Conspiracy theories are proliferating wildly in India. Hindutva echo chambers on the social media and television studios resound shrilly with claims that Indian Muslims wage a range of sinister jihads against their compatriots of other faiths. These fantastical, outlandish but extremely pernicious conspiracy theories which have unfolded in an overheated environment, have become the rationalisation for deleterious attacks on the livelihoods of Muslim citizens by Hindutva mobsters and an openly hostile state. These conspiracy theories are routinely amplified by Union ministers and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government chief ministers. BJP CMs are also passing laws and issuing directions to the police to rein in and punish such jihads. Lately, the Prime Minister has abandoned dog-whistling and instead has also taken to directly articulating many of these theories. Hate prejudice has seeped deep into the general Hindu common sense, and both working class and professional Muslims report battling prejudice in the workplace. Recent years have seen a burgeoning battery of outlandish conspiracy theories which have metastasised like a cancer since 2014. Other alleged jihads range from jihads of “love”, “land”, “spit”, “beauty parlour", “mehndi", “rehdi” (handcart), and even “jeans”.Each claim is more staggeringly fanciful than the others, yet these jihad allegations find wide currency not just in the popular discourse, but even in the public statements of political leaders and the application of criminal law by the police. Only the most recent of these conspiracy claims is “gym jihad”. The police in Mirzapur have filed a 6,000-page chargesheet and arrested 10 Muslim gym trainers and owners under the UP Control of Goondas Act, 1970. (A goonda in this statute is defined to be a habitual, desperate, dangerous criminal). The police claim is that these gym owners and trainers are gang members who befriend women clients in the gyms, have sexual relations with them, record their photos and videos, then blackmail them to convert to Islam, recite religious verses and wear burqas. I list here some of the conspiracy theories that preceded gym jihad in recent years, mounted to justify the boycott or destruction of Muslim livelihoods and distrust of Muslim employees.'Land Jihad' to PILs: How Hate Narratives Turn Into Legal Action Against MosquesLove JihadOne conspiracy theory that dates back to the early 2000s is of “love jihad”. This is the claim that Muslim men deliberately target Hindu women with romantic overtures to make them sex slaves, to produce masses of Muslim children, or even for terrorism. This misogynist denunciation of Muslim-Hindu romantic and sexual alliances and the agency and sexual freedom of Hindu women is widely aired by Hindutva zealots. Dog-whistling about “love jihad” by Muslim men pretending to be Hindu to pure Hindu girls was, for instance, the defence put out by Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra after the brutal abuse and thrashing of a 25-year-old bangle seller in Indore in August 2021. The bangle seller, Tasleem Banjara, a Muslim man from a denotified tribe, was assaulted by a mob for his identity and later accused of molestation by the daughter of one of his attackers.The Quint reports about the video of the incident which shows the bangle seller pinned to the ground while a man wearing a saffron-coloured kurta empties his bag. A crowd of men can be seen standing around while the bangle seller is interrogated. He continues to plead, while some men thrash him. More join in the thrashing. The bangle seller tries to run away twice, but is caught and beaten again. 'Forgive Everyone': Muslim Bangle Seller, Fake Allegations & Battle for JusticeDespite video evidence of the assault, Tasleem was booked under serious charges, including the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). The home minister weighed in blaming the bangle seller without criticising the attackers: “The Home Department’s report is that the man used to sell bangles. He was in the neighbourhood selling bangles, while using a Hindu name. However, he was from a different community (Muslim). Two Aadhaar cards have also been recovered in this connection. Like this, he used to sell bangles to Hindu women…” However, the bangle seller denied using fake identity cards—and said both IDs found on him are correct. A number of other alleged jihads are centred around this same construction of the Muslim male as a sexual predator. These are used by Hindutva mobsters to violently interrogate and attack Muslim men working in professions that involve interacting with Hindu women.FIR Filed After Assault On Muslim Man Over ‘Love Jihad’ In BhopalMehndi JihadIn 2022, Vikram Saini, a BJP MLA convicted just two days earlier for his role in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, alleged that Muslim men operating mehndi shops during the Hindu festival of Karwa Chauth were engaging in "love