Hardliners Sow Terror on Non-Hindus in Northern India
A month after Yogi Adityanath's appointment as chief minister of India's most populous state, his supporters held a rally near the state capital of Unnoa to celebrate the Hindu extremism espoused by their group against religious minorities, Muslims most especially.
A chief priest of the Gorakhnath Mutt temple, Adityanath is one of the few religious leaders who was able to establish a foothold in Indian politics. His ascension as the highest official of Uttar Pradesh is a reward for delivering the crucial votes and election victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
But the 44-year-old monk is advocating a firebrand supremacist view of Hindu and has implemented harsh policies that are detrimental to non-Hindus. On the day of his appointment, Adityanath caused the closure of thousands of meat shops to enforce the ban on slaughtering cows that they consider as holy.
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The success of the crackdown, which left 2,500 without income, is credited to an organization of young hardliners called Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) or Hindu Youth Force, which Adityanath refers to as his private army. His rise to power has emboldened HYV in asserting their supremacy.
"The chief minister's men came with orange flags, broke the window panes of our shops and threw knives and weighing scales out on the street," Chandani Qureshi, a mother of four, related the horror when HYV militias swooped down on their meat shop. "We had no power to stop them."
Pankaj Singh, a senior leader of HYV, boasted their accomplishment to Reuters.
"We got the police to shut down 45,000 small meat shops in less than 24 hours," he said. "They (police) would have failed without our informers. They know we are the real heroes now."
After the crackdown on meat shops, Adityanath now has his eyes set on Muslim men whom he accused of seducing Hindu girls into converting to Islam as part of their "love jihad." He organized "Anti-Romeo Squads" to go after mixed-religion couples.
"For centuries, Muslims have been playing the dirty game of converting Hindus," Singh said. "But now if they touch a Hindu girl, we can fight with our swords."
