Once quiet, civilised Bangalore is shaken to the core by the news of the shocking murder of its most famous journalist, Gauri Lankesh. In big cities and small towns across India thousands of people are protesting at the murder of a gutsy woman who fought for the marginalised, who called Dalit victims her sons, and who protested against injustice and venal politics in the face of death threats.

When you know someone, their death hits you harder. Lankesh was the recipient of endless hate mail from Hindu extremists. She was vilified on two fronts. She dared to take on the powerful Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), currently ruling most of India. She criticised them and their cohorts for attacking minorities and creating a culture that enabled lynching, mob violence and hate crimes. She also defended Dalit rights, provoking the ire of many dominant-caste Indians across the political spectrum.

I have been told off for comparing the current political climate to Nazi Germany. “Don’t go over the top, you’ll lose credibility,” critics advise. Yet for 16-year-old Junaid, a hapless Muslim youth recently stabbed more than 30 times on a public train when he had merely gone out to buy festive clothes for Eid, the pattern is chillingly similar to films we’ve watched on the attacks on Jews in Hitler’s Germany. J

Junaid and his friends were first pushed, then abused as “dirty Muslims”, then told to vacate their seats, their distinctive skull caps thrown on the ground. They tried to escape but Junaid was held down while his assailant stabbed him multiple times. The other boys, who were merely beaten or stabbed, were the lucky ones. They escaped with their lives.

Indian journalist critical of Hindu extremists is shot dead in Bangalore Read more

Harsh Mander, former civil servant and activist writer, has appealed to the majority of peace-loving Hindus of India to stop the violence, to stand with the minorities. Even as Lankesh was being lethally mown down, a peace pilgrimage, or yatra, had been initiated in faraway Assam. Called the caravan of love, Karwan e Mohabbat (Kem), it aims to atone for the violence against minorities, and beg for peace and harmony to replace the politics of hate. Currently Muslims, tribal groups (the Adivasi), Dalits and Christians have been singled out in violent attacks.

A US state department report quoted in The Hindu says: “Authorities frequently did not prosecute members of vigilante ‘cow protection’ groups who attacked alleged smugglers, consumers, or traders of beef, usually Muslims, despite an increase in attacks compared to previous years.”

Kem proposes to travel across India, to meet the families of people victimised, attacked, raped and murdered for being minorities. It began on 4 September when Mander and other activist writers visited two women whose teenage sons had been brutally killed.

The cousins, Riyaz and Abu, had gone fishing on their day off. Someone screamed that they were cattle thieves. Within minutes a mob assembled. The boys were thrashed mercilessly while pleading for their lives. Their mutilated bodies came home with eyes gouged out and ears cut off. Two carefree, laughing boys left home promising their mums a fish feast. Instead the women received the worst news possible for any parent: their children had been murdered.

Kem urges Indians to fight to uphold the values of the Indian constitution, which promises its citizens liberty, justice, equality and fraternity after centuries of oppression. Now we appear to be turning into that which we hated, that which we fought against: oppressors, cruel tyrants, intolerant murderers.

In the last two decades, the voices of Hindu extremists have become more vocal, frighteningly shrill. They’ve become emboldened with the culture of impunity which seems all-pervasive. When minorities are killed, often falsely accused of trading, eating or carrying beef, by cow vigilantes, our most vocal, always tweeting Prime Minister Modi says not a word. The silence is deafening. This has encouraged the fanatics to lynch, attack and kill people.

Shockingly, the fanatics glorify Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Gandhi, because he believed Gandhi had caved in to Muslim demands by allowing the creation of Pakistan. The once-banned Godse cult is now thriving. Social media are powerfully used to propagate lies, hate and distorted facts.

Critics of Hindu nationalists’ fanaticism are being murdered to scare all dissenters into silence. Two years before Lankesh’s death, the eminent intellectual MM Kalburgi was also shot dead outside his home. That same year, Govind Pansare another vocal critic of extremist Hindu groups, was murdered. In August 2013, the Dalit campaigner and atheist Narendra Dabholkar killed. All of these martyred Hindus were fighting for the idea of India. They were battling to save Hinduism from bigots and charlatans.

Never has India witnessed the flood of hatred and vitriol currently being so openly spewed

All over India, people are waking up to the reality that their beloved country could be destroyed. Never has the country witnessed the flood of hatred and vitriol currently being openly spewed. The voices of sanity plead: “Stop the descent. We cannot become Kosovo or Rwanda.”

Mander issued a challenge to India, but especially to the Hindu majority. “It’s a call of conscience to India’s majority,” he says. “We need our conscience to ache. We need it to be burdened intolerably.” Silence can mean complicity. The silent majority needs to speak up. And to speak out now. Otherwise the Hindu stalwarts who fought for justice will have been martyred for nothing.

In spite of these dark, dismal days, hope has not died. People are protesting: “Not in my name.” And India’s supreme court has just ordered all states and union territories to appoint police officers in every district to track down and prosecute cow vigilante groups. Perhaps sanity will be restored. Perhaps peace will return to this beleaguered nation again. Perhaps Lankesh and the martyrs who preceded her will not have died in vain.

• Mari Marcel Thekaekara is a human rights activist and writer based in Gudalur, Tamil Nadu