The Samajwadi Party has a history of Muslim appeasement. Be it Mulayam Singh Yadav’s transition into “Mulla-Mulayam” and ordering firing on unarmed Karsevaks in Ayodhya in 1990, making Muslim appeasement policies, and protecting Islamist rioters as seen in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar Riots, attempting to withdraw cases against Islamic terrorists Shamim and Waliullah Khan in the 2007 serial blasts or the recent show of support to Islamists in the Sambhal violence case, the Samajwadi Party has always positioned itself as a party of the Yadav family but for the Muslim community. In Islam, there is a concept of Ummah which essentially means Muslim brotherhood implying that Muslims across the world regardless of nationalities and race are “religious brothers”.
This simply means that a Bangladeshi Muslim would support an Indian Muslim or Pakistan Muslim or so on in their fight against non-Muslims by virtue of being ‘Islamic brothers’. While a historical example of this is the Khilafat Movement of the 1920s by Indian Muslims in response to the removal of the Caliph (Khalifa) Turkey, a contemporary instance of Islamic brotherhood can be the Muslims across the world beyond their national or racial identities extending support to Palestinian terror outfit Hamas, which claims that Israel is Waqf property, in its was against the Jewish nation. Even in India, several Muslims expressed solidarity with their Palestinian Ummatis in the forms of protest marches, social media outrage and so on.
Buddhist-Rohingya Muslim conflict in Myanmar and its aftermath in India
While the Khilafat Movement despite a deliberate downplaying of the Islamic religious motives and giving it a ‘nationalistic’ and ‘secular’ outlook, is a widely known and discussed incident wherein Indian Muslims showed their allegiance to the ‘Ummah’, OpIndia has brought to its readers an incident from the year 2012. It was in a Samajwadi Party-ruled Uttar Pradesh when Muslims in Lucknow broke the idols of Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira to avenge the retaliatory violence and arson by Rakhine Buddhists in Myanmar against Rohingya Muslims after a Buddhist girl was raped and murdered by three Rohingya Muslims. The communal violence in Myanmar had a ripple effect in India, and the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam killed four boys belonging to the Bodo community. In no time, a full-fledged riot erupted in Kokrajhar and neighbouring districts leaving over 80 people dead and numerous injured.
Azad Maidan Riots
After this, two major incidents of Islamist violence happened in the country, one was the infamous Azad Maidan Riots wherein Islamists led by Raza Academy who gathered to protest against the alleged atrocities on Muslims in Assam and Myanmar, desecrated the Amar Jawan Jyoti memorial dedicated to the fighters of 1857 – the First Indian Freedom Struggle. The Islamists also clashed with the police leaving two dead and 63 injured. OpIndia earlier reported how the Mumbai Police in the then Congress-NCP alliance ruled Maharashtra waited till Eid to arrest the accused rioters so that they could celebrate their festival.
When Islamists vandalised the statues of Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira to ‘protest’ against the alleged atrocities against Muslims in Myanmar and Assam
The other and lesser discussed incident was the breaking of the idols of Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira in Lucknow by Islamists. It was the ‘holy’ month of Ramzan when Muslim organisations called for a ‘protest’ saying that Muslims in Assam and Myanmar are being oppressed. The date was 17th August 2012, and on the last Friday or Jummah, the Muslim mob came out on the streets of Lucknow after offering the Alvida namaz at the disputed Teele Wali Masjid. The mob targeted Buddha Park in Lucknow, where they vandalised the statue of Lord Buddha in a meditative posture installed in the Buddha Park and of Lord Mahavira in the Bhagwan Mahavira Park (also called the Hathi Park). The mobsters also vandalised public property, including roadside shops and attacked the media persons who clicked the photos of the vandalism. Later, the police dispersed the mob.
Notably, the 9-foot-high padmasana idol of Lord Mahavira was installed on the 25th of April 2002. The Government of Uttar Pradesh had installed this idol on the occasion of the 2600th birth anniversary (Janma Kalyana – Jayanthi) of Lord Mahavira. The idol of Lord Mahavira had been brought in a procession by the members of the Jain community led by Acharya 108 Sri Viveksagarji Maharaj and other Jain ascetics.
The Muslim mob’s act in Lucknow was closely aligned with the ideology and actions of Afganistan’s Taliban. Back in March 2001, the Taliban government demolished the Bamiyan Buddhas, two enormous statues carved into the cliffs of the Bamiyan Valley in the sixth century. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, ordered the destruction, declaring the monuments blasphemous and against Islamic principles since idols and statues are considered haram by the Taliban as well who are Sunni Muslims of the Deobandi (Hanafi) sect.
“Those statues were for entertainment purposes”: The Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government’s apathy towards Jains and Buddhists to avoid ‘upsetting’ Muslim votebank
The Islamic skullcap-wearing Muslims climbed up and broke the Buddha idol with spades and other objects. All this was happening in the capital of Uttar Pradesh. The Jain and Buddhist communities were outraged over the incident and questioned what was the fault of their deities or those statues. It is notable that neither in Assam nor in Myanmar, the Jain community was involved in the conflicts with Muslims. Evidently, the Islamists saw it as an opportunity to destroy the statues of the Kafirs.
When the Jain community approached the High Court demanding that the Samajwadi Party government take action against the Islamists who broke the statue of Lord Mahavira and install a new one at the same park, the bureaucrats under the Akhilesh Yadav government said that those statues of Lord Mahavira and Lord Buddha were installed in the parks for “amusement purpose” and that there were only ‘minor’ damages’ to the statues. The court, however, rebuked the the Lucknow DM Anurag Yadav and Principal Secretary (Home), RN Srivastava for downplaying the seriousness of the incident. While the SP government claimed to have allotted Rs 24 lakh for the replacement of the damaged statues with new ones, nothing was done leading the court to summon the DM and Principal Secretary only for them to downplay the religiosity of the statue of the most revered figures of two Indic religions and mock their faith.
In 2017, the court once again asked the statement government about what action was taken against those Islamists who damaged the statues, however, the government did not provide any clear answer.
On 12th December 2024, advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain shared the High Court order directing the Akhilesh Yadav-led government to install new statues of Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira. It was Jain’s father and lawyer Hari Shankar Jain who represented the petitioners Ranjana Agnihotri, Sandhya Dubey and Usha Tiwari. Then in power, the Samajwadi Party government trivialised the blatant display of Islamist hatred for Buddhists and Jains, and now when HS Jain’s son is representing the Hindu side in the Sambhal Jama Masjid-Harihari Temple dispute, the Samajwadi Party is supporting the Muslim side and its MP is accused of instigating violence.
Order of Hon’ble High Court directing the government on 29.08.2012 to install new idols of Lord Mahaveer and Lord Buddha after the rioters had demolished it in Lucknow in August,2012. pic.twitter.com/kSJcdIxt17
— Vishnu Shankar Jain (@Vishnu_Jain1) December 12, 2024
From Lucknow to Sambhal, Ayodhya, Kashi to Mathura, Hindus and other non-Muslim communities have for some or the other reason been targeted by the Islamists. In Lucknow, the Islamist mob hooliganism was a “show of solidarity” with the Ummah in Myanmar and Assam, in the cases of Sambhal Jama Masjid-Harihari Temple, Gyanvapi-Kashi Vishwanath Temple, or the Shahi Idgah-Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi, it is the obstinacy of Islamists to let the Hindu community reclaim its cultural and religious heritage and Muslim appeasing political parties facilitate their obstinacy by shielding them and projecting them as victims for electoral gains while trivialising the attack on religious symbols of Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.
