Thousands of people have turned out in protests across India against a wave of attacks on Muslims by mobs that accuse them of killing cows or eating beef (June 28).

In some places,  protesters read poems penned by Mahatma Gandhi and the posters spoke out that the mob lynchings are examples of “false nationalism.”

Waving “Not in My Name” banners and “Stop Cow Terrorism” placards on Wednesday, protesters braved monsoon rains in at least 10 cities including Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta and Delhi where a cast of intellectuals and activists were joined by relatives of recent lynching victims.

Hundreds of people from Delhi joined the protest, called “Not In My Name”, held six days after the 17-year-old Junaid was killed by a mob on board a Mathura-bound train.

Simultaneous protests were held in several other cities, and are also slated to be held elsewhere in the world.
Among the protesters in Delhi were ordinary citizens, as well as leaders from the Congress, JD(U), AAP and the CPI.
Students and artistes voiced their resistance against what the organisers called a “climate of fear” in the country through poetry, plays, songs and posters which carried messages such as “Not In My Name, Not In Anyone’s name” and “Muslim Lives matter, All lives matter”.

“Dear Ma, I am home. You wanted me to buy new clothes in Delhi, but fate has landed me in heaven, where you don’t have marauding mobs. I am home. Yours, Junaid.”
There was not a dry eye at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar when 22 -year-old Mohammed Asaruddin read out from what he called his brother Junaid’s “letter to his mother from heaven”, at the citizens’ protest on Wednesday.
Asaruddin’s voice quivered as he read out the lines in Hindi from a makeshift dais, set against the backdrop of a “lynch map of India”, highlighting the places where people had been lynched in the country since 2015. The letter, he said, had been penned by a journalist friend.

Critics accuse right-wing Hindu groups, some linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of fomenting or not doing enough to stop violence against Muslims and lower-caste Hindus who eat beef or work in the meat and leather industries.

Modi denies the accusation and has publicly criticised so-called cow vigilantes.

Last Friday, about 20 men attacked four Muslims on a train in the outskirts of New Delhi, fatally stabbing a teenager and seriously injuring two others.

“I feel afraid. I don’t even know if I will be able to reach home safely,” Bashruddin Khandawali, a 24-year-old cousin of Junaid Khan, who was killed on the train, told the Reuters news agency next to a huge “Lynch Map of India” banner.

In Bombay ( Mumbai), protesters refrained from shouting slogans but held up banners reading “stand up to Hindu terrorism” and “say no to Brahminism”.

“I am a Hindu. I consider the cow my mother. But killing people is not right,” Narendra Bhandari, a businessman in his 20s, told Scroll.in.

On Tuesday, a man was beaten and his house set on fire by a mob that accused him of slaughtering a cow in eastern Jharkhand state.

Rights groups say government officials, including the prime minister, have been slow to strongly condemn the attacks and that police action against perpetrators has been inadequate.

Five of the killings, almost all of them in broad daylight and in busy public areas, have taken place in the last three months.

Almost all of the 63 attacks since 2010 involving cow-related violence were recorded after Modi and his Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014, IndiaSpend, a data journalism website, said in a report.

Twenty-eight Indians – 24 of them Muslims – have been killed and 124 injured since 2010 in cow-related violence, IndiaSpend said.

Anjali Arondekar, a professor visiting from the US state of California, said she had attended the Mumbai protest because “nobody seems to care any more that a young Muslim man is being killed”.

The campaign, which discouraged party banners, sought to “reclaim the Constitution” and “resist the onslaught” on the right to life.

Actors Shabana Azmi and Konkona Sen Sharma, Kali Koechlin were seen at participating at Carter Road in suburban Bandra.

Community leaders called on Modi to do more to protect the 14 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people who are Muslims.

In Bangalore, historian Ramchandra Guha and actor-director Girish Karnad joined the hundreds in protesting at the Town Hall.

In Calcutta, singer-music composer Anjan Dutta said “the rising trend of Hindutva is dangerous”.

“I am afraid of the situation in my country now. We need to speak against this monstrosity. India is a place for everyone,” Dutta said.

“We are outraged at the systematic violence. The state has done nothing; there has been a deafening silence from the powers that be,” said filmmaker Saba Dewan, whose Facebook post last week triggered an outpouring of solidarity from across the country, and elsewhere, culminating in spontaneous countrywide demonstrations.

  Hindutva, intolerance, naked truth, not in my name