One of the most prominent voices against the RSS/BJP and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s official residence in New Delhi was recently vandalized. Five men who claimed to be members of a group called the Hindu Sena were arrested later for the incident. The attack is a new low in Indian democracy. If an elected MP’s house can be brazenly attacked then who will be safe? The attack shows that the people responsible were ’emboldened’. That activists from a Hindu right-wing organization are emboldened enough to gather at one of Delhi’s most secure neighbourhoods, vandalize a parliamentarian’s house, and chant communal abuses is a sign that the foot soldiers of polarization have a disturbing confidence in their impunity.
This is not the first time in recent months that anti-minority rabble-rousing spectacles have been staged in the national capital and its surroundings. Last month, at a Jantar Mantar gathering – again in the high-security Lutyen’s Delhi – members of several Hindu right-wing organizations called for violence against the Muslim community. Not only was the alarming aggression on public display recorded on video by the activists, but also spread further through the velocity of social media. India is witnessing a dangerous trend of anti-minorities violence. This trend is threatening the country. In the long run, India will seriously suffer from such religious polarization. Still there is time for the BJP government at the Centre to get tough on these hooligans. Before the country is further divided on religious lines, there is a need to put a full stop to religious polarization.