Anti-Muslims laws provoke bloodshed in Delhi as Muslims fear for their lives

Reports of genocide, state-sanctioned violence and ‘n***** hunting’ are not what you would expect to happen in the 21st century, let alone at the beginning of this month.

On the night of 23 February, targeted violence of anti-Muslim brutality by Hindu mobs rioted throughout Delhi, resulting in a relentless four-day long rampage. Hindu mobs raged across India’s capital city setting mosques alight, lynching and burning alive Muslims, destroying property and businesses owned by the Muslim community and even sexual assault. Imran Khan from north-east Delhi stated, “some of them forced me to pull down my trousers. They started beating me violently as soon as they became sure that I was Muslim,” after attempting to walk home from work on the Monday. Delhi police have been accused by locals of encouraging, enabling and even joining in with the Hindu mobs and the destruction of Muslim property.

Countless murderous reports were being circulated on WhatsApp as the violence broke out, which the police and local legislators were quick to dismiss. To conceal the truths of the anti-Muslim tumult further, Indian journalists were threatened, attacked and even shot at to keep them from documenting the violence. The majority of journalists were forced to leave the commotion if they could not provide proof of Hindu religion.

Indian authorities are yet to provide an accurate account of all the damages made and what exactly started the four-day clash that left hundreds wounded and 47 people dead, however tensions between Hindus and Muslims have been circulating for months now after the BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party’s) new citizenship law that was passed in December. The new citizenship law, or CAA, allows undocumented migrants from India’s neighbouring countries to seek citizenship in India, except if they are Muslim. The CAA fast-tracks India citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and Jains who are travelling from their Muslim-majority neighbours, mainly Pakistan and Afghanistan, causing followers of Islam to be unfairly disadvantaged when seeking to immigrate to India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed the CAA as he believed it was a “noble effort to welcome Hindus who are oppressed by Muslim-majority countries”. After the law was enlisted, anti-CAA protests broke out in almost every major Indian city over the past three months and show no sign of subsiding. Delhi’s four-day assault is thought to be an extremist retaliation to these protests by devote followers and believers of the Bharatiya Janata Party and their new chauvinist laws.

The CAA has been compared to US President Donald Trump’s travel ban that has resulted in a decline of immigrant visas issued for the country of Iran, suggesting that the travel ban was effectively a ‘Muslim ban’ disguised as immigration. Coincidentally, Trump’s recent visit to Delhi failed to acknowledge the violence and brutality occurring just miles away from where he visited the Taj Mahal. And in Gujarat, where Trump and President Modi attended a BJP rally together, a wall was constructed by the Indian government to hide slums and protests from America’s view.

With anti-religious and prejudice laws and legislation's on the rise throughout the South and the West, many fear that authoritarian capitalism is also increasing within politics. Tactics of Muslim fear-mongering is nothing new to Western media, but what will it take for us to learn that our xenophobic perceptions of Muslims do not just fill words on a page or a headline, but actually fuel the hatred and murder of innocent human beings.