Members of Kranti Sena, a fringe Hindu group, held their first activist convention on June 1 this year in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, where Muslim hate speech presided over the event.
According to a report by The Caravan, speeches were called for a “sterilization system to curb the explosive growth of the country’s Muslim population.” The “million rupees of Rohingya infiltrators from Bangladesh who have illegally entered the country…be expelled,” Kranti Sena leaders said. About five hundred people participated in this convention and about a quarter of which were women.
The Kranti Sena was established in 2020 and its chairman, Lalit Mohan Sharma, was previously associated with the Shiv Sena and was the chairman of the party’s Western Uttar Pradesh committee.
During the speech, Rajesh Kashyap, district secretary-general of the Muzaffarnagar chapter of Kranti Sena, stated that Hindus were having fewer children than Muslims. “Now we are safe because they are all Hindus in the administrative service, but tomorrow, when our population decreases and the number of Muslims increases, we will not be safe,” he said. “A population control law is enacted,” Kashyap demanded.
Basant Kashyap, who is the deputy chairman of Kranti Sena’s Muzaffarnagar, said Shiv Sena’s decision seemed “anti-Hindu” to him and others within the party.
“Shiv Sena is a Hindu fundamentalist organization, how can it have an alliance with these parties? We did not like it. We are staunch Hindus so together we form Kranti Sena,” he said. Basant comes from a politically active family and was previously a Bahujan Samaj Party worker.
Another speaker, Sajeev Shankar, a priest from Rajasthan and leader of a sect of worshipers of the Hindu deity Ghatushyam, emphasized the importance of protecting Hindu temples. “Today, even when so many Hindutvadi organizations are active, our temples are being demolished but no one speaks. And not talking is becoming fatal for us,” he said.
When they weren’t talking about Indian Muslims, the focus was on Muslims who took refuge in the country. Referring to Rohingya Muslims and their reason for staying in India, the event described them as “infiltrators and illegal persons who are a threat to the internal and external security of India.”
Another Kranti Sena member, Neeraj Verma, is a 28-year-old resident of Ramgarhwa village who works in a clothing store. “We are lucky that there is at least one government for Hindus under Yogiji,” he said, referring to the Uttar Pradesh prime minister, who goes by the name Yogi Adityanath. “If the Yogi government had not been there, the Hindus would have faced more problems.”
Verma felt that Yogi’s rule had enabled Hindus to celebrate their festivals in a grand way. He denied that there was any caste majority in the Kranti Sena. “There are no castes in our organization, we are all Hindus.”
Dandi Swami, a chief priest from Muzaffarnagar, also spoke at the event. He stressed that all Kranti Sena leaders should add their friends on social networks and WhatsApp groups to spread their message. “Understand its importance,” he said.
The Kranti Sena first rose to prominence in Muzaffarnagar in 2021, when its activists began touring the markets around Hindu festivals like Teej and Karva Chauth, campaigning against hiring Muslim Mehendi artists.
Their demand was that no Muslim man should apply Mehendi to any Hindu woman. Manoj Saini, the Secretary-General of the Sena, told the media that Muslim men were using Mehendi to ensnare Hindu women as a form of “love jihad”.
Saini was also the organizer of the June 1 convention. Regarding the demands of the Seine, he said: “Pehle hum nivedan karte hain, phir aavedan karte hain, agar in dono se baat nahi banti toh hum de-dana-dan karte hain”: first we make a request, then a supplication, and if both fail, we let our actions do the talking.
In recent months, a number of Hindutva leaders, lawmakers and Hindu monks had targeted Hindu parliaments or ‘Dharam Sansads’ in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Chattisgarh and New Delhi and incited violence against Muslims after Saffron men and women called for the “genocide” of India’s Muslims.
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