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ISLAMABAD: A water dispute in India&#39;s Uttarakhand state has exposed stark discriminatory practices in law enforcement, with authorities demolishing the homes of accused Muslims within hours while sparing the homes of upper-caste Hindus accused of torturing and killing a Dalit teenager. On June 13, a clash erupted in Bairagiwala village in the Sahaspur area of Dehradun district over agricultural irrigation rights. The Times of India reported that a Hindu man, Ashok Kumar,&nbsp;attempted to irrigate his fields using water from a shared public borewell. According to police complaints, members of an adjacent family, led by a Muslim man, Imtiaz, objected. He said that the water diversion infringed on their irrigation rights. The initial argument escalated into a physical scuffle that drew 30 to 40 armed people wielding batons, wooden planks, shovels, and hammers. During the violence, Vinod Kumar Kashyap, a 44-year-old local ruling party official, was beaten to death with a hammer, according to The Times of India. Unequal justice Within 24 hours, the Dehradun district administration demolished the residential home of a Muslim man who was accused of murder. The local police bypassed the mandatory 15-day notice set by India&#39;s Supreme Court, according to Hindustan Times. The response contrasts sharply with the June 8 killing of Ketan Lal, an 18-year-old Dalit youth in Tehri district. According to NewsClick, attackers used pliers to pull out his fingernails and toenails before he died. Authorities did not demolish the homes of upper-caste accused individuals despite the crime&#39;s brutal nature. Police also delayed registering charges under atrocity protections for Ketan Lal&#39;s case, acting only after public protests, NewsClick reported. Broader anti-Muslim campaign The incident reflects escalating anti-Muslim sentiment across Uttarakhand under Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami&#39;s administration. State authorities have sealed five mosques in the Dehradun area, according to local Indian news outlets. In June, officials sealed a mosque in Thano village that local residents said had existed since 1978 and received state funding, following protests by the right-wing Bajrang Dal organization. Right-wing groups have increasingly monitored hotels, businesses, and resorts targeting interfaith couples under the guise of combating &quot;Love Jihad,&quot; according to NewsClick. In April, a Muslim youth named Samir died after being targeted for eloping with a Hindu girl, the report stated. In another incident, right-wing activists raided a footwear showroom, writing &quot;jehadi&quot; on nameplates of Muslim employees, as reported by several news outlets. State officials have popularized terms like &quot;Land Jihad&quot; and &quot;demographic change&quot; to describe minority Muslim presence and activities, the Center for the Study of Organized Hate reported in February 2025. These narratives have provided the administration with what it claims are justifications to target the minority community. Chief Minister Dhami declared the &quot;jihadi and violent mindset attempting to disrupt the peace and social harmony of Uttarakhand would not be tolerated,&quot; according to The Times of India. Such language conflates an entire religious community with criminal actions. Human rights advocates, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, warn that extra-judicial demolitions and discriminatory law enforcement undermine the rule of law and fuel communal division in the region.

A screenshot shows local police in Bairagiwala village in the Vikasnagar area of Dehradun, northern India, after a water dispute turned violent. (Indo-Asian News Service/X)

India

Recent mosque closures, anti-Muslim campaigns, and vigilantism against Muslims have intensified concerns that administrative actions in the state of Uttarakhand are increasingly shaped by religious discrimination.

