Disruption at Edison's India Day Parade rattles Muslim participants

The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office is investigating an incident during Edison's annual India Day Parade on Sunday when a group of men showed up allegedly wielding flags symbolizing militant Hinduism.

The Indian American Muslim Council, which participated in the parade, condemned the "hateful display of flags" by the men, who they say appeared beside Muslim marchers to intimidate them. Violence against Muslims and Christians has been steadily on the rise in India, and many say it is waved aside by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government.

Indian American families and business groups participated in the parade, which is organized annually by the Indian Business Association, a group of local merchants in the South Asian enclave.

Edison, particularly Oak Tree Road, where the parade took place, is known for its variety of restaurants, theaters and stores, representing the diverse cultures and religious groups in the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Slogans and flags

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and the parade, which included children, was proceeding peacefully, said a Middlesex County resident who said his last name was Ansari but declined to give his first name. Ansari was in the parade as part of the Indian American Muslim Council, or IAMC.

Then a group of around five or six men joined the parade, chanting slogans and waving flags that are used by the Bajrang Dal, a nationalistic outfit with roots in India that espouses a militant and exclusive Hindu identity.

Participants in the parade were calling out "Meri Jaan, Hindustan" — a Hindi-language phrase expressing love for India — in a video shared by IAMC member Niyaz Khan.

Ansari said he had noted the group near Cinder Road, but the men were not interfering with the procession, which permits only the U.S. and Indian national flags, according to the business association's rules on its website. Ansari said he grew alarmed when they joined the parade near his group, shouting religious slogans, according to Khan's video, and he notified police at the event.

Officers intervened, Ansari said, and the group moved away from the parade.

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"IAMC commends local law enforcement for taking swift action to address the hateful display," the group said in a press release, noting that the parade was otherwise peaceful and celebrated India's various communities. The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment as the police report is under investigation.

A video clip showing the flags was tweeted by Hindutva Watch, a volunteer watchdog group that documents threats to religious freedoms by militant Hindu groups, a trend noted by the U.S. government. The U.S. State Department criticized the decline of religious freedoms in India in a report issued in March, particularly laws in 12 Indian states that prohibit someone from converting from one religion to another.

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"These flags are not from Bajrang Dal," said Dhiren Amin, president of the Indian Business Association, and the chants by the group only praised the Hindu deity Rama, he said, upon reviewing the video. "We are a true community organization and we are working with the community."

Bulldozer at last year's parade

Amin's association last year publicly apologized after an outcry when national reporting revealed that the parade featured a bulldozer that some said was innocuous but critics said was divisive. Bulldozers have been used to demolish homes of Muslims in parts of northern India in recent years, as an intimidation tactic.

In its report "We have no orders to save you," Human Rights Watch identified the Bajrang Dal and an affiliated group, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, for "extensive involvement" in a 2002 pogrom against Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. The CIA also listed the Dal as a militant religious organization for a few years in 2018.

The Indian American Muslim Council usually participates in Indian Independence Day celebrations in New York City, but it joined the Edison parade this year.

The annual parade commemorates India's independence day, which falls on Aug. 15. Attended by local politicians and mayors of Woodbridge and Edison, it features floats, entertainment and performance by children, and is a long-standing tradition in town. Sunday's incident alarmed Muslim participants.

"Religious violence and intimidation are normalized in India today. That is the gist of what happened in Edison on Sunday," said Central Jersey resident Deepak Kumar, an activist and member of the progressive group Hindus for Human Rights, which advocates against rising Hindu militancy in India. "These people showed up to say they are still around, and that they call the shots. But New Jersey is not India. Whatever is happening there should not be allowed to be reflected here."

He disagreed with Amin’s characterization of the incident. The disrupters were not “chanting” peacefully, but were “shouting,” at the Muslim group, he said.

Videos and photos posted on the Bajrang Dal’s social media accounts show supporters using these slogans and flags.

Bajrang Dal

The incident at the parade shows that Bajrang Dal "has a support base here in our communities, which should ring an alarm for the local law enforcement, considering the group’s extremist ideology and militant campaign against India’s religious minorities," said Raqib Hameed Naik, a journalist who has documented the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the U.S."It was also an attempt to intimidate and bully the Muslim and Christian participants of Indian origin, who know what this flag means and the role this group has played in upending the lives of their loved ones back home,” he said.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Edison NJ India Day Parade hate flags rattle Muslim marchers