Connecting the dots: From ‘Devbhoomi’ to Mumbai, the communal targeting media won't see

There is news. And then there is barely any news.

When headlines are dominated by what politicians say, by accusations and counter-accusations, it is virtually impossible to get a sense of what is really going on in this country. Is the Indo-US trade deal all that matters? Are the shenanigans in Parliament, entertaining as they are, making a difference to our lives?

At any time, and especially now, it’s worth spending time looking for news that is barely reported and joining the dots to understand what is happening in India. Not the headline news or the “breaking news” that inundates our timelines. But the developments that affect those not considered important enough to be a part of the news cycle.

Let’s start with the story of ‘Mohammed’ Deepak, the gym trainer in Uttarakhand’s Kotdwar, who intervened to save an elderly Muslim shopkeeper being bullied to change the name of his shop by Bajrang Dal members. This happened on January 26 when India was celebrating Republic Day. Instead of charging the mob that threatened the shopkeeper, the local police filed a case against Deepak.

Yet, Deepak Kumar, a Hindu who, on the spur of the moment, added the prefix ‘Mohammed’ while confronting the mob, has survived because the video of his intervention went viral on social media, and people have stepped up to support him. For instance, after the incident was reported, many local people cancelled their gym memberships. But John Brittas, CPI(M) member of Parliament from Kerala, has taken the initiative to rope in Supreme Court lawyers who have bought annual membership for his gym to help him out, as reported in The Indian Express. 

His troubles might not have ended yet, as another video on social media shows a Hindu Raksha Dal member offering a reward to anyone willing to kill Deepak. As this article by poet Kaushik Raj in The Wire explains, those invested in inflaming passions against Muslims are particularly afraid and angry with Hindus who speak up for their fellow Indians, irrespective of religion. 

But Deepak’s story is an exception. Off the radar, Uttarakhand is one of those states where the attacks on Muslims are growing, encouraged by the lack of action by the police. In this BJP-ruled state, someone who intervenes like Deepak is charged rather than the men who attacked the shopkeeper. 

And while this is happening across the state, all we read about Uttarakhand is in full-page advertisements in many national newspapers, with the faces of the state’s chief minister and the prime minister prominently displayed at the top, and the rest of the advertisement boasting of the state government's achievements.

This piece in the Northern Gazette tells a very different story. And this one in Article 14 about the young Kashmiri selling shawls in Uttarakhand who was beaten up for being a Kashmiri Muslim. It also mentions similar incidents against Kashmiri Muslims in Himachal Pradesh.

Then take Odisha, another state that is sometimes in the news for incidents like those taking place in Uttarakhand. “Cattle trading is emerging as a flashpoint, deepening mistrust between majority and minority communities”, writes The Hindu’s Odisha correspondent in this long-form piece after a Muslim cattle trader was beaten to death on January 14 on suspicion of “cattle trafficking”.

Or this disturbing report in Quint of three incidents of mob lynching of Muslims.  The stories are similar. Muslim men were lynched on suspicion of being cow smugglers or of being “illegal Bangladeshis”. 

And this in the Telegraph, about two elderly men and a woman being arrested and deported to Bangladesh on suspicion that they were “illegal” on November 27, 2025. Their families were not informed until two months later that the three had been deported. The son of one of the men deported is quoted as saying: “We are Indian citizens. We vote, we have Aadhaar. But because we are Muslim and speak Bengali, our identity is being questioned.”

And not only Muslims. Odisha has also been in the news for the attack on a Christian pastor in Dhenkanal district, as this report by Citizens for Justice and Peace documents. Typically, while the local police finally registered a case against the attackers, they also registered a case against the victim of the attack, the pastor.

And then look at Assam. It is in the news not just because state elections are around the corner but because Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma finds no reason to hold back in attacking Bengali-speaking Muslims, whom he repeatedly refers to as “Miya”,  in words that ought to be considered hate speech. In this piece in Outlook, Harsh Mander quotes Sarma saying: “My job is to make the Miya people suffer”.

Yet even though there is enough case law to qualify his statements as hate speech, as this article by Ajaz Ashraf in Frontline points out, Sarma continues virtually unscathed.

A particularly poisonous video shared on social media, depicting Sarma doing target practice with a gun on Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, has been taken down, but it was reported outside India. Besides his divisive statements that always make it to the news, we are getting stories, albeit mainly from independent media platforms, about how the state police are literally pushing suspected “illegal” immigrants across the border into Bangladesh without due process.

There has been enough reporting on communal issues in Uttar Pradesh over the years. Still, this story, of a group of young girls fooling around in Moradabad, gets turned into a communal incident because most of them were Muslim and one was a Hindu, jolts you into realising how far things have gone. They were booked under the anti-conversion law because they were seen putting a burqa on their Hindu friend.

Join the dots on these reports, and the picture that emerges is not of a country that can call itself “Vishwaguru” but one that is rapidly being consumed by communal hatred.

Unfortunately, this diversionary theme of “illegal immigrants” that has been assiduously propagated by the BJP, including by Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Shah, is now percolating down to the municipal level wherever the BJP has managed to gain control.

The latest in line is Mumbai, a city that knows well the price that is paid by Muslims when any party unfurls the communal flag. Mumbai now has a BJP Mayor, the first time in 44 years, and she has already announced that her first priority is to detect “illegal immigrants”, as reported in this interview in The Indian Express. For a city struggling with enormous civic challenges, including affordable housing and transport, air pollution, perpetually dug-up roads, and more, there is reason for residents of India’s largest city to be apprehensive.

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