Exporting Hindutva: Civil unrest in Leicester severs interfaith harmony and ignites sectarian fears

In recent weeks, Britain has witnessed increasing tensions between Muslim and Hindu communities in Leicester with a real danger of this spilling over into other cities.

The conventional wisdom that this broke out over a cricket match and involved ‘Islamist mobs’ engaged in intimidation and harassment of the local Hindu community is not just factually inaccurate, tiresome and racist in its assumptions, but incredibly dangerous.

It completely ignores the role that Hindutva ethnonationalism has played in the situation and the British government’s tolerance and indeed support of this movement.

"While the British government has been utilising the full spectrum of its counter-extremism powers to interrogate Muslims... it has not only allowed Hindutva ethno-nationalism to fester but has actively assisted it to flourish"

In order to better understand events in Leicester, it is imperative that we take a closer look at the current regime governing India.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the political wing of a right-wing paramilitary organisation modelled on fascist groups operating in Europe in the 1920s.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Volunteer Organisation propagates a vision of India as a Hindu nation free of Muslims and Christian "foreigners".

RSS was connected to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 and its members have been implicated in numerous acts of terrorism in India, including the 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings that killed 68 people.

It has been banned on three occasions by the Indian government, most recently following the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992.

In 2016, Maharashtra's former inspector-general of police reportedly called for the banning of the RSS as "the country's largest terror organisation" and also accused the country’s Intelligence Bureau of colluding with the group.

The current Prime Minster of India, Narendra Modi, is a life-long member of RSS, having attended his first meeting at the tender age of eight years old.

In 2002, while Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat, thousands of Muslims were killed in a genocide orchestrated by the RSS with the complicity of the police and the ruling party.

Modi was effectively banned from the US and UK for a decade for his role in the genocide. His ban was only lifted after he came to power in 2014.

Since Modi's rise to power in 2014, RSS mobs have been operating with impunity in India targeting Muslims and Christians in lynchings, arson attacks and intimidation.

Even the Home Office recognises how police not only fail to protect victims but are complicit in it. Indian Muslims are even routinely arrested and jailed for sedition if accused of supporting the Pakistani cricket team.

"In 2014, undercover footage broadcast on ITV showed a HSS summer training camp in London in which Hindu children were taught that 'Islam is the world's worst religion'"

Nationally, the BJP government has introduced new legislation under which it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of millions of its Muslim citizens rendering them stateless, while simultaneously facilitating citizenship for all faiths except Muslims, prompting the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to take the unprecedented step of formally intervening in the Indian Supreme Court.

In essence, the BJP under Modi is implementing the RSS vision of an India free of Muslims.

This background is important to understand the threat of any RSS presence in the UK.

The overseas wing of the RSS is the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS).

As Ramesh Subramaniam, Mumbai coordinator of RSS' overseas work, explains, "RSS doesn't call it RSS overseas as it's not on Indian soil. They call it HSS as they believe it unites Hindus worldwide."

In 2014, undercover footage broadcast on ITV showed a HSS summer training camp in London in which Hindu children were taught that "Islam is the world's worst religion", "the number of good Muslims can be counted on fingers", and that "destroying Hindu history was a secret Christian conspiracy".

Children were also taught martial arts and engaged in military-style marching parades. Later that same year, former Home Secretary Priti Patel congratulated HSS for inviting the current General Secretary of RSS to the UK in an event entitled "RSS: A Vision in Action - a new Dawn". Her letter also confirmed his "influential" role over Modi describing him as "one of the primary points of advice to the BJP senior leadership."

The footage from ITV prompted an investigation by the Charity Commission in which it emerged that unaired footage showed a speaker at the camp confirming the umbilical links between RSS and HSS, stating “they are both the same, only thing is that here [in the UK] we cannot call RSS as RSS so we call it HSS”.

Despite the damning evidence, the Charity Commission, then under William Shawcross, cleared HSS of formal ties with RSS. Incredibly there appeared to have been no interventions by the government’s counter-extremism unit Prevent. Incidentally, as Home Secretary in 2021, Patel controversially appointed Shawcross as the new Independent Reviewer of Prevent.

"Hindutva ethnonationalism is a very real threat to Muslims, Christians and other minorities in India"

Both Patel and Shawcross have ties to the Islamophobic neoconservative think-tank the Henry Jackson Society. Patel sat on its political council until 2016 and Shawcross is a former director, notorious for making Islamophobic statements that could have been taken straight out of the RSS playbook.

It is of little surprise then that the HJS has been dispatching its members to whitewash any notion that Hindutva may be the root of the problem in Leicester.

Hindutva ethnonationalism is a very real threat to Muslims, Christians and other minorities in India to the extent that the US Committee on International Religious Freedom has recommended that India be designated a "Country of Particular Concern" for the third year running.

If implemented, India would find itself among countries like China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, Dr Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch briefed the US Congress that early "signs and processes" of genocide were visible in India. Stanton is recognised for predicting the Rwandan genocide in 1989, five years before it occurred.

That this is now spilling over onto the streets of Britain should concern us all. India today is an embodiment of the Hindutva vision if given power.

Its five million members around the globe have engaged in intimidation and threats of death and sexual violence against those who seek to expose the agenda.

While the British government has been utilising the full spectrum of its counter-extremism powers to interrogate Muslim children and investigate mosques and Islamic centres over the slightest form of political dissent, it has not only allowed Hindutva ethnonationalism to fester but has actively assisted it to flourish.

It is little surprise then that UK-based groups linked to the BJP were actively involved in lobbying British citizens to vote Conservative in the 2019 general election.

With Britain desperate to secure a trade deal with India in the post-Brexit uncertainty, the incentive to continue to turn a blind eye has never been greater. But at what cost?

Fahad Ansari is the principal solicitor and director of Riverway Law, a niche UK firm specialising in immigration and nationality law. He is regularly instructed in national security cases such as deprivation of citizenship, passport confiscations, exclusion and deportation of convicted terrorists. 

Follow him on Twitter: @fahadansari