Photo: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the largest paramilitary organization in the world, is the armed wing of the BJP. It proclaims that giving one’s life to protect India by killing non-Hindus is a sacred duty.

The Indian People’s Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra ‎Modi, has just banned the Islamic headscarf (hijab) in schools in the state of Karnataka. The campaign underway for the election of the president of regional governments is reverberating with a violently anti-Muslim, and sometimes anti-Christian, rhetoric. ‎

In July 2020, 53 people were killed in anti-Muslim riots in New Delhi. The states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh have just passed laws prohibiting religious conversions, except in the case of marriage, subject to a prior 60-day authorization from the regional state.

In Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, converting a Hindu to another religion is punishable by 10 years in prison.

The head of the regional government of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, a close friend of Narendra Modi, has become the leading figure promoting the discourse against “foreign religions”, Islam and Christianity.

See: “Already 10 months of confinement in Jammu and Kashmir”, by Moin ul Haque, Dawn (Pakistan), Voltaire Network, 13 June 2020.

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