India: Between December 17 and 19, a ‘religious parliament’ (Dharma Sansad) was organised and attended by major religious leaders, right-wing activists, hardline extremists, Hindutva organisation and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay and BJP Mahila Morcha leader Udita Tyagi,
For three days, hate speech and violence against Muslims was propagated setting a new benchmark of hate speech in the country.
Prabodhanand Giri, President of the Hindu Raksha Sena, a right-wing organisation based out of Uttarakhand said “like Myanmar, the police here, the politicians here, the army and every Hindu must pick up weapons and we will have to conduct this cleanliness drive (safai abhiyan). There is no solution apart from this.”
The statements calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide are particularly alarming given Prabodhanand’s connections with the BJP.
Swami Prabodhanand Giri with Yogi Adityanath. Photo: Facebook
Prabodhanand’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is not a recent event. In 2017, he issued a widely reported statement calling for Hindus to have eight children for the purposes of contributing “towards conserving, preserving and protecting Hindutva and the society.”
Cover Photo of Swami Prabodhanand Giri on Facebook
“We have to make preparations and I’ll tell you what preparations those are. I will make myself clear, this is the solution, and if you follow this solution, then the path is made for you,” he said at the conclave.
‘In Myanmar, Hindus were being chased away. The politicians, government and police were just standing and watching. They started by killing them by cutting their necks, and not only this, but they began to cut them in the streets and eat them. The people watching thought we are going to die, we are not going to live.”
“This is our state now. You have seen this at the Delhi border, they killed Hindus and hung them. There is no more time, the case now is that either you prepare to die now, or get ready to kill, there’s no other way.”
Moreover, Sadhvi Annapurna alias Pooja Shakun, General Secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha gave a call to arms and incitement for genocide- a direct call for the mass murder of Muslims.
“Nothing is possible without weapons. If you want to eliminate their population then kill them. Be ready to kill and be ready to go to jail. Even if 100 of us are ready to kill 20 lakhs of them (Muslims), then we will be victorious, and go to jail… Like [Nathuram] Godse, I am ready to be maligned, but I will pick up arms to defend my Hindutva from every demon who is a threat to my religion,” she said.
“Members of the Muslim community are creating a ruckus here, spreading non-vegetarianism, throwing meat and cow meat in the Ganga to defile it (sic). If we don’t take note, then it will become Kashmir. There should be one state for Hindus at least. If a title suit on the lines of Ayodhya would be fought for Uttarakhand, Hindus will win it, another religious leader Swami Anandswaroop said,
“The decision of this Dharma Sansad would be a word of God and the government will have to listen to it,” he said. “If it won’t, then we would wage a war that would be more gruesome than the revolt of 1857,” he said during the event,
He went on to explain through personal examples how Hindus should deal with Muslim street vendors. “The street in which I live, every morning I used to spot a Mullah [derogatory word for a Muslim] with a big beard and nowadays they keep a saffron beard. This is Haridwar, Maharaj. There is no Muslim buyer here, so throw him out,” he said.
He also said if Muslims want to remain associated with us, they should first stop reading the Quran and stop offering namaz,”
“Then he had offered a ‘solution’ to Hindus: “You decide that you will not buy anything from a Muslim. If you destroy them socially, politically and economically, they will begin converting to Hinduism from Islam,” he had said at the event.