Dehradun water clash exposes discriminatory justice against Muslims in India

ISLAMABAD: A religious leader at a Hindu nationalist gathering in Indian Hyderabad called on parents to train their children in firearms and violence instead of traditional childhood education, according to on-ground reporting by Indian investigative outlet The News Minute. &quot;Stop teaching children &#39;Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.&#39; Teach them how to fire a gun and sword fighting. Don&#39;t send girl children to dance classes. Send them to martial arts classes. Send them to RSS shakas, Bajrang Dal&#39;s training centers,&quot; chief speaker Girdhar Swami Shastri told the gathering on Saturday, according to The News Minute. The statement was made at the Dharma Rakshana Sabha, organized by the Ganesh Utsav Committee, which is affiliated with the right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteer organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). &#39;Twist their necks&#39;The Jan. 24 event was held in Balapur, a location in Hyderabad that hosts a settlement of Rohingya Muslims who fled religious persecution in Myanmar. The Indian government does not categorize Rohingya Muslims as refugees and considers them &quot;illegal immigrants,&quot; as noted by The News Minute. The report noted how the chief speaker, Shastri, declared he would not step down from the dais until India became a &quot;Hindu Rashtra.&quot; He claimed Muslims enter countries &quot;either to convert or to behead&quot; non-Muslims. He urged Hindus to organize &quot;physically and militarily,&quot; stating: &quot;The Hindu society will not survive unless the community gets organized and starts responding to bricks with stones, sticks with swords and spears with pistol revolvers.&quot; The speech included direct exhortations to violence: &quot;If you see any Bangladeshi Muslim or a Rohingya Muslim, hold them by their neck, pin them on the ground and twist their necks,&quot; according to the report. Shastri also urged Hindu women to have more children, claiming that &quot;strength lies in numbers.&quot; He said children should be trained in violence. Scale of operationsAccording to the RSS Annual Report 2025, the organization operates over 73,000 daily shakhas (training branches) across India. The organization&#39;s educational arm, Vidya Bharati, operates schools enrolling 3.5 million children. Over 70% of new RSS members belong to the 14-25 age group. RSS ideology has also been integrated into formal education systems, according to Indian media reports. In late 2025, the Delhi government began introducing lessons on the history of the RSS and its founders into the public school curriculum under the &quot;Rashtraneeti&quot; (National Policy) program. In remote tribal areas, the organization operates thousands of &quot;Ekal Vidyalayas&quot; &mdash; one-teacher schools providing basic education while making Hindutva ideology compulsory curriculum, according to reports on the organization&#39;s educational activities. Academic research published in the Journal of South Asian Studies describes RSS shakha activities as including physical training with a &quot;lathi&quot; (bamboo staff), ideological instruction that reinterprets Indian history as a continuous struggle against Muslim &quot;invaders,&quot; and concluding with a Sanskrit prayer to the &quot;Motherland.&quot; The Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, operates annual &quot;Shaurya Prasikshan Varg&quot; (Valour Training Camps), according to VHP official charter documents.&nbsp; BBC has documented some camps where training includes knives and firearms. In 2016, a video from an Ayodhya camp showed trainees &quot;fighting&quot; men dressed in traditional Muslim attire. Historical patternThe rhetoric calling for the militarization of Hindu youth dates to the founding of Hindu nationalist ideology, according to academic historical research. In 1923, V.D. Savarkar argued that only through &quot;rifle practice&quot; could Hindu youth assert dominance. In 1937, B.S. Moonje established the Bhonsala Military School in Nashik to train Hindu boys in military discipline. Human Rights Watch documented Bajrang Dal leaders in the 1990s calling for &quot;militarization&quot; of Hindu youth. In 2002, Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray publicly suggested Hindus needed &quot;suicide groups armed with bombs.&quot; Violence connectionsHuman Rights Watch and judicial commissions have documented connections between RSS/Bajrang Dal training and communal violence. HRW reports and tribunals found that Bajrang Dal and RSS members &quot;were most responsible&quot; for organized anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat 2002 that killed over 1,000 people. Witnesses reported that mobs used organized tactics similar to those in training drills, according to tribunal testimony. More than 600 incidents of violence against Christians were reported in 2024, with RSS and Bajrang Dal youth groups identified as primary aggressors, according to United Christian Forum and Human Rights Watch. A December 2025 New York Times investigation uncovered a network of over 400 hostels serving tribal youth that function as recruitment centers for Hindu nationalist mobilization. Legal enforcement gapIndia&#39;s Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, criminalizes recruitment of children by &quot;non-state self-styled militant groups&quot; with penalties up to seven years, according to the Act&#39;s provisions. However, RSS and Bajrang Dal successfully defend activities in court as &quot;cultural education&quot; protected under constitutional rights, according to legal analyses. According to India Hate Lab data, there were 1,318 verified hate speech events in India in 2025 &mdash; a 13% increase from 2024 and nearly double the 668 incidents in 2023. Almost 90% of events occurred in BJP-governed states, according to IHL analysis. The highest numbers were in Uttar Pradesh (266 events), Maharashtra (193), Madhya Pradesh (172), Uttarakhand (155), and Delhi (76). International concernThe United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued multiple statements in 2024-25 expressing alarm over &quot;incitement to violence&quot; targeting Muslims in India, according to official UN communications. For the sixth consecutive year, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended in its 2025 report that India be designated a &quot;Country of Particular Concern.&quot; Human Rights Watch&#39;s World Report 2025 documented growing use of &quot;hate speech&quot; at religious gatherings where speakers call for an exclusively Hindu state, noting that local authorities often fail to take action.

At a Hindu nationalist gathering, chief speaker Girdhar Swami Shastri urged parents to militarize children, citing firearms training, amid rising hate speech, weak enforcement, and links between RSS-linked groups and violence.

Articles tagged with "anti-Muslim sentiments"

Dehradun water clash exposes discriminatory justice against Muslims in India

Replace nursery rhymes with firearms training, Hindu nationalist tells Indian parents

Dehradun water clash exposes discriminatory justice against Muslims in India