Not a place hitting the main news channels often, Leicester is a small town of 250,000 inhabitants about a hundred miles north of London and 40 miles east of Birmingham the UK’s second largest city.
But an imported ideology is now the cause of religious violence that has profoundly affected Leicester’s ethnic community of South Asians. This Hindutva ideology represents a belief in the transcendence of Hinduism and its culture.
Leicester prides itself as a city of tolerance and diversity where different religions and races all live together in relative harmony — a sort of ‘live and let live and mind your own business’ philosophy that had worked until recently. But under the surface simmering tensions burst forth recently. The trigger was a South Asia Cup cricket match between Indian and Pakistan held in Dubai and won by India.
Couple Hindutva with India’s win and groups of Hindu young men were keen to demonstrate their might, and did so on isolated young Muslims. The latter then formed their own groups ready for revenge.
Where were the police one might ask. Well, a couple of beaten up Asian teenagers did not register as exhibiting anything more than random teenage violence. They were slow to react and did not discuss the ominous truth of religion as the prime mover behind the violence.
Civic leaders on both sides are now trying to quell the attacks. But the damage has been done and the seeds of ill-feeling have been sown within the community meaning Hindus vis-a-vis Muslims and vice versa.
India’s per capita GDP is higher than for Pakistan or Bangladesh, the two countries bordering it, which together constitute the subcontinent. Thus the three countries are similar culturally. The next question to ask is why then is India hugging the bottom on the 2020 World Happiness Report, next to ill-fated war-torn places like Yemen. India is ranked 144 while its rival and neighbor Pakistan, although lower in per capita GDP, ranks a shocking (for India) 66. Bangladesh also ranks much higher than India at 107, despite its devastating floods and typhoons.
Perhaps the answer lies in the pervasive hate that is the currency of the ruling BJP (Bharatia Janata Party), a currency spent liberally during general elections to the detriment of the Congress Party, which has stood for a secular India since independence.
But hate yields more votes as BJP leaders Norendra Modi and Amit Shah know well. After all, they came to power via the destruction of the historic nearly five century old Babri Mosque, built on a Hindu holy site in an effort to ally Hindus by an astute Babur, the Mughal whose hold on India, just wrested from the Muslim Pathan kings, was still weak. It worked for Babur then; its destruction worked for the BJP in the 21st century
Has India become more civilized since?