If they take one Hindu girl,
we will snatch at least 100 Muslim girls from them.
This is Yogi Adityanath.
Critics have called him everything from a fire-breathing monk
to a warrior priest.
And for good reason.
Despite his holy background,
the Yogi is best known as one of India’s most aggressive
and dangerous political leaders.
This person must quit as chief minister.
This is a person who has been willing to use live ammunition
against protesters in his own state.
And then he’s asked them to pay for any damage done during protests.
Many are tipping the Yogi to one day replace Prime Minister Narendra Modi
and become the leader of India.
[Dogs of War]
Yogi Adityanath is a high priest and an extreme Hindu nationalist.
He believes that India is a Hindu country for Hindu people,
and his anti-Muslim hate speeches have divided the country.
In a speech, he said if one Hindu was killed by a Muslim,
then 100 Muslims should be killed in return.
I would say that he has attracted as his followers
some of the most hardline, xenophobic, bitterly anti-Muslim
and anti-Christian elements of the Hindu nationalist movement.
The problem is Adityanath isn’t a fringe outsider.
In the last decade,
he’s become one of the most powerful men in Indian politics,
with millions of diehard followers.
And he’s used that power to incite deadly riots,
bulldoze mosques, and rename cities to erase their Islamic history.
In Uttar Pradesh, after BJP came to power,
we renamed Faizabad to Ayodhya.
This is a government that has lost the moral responsibility to rule,
and Yogi Adityanath should resign.
Now it is being turned into
a laboratory of Hindutva fanatic politics.
They are thinking it is a kind of holy war.
Adityanath is a prominent member of the BJP, India’s ruling party,
and the chief minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh.
It’s the biggest state in India
and is seen as the golden goose in Indian politics.
That is the political heartland of India.
And there is an old saying in Indian politics
that the route to power in New Delhi goes through Uttar Pradesh.
The state is home to around 200 million people,
almost a quarter of whom are Muslim.
To put that into context,
there are more Muslims in Uttar Pradesh
than the entire country of Saudi Arabia.
And since becoming Chief Minister,
Adityanath has turned the lives of Muslims there into a living hell.
Yogi said there is no place for others
in places where there are more than 40 percent Muslims.
Places where the Muslim population is between 20 to 35 or 40 percent
witness heavy communal violence.
And in places where the Muslim population is above 35 to 40 percent,
there is no place for non-Muslim people.
He ensured zero representation
for over 35 percent of the total population of the state,
who are Muslims.
He turned that state [Uttar Pradesh]
into one of the most violent parts of India.
The fact that he became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh,
effectively the third most powerful political position in India,
marks the moment where Hindu nationalism
really begins to look scary.
Adityanath has been influential
in spreading a right-wing conspiracy theory known as “love jihad.”
This is the theory that Muslim men
are intentionally marrying Hindu women
and converting them to Islam.
He cited an Allahabad High Court order of yesterday
that said that religious conversions for the purpose of marriage
is not acceptable
to declare that his government would curb love jihad.
It is actually false. It is not existing.
And even his own government, his own central government,
denies its existence.
We will usher in an effective law.
Those people who are secretly hiding their identity and their ideology.
They disrepute the modesty of our women.
This is a warning to them in advance.
If they don’t mend their ways, their death procession awaits.
This is 22-year-old Pinky,
now back home after spending nearly ten days
at the Nari Niketan in Moradabad,
where she claimed to have suffered a miscarriage.
Pinky was sent to the shelter home
after her marriage with a Muslim man
was termed illegal under the new love jihad ordinance.
Under the Yogi’s rule,
the police in Uttar Pradesh have become violent and emboldened.
During Muslim-led protests,
the police opened fire
and were accused of murdering more than 20 people.
He has empowered the police
to act effectively as vigilante death squads.
There is complete breakdown of law and order
in Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh.
It is almost like an imitation of fascism or Nazism.
But it isn’t just the police who’ve been empowered
by the Yogi’s rhetoric.
Civilians are taking action too.
He’s the founder of a youth organization
called Hindu Yuva Vahini,
who’ve been responsible for violence and intimidation
across the state.
Dangerous gangs known as anti-Romeo squads
terrorize people across the region under the protection of the Yogi.
We will put all TMC Romeos behind bars.
Before becoming the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh,
he started the anti-Romeo squads.
They are initiating violence against the girls and the boys
who are entering into a relationship outside their religion.
To safeguard the interests of our sisters and daughters
we will create Uttar Pradesh-like anti-Romeo squads.
While sharing a stage with members of his youth organization
during one of his speeches,
Adityanath looked on as one man called for Hindu men
to rape the corpses of Muslim women.
We are literally in the middle of a rape epidemic,
in Uttar Pradesh especially, but also in the rest of the country.
What the future holds for Yogi Adityanath,
nobody knows.
But tensions are rising in India,
and he’s the man driving them.
Next year, he will campaign for re-election
as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.