Sami Ahmad
NEW DELHI—While the United Kingdom paused for Queen Elizabeth II’s final farewell, police in east Leicester city were busy controlling a large-scale disorder that broke out on Saturday involving men from the Hindu far right-wing chanting Jai Shri Ram. Such chanting is common in India’s Hindi Belt, but the same has reached the UK.
What should have been, at worst, a scuffle between Indians and the Pakistanis was turned into an anti-Muslim violent procession in the UK. There were some striking similarities between the reported disturbances and what happens in India during such processions as chanting a particular slogan, using the flag, targeting places of worship, and abusing women and the source-organization for all these.
The only silver lining is that people from the communities are working for calm and declaring that those involved in such disturbances are not representatives of their community.
A media report said that fifteen people had been arrested during an operation to deter further disorder over unrest in the city as more protests took place on Sunday.
Earlier, two men were arrested after Saturday’s disorder. One of them was suspected of hatching a conspiracy to commit violent disorder, and another was supposed to be carrying a bladed article.
This series of disturbances started on August 28 after a cricket match between India and Pakistan played in Dubai for the Asia Cup, which India had won. From then on to September 11, twenty-seven people were arrested on different dates, though their names were unavailable. Then, after a few days, the disturbances restarted on September 17.
The Guardian quoted a local of Belgrave Road in east Leicester that they (the far-right Hindu wing people) were throwing bottles, coming past our mosques, taunting the community, and physically beating people up randomly. On the other hand, the newspaper said that Drishti Mae, a former chairperson of a Hindu organization, accused Hindus of being targeted and harassed.
It also reported that in Green Lane Road, where there are several Muslim-owned businesses and a Hindu temple close by, a group of Hindu men was filmed marching through the area on Saturday.
Aina J. Khan of The Guardian tweeted, “It was a tense day of reporting from Leicester for me today. I interviewed a Hindu man wearing a motorbike helmet, holding an Indian flag on Belgrave road, the site of some of the unrest yesterday between a group of Muslim and Hindu men.” It looks similar to the modus operandi used in India to mask the face while chanting offensive slogans. She further wrote, “This man said he supported Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)- a group whose founders took inspiration from Mussolini’s fascists.”
It seems that the cricket match was used just as an excuse to further the agenda of the RSS, even in the UK, as the tweet by the Guardian journalist suggested. So she was told by the man she talked to. According to her, “He said India’s independence did not truly begin until Narendra Modi took office as PM eight years ago, and that Modi’s leadership was the panacea for “jihadist Muslims” in India. Helmet man said that Muslims were a problem in the U.K., pointing to grooming gangs in Rotherham.”
The involvement of those attached to the RSS is further strengthened as she wrote, “This man exuberantly professed how great and altruistic RSS was, a stone’s throw away from a statue of Gandhi that stands adjacent to a Hindu temple.”
Another tweet by her showed the similarity to what happens in India. Abusing women has been a feature of the right-wing Hindu violence in India. She wrote, “A witness on green lane road where they marched, shared how these men swore at women peeping out of their windows and doors. There were some violent scuffles too. After seeing this unfold on her doorstep, she has locked her shop door for fear of retaliation.”
One can expect in India that a Muslim journalist is accused of being a Talibani, but this British lady journalist too was accused of being “a member of the Taliban, an extremist, playing the victim card. I was accused of not scrutinizing Pakistan’s treatment of its minorities and fixating on India’s treatment of its minorities, of ignoring how Muslims are raping everyone.”
A BBC report quoted Leicester’s elected mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, saying that he and community leaders were baffled by the events. The mayor accused them of being “fanned by some distorted social media” and “many people who came in from outside”. Using social media to spread distorted information and the involvement of outside people is also a common phenomenon in India when such violence occurs. However, he also said to the BBC, “I don’t want to minimize the impact, but there is no obvious local cause for this at all.”
Dr. Aslam Abdullah wrote in The Scribe, “Hindutva is no longer a hate ideology against Islam and Christianity confined to India. Instead, it has become a global movement for racist supremacy of Hindu upper castes. What happened in Leicester, UK, Edison, NJ, Sydney, Australia, Dubai, UAE, and Auckland, New Zealand, is alarming.”
Despite all these, saner elements seem to be working hard to restore peace there. According to the BBC, Sanjiv Patel, who represents Hindu and Jain temples across Leicester, said he was deeply saddened and shocked by the recent disturbances. He said: “We are horrified and deplore what was going on [on Saturday] and across the last two weeks. However, across the Hindu and Jain communities and with our Muslim brothers and sisters and leaders, we are consistently saying ‘calm minds, calm heads’.”
Suleman Nagdi of the Leicester-based Federation of Muslim Organisations told the BBC, “What we have seen on the streets is very alarming.” However, he said that the situation was never as ugly as that. “We need calm – the disorder has to stop, and it has to stop now. We need to get the message out that this must end and try to do this through parents and grandparents talking to their sons.”
