Dalit woman's converted brother and his family abuses his sister, makes casteist remarks and threatens to kill her if she doesn't convert to Islam

Case ID : e97a141 | Location : Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 1 September, 2023

Case ID : e97a141

Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India

1 September, 2023

Dalit woman's converted brother and his family abuses his sister, makes casteist remarks and threatens to kill her if she doesn't convert to Islam

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Hate speech against Hindus

Anti-Hindu slurs, mocking faith

Violent threats

Case Summary

Police have arrested 4 people on charges of conversion of a Dalit woman in Ambedkar Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh. The victim has accused her converted brother, his wife, daughter and son-in-law of pressurizing her for conversion and threatening to kill her by entering the house. The matter is of Tara Kala village of Malipur police station area of Ambedkar Nagar. In her complaint to the police, Indravati, a Dalit woman living here, has said that her brother Shyamlal had left his wife and gone to Mumbai about 40 years ago, where a Maulana converted him and named him Mohammad Hussain. After this, a person named Mohammad Hussain from Shyam Lal married a Muslim woman from Mumbai, Mumtaz Shaikh. When both of them had a daughter, she was named Hina Rabbani Shaikh. When Hina Rabbani became eligible for marriage, Mohammad Hussain first converted Vicky alias Vikas Tripathi, a resident of Varanasi, into Abdul Rehman Sheikh and then married his daughter Hina Sheikh. Indravati said that after the death of her mother Pratapi Devi, the man who changed from Shyamlal to Mohammad Shaikh returned to the village with his family. Mohammad Sheikh was accompanied by his wife Mumtaz Sheikh, daughter Hina Rabbani Sheikh and his son-in-law Abdul Rehman from Vikas Tripathi. All of them together started pressuring Indravati to convert to Islam by offering cash and all the land in her name. In the complaint given to the police, Indravati said that she did not succumb to the pressure of her brother and his family and refused to convert. After this, Mohammad Hussain along with his wife, daughter and son-in-law entered the house, abused them and threatened to kill them. They also insulted her by making caste-related remarks. In this case, based on the complaint of the woman, the police filed a case against Mohammad Hussain alias Shyamlal, his wife Mumtaz, daughter Hina Rabbani Shaikh, and son-in-law Abdul Rehman alias Vikas Tripathi under sections like conversion, SC-ST, breaking into the house and assault among others. All four were registered and arrested.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added as a religiously motivated crime under two prime categories of the tracker. The first is- Predatory proselytisation. Under this, the sub-category selected is- Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion. Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. The second category under which this case has been placed is- Hate speech against Hindus and within this, two sub-categories have been selected. The first 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 second sub-category selected under 'Hate speech against Hindus' is- Violent threats. Violent threats, explicit, implicit or implied, is the most dangerous form of hate speech since it goes beyond discriminatory and prejudicial language to express the intent of causing harm to an individual or a group of people based on their religious identity and faith. There could be several different kinds of threats that are issued to Hindus based on religious animosity. An explicit threat would mean the direct threat of violence towards an individual Hindu, a group of Hindus or Hindus at large. Physical violence, death threats, threats of destruction of property belonging to Hindus and threats of genocide would mean explicit threats against Hindus for their religious identity. Implicit threats may not be a direct threat but implied through the use of symbols of actions – for example – in the Nupur Sharma case, other than explicit threats, there were also implicit threats when Islamists took to the streets to burn and beat her effigies. It implies that they want to do the same to Nupur Sharma – thereby is considered an implicit threat. Violent threats can be delivered in person, through letters, phone calls, graffiti, or increasingly through social media and other online platforms. It would be important to understand that a threat – explicit or implicit, online or offline – to an individual who happens to be a Hindu does not qualify as a religiously motivated threat. Such a threat, while vile and dangerous, could be owing to non-religious reasons and/or personal animosity. To qualify as a religiously motivated threat, it would need to exhibit an indication that the individual is being targeted for religious reasons and/or owing to his/her religious identity as a Hindu. In this case, the victim was harassed and pressured by her converted family members into renouncing her faith and adopting Islam. She was also threatened with life if she refused to accede to the conversion demands. This was an arm-twisting tactic that her family members adopted to compel her to renounce her professed faith and accept Islam. This constitutes a religiously motivated hate crime as such actions are driven by intolerance towards the victim's religious identity and aim to coerce her into abandoning her faith, often accompanied by threats, violence, or other forms of intimidation. Further, the religious motive and animosity towards the Hindu woman become more apparent because of the caste slurs that were hurled at her. The victim herself testified how she was abused with caste slurs by her family members when she refused to accede to their conversion demands. Here, it can be argued that a caste-specific slur is aimed at her micro identity of belonging to the Dalit section of the Hindu community and not her Hindu identity itself. However, as far as Abrahamic religions are concerned, the micro identities of caste, region, and language are secondary. It is the religious identity that drives the animosity of the perpetrator against the Hindu victim. In this case, while the accused hurled caste abuses at the victim, the animosity was driven by his animosity towards Hinduism and Hindus. Therefore, the fact that caste slurs were hurled at the victim by the perpetrators makes it a religiously motivated hate crime against the victim.