Muslim and Hindu tensions rise amid historic elections

In Varanasi, on India’s holiest river, the Ganges Hindus worship with the purifying power of fire. But smoldering religious tensions risk igniting a dangerous conflict between India’s Hindu nationalists and their Muslim neighbors, who tell us they no longer feel welcome or safe. We came here as tensions are rising over this 17th century mosque. Hindus say it sits on land stolen from them hundreds of years ago. Now they’re fighting in court to get it back. My community is very much worried, long time Muslim leader SM Yasin says. Hindus are trying to take over their mosque. How difficult is it to fight in this in court? It’s very difficult. Nobody is listening to us. Nobody. Yasin blames Indias popular Prime Minister Narendra Modi for mixing politics and religion. Modi’s political opponents say he’s marginalizing the nation’s more than 200 million Muslims. They are treating us as second class citizen. We’re second class. Now if they’re saying they feel like they are second class citizens, then this makes me happy. Swami Jitendra Anand Saraswati is a Hindu spiritual leader with views on Muslims many would consider Islamophobic. In the blood of a Muslim, there’s a desire to want to riot all the time. Muslim shopkeeper Shamsher Ali feels like he’s being pushed out. Anything can happen at any point. That is the amount of hate. Now they say leave the country. Where will we go? We were born here. We will die here. This is my country, a country where violence against Muslims is on the rise. A Delhi Police officer was caught on camera last month kicking a group of Muslim men praying by the side of the road. The video went viral. The officer suspended another police officer arrested for killing three Muslims on a train, praising the Prime Minister while standing over their bodies. The worst was in 2020. Violence broke out between Hindus and Muslims in the capital, New Delhi. Dozens of people died, mostly Muslims. It happened around the same time Modi was meeting then President Donald Trump. Even those who survived one of the darkest chapters in India’s recent history will never be the same. Nasir Ali says a Hindu man shot him in the face near his home, the one place he should have been safe. He says the police did practically nothing, a charge they deny everyone was feeling unsafe. We can no longer rely on the police. A court order called their investigation casual, callous and farcical. Four years later, the case is still ongoing in a higher court. Is there justice for Muslims like you in India Today? No. Our only crime is that we are Muslims. The national spokesperson for Prime Minister Modi’s party, the BJP, says people of all religions have the same rights. Is this a Hindu first government? India, by fabric, by design, by structure, by constitution, is secular. India’s constitution protects the Indian democracy. No political party in country is strong enough to bulldoze the Constitution, to bulldoze the will of the people. Muslim owned buildings are literally being bulldozed in what the government calls a crackdown on illegal construction and accused criminals a brand of bulldozer justice, all too common in India. Prime Minister Modi accused of adding fuel to the fire when he used a derogatory term for Muslims at a recent election rally. He’s running for a rare third term. What is the worst that could happen in your view over the next five years? What happened? I don’t know. But that will be not good for our country. Many Muslims in Modi’s India say it doesn’t feel like their country anymore.