On September 18, the Aligarh police in Uttar Pradesh, India, booked fifty-eight-year-old Yati Nasinghanard for calling for the demolition of a Muslim university as well as local madrassas.
This Dasna Devi Temple priest is well known for his controversial statements. He has openly called for hate against Muslims in the past, as well as women and minorities. His social media reaches millions of right-wing followers.
According to the BBC, he calls Muslims “demons” and has threatened to eliminate them.
The latest comments came at an organized event where he said, “Madrassas should not exist in the first place. They should be blown to bits with gunpowder, or we should practice the policy of China and send the residents of the madrassas to detention camps.”
Hindutva supremacist seer Yati Narsinghanand in Aligarh on Sunday said that "all the Madrassas should be blown up with gunpowder & the way China does, all the students of Mardrassas should be sent to camps where the virus called Quran can be removed from their brains." pic.twitter.com/3iYGdtSwKw
— Mahmodul Hassan (@mhassanism) September 18, 2022
According to reports, he said that the Aligarh Muslim University should be demolished “using bombs.”
Nasinghanard stated that he is not concerned with the legal consequences of his speech. That seems to be the case, as he was arrested on January 15 for calling on the genocide of Muslims in Haridwar and for another inflammatory speech in April while he was on bail.
Hindutva leader Yati Narsinganand has been booked by the Uttar Pradesh police after yet another instance of the leader making inflammatory statements by allegedly calling for the demolition of madrasas and the Aligarh Muslim University. https://t.co/B1mrqaK9An
— The Wire (@thewire_in) September 19, 2022
Police also booked Pooja Shakun Pandey, Hindu Mahasabha national secretary, and her husband, Ahshih Pandey, under 295-A deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings by any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.
Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a human rights movement in India, says it is “dedicated to finding and bringing to light instances of hate speech so that the bigots propagating these venomous ideas can be unmasked and brought to justice." They approached the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) last year concerning Narsighhanand’s Islamophobic statements when he warned Hindus that letting plumbers, electricians, and delivery people of Muslim faith into their homes would fall prey to the “jihadis.”
