Hindu tailor attacked by Muslim men for playing Hanuman Chalisa

Case ID : 2d52950 | Location : Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India | Date of Incident : Wed, 31 January, 2024

Case ID : 2d52950

Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India

31 January, 2024

Hindu tailor attacked by Muslim men for playing Hanuman Chalisa

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Bhavnagar, Gujarat, a Hindu tailor was brutally attacked with iron rods, reminiscent of the infamous Kanhaiya Lal case. The victim, Rajendrabhai Chauhan, accused Sahil, Shaukat, and Munna of assaulting him for playing Hanuman Chalisa at his shop. The attack led to a head injury for the victim who was hospitalized. Rajendrabhai filed a complaint with Boratalav Police, alleging threats from Sahil's father, Munna Bilal Padarshi, prior to the assault. CCTV footage of the incident circulated online, indicating ongoing tensions between the two families. Despite the victim's claims of mentioning Hanuman Chalisa in his statement to the police, it was not included in the FIR. The victim had told OpIndia that the police was pressurising him to change his statement and not mention the Hanuman Chalisa angle in his complaint. The police had also said that the accused were being released.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. In this case, the Hindu man was brutally attacked by Islamists for merely listening to Hindu devotional songs. It is important to note that here there was no sort of provocation from the Hindu man's side. In fact, he was playing the bhajan (devotional song) inside his shop, without causing any sort of disturbance to others but the Muslims took offence to this and attacked the Hindu man. It can thus be safely said that the attack was motivated by hostility or prejudice against Hindus and their religious practices. Such acts are driven by intolerance and a desire to intimidate or harm individuals based on their religious identity and qualify as a hate crime. In this case, the police denied that the Hindu man was attacked for playing the Hanuman Chalisa. The Hindu victim has said that the police was pressuring him to keep the trigger of the violence against him out of the complaint. The police, in many such cases, where the motive behind the crime is obvious but not explicitly mentioned, deny that the crime committed was in any way motivated by a religious bias or say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to the crime. Several factors are generally at play here. Many a time the police downplay incidents of low-level communal crime because it is their jurisdiction that comes under question. The police also often say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to a crime when there was one because they wish to ensure that owing to the crime already committed, there is no further flare up in the area. Likewise, the Left media and the leftist elite are also inclined to emphasise this "no communal angle" trope, especially wherever the victim of the crime is a Hindu. However, only a police statement or a media report, for instance, cannot be enough to determine whether there is a communal angle present in the crime that has been committed. In fact, to determine whether the crime is communal in nature or not, we need to give emphasis to the ground realities. For example in the case of Rinku Sharma, the Bajrang Dal activist who was mercilessly stabbed in his house in front of his family members in Delhi’s Mangolpuri area in the year 2021, the leftist media and the leftist ecosystem had tried to peddle that there was no communal angle to the crime. Even the police denied that the crime was communal in nature. However, Opindia spoke to several people who are on the ground with the family of Rinku Sharma and we were told that the communal tension in the area is palpable. The family of Rinku Sharma has said that the Muslims of the area held a grudge against Rinku ever since he celebrated the Ram Mandir verdict. Like the case of Rinku Sharma, those cases where even if the police have denied a communal angle or the leftist media have gone on an overdrive to peddle the ‘no communal angle’ trope, the ground reality, like the victim’s family or relative's testimonies, make it clear that there was an obvious religious bias that led to the crime, will be documented in this tracker.