The Bajrang Dal is a Hindu nationalist militant organisation that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a member of the right-wing RSS family of organisations. The ideology of the organisation is based on Hindutva. Founded on 1 October 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, it has since spread throughout India, although its most significant base remains the northern and central portions of the country. The group runs about 2,500 akhadas, similar to the shakhas (branches) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The name "Bajrang" is a reference to the Hindu deity Hanuman.
The Liberhan Commission was a long-running inquiry commissioned by the Government of India to investigate the destruction of the disputed structure Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Led by retired High Court Judge M. S. Liberhan, it was formed on 16 December 1992 by an order of the Indian Home Union Ministry after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December and the subsequent riots there. The commission was originally mandated to submit its report within three months. Extensions were given 48 times, and after a delay of 17 years, the one-man commission submitted the report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009. In November 2009, a day after a newspaper published the allegedly leaked contents of the report, the report was tabled in Parliament by the Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
The Godhra Train Burning was an incident that occurred on the morning of 27 February 2002, in which 59 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, were killed in a fire inside the Sabarmati Express train near the Godhra railway station in the Indian state of Gujarat. The commission set up by the Government of Gujarat to investigate the train burning spent 6 years going over the details of the case, and concluded that the fire was arson committed by a Muslim mob of 1,000 to 2,000 people. A commission appointed by the central government, whose appointment was later held to be unconstitutional, stated that the fire had been an accident. A court convicted a group of 31 Muslim individuals for the incident and the conspiracy for the crime. The conviction was later upheld by the Gujarat High Court. The causes of the fire have yet to be proven conclusively. The event is widely perceived as the trigger for the Gujarat riots that followed, which resulted in widespread loss of life, destruction of property and homelessness. Estimates of casualties range from the official figures of 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus, to upwards of 2,000 casualties.
The 2002 Gujarat riots, also known as the 2002 Gujarat violence and the Gujarat pogrom, was a three-day period of inter-communal violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The burning of a train in Godhra on 27 February 2002, which caused the deaths of 58 Hindu pilgrims karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, is cited as having instigated the violence. Following the initial riot incidents, there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three months; statewide, there were further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population of Gujarat for the next one year.
The 1994 Gowari stampede occurred at Nagpur, India on 23 November 1994 in which 114 people from the Gowari community were killed and 500 more injured. Nagpur Police were trying to disperse almost 50,000 Gowari protesters using a baton charge but it created panic and triggered a stampede amongst the protesters. Gowaris are an ethnic group of central India and are predominantly present in Nagpur. The majority of casualties were women and children who were crushed to death under the crowd’s feet as they scrambled to escape the police line. Some were victims of barbed wire piercing as they were climbing over high fences to escape. The Maharashtra state government appointed the one-man Justice S S Dani Commission to investigate the event, but it held nobody responsible and referred to the tragedy as an "unfortunate" one. The Commission justified the police action of baton-charge to control such a huge crowd. The commission also cleared state Chief Minister Sharad Pawar and the rest of the government for any responsibility in the incident. Maharashtra’s Tribal Development Minister Madhukar Pichad later resigned, accepting moral responsibility for the tragedy.
Anti-Christian violence in India is religiously-motivated violence against Christians in India. Violence against Christians has been seen by Human Rights Watch as an tactic used by the Sangh Parivar origanisations to encourage and exploit communal violence to meet their political ends. The acts of violence include arson of churches, conversion of Christians by force, physical violence, sexual assaults, murders, rapes and destruction of Christian schools, colleges, and cemeteries.
The Bijon Setu massacre or Ananda Margi Monks killing was the killing and burning of 16 sadhus and a sadhvi belonging to Ananda Marga at Bijon Setu, near Ballygunge, Kolkata in West Bengal, India, on 30 April 1982. Despite the attacks being carried out in broad daylight, no arrests were ever made. After repeated calls for a formal judicial investigation, a single-member judicial commission was set up to investigate the killings in 2012.
The cash-for-votes scandal was an Indian political scandal allegedly masterminded by then Opposition Party Bharatiya Janata Party politician Sudheendra Kulkarni in which the United Progressive Alliance, the majority-holding parliamentary-party alliance of India led by Sonia Gandhi, allegedly bribed Bhartiya Janta Party MPs in order to survive a confidence vote on 22 July 2008. The vote in the Lok Sabha arose after the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front withdrew support from the government, who wanted to pursue an Indo-US nuclear deal.
