Attacks on Hindus and Hindu Dharma, both in Bharat and overseas, are frequent and unrelenting. In many regions of the world, this persecution is like a genocide slowly unfolding before our eyes. For decades, the world has ignored the actual depth and breadth of these attacks, driven by disturbing anti-Hindu bigotry. From murders, forced conversions, land grabs, assault on festivals, desecration of temples and murtis, hate speech, and sexual violence to institutionalized & legal discrimination, Hindus are facing an increasing assault on their very existence along with an unprecedented Hindu hatred.

In this weekly summary for the period from 14 May to 20 May 2023, we hope to provide a snapshot of such crimes and hopefully awaken more people around the world to this human rights crisis:

Bharat

1) Instagram post allegedly ‘insulting Prophet’ triggers violent clashes in Akola leaving 1 dead. The police have arrested 26 persons.

2) A Marathi family in Madhya Pradesh (MP) is struggling to protect their daughter who was groomed & manipulated by Islamist Aman.

3) Stones were pelted on the Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Jayanti procession in Maharashtra’s Shegaon leaving 4 injured.

4) Security personnel stopped a Muslim mob trying to force its way into the Triambakeshwar Mandir. Brahmin Mahasabha threatened to undertake intense protests if the police failed to thoroughly investigate the shocking incident.

5) Minor Hindu girl from Bihar’s Nawada, who was abducted by Musharraf Alam, was recovered from Jharkhand’s Ranchi.

6) The Madhya Pradesh anti-terrorist squad (ATS) which recently dismantled a Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) module and apprehended 16 people from Madhya Pradesh and Telangana revealed that as many as 8 of these terrorists had converted to Islam. There are three arrested from Bhopal who married Hindu girls and later forced them to convert to Islam.

7) On Monday, the Uttar Pradesh Police filed an FIR against some Muslim persons for harassing a Hindu boy belonging to the Jatt community and a Muslim girl in the city of Muzzafarnagar. The Muslim men had objected to the Muslim girl being friends with a Hindu boy and roaming around with him on his bike.

8) A distressing incident involving love jihad and triple talaq has emerged from Agra, Uttar Pradesh. According to the victim in this case – a Hindu woman – she was deceived by the accused Raja Khan, who initially portrayed himself as a Hindu and developed a friendship with her.

9) Early Saturday, an Islamist mob brutally lynched Rajesh Manjhi in Malappuram, Kerala. Rajesh was a 36-year-old Dalit migrant labourer from Bihar’s East Champaran district. The gruesome incident happened at Kizhisseri near Kondotty town in Kerala’s Muslim-majority district of Malappuram. The shocking incident occurred near his house, 300 meters from the poultry farm where Rajesh worked.

10) JK Peace Forum, an organisation of Kashmiri Pandits, on Tuesday, filed a criminal complaint addressed to ADGP (Kashmir) alleging criminal involvement in usurping the land belonging to a temple in Srinagar.

11) A Muslim mob thrashed a Hindu youth over a minor accident in Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Bareilly.

12) On May 15, a violent Muslim mob abused and assaulted a Hindu man for being friends with a Muslim girl in the city of Patna Bihar. The two were stopped by the mob while they were on a bike and were abused for roaming together. The Muslim girl was also schooled by the mob and asked to leave the spot and go home.

13) Are grooming jihad (love jihad) gangs targeting young Hindu boys too? A young man from Palakkad has accused that he was forced to convert to Islam after a Muslim girl pretended to be in love. He had gone to work in Malappuram, where he was trapped in love and converted. The young victim escaped the clutches of religious extremists trying to smuggle him abroad.

14) Visuals of groups of men hurling abuses and comments on women belonging to Muslim communities found with Hindu men are common these days. The comments they pass include ‘Why can’t you find a Muslim man? or ‘How dare you take a Muslim woman out with you?’. This hooliganism is called vigilantism by Islamic believers, as per them they are protecting their daughters.

15) Devotees have made serious allegations about how Thrissur Pooram was conducted this year. Meat products were served near the south tower of the famous Vadakkumnathan Shiva Temple during the festival on 1 May.

16) Raju Saini fell in love and married a Muslim woman, has a baby girl, and then is beaten and killed brutally by the girl’s family in MP’s Khandwa.