jihad." “Muslims are opening multiple mehndi shops”, he declared. “Women are getting mehndi applied by Muslim youths at these shops. This is wrong. They have other intentions—love jihad. Nothing more than that.” He claimed he had encountered “many such cases” and advised Hindu women to apply mehndi at home, “or at the beauty parlours opened by our sisters and daughters. There is no need to go to the awaaras [vagabonds].” Their activists set up a number of mehndi camps for the festival season. A banner at one of these read, “Apna tyohaar, apnon ko rozgaar, jihad par prahaar [our festival, employment for our people, and attack on jihad].”A similar charge was made by members of the Kranti Sena when a video went viral showing them conduct "surprise checks” at a Muzzaffarnagar market to ensure that no Muslim man applies mehndi on the hands of Hindu women on the festival of Hariyali Teej. Their “checks” did not reveal any Muslim men. But they put out a warning, Kranti Sena"We appealed to the local shopkeepers to not employ Muslim men and they have assured us about the same. If somebody is caught, we shall deal with it in our style. Our men will be in the area to keep a check on this." Fact-Check: Images of Bangladeshi Actress Viral With False Love Jihad ClaimsBeauty Parlour JihadThe conspiracy theories of sexual preying by Muslim men does not end there. A crescendo on BJP-supporting TV channels was raised about a “beauty parlour jihad”! A hardline Hindutva group, Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi Sangharsh Nyas, wrote to the Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath alleging an “international conspiracy” behind Muslim men working in women's beauty parlours. They claimed that Muslim men pose as Hindu men, entrap and marry female Hindu customers, and later “sell them in foreign countries”. The organisation demanded a ban on Muslim men working in beauty parlours in Mathura where the organisation is located. These accusations of “beauty parlour jihad” were most lasciviously amplified by Zee News. Some of its tickers for its “super exclusive” video reports were, “Beauty parlour mein bhaijaan khel kar rahe hain?” (Bhaijaans—a dog-whistle for Muslim men—are playing games in beauty parlours?) and “Beauty parlour mein international saajish?” (An international conspiracy in beauty parlours?)Other news channels also amplified this new paranoia by airing their versions of these imputations of Muslims spreading “love jihad” via “beauty parlours.” Reporting on this, Newslaundry observed that no news channel bothered to speak to a single Muslim youth working in a salon, or to investigate the veracity of the charges.News 18 Uttar Pradesh/Uttarakhand and News18 Rajasthan interviewed a “religious leader”, one Acharya Satyamitranand, who affirmed these charges. He declared: “As many salons and beauty parlours are opening, people with irreligious mindset are making women from the Hindu society victims of different kind of love jihad.”Republic Bharat did a “ground report” on “parlour jihad” aired under the title, “Mathura में 'Parlour Jihad' का नया दावा - प्यार के जाल में फंसीं लड़कियां | Love Jihad”. For this, reporters interviewed four women about their experiences in beauty parlours in Mathura. I quote at some length one of the women who Republic Bharat spoke to, only because I found her testimony simultaneously coy, salacious, and toxic. She claimed that in her experience, Muslims “over-pamper” ladies while providing services like a pedicure or facial. “As they are men, they don’t tire easily. Sometimes they provide a little more relief with their hands,” she explained. “What happens after that is we start going there regularly… As a mature lady, I can understand if they are going wrong. But in some cases, teenage girls, or girls who have just started going to salons (do not)… They (Muslims) pamper them, provide them more services in less fees…Then they even sometimes exchange numbers… After that things get spoiled. Girls who are not smart enough or are still young…Then end up in marriage, love jihad, or in a suitcase.” The reference to the “suitcase” is a dog-whistle for an infamous instance of murder in Delhi in which a Muslim man killed his Hindu live-in partner and stuffed her body in a suitcase.Growing Up Muslim in India's ClassroomsThook JihadAnother bizarre conspiracy theory—and one that is particularly humiliating—again grew out of the hate scapegoating of Muslims for the suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is thook Jihad, literally a jihad of spitting! The claim is that Muslims deliberately spit into food served in eateries to infect or spite the Hindu clients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the conspiracy theory spread that Muslim fruit and vegetable vendors deliberately contaminated the fruit and vegetables they sold with their saliva in a malign bid to infect Hindu residents. There were clearly many takers of this fantastical hate