Flare-up of communal tensions in Leicester amid Hindu supremacist chants

On Wednesday 17th April, which was the Hindu celebration day of Ram Navami, a crowd of people gathered on a street in Leicester carrying saffron flags and chanting incendiary phrases that evoke violence against Muslims and Muslim culture in India.  This is shocking and a manipulation of our Hindu way of life, which is grounded in the timeless values of shanti (peace), nyaya (justice), and satya (truth).  But sadly this event has precedent.

In 2022 Leicester saw communal unrest that was uncharacteristic of the city, but not totally unexpected in hindsight.  Looking back now it’s clear to see that malicious actors were stirring up trouble there that would boil up sooner or later.

Since the 2022 Leicester unrest, not much has been done to address the situation there in a meaningful way.  In fact, there hasn’t been much mainstream attention on the issue, beyond cursory narratives of Indians and Pakistanis going at it again due to their love for, and competitiveness in, cricket.

We are several inquiries in – some completed, others abandoned; some in good faith, others tendentious.  And before we have had the time to process the results of their findings, we have witnessed another outpouring of Hindutva hate in Leicester.

Ram Navami marks the birth of the Hindu deity Rama.  This calendar event has been highly politicised, especially since the Ram Mandir inauguration of 22nd January and the build up to the national elections in India now underway.  But sadly, on top of the joyous, peaceful festivities that would have been taking place on Ram Navami, a large, hateful manifestation of Hindu supremacy was documented as well.

A tweet from the UK-Indian Muslim Council (UK-IMC) shows a video of what it describes as a ‘Hindutva mob chant[ing] “Ayodhya was just a glimpse, Kashi and Mathura are left. O Lord Krishna, we will come and build the temple right there for you. We are Hindu, and Hindu rashtra is ours.”’  This horrifically refers to the aforementioned Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, India, which was consecrated personally by Prime Minister Modi earlier this year, having been built on top of the ruins of a mosque that was destroyed by a Hindutva mob in 1992.  The chant declares the desire of many on the Hindu far-right to repeat their destructive assault in other areas.

The crowd can also be heard chanting “Jai Shri Ram” (meaning “Hail Lord Ram”) a phrase that has become something of a dog whistle, to put it mildly, if not a phrase that Hindu lynch mobs have turned into an outright murder cry.  This chant, ‘synonymous with Hindu nationalist violence in India’, was also present in the Leicester Unrest of 2022, presenting a sinister parallel that we can only hope does not develop further.

Hindutva Watch, which describes itself as ‘a media and research initiative committed to documenting hate crimes and hate speech targeting India’s religious minorities and marginalized groups, including Dalits’, also tweeted about this event from 17th April.

In light of India’s general election, the biggest election in human history, in which voting started on 19th April, tensions are predictably higher than they usually are, even in Modi’s India.  But this affects the global Indian diaspora, not just the domestic population.

In the UK, these developments are pervasive.  A report by the Bridge Initiative, a research project spearheaded by Georgetown University, concluded that tensions in the UK have been ‘inflamed’ by outside voices that work through a ‘digital ecosystem’.

This is perhaps clearest in Leicester, which has so far taken the brunt of Indian-origin communal tensions.  Leicester has been upheld as a model of multiculturalism for some decades; many were shocked to see the violence that broke out there in 2022 and we are shocked now to see the chanting that took place in April.

Feeding into these events are years of work by ‘thousands’ of Hindu supremacists, using social media to spread mis- and dis-information.  They disguise their efforts by putting out Islamophobic tropes that play on the prejudices of many within South Asian and other communities in the UK.

We must stop hate from proliferating online before it spills out onto the streets.  For this reason and more, a collective of activists and organisations protested on Tuesday 16th April against Meta’s (formerly Facebook) complicity in hate speech that is having a particularly deadly effect in India.

It’s not just Leicester that sees this kind of activity.  In London on Sunday 17th March, over 250 cars travelled from Northolt to Neasden, ending at the BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir.  This large car rally was intended to proclaim ‘unwavering support’ for prime minister Modi and the ruling BJP party ahead of India’s general election.  Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East who is no stranger to courting the Hindu far-right, is reported to have been in attendance too.

On Sunday 28 April, a crowd of people described as a “Flash Mob” took part in a “Run for Modi” in Westminster, London.  This event may have been first documented in this tweet, and was later picked up by Asian News International.  The crowd was openly promoting the BJP right in front of parliament – a clear-as-day sign that our government has failed to take this issue seriously.

The issue obviously is not that people are assembled or engaged in public action – that freedom ought to be welcomed.  But this public action points to our government’s failure to deal with Hindu nationalism head-on.  If our political representatives were having the right kind of public conversations about the BJP’s flagrant, systematic human rights abuses, then we might expect to find more awareness of these issues in our society and to find fewer elements actively promoting them.

It’s also worth pointing out that both of these events – the car rally from Northolt to Neasden and the Run for Modi in Westminster – were arranged by one group, the Overseas Friends of BJP UK.  This organised pro-BJP presence in the UK is also evidenced by the fact that in January the office of the Mayor of London referred me to the Hindu supremacist Hindu Council UK, an influential British organisation linked to the ‘fascistic’ Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The organisation that I represent, Hindus for Human Rights UK, is trying to redress this hate politics.  We tweeted a response to the events of Ram Navami 2024.  This outlined our outrage, as Hindu Brits, at the chanting that took place, which does not happen in our name.  I also expressed my sadness and anger at the Run for Modi in Westminster, calling on the government to address Hindu supremacy.

The results of a landmark survey done by our friends at the Platform for Indian Democracy were published exclusively by Channel 4 on 18th April.  Only 35% of Brits of Indian descent think favourably of Modi, with 52% explicitly saying they think of Modi unfavourably.

But religion influences people’s feelings about Modi.  57% of Hindu Brits think of Modi favourably, as opposed to just 19% of non-Hindus.  So, as Brits of Indian descent, we are well within our rights to say that Hindutva and all its hateful manifestations do not reflect us.  And as Hindu Brits we say the same, posing a challenge to the 57% who currently support Modi and the majoritarian Hindu politics that he spearheads.

We reject and are committed to ending the hostile environment that the behaviour and ideology described in this piece create for others, especially those from Muslim communities.

This does not reflect us Hindu Brits or our way of life.  In the name of our beloved tradition we declare: vasudhaiva kutumbakam – the world is one family.

—Rajiv Sinha, HfHR-UK