Violence swept different parts of the country on Thursday, March 30, on the occasion of Ram Navami, as Islamic supremacists provoked and attacked Lord Ram devotees in the Shobha Yatras, many of which were organised for the first time since COVID-19 restrictions came into force in 2020.
From Vadodara in Gujarat to Howrah in West Bengal, from Mumbai to Sambhaji Nagar, cities and towns across the length and breadth of the country were smouldering with the fire of religious zealotry as Islamists attacked Ram Navami processions while they were traversing through Muslim-majority regions or as the ‘liberals’ call them ‘Muslim areas’.
On Thursday, a Ram Navami procession near Panjrigar mohalla in the Vadodara district of Gujarat was attacked by Islamists who pelted stones at the procession. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, confirming the attack stated that the attack was massive but the idol of Lord Rama was saved.
According to the reports, around 200-500 Muslims arrived on the street during the procession and began pelting stones at the procession and the Hindu participants. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)’s local office bearer Vishnubhai Prajapati stated that some vehicles including big cars were also damaged.
Howrah, the twin city of Kolkata witnessed a similar spate of violent attacks on the occasion of Ram Navami as stones were pelted on the procession from the terraces of the buildings in the Shibpur neighbourhood.
Vehicles and shops were also torched during the violence. Videos from the place show several vehicles on fire on the road, while many other vehicles were lying overturned. The damaged vehicles include a police vehicle. The neighbourhood where the violence was reported is dominated by Muslims.
Similar violence was reported from Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district on Ram Navami. Violent clashes broke between two groups at the Kiradpura area of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, videos of which have emerged showing that the decorations outside Ram Mandir in the area were attacked by a violent mob on Wednesday night.
The mob attacked the outer side of the Ram Mandir and also vandalised several vehicles parked in the area including the police vehicles. As reported earlier, the mob executed the attack in presence of the police officers and also set police vans on fire.
Several injuries were reported after a Ram Navami procession in the Malvai region of Mumbai’s Malad suburb was attacked by an Islamist mob as it passed by a Masjid near gate no. 7 area. The Islamists attacked the procession by pelting stones and also forced the loudspeakers to be shut in the area.
Also in the Paldhi region in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra, a fight broke out between two groups when DJ music was played as a religious procession passed by a mosque in Paldhi. The police have made 45 arrests and registered two FIRs in the case.
The alarmingly routine attacks on Ram Navami are an attempt to assail the symbol of the modern Hindu renaissance, Lord Ram
Such attacks, especially when the procession passes through Muslim-majority regions, have become alarmingly common in the last few years, especially on the occasions of Hindu festivities, in particular, Ram Navami, the birth anniversary of Lord Rama. For Hindus, Ram Navami remains one of the foremost festivals and a preeminently auspicious occasion in the Hindu calendar year. On this day, Hindus seek blessings from Lord Rama, provide food to the needy, perform rituals, and take out processions among other things.
The attacks are not just on the religious beliefs of Hindus but also an attempt to extinguish their resistance. Lord Ram, one of the most popular Gods of Hindus, has emerged as the most potent symbol of the modern Hindu renaissance against western decadence and middle eastern orthodoxy. The attacks on Ram Navami processions aim to chip away at the symbolism personified by Lord Ram.
In response to Christian colonialism and centuries of tyranny under Islamic marauders, several Indian intellectuals and reformers in the 19th century endeavoured to revitalise and reform Hinduism, giving rise to the concept of the modern Hindu renaissance. Lord Ram thus became an important figure to mobilise an otherwise fragmentary Hindu society, riven by infighting and numerous cultural differences. He has been a source of inspiration for many Hindus and is revered for his virtues of righteousness, courage, and devotion to duty, and is seen as a personification of the ideal human being. In this sense, Lord Ram embodies an ideal that modern Hindus strive to emulate in their own lives.
In addition, the celebration of Ram Navami and the recitals of Ramayana paths keep alive the values and principles Lord Ram stood for and embodied, which is anathema to the supremacists wanting to homogenise the entire world and bring them under one religious fold. Lord Ram is a lodestar of moral guidance and has inspired a generation of Hindus to live a virtuous and ethical life. In this way, the celebration of his birth, Ram Navami, has naturally contributed to cementing and reinforcing a distinct Hindu identity that has survived despite centuries of Christian colonialism and Muslim conquests.
