Who benefits from the riots in India? This question is answered by the well-known study of a leading university. The fundamentalists RSS/BJP is the answer to this question. The Hindu-Muslim polarisation is crucial for the RSS/BJP to win elections in India. For the obvious reason that the minority of the Brahmin-Banias who are the core of the RSS/BJP cannot come to power without this polarisation of the castes as Hindus, and in order to do that, the Muslim-hate is an important plank of the RSS/BJP.

What happened in Kasganj in UP is an indication of the events to come in future. Prior to elections in India in 2019, there will be riots and the riots might have all over India. In Kasganj, a group of Muslims assembled to pay their respect to Indian tricolor flag on 26th January 2018. They had arranged the program in which the flag hosting was to take place and they laid out chairs for the participants to sit. Another bike rally of the caste Hindus to commemorate the republic day of India was to pass through it, and this is where the standoff took place. What followed was the large-scale violence and the local MP of the BJP sided with the Hindu mob.

The Kasganj, previously named by Mayavati as Kanshiram Nagar, is dominated by the dominant OBC castes and they have a strong political presence except once a Muslim candidate won the elections. The elections of 2019 will be critical for a number of reasons, but it can potentially seal the fate of India. The minority government that was voted 30 percent of the popular votes in India and which came to hold strong political power due to its first-past-the-post system has increasingly turned India into a Taliban state. It has undone the important institutions of the democracy and instituted a deep state that is run by the RSS.

The control over the press and media and fake news and outright lies have become part of the governance in India. The opposition parties are crushed beyond repair. In the recently announced seats of the Tripura assembly elections, all the 44 candidates posed by the RSS/BJP came from the Congress party. This is the political poaching that goes hand in hand with perhaps the tampering of the EVMs.

UP is now seeing fresh events of encounters and add to it the riots: you get another delivery of Gangs of Wassepur in real!

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist

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