"We've chased away all the Muslim tailors who used to work there," said Ashish Kumar and Somvir Singh proudly. The two 20-something lanky companions seemed to be killing time in front of a mechanic's shop in the Badshahpur market in the town of Gurgaon and its pothole-ridden streets. Located in the state of Haryana, which borders the capital New Delhi and is home to the headquarters of multinational corporations like Microsoft and Google, the city witnessed an outburst of religious violence in early August. In retaliation for clashes that took place during a Hindu procession on July 31 in Nuh, some 40 kilometers away, Muslim-owned businesses were ransacked, a mosque was set on fire and one of its clerics murdered. The violence then spread across the state, resulting in the death of at least six people.
In the days that followed, members of far-right Hindu organizations began hunting down Muslim families who had come from other states in the country to work in "Millennium City," as Gurgaon is nicknamed. "Youths from neighboring villages threatened Muslim shopkeepers with burning down their stalls, ordering them to leave," said Sonu Yadav, a resident who works not far from the Badshahpur district and witnessed the violence. The charred wreckage of a tire business still lies along the road, while other makeshift stores, spared by the rioters, have been left abandoned. Threatened, the owners opted to flee. The Muslim barbers who usually set up shop along the sidewalk also disappeared.
Kumar and Singh boasted of having contributed to this climate of terror. Sitting on a plastic chair, Somvir argued that "Almost 100% of the violence against Muslims is justified," repeating the conspiracy theories prevalent in extremist circles. Both are members of the Bajrang Dal, the youth movement of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Council of Hindus, VHP), an extremist group belonging to the same ideological family as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party. Founded in 1984, the Bajrang Dal is considered the armed wing of Hindutva, the ruling party's Hindu supremacist project to transform secular India into a Hindu nation.
Calls for a boycott of the Muslim community and threats by Bajrang Dal's members have proliferated throughout the state of Haryana. In the town of Hansi, 150 kilometers from Gurgaon, a member of the organization urged local shopkeepers to fire their Muslim employees, threatening them with a boycott. In a widely shared video on social media, he could be seen moving around town with a microphone in hand, escorted by a crowd and under the eyes of law enforcement forces. "If in two days' time, a Muslim vendor is still there, he will be solely responsible for what happens to him," said the man, against whom the police have brought legal action, including for hate speech.
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