India: Religious leader who spoke ill of Gandhi arrested

Indian police arrested a Hindu religious leader on Thursday for allegedly making a disparaging speech against the independence leader Mohandas Gandhi and praising his killer.

Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead by a Hindu extremist during a prayer meeting in the Indian capital in 1948, because he was considered a Muslim sympathizer during the partition of the Indian subcontinent by British colonialists in 1947 in secular India and Islamic Pakistan. .

Kalicharan Maharaj was arrested in the central state of Madhya Pradesh on Thursday for allegedly promoting hatred between religious groups in a speech earlier this week, Press Trust of India news agency police officer Prashant Agrawal was quoted as saying.

According to the local press, Maharaj said: “Gandhi destroyed the country … regards to Nathuram Godse, who killed him.”

Maharaj will be formally charged in court after the police complete an investigation. If convicted, he can be jailed for up to five years.

Attacks by radical Hindus against Muslims and other minorities have intensified after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 and was re-elected in 2019.

The opposition is also demanding the arrest of several Hindu religious leaders for delivering inflammatory speeches against Muslims at a closed-door religious parliament, known as Dharam Sansad, earlier this month in the northern holy city of Haridwar. They called on Hindus to arm themselves for “genocide” against Muslims, according to a police report.

Uttarakhand state police, governed by Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, said they were questioning the suspects. No arrests have been made.

Muslims make up nearly 14% of India’s 1.4 billion people.

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