Violations of Freedom of Religion

IPT 2.2 | April 2023 | Section 5

In the period under review, there were multiple instances of state actors and policies violating the freedom of religion of Muslims in the country. Some instances are shared below: 

Christian places of worship also continue to be targeted by Hindutva groups using the false ‘anti-conversion; rhetoric:

On January 6th, Pune Police in Maharashtra imposed Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which puts significant limits on public gatherings, in a response to Hindutva groups protesting against the observance of Urs, a Muslim Sufi ceremony. This also effectively stopped the Urs from being observed at the historic Lohagad Fort, which was the site of the protests. 

In Karnataka in January, a BJP politician and former state legislator demanded that the municipality take action against a residential property that had recently been donated to the state Waqf board, being used for religious purposes. The civic authorities served a notice to the Waqf board based on the complaint by the BJP leader Sanjay Patil, along with Hindutva groups. 

On March 17th in Karnataka, Shivamogga police booked a preventive arrest case against a Muslim man for reciting the Azaan (Muslim call for prayer) during a protest. The protest was against comments made by BJP Member of Karnataka Legislative Assembly K.S. Eshwarappa who had allegedly commented that loudspeakers used for Azaan disturb people.  

February 14: This was part of an eviction drive against 2500 families for allegedly illegally occupying forest land. Most of the people who live in the area are Bengali Muslims who are primarily engaged in cultivation.

In February, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs posted notices outside 123 properties of the Delhi Waqf Board, including mosques, dargahs (shrines), cemetery, denotifying them as the Board’s property. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad had approached the court to revoke the Wakf Board’s right to this property as they had been provided by the previous Congress government at the centre.  

On February 14th, police officials stood by as a mob of Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal members vandalised an under-construction mosque in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, claiming it was illegal.  

A Hindutva mob burst firecrackers at their aggressive gathering at the gates of Hazrat Malik Rehan Dargah (a Muslim shrine) in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, on the occasion of the Hindu Mahashivratri festival in February. videos taken by members of the mob show them lighting the crackers, celebrating and cheering ‘Jai Shri Ram’ (Glory to Lord Ram), whilst men in police uniform stand by outside the dargah, doing little to prevent it.  

In March, a police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district stopped Muslim men from offering Taraweeh (a prayer offered during Ramadan) within their own premises  after a group of Rashtriya Bajrang Dal led by its state president Rohan Saxena barged into the godown of a Muslim man named Zakir Hussain in Lajpat Nagar in Katghar police station area, and complained to the police that the men were conducting their religious rituals. The police asked the Muslim men to only use mosques for prayers.  

Taking a cue from past state-led demolition drives, private Hindu actors have also begun targeting minorities with demolitions and evictions. On March 2nd, Radha Semwal Dhoni and other Hinduvta sympathisers demolished a Muslim shrine (Mazar) in the state of Uttarakhand, alleging that it was built on state land. A video of the two men breaking the shrine was taken by the perpetrators and shared on Dhoni’s Facebook page. On February 1st, she was featured in another video seen hurling abuses and attacking Christians, accusing them of religious conversion, assaulting and threatening them. Videos of such purported vigilantes are freely circulated on social media with neither the Indian government nor the media companies protecting the rights of minorities.  

On March 26th, Zakir Sayyed Khaja, an Imam at a mosque in Maharashtra’s Jalna district was beaten up and his beard cut off for refusing to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Khaja says that he was sitting in a mosque at Anwar village, when a group of unidentified men entered the mosque and assaulted him. They forced him to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ (Hail Lord Ram) and when he refused to do so, took him outside the mosque where he was beaten and his beard was shaved off. While the police have registered a case against the unidentified perpetrators, the complaint includes offences under Sections 452 (trespassing after preparation for hurt, assault), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and 34 (criminal act by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). However, despite the crime being motivated by hate and bias against the Imam’s faith, sections of the law pertaining to acts outraging religious feelings such as Section 295 have not been invoked.  

