Join us for a teach-in workshop followed by a public demonstration on the political context of caste, Islamophobia, and violence in India! 

2:00 to 4:00 pm - Teach in Workshop at New York University (Rm TBD).  
4:00 to 6:00 pm - Walking together and gathering at Washington Square Park for a demonstration and vigil! 

In 2017 alone, there have been 20 reported cases related to cow terrorism. These assaults by citizen vigilante groups include mob lynchings, gang-rape, sexual humiliation via stripping, being chained and beaten. In many of these cases, no one was arrested. In 13 of these cases, the police filed registered cases against the victims or the survivors families. Of the people who died from these particular horrific violence, the majority have been Muslims. Of the 65 instances of cow-terrorism that has been media reported in the past 8 years, 97% have occurred under the Modi regime with each passing year seeing an alarming rate increase. 

The stories around cow or beef-related lynchings have gained virality in part because many of these crimes were video-recorded or photographed. Evidence was uploaded to social media platforms. It speaks to the confidence of impunity that Hindutva criminals enjoy that no attempt was made to erase this evidence. This uptake of cow terrorism is part of a much longer and deeper history of brutal violence against India’s minorities. Brahminism and the Hindu right have always utilized state mechanisms to terrorize India’s Dalit-bahujan communities and minorities -- Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Ravidassis, and Adivasi (indigenous) people. In the past two decades alone, we have witnessed this in the Modi state-sponsored 2002 Gujurat pogram; in the vicious 2008 Kandamal killings of Odisha’s Dalit Christians and the 2013 Muzaffarnagar massacres. State mechanisms have frequently functioned to offer protection and sponsorship during these instances of coordinated ethnic cleansings.

Media narratives have been busy re-framing cow terrorism as a new phenomenon to do with nameless mobs and communalism. However, citizen vigilantism and mob violence is not new. It has always been strategically used by Brahminical nationalists to suppress and destroy dissent, particularly from Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim communities. Recently many in the liberal media have lauded Modi’s condemnation of the cow killings, somehow managing to forget his loving embrace of the recently elected Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath -- an avid Trump-supporter who operated an anti-Muslim vigilante group and is best known for his virulent hatred of Muslims, Christians and Dalits. Little can be expected from media players who have so easily forgotten Modi’s key role in the massacre of over 2000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. 

We are a group of south asian organizations and individuals who stand together against this violence! We stand against the impunity afforded by Brahminical nationalism to the violence perpetrated by Hindutva criminals! We call for peace, justice and accountability! Join us! 

Organized by the Alliance for Justice and Accountability.