Many occurrences mark the onset of Durga Puja; Islamists attacking the murtis of the deity is just one of them. This has been happening so regularly that no one even bats an eyelid at these incidents.
On Tuesday, September 27, pictures of a desecrated Maa Durga murti in Hyderabad surfaced on social media. Damages to the murti and the lion were visible in images from the site. Soon, it was revealed that two Burqa-clad women had carried out the vandalization in the Navaratri Pandal in the Khairatabad locality of Hyderabad.
They had barged into the pandal and smashed a portion of the Devi Durga murti, confirms Hyderabad Police. When a local attempted to stop them, one of these women attacked him with a metallic tool. However, locals apprehended both women and handed them over to the police.
This duo had also wrecked an idol of Mother Mary outside a nearby church. DCP, Central Zone, Hyderabad, stated, “In the morning, we received a call that two ladies have tried to vandalize the mother Mary statue and later they also tried to vandalize the statue (sic) of Goddess Durga.”
He added, “One woman was also seen carrying a spanner and she tried to attack a local who tried to stop. However, locals caught both of them and handed them over to Saidabad police. We are trying to verify their details, but they are behaving very weirdly. An investigation is underway.”
The authorities were trying to figure out the identities of these women and their motives behind doing this. The accused refused to disclose their identities. Later, Hyderabad’s Central Zone DCP MR Chandra informed that both the women belonged to a family of four and had returned from Jeddah in 2018.
The women’s family member came forward and issued an apology while identifying them as his mother and sister. He claimed that his mother and sister have ‘schizophrenia’ and that his other brother also has paranoid schizophrenia. A complaint has been filed under the relevant sections of IPC, informed a police officer. “Now, we’ll record all statements. Since the women’s brothers said they have a mental issue, we will refer them to a government hospital and produce them before the magistrate. It’s up to the magistrate to take a call,” the DCP assured.
It is worth noting that both the women, allegedly suffering from a mental illness, had chosen to walk up to a church and a Navratri pandal and attack a statue of Mother Mary and Devi Durga. Even in their extreme fear of mental illness, they didn’t go and vandalize a Mazar or a masjid. Damaging the religious symbols of non-Muslims and then claiming to have mental illness has become an established pattern these days.
During Durga Puja last year, Islamists in Bangladesh started a countrywide attack on Hindus after a copy of the Quran was found near the feet of a Hanuman murti at a Durga puja pandal. Later it was revealed that the Quran was placed in the pandal by a Muslim man named Iqbal. Apologists started the narrative of him being mentally unstable to protect him, but Comilla CID denied these claims.
In June 2016, a Muslim youth desecrated a Hindu temple in Jammu. He flung stones at windowpanes and tried to destroy the Shivaling and murti of Bhagwan Shiva. Later, Law Minister Abdul Haq Khan claimed that the man identifying as Yasir of Doda was mentally unstable.
While there are many such instances, in a more recent incident that occurred on April 3, a man named Ahmad Murtaza Abbasi severely hurt two police personnel with a sharp weapon outside the Gorakhnath just a day before CM Yogi Adityanath’s scheduled visit to the temple.
Again, his family started claiming that he was mentally unstable. However, the doctor who treated the attacker refuted the reports of him having any mental disorder. This pattern has spread to other regions as well, including China.
Hence, we are compelled to wonder if these individuals who attack non-Islamic places of worship are actually mentally unstable or just radicalized Islamists using mental illness as a cover-up for their Hinduphobia.
While Islamists are smashing Durga murtis ahead of the Hindu festivities, seculars and defenders of Islamists are trying to carry out different propaganda through social media. We all remember the famous and overused image of a burkha-clad woman taking her child as “Krishna” to school for Janmashtami.
On similar lines, images of Muslims celebrating Durga puja are also circulating on Facebook. Social Media users should not get misled by such fake eye-washes. Gullible Hindus who organically gravitate toward secularism must be made aware of the stark difference between reality and the propaganda being run to hide the uncomfortable reality.
