Hindu Nationalist Mobs in India Are Hunting and Beating Muslims

In one case, he put out an urgent call for assistance for a Muslim friend-of-a-friend whose house had been surrounded by a mob; the man had to jump on to the terrace of a neighboring building to escape after the mob set his house on fire.VICE News spoke briefly to the man, but he said he was still trying to make it to safety before he could speak further.Khan said much of the violence was coming from pro-government hardliners, targeting Muslims, journalists, civil society activists and anyone else viewed as an opponent of their brand of far-right Hindu nationalism, although there were also reports of violence from Muslim groups.“In one neighborhood, anyone with a beard was attacked,” he said, adding that some people were putting Hindu nationalist flags outside their homes to try to avoid being targeted.As well as the journalist who was shot, two journalists from Indian news channel NDTV were beaten by a mob as they filmed a mosque being burned.Nidhi Razdan, executive editor at NDTV, tweeted that the attack on her colleagues only stopped after the mob realized “they are ‘our people — Hindus.’”The violence has been an unwelcome distraction for India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as he rolls out the carpet for the first state visit by fellow strongman Donald Trump.