Mumbai: “Who are these Pakistani bhadwe (pimps) who live here, due to whom we can’t celebrate our Navratri festival?... I will come to your home, strip you and beat/kill you in your own house.”
—10 October 2024, Mumbai
“If you are going to keep chicken and mutton shops open during Navratri, no Hindu will tolerate this. If you want to insist on keeping them open, then we will throw pork in front of mosques.”
—10 October 2024, Mumbai
“I am telling the police men, take a 30-minute break from home, on the pretext of your family or for Devi’s darshan, and go away from here. See how these bhagwa-dhaaris (saffron wearers) clean Pathanwadi (of Muslims).”
—10 October 2024, Mumbai
“I need to get calls from here that they (Muslims) have stopped stepping out of homes, that an exodus has started, they have started selling off their homes. And then, it will become a Hindu-only Ahilya Nagar, won't it?”
-1 September 2024, Ahilya Nagar (formerly Ahmednagar)
“If bhadwas from there (Muslim-dominated areas) are here, remember that this is not over: tumko chun chun kar maarenge (I will beat each one of you up). Nobody will come from your mosques to save you.”
-30 July 2024, Uran
“You should not call it Islampur at all; you should slap whoever says Islampur and insist they call it Ishwarpur. If as Hindus we don’t show this rigidity, these jihadis won’t realise that it isn’t going to be Islampur for too long now.”
-30 August 2024, Islampur (Sangli district)
“If there is any (Bangladeshi or Rohingya) hawker or ferriwallah (street vendor) you see, do whatever you need to do for the Hindu religion and we will ensure you get back home safe.
—10 March 2024, Mumbai
“The police and administration have to decide if you want to eat their biryani or our vada-pav?... Remember, you are Hindu first.”
—10 October 2024, Mumbai
These are some statements made by three-time Maharashtra member of legislative assembly (MLA) Nitesh Rane, 42, who on 15 December 2024 was sworn in as a cabinet minister in the state’s newly elected government, led by his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his appointment conforming to a pattern of reward or immunity for hate speech.
On 29 December 2024, he described Kerala as “mini Pakistan”, referring to Muslims who voted for Congress members of Parliament Priyanka Gandhi and her brother Rahul Gandhi in the Wayanad parliamentary constituency.
Even while his father, Naryan Rane, was a minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for two years until June 2024, Nitesh Rane, 42, criss-crossed Maharashtra as lead speaker in rallies organised by obscure Hindu right-wing outfits.
The excerpts above offer some indication of the abuse, threats of murderous assault and violence Nitesh Rane has issued against Muslims, apart from administering oaths to Hindus to pledge a boycott of Muslims and intimidating police officials with retribution for protecting them.
According to an affidavit Nitesh Rane filed with the Election Commission of India in October 2024, he faces a total of 38 police First Information Reports (FIRs) against him, of which 20 have been filed for hate speech, with alleged crimes ranging from section 196 (1) (promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion) to section 351 (criminal intimidation) to section 352 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace).
All these sections attract jail terms of anywhere between two to three years, if found guilty. Of the 20 FIRs, 19 have been filed over the last two years.
But Nitesh Rane has faced no police action so far, despite 2023 Supreme Court orders to police nationwide to act against hate speech. The FIRs have remained on paper—Nitesh Rane’s own affidavit reveals that the police have failed to file chargesheets in any of these cases.
An FIR is the first step in a police investigation and a chargesheet signifies the end, with details of the investigation. Without filing a chargesheet with a court, an accused cannot be tried for the charges listed in the FIR.
While the police have dithered, Nitesh Rane is now a cabinet minister for fisheries and ports in the government of BJP chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Nitesh Rane defended his statements, telling Article 14 that his speeches were not aimed at “all Muslims”.
“I am only talking about the jihadis in the Muslim community, I am not talking about the rashtrabhakts (patriots) in the community,” he said.
Nitish Rane said he was not deterred by the FIRs that the Maharashtra police had filed against him.
“Filing an FIR does not mean that whatever I have said is wrong,” he said. “It means that the police are investigating the case, if there is anything wrong in whatever has been said or claimed.”
Hate Speech & Its Rewards
Rewarding Islamophobic rhetoric and threats of violence fits a pattern that the BJP has established.
In Telangana, the party, after suspending him briefly, reinstated and gave an election ticket to MLA T Raja Singh, who routinely delivers anti-Muslim hate speeches across the country and has 104 FIRs against him.
In October 2023, union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat delivered violent threats to “those who speak against sanatan dharma (Hindu religious practices)” and threatened to “pull out tongues and gouge out eyes” of those who disrespect the Hindu religion. In June 2024, Shekhawat returned as India’s minister for culture.