propaganda, leading to countrywide boycotting of Muslim vendors. The pandemic ended, but not this conspiracy that got dubbed “thook jihad” or spit jihad. This succeeded in weaponising prejudice and hate not just against Muslim vegetable and fruit vendors, but even against Muslim eateries with its wild claims that Muslims spit into food served by them.Journalist Alishan Jafri investigated for The Wire some videos claiming thook jihad and TV news channels that amplify and discuss these videos. He found in recurring videos the same Hindutva organisation, the Hindu Raksha Dal (HRD), and the same TV channel News18, suggesting that these were not random but coordinated.A seven-second video went viral of a Muslim eatery worker from Loni, Ghaziabad. Circulated on 15 November 2021, it was shared by members of the BJP and right-wing media handles. The video shows a skullcap-wearing worker at a “Muslim hotel” baking chapatis in a tandoor and alleges that this worker had spat on the chapatis. Sumit Sood, the HRD worker who uploads the video of the incident, says in the video: “This is for those Hindus who come and eat with these pigs [Muslims]. You come and eat their spit daily. The more you boycott these mullahs, the better. To all my brothers [this is a message] to not eat with these pigs. They feed you filth.” The video shows the eatery in question apparently vandalised. (The Muslim man in the video was jailed, based on a criminal complaint filed by Sood and other HRD members).The next day, Aman Chopra, anchor of the news channel News18, organised a prime-time debate centred on this video, suggesting a sinister ‘riwaz-e-thook’ (a ‘tradition of spitting’) by Muslim eatery workers. (Jafri notes that - perhaps coincidentally? - the day after this broadcast, prime minister Narendra Modi follows Chopra on Twitter). Newslaundry discusses how television anchor Aman Chopra propagates misinformation and anti-Muslim sentiment through his show on News18 India. It focuses on the Aman Chopra show titled “Khane mei thookna, Jihad or Jihalat (Is spitting into food jihad or barbarity)?” The program made explicit the allegation that Muslims were waging a "thook jihad" by spitting in food.One of the panellists in this TV debate was former Delhi BJP spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay (who incidentally had been arrested earlier in August 2021 for his role in the Jantar Mantar hate rally in which calls to economically cripple and kill Muslims were made). On the show, he declared, “These thook jihadis are either being taught all this by their parents or at some school.” He even suggested that Muslim men may be mixing other body fluids in the food they prepare. In another video, once again, an HRD member spots in a street-side eatery a Muslim man purportedly spitting on rotis. The video shows the man being manhandled by a mob raising the slogan “Jai Shri Ram”. They filed a police complaint. And once again News18 carried the video with its prime-time discussion. After this, Pinky Chaudhury, chief of the HRD, wrote on Facebook, “Jai Shri Ram to all my brothers. I have been saying this for a long time that no Hindu should eat at Muslim eateries because they want to defile our faith…Boycott these people with a jihadi mindset,” sharing the News18 report on the incident. Many more such allegations of thook jihad continued to pop up on social media and in public rallies. Siasat Daily reports an incident in Najafgarh, Delhi in May 2023, where Bajrang Dal members stirred a disturbance at a juice shop owned by a Hindu but run by a Muslim. They objected to the shop's Hindu name and demanded it be changed to reflect the Muslim operator, Mohammed Zaid, accusing him of participating in thook jihad. In a rally in Mira Road, Mumbai, in March 2023, among many hate speeches, Kajal Hindustani, a hardline Hindutva influencer with massive social media following, alleged that Muslim fruit- and vegetable-sellers lace produce with toxins and warned people from buying from these “jihadi vendors”. She said: “Spend extra and buy from Hindu vendors. Let the money that you spend go to the house of a Hindu.” Outlook India spoke to Sakshi Gupta, a homemaker married to a shop owner who sells roasted peanuts, chickpeas, and bhel, who joined this rally. Gupta said she was educated about the dangers she faced after hearing Hindustani’s speech: “I am also at risk because I am a Hindu. My husband has banned me from wearing green-coloured saris or salwar kameez. It is a Muslim colour,” she said. A worker at a popular non-vegetarian eatery in Delhi explained some elementary details of roasting chapatis to The Wire, “Nobody spits in the food or chapatis. Sometimes a cook blows extra dry flour on the bread so that it can be stuck properly inside the tandoor. These videos are false stories meant to spread hatred.” A roti shop owner in Lucknow said, “I don’t want to explain anything. You can come and record a video to know the process. This is a laughable