Why did a Hindu who attacked Sikhs in Australia receive a hero’s welcome in Modi’s India?
- International student Vishal Jood was asked to leave Australia after being linked to a series of attacks on Sikhs. Rather than opprobrium, on his return he was greeted by a roadshow and politicians calling him a patriot
- Critics who accuse prime minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party of fuelling Hindu nationalism in India warn Jood’s case shows how the problem has spread to overseas diasporas
Sonia Sarkar
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Published: 7:30pm, 22 Oct, 2021
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Vishal Jood, who was asked to leave Australia after being linked to attacks on the Sikh community. Photo: Twitter
An international student asked to leave Australia after allegedly assaulting members of the Sikh community received a hero’s welcome on his return to India.
A roadshow greeted Vishal Jood, 24, “an unlawful non-citizen” of Australia as he arrived back in his home state of Haryana on Sunday. A fleet of cars drove through the streets of the city of Karnal in celebration, while a garlanded Jood appeared from a sunroof, waving the Indian flag and smiling.
To foreign eyes, such a welcome – for a convicted criminal fresh from serving six months of a one-year jail term – might seem jarring. But to seasoned observers of the India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the twisted logic behind it was all too recognisable.
Jood was arrested in April in connection with attacks that took place on Sikhs in September 2020 and February 2021, including one in which he was armed with a baseball bat. He was also charged with hate crimes, but these were dropped by the New South Wales’ department of public prosectors. While he admitted three charges related to assault, actual bodily harm and being armed with intent, he and his supporters have portrayed his acts as patriotic. Jood claims that at the time of the attacks he was trying to prevent the Indian flag from being desecrated by Sikhs demanding the creation of a “sovereign state” consisting of land that currently forms Punjab on both sides of India and Pakistan to be known as Khalistan.
While still in jail, Jood had said on Facebook live that an altercation had taken place when he heard “Khalistanis” shouting anti-Modi slogans during a protest and he shouted “Bharat Mata Ki Jai [Hail Mother India]” in return. He claimed the protestors had hit his head, taken the Indian flag he was carrying and thrown it on the floor.
It’s a narrative of events that – despite not winning the sympathy of the Australian justice system – has been faithfully parroted both by sections of the Indian diaspora in Australia and New Zealand and various BJP politicians in India, who portrayed Jood on his arrival home as a “hero” and a “victim”.
In Australia and New Zealand, members of the diaspora flooded social media with videos showing Jood’s grand welcome by his Ror community; in India, Jood had the honour of meeting the Haryana Chief Minister (and BJP politician) Manohar Lal Khattar. Khattar had previously urged India’s Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar to press Australian authorities to release Jood on the grounds he was protecting the Indian flag. Meanwhile, the BJP lawmaker representing the Ror community, Harvinder Kalyan, said anyone who raised his voice to defend the country’s pride “deserved” to be welcomed by the community.
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Concerns
But to others, the reaction to Jood’s return showed far more sinister undertones. Critics said attacks like those Jood carried out were on the increase and were being encouraged by the BJP’s “Hindutva” ideology that calls for Hindu hegemony. Among proponents of the ideology are right-wing elements that claim the religion is under threat from Sikh “Khalistanis” wanting to destabilise Modi’s government.The prime minister has himself often courted diaspora Hindus by portraying members of other religions as “anti-India” forces, according to Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a biographer of Modi.
In Sydney in February, five Sikh students were attacked by a group of men armed with wooden bats. Also in Sydney that same month, police had to intervene when Hindu nationalists affiliated with the BJP clashed with Sikh supporters of Indian farmers protesting against the BJP’s changes to India’s agricultural laws, which farmers say are exploitative and will make them poorer.
Mohan J Dutta, the dean’s chair of communication at New Zealand’s Massey University, who has received abusive messages on social media for criticising “Islamophobic elements” in the Hindutva ideology, said assaults on Sikhs showed not only that Hindu nationalism among Indians overseas was growing, but that it was becoming a threat to social cohesion and democracy in Australia. He said Hindu extremists took advantage of multiculturalism in Australia and New Zealand to propagate hate.
Surjeet Dogra Dhanji, a post-doctoral fellow studying the Indian diaspora and migration at Melbourne University, added that members of the Indian diaspora were concerned at the increasing reach of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist politics and feared it could affect their standing in the eyes of the Australian government.
Of the 619,164 people of Indian ancestry in Australia, there are 224,610 Indian-born Hindus. In New Zealand, there are 240,000 Indians, of which 121,644 are Hindus.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Bloomberg
Spread by social media
Soon after Jood’s arrest in New South Wales, his supporters created a social media campaign titled “Justice For Jood” and raised money to get him a lawyer.These actions raised concerns among local social justice advocacy groups and diaspora members, but those who questioned the campaign often found themselves labelled “Hinduphobic”.
Sydney-based Haroon Kasim, co-founder of the Humanism Project, a diaspora organisation advocating for pluralism, said that allegations of “Hinduphobia” were increasingly being used to attack anyone who opposed the Hindutva ideology.
This had become apparent in Australia during the clashes over Modi’s agricultural reforms, after which many BJP supporters labelled Sikhs “anti-nationalists” and “Khalistani” separatists and spread claims they had insulted the flag. But Amar Singh of Australia-based Sikh charity organisation, Turbans 4 Australia, said that the Indian flag had never been “insulted” at the pro-farmer rallies and that the flag did not need protection from criminals like Jood.
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The Justice for Jood campaign is just one example of how social media is being used to spread the Hindutva agenda. Dutta, of Massey University, said that larger ideological forces were at play and that his team had discovered several Twitter accounts dedicated to projecting the Hindutva narrative on Australian events. These accounts were used to spread disinformation, amplify pro-Hindutva Indian and diaspora media coverage and champion BJP politicians, he said.“These accounts also tag [the Twitter accounts of] Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indian Minister of External Affairs Jaishankar while spreading disinformation,” Dutta added.
Various other social media accounts were used to spread hate speech and portray Australian-Indian Sikhs, Muslims and progressive Hindus as “terrorists or terrorist sympathisers or traitors”, added Kasim, of the Humanism Project.
He said the scale of the problem was larger than the Australian government realised, and claimed that some Hindu religious bodies were promoting hate speech even while drawing public funding. Given this, he said the Australian minister for immigration Alex Hawke was “misinformed” to blame the Jood episode on a “small minority”.
Indeed, many members of the Indian community fear incidents like that involving Jood threaten their standing with the Australian government, though Duta said “deep engagement” with marginalised communities – Muslims, Sikhs, women, caste-oppressed Dalits – could help to alleviate tensions.
Others warned it was in India itself where problems were storing up.
Melbourne-based Deepak Joshi, co-founder of NRI Affairs, a news platform for overseas Indians, feared the support for Jood would encourage others to see violent acts against other religions as a path to a “rewarding” career on their return to the homeland.
Back in India, Haryana-based Daljeet Singh of the Democratic Party of India thought it entirely plausible that the BJP might use Jood to create trouble in the state especially as the farmers’ protests were continuing.
“But this won’t help the BJP politically because people now talk about real problems – inflation, unemployment and the new agricultural laws,” Singh said.