In March, Muslim residents of a building society in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, were stopped by other residents of the building from offering their Taraweeh prayers, which are evening prayers during the month of Ramadan. The residents complained against the Muslims offering the prayers peacefully in the basement of a building, and police were called. Eventually the Muslim residents decided to not go ahead with the prayers to assuage the majority’s concerns. A similar protest against Muslim residents offering namaz also took place in a building society in neighbouring Noida, which falls under the same Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the state. Residential and housing societies in Noida and Greater Noida usually cater to middle and upper middle classes, and their common spaces are used for religious functions. Some also have make shift Hindu temples for residents to use. Such attacks by members of the public against Muslims conducting their religious rites without  disturbance to other residents, demonstrates how Islamophobia has vitiated the country’s civic space. In none of the incidents reported did the authorities try to negotiate to protect minorities’ rights to conduct peaceful prayers.     

On January 2nd, violent attacks targeting the Christian community in Narayanpur, Chhatisgarh, erupted following weeks of mobilisation against the community continued. A church along with statues of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary inside, was vandalised after a protest organised by a group of tribals, led by Hindu groups, over alleged ‘forced conversion’ of members of tribal community into Christianity, turned violent. According to Church authorities, there had been several clashes in the past couple of months, especially in the villages, between Hindu tribals and Christians. Roop Sai Salam, the BJP District President for Narayanpur, along with former BJP MLA Bhojraj Nag, have been arrested for inciting the violence.    

On January 7th, crosses put atop a graveyard at a cemetery attached to St. Michael’s Church in Mumbai, Maharashtra, were vandalised.  

In February, a church in Madhya Pradesh’s Narmadapuram district was torched and vandalised, with the word ‘Ram’ written on a wall inside. Religious texts and other church property were also destroyed in an attack by two Hindu men allegedly in retaliation for a controversy surrounding the Ramcharitramanas, a poem based on the Hindu text of Ramayana. 

On February 19th, a group of Christian worshippers were assaulted and a church vandalised by Bajrang Dal activists, in Uttar Pradesh’s Siddharthnagar district. 

On March 1st, a Christian book stall at New Delhi World Book Fair was attacked by a group of Hindutva activists. The Book Fair hosts stalls by various religious groups, however, the Christian stall was attacked with the perpetrators raising slogans of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ and verbally assaulting the stall’s volunteers to stop converting people to Christianity. 

As recorded in earlier IPT editions, Hindutva groups continue to file petitions in various courts against mosques as purportedly built upon historic Hindu temples. Senior BJP leaders such as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath have added to this narrative by calling for a campaign to restore places of worship desecrated in the past. Some notable cases highlighting this FoRB violation are:

In January, the Lucknow Development Authority, opened an investigation into the Shivalaya Mosque in Uttar Pradesh, after the Hindu Mahasabha complained that it had been built over a Hindu temple 

In April 2022, Malali Mosque in Karnataka was demolished, and since then the site is being disputed by Hindutva groups as a former temple site. The case is currently in court, however, on 16th March, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Hindutva groups along with BJP MLA Bharath Shetty performed a religious ritual (Yagna) on the land which the Muslim Waqf board claims is its property.   

On January 9th, the Uttar Pradesh administration demolished a 16th century mosque, the Shahi Masjid in Prayagraj. According to the mosque’s Imam, a case considering the demolition of the mosque was listed to be heard in a lower court on 16th January. However, the administration demolished the mosque, purportedly to widen the road, before the matter could be considered further by the Court. 

On February 22nd, Mohammad Babar (28) was lynched to death in Bihar’s Gaya district. Two other Muslim men, Sajid and Rakhmuddeen, were also assaulted and left in critical condition. According to a local witness, the three men were apprehended by villagers stopped at a small bridge near Diha village and accused of theft while they were returning home from a feast in another village.  It is being alleged by the villagers that the men were carrying weapons. They were later handed over to police, who took them to the hospital. However, Babar was  aged 28, died as a result of his injuries.   

In February, electricity to the Shahi Idgah mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district was disconnected and a police complaint filed against it on allegations of having an illegal electricity connection. The mosque is in a legal battle with the Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi Trust, and the action against it was taken on the complaint of the Trust.

Besides mosques, historic sites and private properties owned by Muslims are also becoming targets of these attacks. In Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district, a historic residence  owned by a Muslim family has become the focus of a campaign by a newly created Hindutva outfit ‘Manhar Kheda Durg Kalyan Samiti’ to rename the fort and hand it over to the Archaeological Survey of India, alleging that it was owned by a Hindu king, and usurped by the ancestors of the current Muslim owners.