Gurpreet Singh  

Days after a French teacher was brutally murdered by an Islamic extremist, Deepika Singh Rajawat is facing a backlash from right wing Hindu fanatics.  

Samuel Party was beheaded after he shared a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad in class.  

While the world has not recovered from the shock, an India-based human rights lawyer is facing threats on social media for tweeting a cartoon depicting the hypocrisy of those Hindus who worship goddesses, but sexually abuse women.   

The Hindus are celebrating Navratri these days. It’s a festival dedicated to female deities that embody women empowerment.  

Deepika Singh Rajawat, who is a known feminist, had questioned the irony of the society that reveres goddesses, but has no respect otherwise for the bodies of women. Her tweet was in response to growing sexual violence against women in India, describing it as ironic that the same set of people who are praying before deities are targeting women with impunity.  

Violence against religious minorities and their women has spiked under the current ruling right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Back in 2018, an eight-year-old Muslim nomad girl, Asifa Bano, was raped and murdered inside a temple in Kathua. This was done to terrorise the Muslim community and force them to flee. So much so, the BJP supporters came out in support of those involved.  

Rajawat had stepped forward to take up the case of the victim’s family. Since then, she has been facing death and rape threats.  

Her tweet of Navratri has once again outraged the supporters of Hindu Right. They are seeking her arrest for hurting religious sentiments, despite the fact that she is a practising Hindu, and the tweet was not offensive toward deities at all. It was rather directed at the double faced worshippers.  

It’s time that the global community takes notice of what is happening in India under the BJP government as well.  The silence over what is happening with Rajawat and the anguish over the murder of Party is selective and dishonest.  

Considering the recent murders of free thinkers and rationalists in India, allegedly by the Hindu extremists who have become emboldened under the BJP rule, threats against Rajawat cannot be taken lightly.