What connects these incidents is not that caste and religious discrimination are identical, but that both expose how easily a person's dignity can be denied because of who they are.

Hyderabad: On September 3, a YouTube podcast aired an interview with Swatantra Bhardwaj, a 21-year-old self-styled “kattar Hindu,” in which he boasted of cracking open a man’s skull at a protest in Delhi. The man, he said, needed 60 stitches. He was Sanjay Kumar, a Dalit whose 14-year-old daughter volunteers with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), attacked on June 23 at the Jantar Mantar protest against the NEET paper leak.

Bhardwaj said he roamed Delhi all night afterwards, unafraid of the police, and called Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra and Union minister Chirag Paswan his “big brothers.” Delhi Police, which had earlier called Kumar’s injuries “simple in nature,” dismissed the claims of protection. Bhardwaj, who now pleads self-defence, was detained in Bulandshahr on September 4 and got interim bail on September 15.

It was a start of a month of 65 hate crimes that Siasat.com documented in September – 42 against Muslims, 14 against Dalits, five against Christians and four against Hindus.

Officers on notice

After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept West Bengal, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra alleged on X that Muslim officers were being sidelined. Siliguri Police Commissioner Waquar Raza, she said, was kept out of the line-up to receive Union Home Minister Amit Shah, with even Special Task Force (STF) chief Jawed Shamim not invited. Maktoob Media, an independent media organisation, was booked by the state police for reporting her post.

On September 13, the Hindu Legal Fund complained to the state home secretary about a video in which Bushra Bano, a 2021-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer serving as Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), Kharagpur, spoke of her journey to the civil services. She had said “Assalamualaikum,” “Inshallah” and “Jazakallah” instead of “Jai Hind” or “Vande Mataram.” The next day, two-and-a-half months into the job, she was made Deputy Commandant of the State Armed Police’s 4th Battalion, seen as a punishment posting.

Yet, the same month, several videos emerged showing Hindu police officers taking part in religious festivities while on duty, facing no such punishment that their Muslim counterparts went through. Closer home in Hyderabad, police personnel on bandobast duty were filmed dancing with devotees at the Khairatabad Bada Ganesh immersion, with no action reported against them.September 5 also marked eight years since the arrest of former Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who had alleged in a 2011 Supreme Court affidavit that Narendra Modi, then chief minister, told officers in 2002 to let Hindus vent their anger. The court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) rejected the claim. Bhatt is serving sentences in two older cases, convictions his family contests.

On August 21, Anandabazar Patrika described violence during a raid on the Jadavpur University campus as “gerua gundami,” or saffron hooliganism. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari demanded an apology and a first information report (FIR) was filed against its editor and chief reporter. The paper held its ground. On September 1, saffron-clad men painted the gate pillars of its Kolkata office saffron as police looked on.

In Delhi, Shaheen Khan and Nafisa Khan, freelancers with 4PM News Network, were detained on September 3 while covering a hospital event in Saket attended by Shah and Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. They allege they were beaten at the Saket Police Station and harder once officers heard the name Khan. Police deny this, saying the two had obstructed a VVIP route.

“Haan, main ek Musalmaan hoon… Lekin main tumse zyada wafadaar hoon (Yes, I am a Muslim. But I am more loyal than you),” Shaheen said later. In Uttar Pradesh, former BBC journalist Huda Zariwala was arrested and jailed after calling Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath a “criminal” over a mosque demolition in Saharanpur.

Mosques and a church

A mosque, about 115 years old, stood inside the Saharanpur Collectorate complex. A city magistrate declared it an illegal structure on government land. Days after a district court dismissed the mosque committee’s appeal, it was razed before dawn on September 5. Locals say they had no time to approach the Allahabad High Court and Kairana MP Iqra Hasan says she was put under house arrest. Opposition leaders called it “bulldozer politics.” 

In Madhya Pradesh, the Medina Masjid was partially demolished for road widening.

Three weeks later, it was the turn of Ujjain’s nearly 600-year-old Shahi Masjid, part of which lay in the path of a road being widened for the 2028 Simhastha Kumbh. The Madhya Pradesh High Court had cleared the move on September 9. Hundreds kept vigil at the mosque for nights and on September 28 police fired tear gas at a stone-pelting crowd. The committee then agreed to remove about three feet, not the 9.5 sought, and community members began breaking the wall themselves. One man wept as he prayed for forgiveness: the hands that had built the mosque, he said, were now tearing it down.

In Pimpri-Chinchwad, near Pune, the Jesus Is Lord Church was demolished on the night of September 6, hours before a court hearing. Members say there was a stay and no notice. The civic body says it was clearing unauthorised construction.

Children and students

In Lucknow, 12-year-old Abdullah refused to fetch cigarettes for a group of Hindu men during a jagran at Badi Kali Mandir Chowk. They told him to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” then slapped him and hit him on the head with an iron kada. His uncle was attacked too.

On September 24, three Muslim students, Md Ashique Billah, Moyajjem Hossain and Hasanur Jaman, were called “jihadi” and “jangi,” slapped and punched on their way to Kolkata’s Sealdah station. 

In Karnataka, an engineering professor called his Muslim students terrorists. “We are not atankvaadis. We are just Muslims,” one told him, hands folded.At IIT Bombay, Sahil Wakode, a 20-year-old Dalit student in his second year, was found dead in his hostel room on September 18. The institute said he had been caught using a phone during an exam hours earlier, though it later apologised for statements in its initial communication. His parents allege caste-based harassment by peers and a professor.

It was a recall to the death of Darshan Solanki, an 18-year-old Dalit student at the institute, in February 2023, which his family blamed on caste discrimination and an internal committee did not.

Festival flashpoints

Ganesh Chaturthi brought stone pelting and meat throwing, with incidents targeting both Muslims and Hindus. In Hyderabad’s Saidabad, chicken bones and waste found outside a pandal raised tensions.

Faith as provocation

In Jammu and Kashmir, a Kashmiri Muslim pony worker was hounded by pilgrims, among them Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bajrang Dal functionaries, to chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai.” “Main Musalmaan hoon, theek hai, main nahi bol sakta (I am a Muslim, I can’t say it),” he said.

At Mumbai’s Cooper Hospital, two Muslim women, one carrying a baby, were allegedly stopped at the gate for wearing a burqa and hijab. “I was told babies can be stolen inside a burqa,” said Zahra Shaikh. “We are being treated as thieves.”What September’s cases share is how little it now takes to deny a person their dignity and how quickly each humiliation becomes just another headline.