Another year, another denial: Delhi Police’s refusal to allow Hanuman Jayanti procession in Jahangiri shows how the state is submitting to the Muslim street veto
By denying permission yet again to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to carry out a Hanuman Jayanti procession through Jahangirpuri, the Delhi Police have made it painfully clear that when it comes to Islamist pressure, the state will not only bend, but it is more than willing to kneel. Almost like clockwork, the annual rejection arrives with the same script: concerns over “law and order,” potential unrest, and the volatile nature of the “sensitive area.” But buried beneath the bureaucratic language is a stark reality—this is not law enforcement, it is law avoidance.
Jahangirpuri is no stranger to communal flashpoints. This Muslim-dominated neighbourhood in northeast Delhi has seen repeated tensions whenever Hindu groups seek to assert their constitutional right to celebrate their festivals in public. In 2022, Hanuman Jayanti celebrations were marred by violence. In 2023, permission for processions was denied. And in 2025, history has repeated itself yet again.
This year’s ‘Shobha Yatra’—planned from A-Block to K-Block—was blocked by police citing potential disturbances. The same officials then generously allowed celebrations to take place within temple premises, as though Hindus were being given a favor instead of exercising their rights in their own country. What the police statement doesn’t say outright, but what everyone understands, is that the procession might “provoke” local Muslims. And provocation, we’re told, must be avoided at all costs—even if it means muzzling an entire community’s right to religious expression.
This logic is deeply disturbing.
Capitulation by design: Institutionalisation of Islamist intolerance
The state’s refusal to act in the face of threats doesn’t reflect prudence—it reflects capitulation. It places the burden of peace not on those who threaten violence, but on those who wish to practice their faith peacefully. This is not secularism. This is appeasement. And worse, it rewards the use of intimidation as a veto over public life.
What we are witnessing is the institutionalisation of the Muslim street veto—a chilling phenomenon where the mere threat of outrage and a possibility of violence from a certain section is sufficient to force the state into grovelling compliance. Be it the banning of books, overturning of judgments, muzzling of debates, or denial of public celebrations, the pattern remains the same: appease the angriest voice in the room.
From the Rangeela Rasool controversy to the Salman Rushdie fatwa, from the Shah Bano case to the Delhi riots of 2020, India has repeatedly capitulated to Islamist mobs masquerading as aggrieved minorities. Each time, the message is loud and clear: offend Islamist sentiment, and the state will ensure you’re the one punished. A similar playbook was evident in the recent vilification of the movie ‘Chhaava’, with left-leaning intellectuals blaming the movie that depicted brutal torture inflicted by Aurangzeb on Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj for violence that swept some parts of the country.
Jahangirpuri fits squarely into this dangerous trajectory. By denying a peaceful religious procession out of fear that “idolatry” might offend Muslim residents, the Delhi Police have, in effect, handed over the keys of the state to the very mobs they are supposed to restrain. If law and order can only be maintained by cancelling Hindu events, it begs the question: why is law and order so fragile in Muslim-majority areas?
Is it the nature of the Hindu procession that triggers the baser instincts of the Muslim-dominated regions? Or is it the intolerance of the local Islamist elements that prompts them to seek “retribution” against Hindus? The answer is evident, but no one in power dares to say it out loud. Because speaking the truth risks the same rage, the same riots, and the same victim-blaming reversal that follows every such violent episode.
Manufacture provocation to justify unrest: The outrage playbook
This aggressive intolerance is not a recent phenomenon. As Sitaram Goel sharply notes in Muslim Separatism: Causes and Consequences, the demands of Islamist elements have historically included the erasure of Hindu cultural expression from public life. Even basic acts like blowing a conch shell, singing Vande Mataram, or garlanding a statue become “provocations” to justify ensuring unrest. Meanwhile, any attempt by Hindus to request respect for their customs is either labeled as “intolerance” or, even worse, an attempt to impose “majoritarianism” on minorities.
What results is a one-way street of concessions. The Muslim community, or rather its most militant voices, offer nothing but demands. And the state, terrified of unrest, grants them time and again. In this landscape, it is not the majority that wields power—it is the minority that dictates terms.
Instances abound—from the Azad Maidan riots in 2012 to the grotesque murder of Ankit Sharma during the Delhi riots—where “offense” taken by Islamist mobs led to brutal violence. The most troubling part? These actions are often preceded by deliberate provocations orchestrated by the same forces to fabricate grievance. In Agra, individuals like Mohammed Naseem and Mohammed Nasruddin were caught red-handed trying to instigate communal unrest by tearing the pages of the Quran and throwing pieces of pork inside a mosque—all to spark the next “offended” rampage.
In Jahangirpuri, this formula appears once again: fake provocation, manufactured outrage, veiled threats, and finally, state compliance. The long-term result? An exodus of Hindus from such areas, a slow-motion demographic conquest, and the consolidation of Islamist control over “their” territory.
What we are witnessing is not just communal tension—it is territorial domination. When processions are not allowed to pass through certain streets because they are “Muslim areas,” what we are being told is that those parts of the country are no longer under the same rule of law. They are governed by a parallel order, enforced through fear, and rubber-stamped by a spineless state.
The Partition may have taken place in 1947, but the two-nation theory lives on in these microcosms. The belief that Muslims and Hindus cannot coexist unless the latter abandon their customs, lower their voices, and retreat from public view is the exact ideology that tore this subcontinent apart. And we are legitimising it every time we give in.
Empowering and encouraging the Muslim street veto by police inaction
It is not the mobs alone that are to blame. It is the police officers, the bureaucrats, and the politicians who enable this behavior with their cowardice. The Islamist strategy is clear: use outrage and violence to stake a claim over geography, culture, and discourse. The state’s role should be to resist this. But in places like Jahangirpuri, the state has chosen instead to submit.
If this is allowed to continue, the consequences will be alarming. Not just for India’s famed religious freedom, but for the very idea of the country as a plural, democratic society. Today, it’s Hanuman Jayanti in Jahangirpuri. Tomorrow, it will be some other festival in some other city. As such, we have already witnessed Islamist violence against the Ram Navami procession in Madhya Pradesh, the Durga Puja in West Bengal, and the Ganesh Visarjan in Maharashtra, as Muslim mobs go on a rampage, citing “provocation” caused to them.
In recent times, not just Hindu festivals but even rallies protesting against Mughal tyrant Aurangzeb, a religious bigot by all accounts and who demolished countless temples, Hindus, Buddhists and Jains alike, have faced Islamist violence as witnessed in Nagpur last month, where Muslim mobs idolising Aurangzeb as ‘Ghazi’ (Islamic warrior) ran riot, vandalising public properties, targeting and torching vehicles owned by Hindus, and pelting stones.
The question is simple: do we still believe in equal rights under the law, or are we content to let street mobs decide who gets to celebrate their faith?
If the latter, we might as well admit that parts of India are no longer governed by the Constitution, but by the mob’s veto.
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