accusation.”Retired Indian Police Service officer and author NC Asthana said that similar allegations of food contamination by spit were made especially since the pandemic began, but not one was found to be true or was successfully prosecuted. Quite clearly, the rumours and the visuals were spread with fake news to disturb communal harmony. “Can a video clip which is a few seconds long and does not show the impugned act clearly be held to be credible information for the purpose of registering a case? If someone merely did as much as to sneeze and was caught on camera sneezing, it could again be alleged that he purposefully did not clean his hands to promote enmity. Obviously, there is no end to this sort of stupidity,” he remarked.Still, the frenzy about thook jihad even spread to Kerala, known otherwise for its high literacy and progressive politics. The News Minute reports that the hate campaign—claiming Muslims spit into food served in restaurants - the claim here, that this was part of Islamic rituals—was sparked off by a video of an ostensibly Muslim man purportedly spitting into a plate of rice before mixing it with the full pot. The reality, as fact-checker AltNews found, was that the man was a maulana. He blew into the food as part of a ritual on Urs (an Islamic event on the death anniversary of a religious leader). The Urs event was held at Tajul Ulama Dargah in Kerala. Many such videos followed. Initially, it was radical Christian groups that started this campaign, and Hindutva organisations only followed. Facebook pages such as 'Soldiers of Cross' listed Kerala hotels that serve “spit-free food.” These were of course hotels owned by Hindus or Christians in Muslim-majority Kozhikode district. Hindutva groups followed suit with such lists. These went further to list “non-Halal-spit-free foods”. They even deliberately miscategorised Halal-certified food as “food with spit”. A section of Muslims called for the boycott of such Hindu and Christian-owned hotels.” Matters turned so absurd that when at the funeral of singer Lata Mangeshkar leading actor Shah Rukh Khan blew into the air after reciting the Surah Fatiha as is the custom among devout Muslims when a person dies, BJP leaders of various ranks, trolls, and TV channels went into a frenzy about these Muslims spitting even during a funeral.Muslim Man Stabbed in Delhi, Outcry Against Goats: The Price For Celebrating EidLand JihadIn its manifesto for the 2021 Assam state elections, the BJP introduced what was until then a relatively novel claim of yet another conspiracy. This it called “land jihad”, and promised serious steps to counter this form of jihad. Assam BJP vice-president Swapnaneel Baruah explained this new purported conspiracy to ThePrint: “Land jihad is a way to force people sell off their lands—it happens anywhere where there are miyas (Bengali-origin Assamese Muslims). How does this work? He alleged that they “corner the land owner, making the land uninhabitable, sometimes by stealing cattle and throwing chopped heads of cattle into courtyards. Ultimately, the owner is forced to sell the land. A third party comes into play and an offer is made to the owner for purchase of the land. A broker gets involved, and the land is captured.”The alleged conspiracy of “land jihad" donned a different garb the next summer in Kanpur, when rioting broke out after BJP national spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s insulting comments about Prophet Mohammad. The local police presented a 1,500-page dossier to the Kanpur district magistrate urging that the alleged “mastermind” behind the violence, Hayat Zafar Hashmi, should be booked under the National Security Act for waging a land jihad. The police backed their claim with half a dozen nearly identical statements of local Hindu residents that he and his gang had plotted to “take over” Hindu land “under the guise of riots”.Anil Kumar Gaur, a jeweller near Chandeshwar Hata Gate. Gaur, for instance, in his statement testified to have “seen Hayat Zafar Hashmi trying to enter Chandeshwar Hata, a Hindu-dominated mohalla, along with members of the Muslim community, after Friday prayers”. He “came to know that under the guise of riots the real motive was the encroachment of our Hata”. Hashmi, an architect, had allegedly hatched this conspiracy with builders Mukhtar Baba and Haji Wasi. “The conspiracy was that we sell off our homes and shops for measly sums, so that those from the Muslim community can construct buildings here,” he added. Gaur’s shop assistant Pramod Kumar Batham, repeated the story. He said the crowd’s motive was “kabza (forced seizure) of land after Hindu owners have left shops and houses out of fear”. Bajpai, a local lawyer, also said in his statement, “We later came to know that under the guise of riots the plan was to create a sense of terror so we would vacate Chandeshwar Hata.” E-rickshaw driver Rahul Trivedi similarly said that he “came to know from the residents that the main