Tapan Ghosh spoke in Commons despite reputation for incendiary rhetoric about religious minorities in India

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Senior Tories have distanced themselves from a firebrand Hindu activist invited to speak at the House of Commons last week, after it emerged he had been jailed at least five times in India for stoking religious tensions.

Tapan Ghosh, the founder of Hindu Samhati, a controversial activist group based in India’s West Bengal state, spoke at an event in the UK parliament last week.

Ghosh has gained notoriety in India for his incendiary rhetoric about religious minorities in the country, especially Muslims, who he has claimed are “all jihadis”.

He has also justified the persecution of Rohingya refugees and told his followers earlier this year that “1 million white English children may have been the victims of Muslim rape gangs”.

His travel to the UK and appearance at the event, which included meeting several Tory MPs, raise questions over how much scrutiny is paid to the activities of Hindu nationalists in the UK compared with those of Muslim or Christian hardliners.

Ghosh addressed an event titled Tolerating the Intolerant, organised by the National Council of Hindu Temples (NCHT), a lobby group for British Hindus.

Seated beside the Conservative member for Harrow East, Bob Blackman, Ghosh told the crowd Hindus were having “their daughters and sisters snatched away by what is called love jihad”.

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Love jihad is an unfounded but widely held belief on the Hindu right that Muslim men are engaged in an organised campaign to seduce and marry Hindu women.

According to West Bengal police records, Ghosh was arrested at least five times between 2012 and 2014 as a preventative measure to stop his group from triggering violence during religious festivals.



He spent 19 days in prison in 2013 in connection with an alleged attack on police by Hindu Samhati members during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

During his visit to the UK, Ghosh also attended a Diwali event with cabinet ministers Amber Rudd and Priti Patel, and met with the former neo-Nazi leader Tommy Robinson.

A spokesperson for Rudd said: “The home secretary fundamentally disagrees with Mr Ghosh’s views on Islam. The home secretary accepted an invitation from the Hindu Forum of Britain to attend an event in parliament last week to celebrate Diwali. She did not speak to Mr Ghosh and was not present when he spoke.”



Blackman, who is chairman of the all-party parliament group of Hindus, said he hosted regular events highlighting important issues for members of the faith, but distanced himself from Ghosh.

“One of the most worrying trends in recent years has been grooming and forced conversions of Hindu minorities in the UK and countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A spokesperson for Amber Rudd said: ‘The home secretary fundamentally disagrees with Mr Ghosh’s views on Islam.’ Photograph: Ciro Fusco/EPA

“In our commitment as a nation to fight extremism and radicalisation it is important to hear the voices of suppressed minorities.

“As for the event in question, the choice of speakers and the views expressed are entirely the NCHT’s, who are the organisers.”



Satish Sharma, general secretary of NCHTUK, defended the decision to bring Ghosh to the UK parliament, arguing the event was “specifically focused on the plight of girls in the Hindu and Sikh traditions”.

“[Ghosh] has been working in the particular space in Bengal for a long period of time. Controversy is something that an awful lot of people court and we couldn’t find somebody [else] who had his decades of grassroots experience,” he said.

“In terms of the media frenzy, we do not stand by any claims or any statement that have been attributed to him,” he said. “We reject them without reservation.”

Hindu nationalists aim to forge the adherents of the world’s third-most practised faith, with a extraordinarily wide array of beliefs and practices, into a modern political movement.

Proponents, including the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, argue their version of Hinduism should be reflected in the country’s institutions and culture – in contrast to the secular vision of modern India’s first leaders.

Sarbani Bandyopadhyay, an assistant professor of sociology at St Xavier’s College in Kolkata who has tracked Ghosh’s activities since 2008, said it was a disgrace that he was invited to speak at the UK parliament.



“All international forums and institutions should publicly condemn such people as Tapan Ghosh,” she said.



Ghosh wrote on Facebook on Thursday that his appearances in the UK had been like “a bomb in the parliament in London”. “But, in England, in several meetings and seminars I just tried to give some lessons on real Islam,” he said.

Ghosh founded the Hindu Samhati, or Solidarity, in 2008, to combat the “persecution of Hindus” in West Bengal, where they make up about 70% of the population.

But activists such as Ghosh argue, with little evidence, that Muslim groups are trying to “Islamise” the state, especially by converting women.

In public speeches Ghosh has claimed that each year up to 900 Hindu girls are being converted to Islam through “love jihad”.

He has led several campaigns to separate recently married couples in cases where women are marrying Muslim men.

After “rescuing” a Hindu girl from her Muslim partner in 2014, Ghosh tweeted: “Today we rescued 1 victim of Love Jihad of Baruipur of South 24 Pgs. Now challenge before me is 2 change her mind. It takes lot of energy.”



Additional reporting by Shaikh Azizur Rahman in Kolkata