17) After Jodhpur, a Pakistani Hindu camp was demolished in Jaisalmer; Women were lathi-charged, and children were left without water. On Tuesday (16 May), the Jaisalmer district administration demolished 28 housing structures belonging to the migrants in the Amarsagar gram panchayat of the city. District magistrate Tina Dabi told the media that the Amarsagar sarpanch had been complaining to the administration about “encroachments” by the migrants.

18) A month after the suicide of a college girl Mahalakshmi, Chennai City Police arrested three Muslim youths from Kolkata. The three youths were identified as Amanullah Khan(20), Muhammad Faizal(21) and Muhammad Asif Iqbal(20). They live in the Wattganj locality of Kolkata.

19) Mohammed Hasan (50) aka ‘Pappu’ from the Quarsi area of Aligarh, UP has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for raping his adopted minor daughter (10), originally a Hindu.

20) Alert train passengers and VHP activists rescued a minor Hindu Dalit girl who was groomed and abducted by Javed Alam.

21) A young Islamist pervert named Savad sexually harassed actress and model Nandita Sankara inside a Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) bus. When the young victim complained, Kavil Savad Sha (27) of Kayakkody, Kozhikode, ran away from the bus.

22) Hindu wedding was attacked with stones for playing songs of Prabhu Ram, and slogans of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ was raised by the attackers.

23) In a shocking case of love jihad, a married woman from Uttar Pradesh was held captive in Ambala, Haryana, for nearly a month and was raped by a Muslim man named Arif Khan who posed as Abhay Mishra. Accused Arif forced the victim to offer Namaz and wear Burqa when he kept her captive.

24) Two cases of grooming jihad have come to light in Tamil Nadu even as the DMK government is indirectly trying to ban The Kerala Story. A minor and a college girl were abducted by Muslim men who promised to marry them. The minor girl was raped by 3 Muslim men repeatedly while the college girl’s family worry that she could be sold and sent abroad.

Pakistan

Abduction, rape, forced conversion, and marriage of minor Hindu girls are common occurrences in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. At least 1000 minority girls suffer such sex slavery every year in Sindh province alone. Apart from this, Pakistani Hindus face systemic and institutionalized discrimination and neglect, such as frequent attacks on Hindu temples, demonization of education curriculum, police and judicial antipathy, denial of fundamental rights, and even untouchability. This latest instance of the brutal rape and murder of a Bheel woman in Pakistan is yet another proof of the pitiable condition of Hindu minorities in Pakistan.

1) A 50-year-old Hindu man, Amlakh Bheel was decapitated in Shahdadpur, Sanghar District by a group of Muslim youth. Local media reports say that he was beheaded after he allegedly protested against the eve-teasing of his daughter Reshma Bheel.

Bangladesh

Attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh are relentless and designed to cleanse the religious minority from the country gradually. According to a study by Prof. Abul Barakat of Dhaka University, no Hindus will be left in Bangladesh by 2050 due to systemic and institutionalized persecution. Temple desecration, land grabbing, mob attacks after false blasphemy charges, rape/forced conversion of women, and hate speech are tools used to intimidate and drive Hindus out.

1) On the night of the 13th of May, Saturday, Muslim neighbours attacked homes belonging to the Hindu minority community at Ghaneshyam Bairati under the Tushbhanadar Union. Several houses were broken and set on fire.

2) A Kali temple was set on fire in Naogaon. The murti of Ma Kali got entirely burnt due to fire.

Most hate crimes are driven by anti-Hindu bigotry encoded in certain religious teachings and political ideologies. While the anti-Hindu hate in Islamic countries is evident, there is another subtler form of anti-Hindu sentiment within institutions and the public sphere of ostensibly secular states (like India) that provides an enabling environment for Hinduphobia and hate crimes. This subtle, everyday discrimination can be missed unless one studies prevailing laws and patterns. The gradual ban on firecrackers during Diwali is a good example – it might seem pollution-related on the surface. Still, the double standards at play become apparent when one looks at the larger picture of restrictions on Hindu festivals and the lack of sound reasoning behind the ban.

We request all readers to share other anti-Hindu hate crimes that we might have missed in this period in the comments below or by dropping an email to [email protected]. We also solicit support in maintaining the Hindu human rights tracker database.