Somewhere along the line, much of India’s political leadership and citizenry developed an intellectually and psychologically neutered response towards excesses against Hindus.
BENGAL BURNING. AGAIN.
The scale of Bengal violence in the wake of the presidential assent to the Waqf Amendment Bill (2025), now an Act, has shocked the sensibility of the Indian nation. In scenes eerily resembling the anti-CAA protests and riots of Delhi in 2020, predominantly Muslim protestors have been rampaging throughout the state, damaging public and private properties and setting vehicles on fire, etc. The violence, according to reports, has so far claimed three lives at the time of writing for these pages.
The rioting crowds have specifically targeted Hindus, burning their homes and destroying their livelihoods. In Murshidabad, the mob hacked to death a father and son of the family. There are reports of large-scale “migration” where people are forced out of their dwellings either out of fear for safety, or their houses were razed or burned.
CONFLICT, OUTRAGE INDUSTRY, AND THE NARRATIVE OF VICTIMHOOD
The Hindu-Muslim conflicts have a long history in the Indian subcontinent. The Islamic “outrage industry” and victimhood narrative around the world are relatively newer phenomena. Somanjana Chatterjee, a researcher affiliated with the Center for Dharma Studies, GTU, Berkeley, California, and a board member of the Silicon Valley Interreligious Council, says that most modern social scientists view political considerations as the underlying motive for religious violence. However, Hindu-Muslim violence predates electoral politics in India.
While the genesis of the subcontinental Hindu-Muslim conflict lies in the idea of Islamic supremacy, both in its ideology and political power, the outrage is part of a carefully curated grievance and victimhood narrative.
“Islam traditionally characterizes Hindus as idol-worshippers and, by extension, as a threat to civic society,” said Chatterjee in an email. Muslims, unfortunately, never saw Hindu temples as “an embodiment of the cosmic energy, seat of learning, etc.” Religious persecution of Hindus by the Islamic invaders and later by Islamic rulers, whether by destroying temples, desecrating temple deities, imposing religious tax, forced and coerced conversions, or plain old genocide, came to be the order of the day.
In 1803, Banaras saw a three-day carnage (Meenakshi Jain, Flight of Deities and Rebirth of Temples; p 99) in the War of the Lat. When Hindus “tried to erect a permanent stone enclosure in place of the mud dwelling of Hanuman on the contested ground between the idgah and the Lat,” Muslim Julahas objected and destroyed the stone structure. “There were losses on both sides,” Jain notes in the book.
Subcontinental Muslims rejected the idea of living in a setup where they would be “ruled” by Hindus. This rejection resulted in the Partition of India in 1947. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the intellectual fountainhead of the “two-nation theory,” famously said that it would be impossible for “the Mohamedans and the Hindus… [to] remain equal in power.” According to Khan, they could only live together in one nation if one is “to conquer the other and thrust it down.” It was unambiguous who Khan thought would be the ruler and the ruled. “Oh! My brother Musalmans,” Khan said, “I again remind you that you have ruled nations… For seven hundred years in India, you have had Imperial sway. You know what it is to rule.” To hope that both could remain equal “is to desire the impossible and inconceivable.”
It was the outrage over a mostly obscure book, Rangeela Rasool (Tr. The Playboy Prophet), published in 1927. Ilm Deen, the son of a carpenter, had heard about a Hindu publisher, Mahashay Rajpal, who had published a “blasphemous” book on Prophet Muhammad called “Rangeela Rasool.” Another Hindu Pandit Chamupati was the author of the book. Ilm Deen was so incensed by this episode that on April 6, 1929, he purchased a dagger from the local bazaar, went straight to Rajpal’s shop, and stabbed the dagger into Rajpal’s chest. Rajpal fell to the ground and died.
In recent years, the outrage over Kamlesh Tiwari and Nupur Sharma’s “blasphemous” statements cost the former his life, while the latter had to go into hiding, à la Salman Rushdie.
Post-Independence, Indian Muslims have also developed a narrative of grievance and victimhood. Edward Said’s “Orientalism” institutionalized that narrative around the world, including in the US. We saw a glimpse of it in violent protests and rioting in Delhi in 2020 against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Muslims have had political power in the Indian subcontinent (and the world), except for the two centuries of European colonization. Muslims are also the second-largest religious majority in India and the world. Yet, they see themselves as a disadvantaged, oppressed minority.
TWO-TIER POLICING
The ongoing violence in Bengal, where the rioting mobs of Muslims have targeted Hindus, presents a complex scenario for the analysts. At the surface level, it is a clear case of the state’s political and law and order leadership failure. Suppose the Act in question was an attack on Islam and Muslims. In that case, there are states, districts, and cities in India where Muslims have significantly large populations, including the demographic majority. Yet those parts and the rest of India have remained peaceful, given that the Act is applicable across India.
If a blatantly pro-Muslim political leadership of Bengal turned a blind eye to the gravity of the situation in the wake of Waqf violence, the senior leadership of the state police also fell behind in their duties. The biased “two-tier” policing did not escape the perceptible eyes of Shirish Thorat, a former police officer and a counter-terrorist expert whose books have been adopted by OTT. “I can see the lopsided and biased policing being practiced in Bengal. It was evident even during the unrest following a gangrape and brutal murder of a Hindu doctor last year.”
The two-tier policing is now a global phenomenon in response to Islamist threats, Thorat reminded, that has now been “implemented and perfected in Europe, particularly the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Sweden.”
The plight of Hindus in Bengal amid a spate of current violence is beyond palpable. Having gone through partition three times—1905, 1947, and 1971—the Bengali Hindu story is one of profound suffering. Indigenous to the land and deeply rooted in their culture, Hindus of the larger Bengal region have suffered immensely during key moments in history.
HOW MUST HINDUS RESPOND?
Somewhere along the line, much of India’s political leadership and citizenry developed an intellectually and psychologically neutered response towards excesses against Hindus. Indian politicians, scholars, and intellectuals have nearly wiped history clean of the memories of genocide, destruction, desecration, and persecution out of sheer ideological convenience and political imperative. At the same time, they have internalized, to quote Arvind Sharma, a professor of Comparative Religion, Bhakti (piety) over Shakti (power), and Sahishnuta (compassion) over Jishnuta (victory).
“Hindus have been made to develop a fatalistic outlook—a stance that runs counter to Hindu teachings.” Chatterjee points to the deliberate misquoting of the meaning of Ahiṃsā by Indian elites to drive this point. Ahiṃsā is commonly interpreted in English as “non-violence.” But the Sanskrit root of Ahiṃsā, √hiṃs, according to Pāṇini’s grammar, explains Chatterjee, is not a noun but a verb, meaning to injure.
“So, etymologically, Ahiṃsā is an active attitude of non-injury—not to voluntarily hurt others. Behaviourally, this attitude complements the act of defence—Rakṣā, the protection of Self, of the weak, of women and children, of ancestral heritage, of traditions, and of the sustainability of the world. Hindus, sadly, have forgotten this.” Chatterjee laments.
Throughout history, Hindus have mounted an intellectual and martial defence of Dharma.
The Prithvi Sukta mantra (14) of the Atharvaveda offers an exciting insight into the inner workings of the Hindu Dharma. The mantra calls upon Mother Earth to subdue those threatening us with “his mind or weapons.” It is perhaps time for the Hindus to sharpen their martial alongside intellectual skills in defence of Dharma.
* Avatans Kumar is a Chicago-based award-winning columnist.