NEW DELHI: Suhel Mansuri, who carries scars from Hindu-Muslim riots that killed dozens in his district of India’s capital in 2020, says his vote on Saturday in national elections was for “peace and brotherhood” as divisive religious rhetoric rises.
Mansuri and his brother were surrounded by a crowd during the riots in Delhi’s most densely populated district and beaten with iron rods and bricks, resulting in multiple bone fractures.
Saturday’s vote is the first since the riots in which at least 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and more than 500 injured as crowds roamed the streets for days, attacking each other with swords and guns, and setting buildings on fire.
“I don’t want anyone to suffer like this ever again,” said Mansuri, 29, a Muslim who has a small clothing business in the Mustafabad area. “People forget that we’re all just the same as the next person when they are incited by hateful speeches.”
Rhetoric focussing on religion and inequality has dominated much of India’s massive seven-phase vote running through June 1, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces accusations of targeting minority Muslims in its campaign.
The Northeast Delhi constituency elected a BJP lawmaker in the past two national elections, in 2014 and 2019.
Modi, favoured to become only the second person to win three consecutive terms as India’s prime minister, referred to Muslims as “infiltrators” and people who have “more children” in a speech last month. He later denied targeting the group that constitutes about 200 million of majority-Hindu India’s 1.4 billion people.
“I want to vote for peace and brotherhood. It’s difficult that the BJP will garner any votes here,” said Mansuri, in a thought echoed by voters in Mustafabad, including some Hindus.
Mithilesh, 42, a Hindu woman who gave only her first name, said she feared for her safety during the riots as a crowd stabbed two youths to death on her street while she was locked inside her house with her daughter-in-law.
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