In the event, Swami Prabodhanand Giri while calling for genocide, also says tell all ‘jihadis’ to return to the Hindu faith and apologize.
Between December 17 and 19, a huge group of major religious leaders, right-wing activists, hardline fundamentalist militants, and Hindutva organizations came together at Haridwar for an event called the ‘Dharma Sansad’ or ‘Religious Parliament’. During these three days, virulent hate speech indoctrinated the crowds with lies and falsified facts, spewed hate against Muslims calling for violence against them.
Sadhvi Annapurna aka Pooja Shakun Pandey, a mahamandleshwar of the Niranjani Akhara and general secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha gave a direct call for the mass murder of Muslims. She said, “Nothing is possible without weapons. If you want to eliminate their population then kill them. Be ready to kill and be ready to go to jail. Even if 100 of us are ready to kill 20 lakhs of them (Muslims), then we will be victorious, and go to jail… Like [Nathuram] Godse, I am ready to be maligned, but I will pick up arms to defend my Hindutva from every demon who is a threat to my religion,” she said.
The event was also attended by BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay, who has previously been arrested for an event he helped organize where slogans were raised calling for violence against Muslims, and BJP Mahila Morcha leader Udita Tyagi, giving the event a level of political encouragement from the ruling party.
New Delhi: The ‘Dharma Sansad’ organized at Haridwar in Uttarakhand on December 17-19 saw an assortment of leaders from the Hindutva ecosystem taking the stage to set a new benchmark for brazen hate speech in the country.
“We have to make preparations,” said Swami Prabodhanand Giri, president of the Hindu Raksha Sena, a right-wing organization based out of Uttarakhand. “And I’ll tell you what preparations those are. I will make myself clear, this is the solution, and if you follow this solution, then the path is made for you… in Myanmar, Hindus were being chased away. The politicians, government, and police were just standing and watching. They started by killing them by cutting their necks, and not only this, but they began to cut them in the streets and eat them. The people watching thought we are going to die, we are not going to live.”
“This is our state now. You have seen this at the Delhi border, they killed Hindus and hung them. There is no more time, the case now is that either you prepare to die now, or get ready to kill, there’s no other way. This is why, like in Myanmar, the police here, the politicians here, the army and every Hindu must pick up weapons and we will have to conduct this cleanliness drive (safai abhiyan). There is no solution apart from this.”
The statements calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide are particularly alarming given Prabodhanand’s connections with the BJP.
On two occasions, Prabodhanand has shared photographs of himself with Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The first ‘photo op’ took place in January 2018, and the second a little over a year ago in August 2020 – the header image on his Facebook page today.
Facebook header of Swami Prabodhanand Giri. Photo: Facebook
Adityanath is not the only BJP leader Prabodhanand has been linked with. On September 14, 2020, he was pictured with Naresh Sharma, a former BJP leader from Haridwar, who joined the Aam Aadmi Party a year later.
He was also photographed with the higher education minister of Uttarakhand and BJP member Shri Dhan Singh Rawat on August 12, 2021.
In June 2021, he was also photographed with former Uttarakhand CM and BJP member Tirath Singh Rawat, giving him a sword.
Swami Prabodhanand Giri gave a sword to former Uttarakhand CM Tirath Singh Rawat. Photo: Facebook
In 2017, Prabodhanand issued a widely reported announcement calling for Hindus to have eight children for the purposes of contributing “towards conserving, preserving and protecting Hindutva and the society.”
In a speech at Shamli in 2018, he said that only Muslims rape Hindu women and spoke about the bogey of ‘love jihad’, apart from expressing other anti-Muslim sentiments.
He has also made genocidal statements in a video with Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati that was made public in June of this year. In that video, he says, “In the entire world, if we want humanity to last, we will need to clean it of jihadis. There should be treatment, management for jihadis on this earth.
A few days ago someone said that in Islam, rapists are born, jihadis are born – I have been saying this for some time, there is a jihadi and a terrorist in each Islamic home… Hindu society needs to stand up and find a cure for jihadis, otherwise, these jihadis will find a cure for Hindus, and there will be no place on this earth for us to live… One thing is certain, if he comes into my space and I find out, he will not leave. I have lived for 14 years among jihadis, I’m not that weak… They should not think that if Narsinghanand or I are killed, you can live happily. There will be a pile of corpses, across the country you will see corpses. This is certain, nobody will stop us.”
Hindutva Leaders at Haridwar Event Call for Muslim Genocide.
Key context — India is currently run by a Hindu nationalist party (BJP) whose official platform endorses Hindutva ideology. Unsurprisingly, anti-Muslim violence has shot-up under BJP rule.
https://t.co/X9xYJsykFm— Dr. Audrey Truschke (@AudreyTruschke) December 22, 2021
Dr. Audrey Truschke Associate Professor of South Asian history wrote, “India is currently run by a Hindu nationalist party (BJP) whose official platform endorses Hindutva ideology. Unsurprisingly, anti-Muslim violence has shot up under BJP rule.”
When Hindutva leaders instigate mobs, tell lies, and call for genocide of Muslims in a country where India is home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world, the first being Indonesia, second Pakistan, India is in serious trouble because these Hindutva leaders are linked to the BJP.
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