motive of the rioters was to create a sense of fear, so that we would vacate our houses and shops.” Another e-rickshaw driver repeated, almost verbatim, “Later on, I came to know that the main motive was to create a sense of fear so that locals vacate their houses and shops.” None of them explained from whom they learned that the protests were actually a ruse deployed for “land jihad”.Claims of this mutant of jihad gained further currency when Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami in 2024 announced that his government had taken stringent action against what he termed “land jihad” by recovering 5,000 acres which local mafias had illegally encroached on.During the state elections to Jharkhand in the winter of 2024, Union Home Minister Amit Shah accused CM Hemant Soren, alleging in encouraging “land jihad” and “love jihad.” Shah claimed these practices are leading to demographic changes in the state, with illegal immigrants marrying tribal women and buying land, thereby reducing the tribal population. He promised that if the BJP came to power, they would release a white paper to protect the land and rights of the tribal population. The Prime Minister in his Independence Day speech in 2025 used the occasion of commemorating India’s freedom to dog-whistle against India’s Muslims, also alluded to these “sinister” demographic changes. 'Land Jihad' to PILs: How Hate Narratives Turn Into Legal Action Against MosquesUPSC JihadAnother surreal conspiracy claim was aired by the notorious hatemonger Suresh Chavhanke who headed the TV channel Sudarshan News. He called this the “UPSC jihad”. UPSC is the Union Public Service Commission, India’s apex constitutionally mandated body for recruitment to India’s higher civil services. In its promo, the channel claimed that Muslim candidates had “infiltrated” (ghuspaith) into the civil services in “large numbers with very high marks”. This, Chavhanke declared, was a conspiracy against the nation. He went on to charge the 100-year old central university Jamia Millia Islamia—often rated among the country's best universities—with producing jihadis (Jamia ke jihadi).To start with, the claim that large numbers of Muslim women and men are qualifying in India’s All India Services Examination (which is conducted by the UPSC to select candidates for the IAS, IFS, IPS, and other All India Services) is factually wrong. A retired police officer NC Asthana looked at the Uttar Pradesh SC results of 2018 and 2019. In 2018, only 20 Muslim candidates qualified from 759 (forming 2.64 percent). In 2019, their numbers were 35 out of 829 selected candidates (4.22 percent). These are way below the percentage of Muslims in the population of India, which by the 2011 Census was 14.2 percent. Therefore, quite the reverse of being over-represented, they are markedly under-represented in India’s higher civil services. But more pertinently, the question arises that even if Muslim candidates were indeed able to increase their presence in the ranks of the civil services, why should that be a matter of anxiety, even less evidence of any jihad? After all, the examinations conducted by the UPSC are widely regarded as among the most trusted in the country. And Muslims are equal citizens of the country, and have equal rights to compete for recruitment to important public offices. Belonging as they do to a community that has severe development deficits, and is subjected periodically to targeted violence, their presence in larger numbers in the civil services instead should raise hopes of more sensitive and just governance. Incidentally, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in India allowed the telecast of the controversial show on Sudarshan News which targeted Muslims in the civil services claiming UPSC jihad, despite concerns about its communal content. The ministry cited the lack of pre-censorship norms as the reason for permitting the broadcast.'1,318 Hate Speeches in 2025, Anti-Christian Hate Speeches Spike by 41%': ReportSharbat JihadYoga guru and entrepreneur known to be close to the Modi establishment, Baba Ramdev, accused the makers of Rooh Afza, a traditional herbal drink produced by Hamdard Laboratories, of engaging in "Sharbat Jihad". By Sharbat he of course referred to the popular herbal drink produced by Hamdard. The jihad he alleged was that proceeds from its sales funded mosques and madrasas. Ramdev promoted his own Patanjali brand as an alternative, claiming that its profits support Hindu educational institutions. Ramdev’s claims were not only embarrassingly self-serving. They were patently false and defamatory. 