Hindu man brutally assaulted by armed Muslim men for posting “I Love Mahadev” video; attackers hurl abuses at Hindutva, Hindu organisation, and cow protection

Case ID : b1c5bc4 | Location : Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 30 September, 2025

Case ID : b1c5bc4

Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India

30 September, 2025

Hindu man brutally assaulted by armed Muslim men for posting “I Love Mahadev” video; attackers hurl abuses at Hindutva, Hindu organisation, and cow protection

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for Hindu identity

Communal clash/attack

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Case Summary

In Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, a Hindu man named Vikas Kashyap was brutally attacked by an armed Muslim mob for making a video on the "I Love Mahadev" trend. According to reports, the victim was an official of the Hindu Raksha Dal (a Hindu organisation), who made and circulated a video on social media supporting the “I Love Mahadev” trend. The victim, in his complaint, stated that after posting the video, a Muslim youth came to his shop, began verbally abusing him and threatened to kill him if he did not remove the video. The youth also abused the Hindu organisation and made derogatory remarks about Hindutva and cow protection. The victim refused to take down the video and continued to ignore the threats. However, about 10 minutes later, an armed Muslim group of about fifteen to twenty people arrived at his shop in two vehicles and launched a deadly assault on him with sharp weapons. The victim was left unconscious. His friends rushed him to the hospital for treatment. Later, after a bit of investigation by the victim, one of the accused was identified as a Muslim man named Azam Khan, while the others remained unidentified. As of the date of writing this report, the police registered a case against one named person and twenty unidentified persons. The investigation was ongoing.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category in this case is: Attack not resulting in death. The first subcategory under this is: Attacked for Hindu identity. 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. The other subcategory selected under this is - Communal clash/Attack. Communal clash is a form of collective violence that involves clashes between groups belonging to different religious identities. For a communal clash between Hindus and non-Hindus to qualify as a religiously motivated hate crime, the trigger of the violence itself would have to be anti-Hindu in essence. For example, if there is a Hindu religious procession that comes under attack from a non-Hindu mob and after the initial attack, Hindus retaliate in self-defence, leading to a communal clash between the two religious communities. While at a later stage, both communities are involved in the clash/violence, the initial trigger of the violence was by the non-Hindu mob against the Hindus and therefore, it could safely be termed as an anti-Hindu violence. Further, the trigger would also have to be religiously motivated. In the cited example, the attack by the non-Hindu mob was against religious processions and therefore, can be concluded to be religiously motivated. In some cases, the trigger may be non-religious, however, it develops into religious violence against Hindus at a later stage. In such cases too, the foundational animosity towards Hindus becomes the motivating factor of the crime and therefore, it would be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus under this category. The second primary category selected here is - Hate speech against Hindus. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith. Anti-Hindu slurs and the deliberate mocking of the Hindu faith owing to religious animosity involve the usage of derogatory terms, stereotypes, or offensive references to religious practices, symbols, or figures. One of the common anti-Hindu slurs used against Hindus is “cow-worshipper” and “cow piss drinker”. The intention of using this term is to demean and mock Hindus as a group and their religious beliefs since Hindus consider the cow holy. Additionally, some symbols and the slurs attached to them have a historical context that exacerbates the insult, hate, stereotyping, dehumanisation and oppression against Hindus. Cow worship has been used for centuries to denigrate Hindus, insult their faith and oppress Hindus specifically as a religious group. There has been overwhelming documentation about how cow slaughter has been used to persecute Hindus with cow meat being thrown in temples and places of worship. There has also been overwhelming documentation where cow meat (beef) has been force-fed to Hindus to either forcefully convert them to Islam or denigrate their faith. Apart from cow worship, the Swastika – which holds deep religious significance for the Hindus – has also been misinterpreted and distorted to use as a slur against Hindus. Similarly, the worship of the Shivling has been used by supremacist ideologies and religions to denigrate Hindus owing to religious animosity. Such slurs and denigration stem out of inherent animosity and hate towards Hindus and their faith, therefore, it is categorised as hate speech targeted at Hindus specifically owing to their religious identity. The brutal attack on Vikas Kashyap in Rishikesh is a clear case of a hate-driven assault targeting Hindu identity and devotion. Vikas, a Hindu Raksha Dal official, had simply participated in the “I Love Mahadev” trend, a peaceful assertion of Hindu faith that emerged in response to the “I Love Muhammad” campaign. His act of devotion was met not with dialogue but with communal abuses, threats, and finally a violent armed assault. The attackers mocked Hindutva, ridiculed cow protection, and abused Hindu organisations before launching a mob attack, showing that the real animosity was directed at Hindu faith itself. The “I Love Mahadev” trend was never aggressive or confrontational. It arose as a dignified way for Hindus to affirm their devotion when confronted with the “I Love Muhammad” campaign, which had spread nationwide in a highly coordinated manner. That campaign was not just a display of religious pride but quickly turned into a show of supremacy, often accompanied by intimidation and violence against Hindus. Across the country, Hindus are being threatened, temples are being attacked, mobs are raising chilling “Sar tan se juda” slogans threatening beheadings. In Bareilly, the FIR itself describes how a Muslim crowd, mobilised under the ‘I Love Muhammad’ banner, armed themselves with petrol bombs, stones, country-made firearms, and sharp weapons to attack security forces and intimidate Hindus. In this context, “I Love Mahadev” stood as a peaceful Hindu counter-expression, yet it was treated as a provocation that had to be crushed with violence. Thus, when the victim in this case was abused, threatened with death, and finally attacked, it was not random violence. It was a hate-driven assault meant to punish a Hindu man for affirming his faith. The attack was systematic, targeted, and rooted in deep religious animosity. Such disproportionate violence over a peaceful expression of devotion exposes the ingrained hostility of the perpetrators toward Hindus, driven by an ideology of Islamic supremacy that seeks dominance through force. In this mindset, even the smallest public affirmation of Hindu identity is treated as a provocation and met with violent retaliation, revealing a dangerous pattern of identity-driven hostility at the heart of such hate crimes. This violent overreach stems from an Islamic supremacist ideology within Muslim extremist circles, which views Hindus as socially and religiously inferior. This belief breeds contempt and aggression, especially when Hindus resist submission or refuse to yield in disputes. The readiness to use violence under the pretext of minor issues exposes the continuing threat Hindu communities face, as these incidents are not isolated or spontaneous but part of an ongoing pattern of religiously motivated violence. Furthermore, the Muslim youth not only issued death threats but also used derogatory language against the Hindu organisation, against the principle of cow protection, and against the idea of Hindutva itself. These are not personal insults but attacks on core tenets of Hindu identity and collective faith. By mocking and denigrating Hindu organisations, sacred symbols like the cow, and the ideology of Hindutva, the perpetrators demonstrated that their hostility was not directed at the man alone, but at his religious identity as a whole. This verbal assault laid the groundwork for the physical attack, showing how contempt for Hindu faith and identity translates directly into physical violence. For these reasons, the case has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker. It represents not just an instance of communal tension but a deliberate hate crime where a Hindu was attacked for being Hindu, for affirming his devotion, and for refusing to be silenced in the face of threats and intimidation.