Far-right Hindutva nationalists fuelled Leicester violence, finds new evidence

A UK security source suggests there is evidence of far-right Hindu rioters conversing in closed WhatsApp groups with supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party. Such conversations are argued to have incited them into carrying out violence against Muslim youth in the English city of Leicester, last summer. [1]

Contents

What is Hindutva?Is the UK government complicit in shoving the Hindutva threat under the carpet?So what is government doing to tackle Hindutva ideology, whose venom is infecting Britain?HSS is the UK’s RSS equivalent!Also read

While some reports suggest that the violence against Muslims was carried out after an India-Pakistan cricket match, the local community shared that tensions arose at least three months before the game.

Locals have explained that violence catapulted after a young Muslim man was senselessly attacked by Hindu youths in early May 2022. The subsequent cricket match was just another excuse for Hindutva-inspired youth to target and attack Muslims in the community. [2]

What is Hindutva?

Hindutva is a right-wing fascist ideology that drives the ruling party in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is currently in federal government and has been responsible for continued anti-Muslim sentiment for many years.

The same state-sponsored Islamophobic attacks which have been carried out in India have also been transported to the East Midlands city of Leicester. In the summer of 2022, over 200 Hindutva-supporting youth gathered in the streets in balaclavas, shouting nationalist and other provocative slogans.

Despite there being enough evidence to suggest that the violence was motivated by nationalist rhetoric perpetuated by the BJP and the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), little effort has been made by the British government to address the growing threat of the Hindutva ideology.

Is the UK government complicit in shoving the Hindutva threat under the carpet?

The current main leaders of the cabinet, i.e. Suella Braverman (the Home Secretary) and Rishi Sunak (the Prime Minister), have a track record of choosing to focus on harmful tropes directed at Muslims.

To this end, the pair recently perpetuated racist and Islamophobic stereotypes by erroneously linking most grooming gangs with Pakistani men, despite Home Office findings from 2020 revealing that the perpetrators of most child sexual abuse gangs were White men under the age of 30. [3]

These distasteful comments come at a time when the Muslim community already feels marginalised by some of the policies pushed by government. These policies are clearly targeting and discriminating against the Muslim community.

In addition, in the wake of Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign, he vilified Islam by associating it with “extremism”. He also vowed to shift the focus from right-wing extremism to “Islamic extremism”, which he describes as the “single largest threat” to national security. [2] This is ironic, given that the British government chose to ignore the violence that was perpetuated by right-wing supremacist Hindutva groups against Muslims in Leicester.

Following the Leicester disorder, little support was given to the Muslim community. Nor was there any inkling of encouragement given to other members of the community to tackle and address the issue.

Hindutva mobs are the same groups that were involved in the Gujarat Genocide of 2002, on top of sanctioning and facilitating the daily persecution and oppression of Muslims in India. [3]

So what is government doing to tackle Hindutva ideology, whose venom is infecting Britain?

A recent report by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) belittled hostility towards Muslims in Leicester and ignored the possibility of foreign influences, despite enough evidence indicating that tensions abroad were being exported to the UK.

HJS research fellow Charlotte Littlewood commented on the new evidence via a social media post:

I do not agree fully with @MailOnline I do not believe attacks on Hindu homes to be a 'spin'. I find the portrayal of Modi creating a global Hindu worrying for the safety of Hindus here who face attack as they are held accountable for politics abroad 1/6https://t.co/K02eMqEpME
— Charlotte Littlewood (@CharlotteFLit) May 14, 2023

HSS is the UK’s RSS equivalent!

Amongst other problematic normalisations of the harmful ideology is the existence of RSS affiliate groups such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), which, incredibly, is a UK-registered charity that has over 100 branches. It has been established in the country for over 50 years.

The HSS charity remains open, despite a covert investigative documentary by ITV that exposed HSS leadership to be inciting violence against Muslims and nurturing its students to discriminate against Muslims. [4]

Maybe it is time that the Charity Commission investigated the impartiality (or lack thereof) of charities like the HSS and HJS, and their support of BJP and RSS sympathisers, especially since these organisations are responsible for the daily persecution and oppression of Muslims in India! [5]