The songs that played out on the music system and the slogans that were lustily shouted had little to do with Ram Navami, an occasion of piety and celebration for devout Hindus, but everything to do with baiting Muslims as the processions wound their way on main roads this past weekend. A few, like the one on Andheri-Kurla Road, were shared on social media and received unsettling cheer or justified condemnation, while on-ground activists say many more such processions were held across the city to commemorate Ram Navami.

How the pious occasion merits songs that openly threaten ‘Aurangazeb ki aulaad’, use explicit gendered cuss words set to music, and are repeated even by women, and DJs that rouse the crowds composed mostly of young men to bait the Muslims is an old question. It’s a template being used again and again, with clear political gains.

The Hindutva music targeting and baiting Muslims has been around for a few years now and has been used, without any restraint or response from law-keepers, during festivals and election campaigns. The Bharatiya Janata Party, cleverly, profits from the drumming up of hate against the ‘other’ but shifts responsibility for the offensive lyrics and songs to the musicians-singers.

This trend, reportedly from Delhi-Uttar Pradesh nearly a decade ago, has caught on and spread like wildfire, meriting columns and books and the usual tch-tch noises from shocked liberals. That people continue to be surprised by Hindu........

© Free Press Journal