In places where there are 10 to 20 percent minorities, stray communal incidents take place. Where there are 20 to 35 percent of them, serious communal riots take place and where they are more than 35 percent, there is no place for non-Muslims.

In the run-up to the 2014 bye-elections in Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, a Gorakhpur Member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spewed this anti-minority rhetoric, glorifying communal riots. This was not the first time he came out with such hate speech. In 2007, his bigotry was on full display when he exhorted a cheering crowd:

If they kill one Hindu, then we will kill 100 Muslims.

Adityanath has a series of FIRs (First Information Reports) and cases filed against him by the police, either directly or indirectly, for attempt to murder, rioting, carrying deadly weapons, defiling a place of worship, trespassing on a Muslim graveyard, and promoting enmity between two religious groups.

He is now the Chief Minister of India’s largest and politically most significant state – Uttar Pradesh.



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