It was yet another day and yet another incident of violence against Muslims in India. This time it was a frenzied crowd harassing a Muslim student, Muskaan, in a college in Mandya district in Karnataka for wearing the burqa.

Hundreds of students, donning saffron headgears, chased the girl and raised the Jai Sriram slogans. The gutsy girl confronted the bullies and chanted Allahu Akbar. When the video of the incident went viral on social media, it created communal tensions throughout the state. There were protests at several places in support of and against the entry of Muslim women wearing burqas in educational institutions.

At some places, the protests turned violent. The chief minister then ordered the closure of educational institutions for three days.

As the situation stands now, Karnataka High Court is hearing a case about the ban on the entry of Muslim women wearing a burqa in educational institutions. Since the terminal examinations in the educational institutions in the state are only a few months away, the petition was filed before the Supreme Court of India for an urgent hearing of the case. However, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case early and maintained that the state’s High Court must first decide about it.

Unfortunately, this is only the latest case in a sordid tradition of Muslim bashing that has continued in the Modi-led India. The tradition is becoming more virulent by the day. A revolting incident involving film star Shah Rukh Khan emerged only recently. During the last rites of the iconic singer Lata Mangeshkar in Shivaji Park in Mumbai, Shah Rukh Khan raised his hands in prayer and blew air on the coffin according to the Muslim tradition. The actor also paid a floral tribute to the singer and touched the singer’s feet according to the Hindu ritual. However, the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh spokesperson, Prashant Umrao, and armies of his followers, gave a cruel twist to the actor’s respect for the passionately loved singer on both sides of the border, alleging that Shah Rukh Khan was spitting on the body.

On a previous occasion in December 2021, some of the far-right Hindu leaders had called for a genocide of Muslims at a three-day religious summit of Hindu Mahasabha in Haridwar, in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing party, aka Annapurna Maa, said, “Even if just a hundred of us become soldiers and kill two million of them, we will be victorious… Only if you stand with this attitude, will you be able to protect Sanatana dharma.”

Pandey blasted in front of a cheering crowd: “to protect Bharat Mata and sanatan dharma, you will have to become soldiers. Leave the books aside and pick up the weapons.” She warned that “we will wage a battle far scarier than the battle of 1857.”

On January 1, a hundred prominent Indian Muslim women were put on an auction app, Bulli Bai, as “for sale as maids.” It was a brazen attempt to sexualise, humiliate and force active and socially prominent Muslim women into silence.

Muslims are routinely prevented from praying in the mosques. Far-right Hindu nationalists openly tell Muslims that they are no longer seen as equal citizens in their country. Their dietary habits and religious rituals are being attacked and even criminalised. The “cow vigilantes” have killed dozens of Muslims for consuming or slaughtering cows. The Modi government banned the sale and slaughter of cows in 2017. Many of these murders have remained unpunished partly because of the delay in the police investigation and rhetoric from the ruling party politicians.

This policy of divisiveness can be easily sold to the younger generation because it is an effective strategy to take their attention away from grinding poverty, a high unemployment rate and an uncertain future.

The incident in Karnataka has attracted condemnation from a cross-section of the developed world. Malala, the Nobel laureate, has found it horrifying. “Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying. Objectification of women persists — for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalisation of Muslim women.”

The BJP government in Karnataka has justified the ban on burqa on administrative grounds and cited bans in other countries, including France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. However, the justifications are not tenable for a variety of reasons. The state government of Karnataka maintained before the Karnataka High Court that a hijab could not be allowed in the classroom because it is not an essential part of Islam. The position of the Karnataka government is unjustified because what is or is not an essential part of Islam is none of the government business. Also, unlike schools, where wearing the uniform is a norm, institutions of higher learning rarely prescribe a mandatory uniform because adults are expected to make independent choices. Thirdly, in a country where many national leaders belligerently flaunt their religious identities, it is highly discriminatory to slap a ban on wearing hijab because of its religious connotation.

The discrimination takes a more ominous meaning in a context where the religious and cultural identity of the Muslims is already under unprecedented stress.

The situation has become unbearable for the Muslims in India. More ominously, they may have to brace for an even more virulent form of Hindutva in the future. Yogi Adityanath, the BJP leader in Uttar Pradesh, known for his incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric, may be in the race to succeed Narendra Modi. In one of his election rallies, he referred to the Muslim voters as “worshippers of Jinnah” and compared them with his Hindu followers as the ones who “sacrifice [their] life for Maa Bharati (Mother India).” He has been accused of fuelling religious intolerance against Muslims and challenging India’s secular and democratic character.

Although it is clear that the BJP reaps a big political dividend by bashing the Muslims, and in the process, humiliating, trivialising and othering 20 percent of India’s population, it is not clear how long this dividend can last. The greater the divisiveness and the more intense the animosity between Muslims and Hindus, the more likely it is that the Hindu majority will vote for the party whose only agenda is to fight the “common enemy.”

This policy of divisiveness can be easily sold to the younger generation because it is an effective strategy to take their attention away from grinding poverty, a high unemployment rate and an uncertain future. It is essential to find buyers for this divisive policy among the educated youth because their chances of gainful employment are even grimmer given that 90 percent of the workforce is employed in the informal sector.

However, divisiveness has its limits. It cannot keep the youth preoccupied with the religious symbols forever.

The reality of Muslim lives in India is far from satisfactory. However, any effort to reap political mileage on the part of the Muslims will make the condition for Indian Muslims even worse. Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind may be articulating the communal feelings of the Muslims when it announced an award of Rs 500,000 for Muskaan for standing up for her rights. Pakistan, too, has showed its support for the Muslims in India by summoning India’s charge d’ affaires and conveying its concern on the ban on Muslim girl students from wearing hijab. It would be much better for the Muslims to frame the harassment of a Muslim girl in Karnataka as a question of denial of human rights rather than a communal issue. After all, a vast majority of Hindus does not subscribe to Hindutva.

Muskaan is on record as having said that the college staff and principal supported and protected her from the frenzied mob. Also, Pakistan may not be best placed to talk about minority rights of Indian citizens. The murder of Mishal Khan and the public lynching of a Sri Lankan executive in a factory in Sialkot are a stark reminder that our treatment of minorities and vulnerable population groups might be just as bad as it is in India.

The writer is an  assistant professor in the Department of Economics at COMSATS University Islamabad,  Lahore Campus