On February 23, 2020 in Delhi, Hindu nationalist mobs roamed the streets burning and looting mosques and Muslim homes, shops and businesses. They killed and burned alive Muslims who could not escape; the victims were largely unprotected by the police. At least 137 people, almost all Muslims, were killed and many others were beaten half to death: a two-year-old baby was stripped by a gang to see if he was circumcised as Muslims usually are, but Hindus are not. Some Muslim women pretended to be Hindus to escape.
Government complicity was not as directly visible as in Germany 82 years earlier, but activists of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by prime minister Narendra Modi, were reported to be in the forefront of the attacks. A video was released showing Muslim men, covered in blood from beatings, being forced to lie on the ground by police officers and being compelled to sing patriotic songs. Modi said nothing for several days and then he made a vague appeal for “peace and brotherhood”.
Under the slogan of “Everything is fine”, the government’s real attitude towards the violence became evident when it instantly transferred a judge critical of its actions during the riots. Judge Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court was hearing petitions about the violence when he said that the court could not allow “another 1984” to happen, referring to the killing of 3,000 Sikhs by mobs in Delhi in that year after the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Accusations of fascist behaviour by today’s political leaders and their governments, similar to those of the fascist regimes in Germany, Italy, and Spain in the 1930s and 1940s, should not be taken lightly. Yet Modi and the BJP appear closer than other right-wing regimes to traditional fascism in their extreme nationalism and readiness to use violence. At the center of their agenda is their brand of Hindu nationalism and a relentless bid to marginalize or evict India’s 200 million Muslims.
The rest of the world has been slow to grasp the gravity of what is happening in India because the Modi government has succeeded in shifting India’s image away from its previous status as a pluralistic secular state. The sheer number of people negatively affected by this change is gigantic. If the Muslims in India were a separate country, they would be the eighth largest state in the world by population.
The violence in Delhi stemmed from the fear and hatred generated by the government against the Muslims. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), under which non-Muslim migrants can swiftly gain Indian citizenship but Muslims cannot set the ball rolling. Even more threatening is the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is likely to deprive many Indian Muslims of their citizenship. The non-violent protests and demonstrations opposing these measures provoked the Hindu nationalist mobs into staging what was close to a pogrom. Just how far Modi and the BJP will go in their anti-Muslim campaign is very much in evidence in Jammu and Kashmir, the one Indian state with a Muslim majority. Mass detentions and torture are the norm there, according to the few witnesses who are able to report what they have seen.
Previously it was Kashmir and Assam, today it is Delhi. What’s next for the millions of homeless Muslims? India’s rapid saffronization threatens the secular and democratic ethos that it had cultivated over decades.
After 73 years, the Delhi riots and bloodshed recalled the horrors of the India-Pakistan partition in 1947. In those days, bungalows and mansions were burned and looted, women were raped and children were killed in front of their siblings. After decades, Delhi was facing the same violence and chaos under the fascist government of Narendra Modi. India's capital was grappling with the aftermath of the worst communal violence in Delhi in decades. 
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