autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir, is the impression that it prevents Indians from buying land in the state. That is not true. While the Article does give the state a "special status", it says nothing about land. As it turns out, the prohibition against outsiders buying land in Kashmir was introduced by the Dogras who bought the territory from the British in 1846 under the Treaty of Amritsar..."
"BJP leader Giriraj Singh landed in a fresh controversy today with his remarks that terrorists belong to a particular community and termed it as "naked example of pseudo secularism" when secular leaders remain silent on the issue, drawing sharp retorts from political parties..." See also Terror data give the lie to Giriraj Singh’s slur (The Hindu, 15 May 2014).
"Why is the support of upper castes for the BJP secular, but that of Muslims for any party communal?... it isn't just the Muslims who are subjected to vacuous media representations. You hear of Dalit consolidation, OBC consolidation , and, occasionally, even Jat consolidation. But you never read about upper caste consolidation, presumably because their wisdom is nonpareil, inevitably inclining them to choose the nation over their selfserving group interests. In this narrative, only upper castes make rational voting decisions...
Many myths about Muslims are circulating widely in social media as part of the attempt at increasing communal tension and polarisation. For example "The government favours Muslims and pampers them", "The Muslim population is increasing faster than the Hindu population", "Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims", "Hindus cannot buy land in Jammu and Kashmir", "Muslims are united and act together, while Hindus are divided and weak", "Hindus do not kill based on their religion.
