One year after extremists forced Muslim families from their homes in Purola, Uttarakhand, victims remain in despair while their attackers continue efforts to drive Islam from what they consider a Hindu “holy land.”
Mohammad Salim, a 36-year-old father of three, recalls the violent campaign against the Muslim minority that erupted in May 2023. “If I hadn’t escaped that day, they would have killed me along with my family,” he says. Salim’s shop was looted, and his family now lives in hardship, 100 kilometers away in Haridwar.
Rakesh Tomar, a 38-year-old Hindu nationalist, celebrated Salim’s departure. Tomar, based in Dehradun, considers Uttarakhand a sacred Hindu land and vows to prevent it from becoming “an Islamic state.”
Muslims make up just 13% of the state’s population, but hatred has been fueled by conspiracy theories such as “love-jihad”—claims that Muslim men seduce Hindu women to convert them to Islam. These conspiracies, spread online by hardliners like Tomar and supporters of Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have fractured centuries of peaceful coexistence.
Salim, once a BJP supporter himself, was driven out alongside 200 other Muslims after months of escalating threats and attacks. His shop, which was vandalized and looted, cost him an estimated $60,000 in losses. Now, only a few Muslims have dared to return to Purola.
Tomar and his group of Hindu nationalists are determined to economically boycott Muslim businesses, promoting divisive tactics like marking Hindu-owned shops. He believes his mission is to stop a so-called Muslim takeover, though he offers no evidence to support these claims.
Moderate voices, like civil society activist Indresh Maikhuri, warn that political leaders are fueling divisions for their own gain, creating dangerous rifts between communities.
For Salim, the hope of returning home remains. “This is my motherland,” he says. “Where will I go, leaving the land where I was born?”
