Some Lessons in the Fight Against Hate from Uttarakhand.
Notes on Possibilities, Movements, and Victories in the Struggle for Deeper Democracy.
For the past year, we have been monitoring the situation in Uttarakhand. For more information, we urge you to read this timeline of hate speech and violence since June 2023.
We are deeply concerned about the ongoing situation in Uttarakhand, where news reports describe explicit calls to drive Muslims out of the state. Activists on the ground have been raising alarm over what they say is approaching ethnic cleansing.
This is the story of hate violence in one state in India – but it is a story that has more sides to it than you might expect.
Uttarakhand has become infamous for some of the vilest hate speech in India. Since 2017, there have been periodic waves of hate speech and mob violence in the state – first from July to October 2017 and then from April to August 2018. Subsequently, from November 2021 onwards, beginning with an attack on a church in Roorkee and followed by open calls for genocide in the infamous Haridwar “dharma sansad”, violent and hateful incidents have been steadily occurring in the state. Finally, in May 2023, there was an attempt to drive out Muslims from the town of Purola and surrounding towns in Uttarkashi district, as well as to forcibly shut down Muslim-owned shops in Haldwani and other parts of the state.
But there is another part to this story. In Uttarakhand, the hate brigade has had both successes and setbacks. This newsletter is a brief reflection: Notes on Possibilities, Movements, and Victories in the Struggle for Deeper Democracy.
Throughout history, fascist politics has relied on presenting itself as larger than life and impossible to defeat. They tell us that we can do nothing, as our every act of resistance will be consigned to a “hole of oblivion”, as Hannah Arendt once put it. They tell us that even if we fight, it is only as a moral gesture to show “someone is on the battlefield” (to quote Ravish Kumar’s despairing statement).