The 2008 attacks on Christians in southern Karnataka were a wave of attacks directed against Christian churches and prayer halls in the Indian city of Mangalore, and the surrounding area of southern Karnataka, in September and October 2008 by Hindu organizations, the Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sena. The attacks were widely perceived by Christians in southern Karnataka to be punishment from the right-wing Hindu nationalist organisations because Christians had been outspoken about Christian persecution in Orissa, and after the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda, a Hindu monk, allegedly killed by the local Christian community. Additionally, because the New Life Fellowship Trust (NLFT), a fundamentalist, non-denominational Christian Church, was alleged by the Bajrang Dal to be responsible for forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity.
In the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, there were multiple and far-ranging events that were observed. Besides the immediate impact on the victims and their families, the attacks caused widespread anger among the Indian public, and condemnations from countries throughout the world.
On 24 January 2009, the Sri Ram Sena attacked a group of young women and men in a pub in Mangalore, India. A group of 40 activists of the Sri Rama Sena barged into the pub "Amnesia – The Lounge" and beat up a group of young women and men, claiming the women were violating traditional Indian values. Two of the women were hospitalised. The video of the incident has become one of the most watched clips on YouTube, though how the TV crew happened to be ready at the 'unannounced' attack is not known.
The Shopian rape and murder case is the abduction, rape and murder of two young women allegedly by local indian army. in mysterious circumstances between 29 and 30 May 2009 at Bongam, Shopian district in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Two women who were sisters-in-law went missing from their orchard on the way home on 29 May 2009. The next day morning, their bodies were found both one kilometer apart. Local police rejected the allegations saying that the women appeared to have drowned in a stream.
The 1984 anti-Sikh riots, also known as the 1984 Sikh Massacre, was a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs in India following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The ruling Indian National Congress had been in active complicity with the mob, as to the organisation of the riots. Government estimates project that about 2,800 Sikhs were killed in Delhi and 3,350 nationwide, whilst independent sources estimate the number of deaths at about 8,000–17,000.
The assault on T. J. Joseph occurred on 4 July 2010 at Muvattupuzha near Nirmala College in the Ernakulam district of Kerala, India. T. J. Joseph, a professor of Malayalam at Newman College, Thodupuzha, a Christian minority institution affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University had his hand cut off at the wrist on allegation of blasphemy, by members of Popular Front of India, an extremist Islamic organisation in southern India.
The Hondh-Chillar massacre refers to the killings of at least 32 Sikhs on 2 November 1984 in a village in the Rewari district of Haryana, allegedly by politicians mob during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The local police did not intervene in the massacre, pursue a First information report filed by survivors or help resettle the survivors. The mass graves at the massacre were rediscovered in January 2011. A similar massacre occurred in nearby Pataudi.
B. K. Somasekhara is a retired judge of the Karnataka High Court in India.
The United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR) is an inter-denominational Christian organization in India that fights for the human rights of members of the Christian minority, mainly through protest.
Subash Chouhan was the national President of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva organization in India that is the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
The Naroda Patiya massacre took place on 28 February 2002 at Naroda, in Ahmedabad, India, during the 2002 Gujarat riots. 97 Muslims were killed by a mob of approximately 5,000 people, organised by the Bajrang Dal, a wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, and allegedly supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party which was in power in the Gujarat State Government. The massacre at Naroda occurred during the bandh (strike) called by Vishwa Hindu Parishad a day after the Godhra train burning. The riot lasted over 10 hours, during which the mob looted, stabbed, sexually assaulted, gang-raped and burnt people individually and in groups. After the conflict, a curfew was imposed in the state and army troops were called in to contain further violence.
The Nanavati-Mehta Commission is the commission of inquiry appointed by the government of Gujarat to probe the Godhra train burning incident of 27 February 2002. Its mandate was later enlarged to include the investigation of the 2002 Gujarat riots. It was appointed on 6 March 2002, with K. G. Shah, a retired Gujarat High Court judge, as its only member. It was later re-constituted to include G. T. Nanavati, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, after protests from human rights organizations over Shah's closeness to then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Akshay H. Mehta, retired judge of the Gujarat High Court, replaced Shah when the latter died before the submission of the commission's interim report. Mehta was the same judge who had granted bail to Babu Bajrangi, the main accused of the Naroda Patiya massacre.