Furthermore, the figure of Lord Ram was also used by freedom fighters to galvanise the larger Hindu population against British colonial rule. Several leaders invoked Lord Ram to inspire and unite Hindus in their fight to overthrow the British regime. To this end, Lord Ram became a symbol of national pride and resistance and helped to mobilise the Indian people in their struggle for freedom.
Overall, Lord Ram’s widespread appeal, values and principles propagated, and his enduring significance in shaping Hindu resilience against foreign supremacism turned him into an emblem of the modern Hindu renaissance that stoutly opposed Christian missionaries, Islamic tyrants, and seminaries, which sought to alter and continue to do so the cultural and religious fabric of the country.
Therefore, the Islamist attacks on Ram Navami processions should be viewed from this prism. The ultimate motive of the Islamists is to deracinate India from its millennia-old moorings and convert it into ‘Dar al-Islam’ (The House of Islam) from the current ‘Dar al-Harb’ (The House of War, where Islam is not the state religion) through the agency of ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’. But Lord Ram and his socio-cultural significance remain impediments to the supremacist fantasy of turning India into an Islamic country as they continue to animate the religious and moral conscience of the majority of the country, which is why Ram Navami processions are vilified, and branded as a congregation of extremist elements so that attacks on them can be justified and rationalised.
This is why absurd and irrational explanations are put forth by the Islamists and their allies in the Left ecosystem in their attempt to demonise Ram Navami processions. Instead of blaming the supremacists living in Muslim ghettos, the Ram Navami processions are held responsible for the ensuing violence because they chose to traverse through ‘Muslim areas’—arbitrarily created Muslim enclaves—where the presence of Ram Navami Shobha Yatras and Lord Ram devotees is enough justification for the Islamist attacks on them.
Whether by design or destiny, the attacks on Ram Navami processions are nothing but attempts to create grounds to associate violence with the festival and justify the curbs till it is eventually stopped altogether. This is what the Diwali festival faced when a posse of ‘liberals’ and ‘environmentalists’ ran motivated campaigns against it, associating it with pollution even though the bursting of firecrackers scientifically contributed an insignificant amount of pollution to the environment.
The Left’s attempt to vilify Jai Shri Ram slogans
More worryingly, the attacks on Ram Navami processions are an extension of the Islamist attempts of perverting a pious slogan of Jai Shri Ram as a war cry and a portend of religious fanaticism. For months now, Islamists and their supporters on social media are involved in vilifying ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogans, most notably by Alt News’ Mohammed Zubair, who falsely claimed that an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad was assaulted for refusing to chant the slogan. It later came to the fore that the assault occurred because of personal animosity and an occult practice having gone wrong. But legions of ‘liberals’ made a beeline to smear the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan and spread the fake news.
Similar attempts to vilify Jai Shri Ram slogans have been witnessed, where the ‘liberals’ and ‘Islamists’ paint the benign slogan as a war cry to drive pious Hindus away from chanting the slogan and guilt-trip them into eschewing another of their customs and move them away from their millennia-old tradition.
Why Hindus must not cede ground to religious supremacists
But practices such as taking out Ram Navami processions and chanting slogans such as Jai Shri Ram played a critical role in keeping Indians moored to their culture, even in the face of centuries of Islamic oppression and British colonialism. The Hindus owe their cultural and religious indigeneity and consciousness to the celebrations of festivals such as Ram Navami, Durga Puja, Dussehra, Diwali, and many others. The one reason foreign rulers and tyrants could not strip India of its religious consciousness is the piety and resilience of its population in following its customs and traditions.
As Islamists within the country try to ramrod a cultural change in the country, it is time for Hindus to stand up for their practices and jealously guard them, ceding no inch, no ground to the expansionists who seek to alter the socio-religious fabric of the country by using violence as a tool to instil terror and propaganda as an instrument to demonise the victims.
