As the events of Ram Navami 2023 mirror the synchronised attacks of April 2022 on Muslim neighbourhoods, Hindu festivities appear inextricably linked to brutal oppression.
In West Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, from March 30 to April 1, large mobs of so-called Ram worshippers took to the streets with swords and firearms, raising genocidal slogans, setting fire to Muslims’ properties and places of worship, and proclaiming India’s status as a Hindu rashtra. The devastation left several people injured and three dead in Dalkhola, West Bengal; Bihar Sharif, Bihar; and Aurangabad, Maharashtra.
In West Bengal, where the RSS and its affiliates planned 2,000 Ram Navami processions, Howrah and Dalkhola saw major violence. Disturbing reports from Howrah describe a huge armed mob vandalising and setting afire shops, homes and vehicles in a predominantly Muslim basti.
Muslim residents of Bihar Sharif and Sasaram in Bihar suffered perhaps the worst Ram Navami violence this year. Homes, shops, vehicles and even a graveyard were set on fire. An armed mob vandalised and threw petrol bombs into the Murarpur mosque and Madrasa Azizia and its 22 classrooms – a 110-year-old library established by Bibi Sogra and housing 4,500 books was reduced to ashes.
Also read: What Explains the Scale of Communal Violence in Bihar on Ram Navami?
Similar processions in Vadodara, Gujarat – routed through Muslim neighbourhoods – triggered violence in Fatehpura and Kumbharwada. In Panjrigar, Fatehpura, an armed procession halted near Ibadatgaah while the residents were away for namaz. The mob played loud music and raised incendiary slogans, eventually vandalising vehicles, mosques and shrines. VHP leaders threatened to “burn down Vadodara and repeat 2002” if any of their group members were arrested. Meanwhile, state functionaries announced intent to carry out “bulldozer action” against the accused, all of whom were Muslim.
Aurangabad, Malad, and Jalgaon in Maharashtra saw processions targeting mosques. In Aurangabad, a mob of 500 hurled stones and petrol bombs, torching about 13 vehicles. Shaikh Moniruddin, 45, who died there was bizarrely included by police in a list of rioters named in an FIR.
BJP MLAs and ministers were often participants, even inciting violence. A violent flag procession in Munger, Bihar, was allegedly led by Pranav Kumar, MLA. T Raja Singh, a BJP MLA, joined a Ram Navami yatra carrying portraits of Nathuram Godse in Hyderabad, Telangana; he made genocidal speeches and led a collective oath to build a Hindu Rashtra, calling for violence (“you are half cut (circumcised), we will cut you fully”) and restrictions on the voting rights of Muslims. In the days before Ram Navami, Raja Singh had spoken similarly at major Hindutva rallies, catalysing vandalism by his followers – including in Aurangabad, in the presence of Maharashtra cabinet ministers.
Police largely aided the Hindutva groups, arresting primarily Muslims and harassing women while conducting raids in Muslim localities.
In parallel, frenzied mobs have attacked numerous Muslims in the last few days. In Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, a youth was brutally attacked with a knife by three people only because he was a Muslim. Jharkhand’s Hazaribag and Dhanbad saw incidents of Muslim men being brutally assaulted by Hindu mobs and framed for purported crimes of cattle theft/slaughter. In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, a Hindu mob “celebrating” Ram Navami in front of a mosque assaulted a Muslim woman and a young boy.
Processions in Karnataka’s Hassan, UP’s Lucknow, and several districts of Jharkhand also instigated violence and disruption using the same chronology of events. In J&K, a territory being materially and culturally reshaped to suit Hindu nationalist fantasy, Bajrang Dal extremists were out in the streets calling for a Hindu Rashtra and Ram Rajya. In Khargone, Madhya Pradesh, where Muslim residents have barely begun to rebuild their lives after the 2022 Ram Navami violence, “Jai Hindu Rashtra” banners appeared in the areas targeted last April.
Sacred sites vandalised on Ram Navami in the presence of police included Dargah Haji Abdulreham Malang Shah in Nagpur, Hazrat Kale Khan’s dargah in Khargone, and the mosque walls outside Jama Masjid in Mathura.
The March-April period, religiously significant for many communities, has become crucial to Hindutva’s socio-spatial agendas. Any visible expressions of Islam – prayer congregations or loudspeakers for azaan – are met with violent retaliation, evidenced by umpteen reports this Ramzan across India.
Also read: Defaming Hinduism Through Vandalism
Meanwhile, Hindu festivities celebrate the destruction of religious freedom. Ram Navami 2023 has memorialised the 2022 punitive demolition drives, bulldozers now being part of the processions in West Bengal and Bihar – combining religious iconography with a symbol that merges a vengeful State and the Hindu Rashtra itself, where construction is always subordinate to demolition.
The Hinduisation of public space is not abstract. It happens cruelly through particular forms – sacred sites, intimate localities, processions. Communal violence has long been caused by weaponising religious processions, and now the Ram Navami procession cannot be isolated from the role processions play in the Sangh Parivar’s political imagination. The route is framed according to local geographies of Muslim neighbourhoods, mosques and madrasas to ensure confrontation, timed to coincide with prayers or breaking of fasts. A strategy that is now being mapped onto other local contexts, as in Nepal this year. These confrontations culminate in arson at mosques and libraries, and destruction of historical structures, annihilating a sense of social space that cannot easily be resurrected. The material loss of home, livelihood and security is immeasurable, pushing more Muslim families into precarity.
Shambhavi Madan researches and writes on citizenship, urbanisation and technology, and also works with Galileo Ideas.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.