The speech by BJP’s hardcore Hindu leader and MLA T Raja Singh in the Mira Bhayandar area adjacent to Mumbai on 25 February has sent Mumbai Police into a tizzy. Following permission of the Bombay High Court, he organised a ‘Hindu’ rally last evening near Mira Road, which ended just before the Shab-e-Baraat of Muslims. “Over ten thousand men, most in their twenties and thirties, participated in a massive rally organised by the Sakal Hindu Samaj at Mira Road on Sunday evening,” Hindu Existence reported last evening.

The police at Mira Bhayandar Vasai-Virar station are scrutinising the speech to check whether he has broken his pledge before the court of not giving inflammatory speeches.

The BJP MLA from Goshamahal seat in Hyderabad, along with Mira Bhayandar MLA Geeta Jain, had addressed the huge rally on Mira Road where Singh administered an oath to the people to intensify the struggle for Hindu Rashtra and fight against love jihad and conversion.

The leader is known for such speeches followed by an administration of similar oaths. Here is a sample from last year:

T Raja Singh mentioned Aurangzeb along with Shivaji, saying the Mughal ruler tortured Hindus and destroyed temples.

Sources in the police said today they could take action if they found T Raja Singh had violated the law. He reportedly urged Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to “free” Shivaji’s forts from mosques that, he claimed, were built illegally.

The police scrutiny comes at a time when a controversy is already raging over the Haji Malang dargah (mausoleum. Police sources said they would ensure that T Raja Singh did not provoke or incite the people.

The Bombay High Court had given conditional permission to the rabble-rouser from the BJP. The condition was that his speech would not be “inflammatory”. A police officer said that if they felt that he made any comment against another community, necessary action would follow.

The video of the oath administered by T Raja Singh at the rally on Mira Road went viral yesterday on social media platforms, about a month after violence broke out on Mira Road. The local police are struggling to maintain law and order especially in Muslim-majority areas of the city. The police had refused permission for the rally, but the BJP leader moved the court.

T Raja Singh in and out of political wilderness

In 2022, the BJP had suspended the Telangana leader for his purported remarks against Mohammed, Islam’s prophet, in a video posted on social media. Telangana Police arrested the BJP MLA on 25 August that year under the Preventive Detention Act for allegedly insulting Islam’s prophet in a video that was released in response to stand-up comic Munawar Faruqui’s jokes on the Hindu belief system in Hyderabad.

The BJP revoked the suspension of T Raja Singh on 22 October 2023.

This was the period the BJP, in a bid to endear itself to Islamic countries in West Asia, had bent over backwards to expel spokesperson Nupur Sharma and her colleague in the Delhi unit of the party, Naveen Jindal. Sharma continues to be deprived of normal life, hiding from public view since the time Islamists gave a call for her public beheading.