85 percent of the profits of Hamdards’ unani products are committed to charity, most of all to education. The Hamdard Trust runs well-regarded schools and colleges. It chooses not to contribute to religious causes. I have personally witnessed the educational institutions run by Hamdard, and they are of high quality. After the Gujarat carnage of 2002, the trust admitted children who had lost their parents in the violence into their middle class residential school at no charge.Mohabbat ka Sharbat, Not Sharbat Jihad: Weaponising Rooh Afza & Politics of FoodJeans JihadYou read this correctly. Yes, jeans jihad! Scroll.in reports on the newest outlandish jihad conspiracy and how it has been deployed by a BJP minister to successfully decimate hundreds of jobs in jeans stitching in the urban village of Khyala in West Delhi. For two decades, Khyala had become the unlikely hub of a wholesale jeans market—among the largest in Delhi. It became a magnet for hundreds of Muslim tailors from Uttar Pradesh. Hindus and Sikhs also found employment here. A multitude of sweatshops sprang up, and in 2021 the authorities recognised Khyala as an industrial area.All went well until the summer of 2025 when Manjinder Singh Sirsa of the BJP—the local MLA and Delhi’s minister for industries—originated or amplified (it is hard to say which) a conspiracy theory that Muslims had been using the jeans business to change the demography of the area by forcing out Sikhs and Hindus.Sirsa on social media repeatedly made the claim that the Muslim workers in the jeans stitching units are “Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators”. Sirsa offered no evidence that the workers in the jeans stitching hub were Bangladeshi or Rohingya. “I have never seen any Bengalis working in this market, let alone any Bangladeshis or Rohingyas,” said Porwal, a member of the market association. “People from Uttar Pradesh run the show here”. As Delhi’s minister for industries, he ordered many of the establishments to be sealed. He then publicly claimed credit for the shutdown of the Khyala garment hub. “You can come to my area and see for yourself,” he boasted on a podcast. “I chased out many of them who were working in jeans factories.”Scroll.in found that the industry was virtually paralysed in just months of Sirsa becoming the minister. Most workers retrenched from the abruptly shut jeans tailoring units had returned to Uttar Pradesh. Some were idling around. Sirsa declared to the reporter, “It is good if they have run away. Now our area will be safer.” He claimed that the Muslim presence was troubling Sikh and Hindu “sisters and daughters”. But resident Sikhs and Hindus denied that they had any problem with the jeans factories or their Muslim workers. What the jeans jihad claim did result in was that Delhi’s minister of industries ensured that a thriving small industrial hub in the national capital was shut down in just a matter of months of his joining office in order to obliterate hundreds of Muslim jobs.'Rakhi Jihad': Why Media, Hindutva Accounts Are Pushing a New BogeyEchoes of Nazi GermanyActivist Rahul Easwar condemned these conspiracy theories as part of a “politics of othering.” He said acidly, “All kinds of jihads come from a deep spiritual vacuum inside a Hindu’s mind. This is politics of othering and clear Islamophobia.” The plural framework of India is reflected in that “next to the main shrine in Sabarimala, there is an Islamic shrine for deity Vavar, where no idol is kept. This is to convey that ‘we will respect you in the way you want us to respect you’.” These swirling conspiracy theories bring back grim memories of Nazi Germany. One common thread that binds the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany in the 1930s with the hate campaign against Muslim livelihoods in contemporary India is that both are sought to be justified with fanciful hate conspiracy theories. The Nazi boycott of Jewish establishments was rationalised by conspiracy theories against Jews. On 1 April, 1933, for instance, when the Nazi party carried out the first nationwide, planned action against Jews with a boycott targeting Jewish businesses and professionals, it claimed this was in retribution for “Greuelpropaganda (fake propaganda of atrocity stories)” allegedly circulated by German and foreign Jews aided by foreign journalists in the international press to damage Nazi Germany's reputation.The recurring calls for boycott of Muslims in India are similarly rationalised by charging Muslims with this wide and continuously spawning range of crimes and conspiracies. The bedrock of all of these are claims of their chronic disloyalty to India and disrespect to the Hindu faith, evidenced also by the alleged destruction of Hindu temples in medieval India and the slaughter of cows, and their sexual predation. But the fanciful range of jihads or conspiracies that Muslims are today deemed to be guilty of in India today boggle both imagination and credulity.I am grateful for the extensive research support of Sumaiya Fatima and Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi.(The author is a social activist, writer, and researcher who started the Karwan-e-Mohabbat campaign in solidarity with the victims of communal or religiously motivated violence. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)