Fact-checking website Alt News found how among those invited for Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in June 2024 were those who routinely posted anti-Muslim hate on social media platforms, such as X and YouTube.
Immediately after being sworn in, Nitesh Rane pointed to his saffron shirt, declaring that he had “saffron blood” in his veins and laid out his agenda.
“As a Hindutva activist, I want to assure Hindus that I will use my post to the hilt to strengthen Hindutva across Maharashtra,” he said. He would, he added, represent the voice of the “countless Hindutva activists” who traveled across the far-flung corners of Maharashtra for the cause of Hindutva.
A day later, Nitesh Rane described Opposition protests over electronic voting machines as politics of “Hindu hate”, peppering his responses to reporters with communal innuendos.
“When vote jihad happened, these people saw nothing, they were happy sprinkling green gulaal,” said Nitesh Rane. “Now, when the Hindu community has united and elected a Hindutvawaadi government, when they demonstrated their power as Hindu voters, these people are stung by chillies… green chillies.”
He also said that the Maharashtra government would also bring a law against love jihad, the conspiracy theory—once echoed by the far right, now routinely by many BJP ministers—that Muslim men were conspiring to marry Hindu women. “It is something we have promised in our manifesto, and we always deliver on our manifesto promises.”
He repeated that promise while talking to Article 14. “We will bring in a law against religious conversions,” he said.
He claimed that the lives of Hindu women were being “ruined” by “love jihad”.
Questioned over the evidence of such a conspiracy, Rane, without offering any specifics, said his speeches were based on real-life stories.
“We have met every victim wherever I have gone and delivered a speech,” he said. “We have met them, understood their problems, we are also in touch with the police and have told them what has been happening on the ground.”
Rane said “million girls” were targeted in the name of love jihad and in Maharashtra alone, he said, there were “unregistered cases in lakhs.”
However, a right to information request filed by a Maharashtra Samajwadi Party MLA Rais Shaikh, before the Maharashtra government’s Interfaith Marriage Family Coordination Committee, set up by BJP minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha to investigate ‘love jihad’ cases, revealed the committee got only 402 complaints in a year.
When told about this, Nitesh Rane said getting data about such cases was difficult.
“We are not able to give you any exact numbers because there is no law for such cases right now,” he said. “Families are intimidated and threatened to not register cases about love jihad.”
In November 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government said that “love jihad” was not defined under the law and no such case was reported by any central agency.
Congressman Who Once Mocked Modi, RSS
Nitesh Rane’s Islamophobic rhetoric is a relatively recent development in his political career.
He started his political journey with an NGO called Swabhiman, before joining the Congress on the eve of the 2014 general elections, when he was given a ticket to contest his first-ever election for the Kankavli assembly seat in southern Maharashtra.
When he was with the Congress, Nitesh Rane criticised then-Gujarat chief minister Modi, Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as well as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fount of the BJP.
In 2013, he said Gujaratis in Mumbai who praise Modi and the Gujarat model of development should “leave Mumbai and move to Gujarat”. He also mocked the RSS, calling them “half-chaddi wale”, a reference to their former uniform of khaki shorts.
In 2015, on Twitter, he called Savarkar a “disgrace to every generation” for apologising “4 times to the British Empire.” The tweets have now been deleted.
In 2019, on the eve of state assembly elections, with the then BJP-Shiv Sena alliance seeming the favourites to retain power, Nitesh Rane jumped ship and joined the BJP.
By 2022, three years after joining the party, Nitesh Rane had changed his rhetoric.
In an October 2024 television interview, he defended his change of heart and said joining the Congress was a “mistake” and he had been “trapped” in the party.
“But now, we are back to our roots in a Hindutva-waadi party,” he said. “We understand these issues and we agree with them.”
Call To Action Against Muslims
A common theme in Nitesh Rane’s Islamophobic speeches is a direct call to action from his audience.
The action can be diverse—from urging mobs to demolish mosques in the area, or explicit calls to violence against Muslims.
Weeks before the Election Commission declared polling dates in Maharashtra, Nitesh Rane visited Pathanwadi, an area in the western Mumbai suburb of Malad.
In an October 2024 speech brought to public attention by Hindutva Watch, an online platform documenting hate speech—its X handle was suspended in January 2024 after the Modi government told X the account violated the Information Technology Act, 2000—Nitesh Rane claimed local Muslims were not allowing Hindus to celebrate Navratri and take out processions.
Nitesh Rane said when he heard that, he decided to come down to meet the “Pakistani bhadwe” (Pakistani pimps) who said this. He also referred to them as “hirwe dukkar” (green pigs).
“I will come to your home, strip you down and beat/kill you in your own house (maar ke jaaonga),” he said.
Nitesh Rane said he was angry that Muslims were keeping chicken and mutton meat shops open even though Hindus were celebrating Navratri.
“If you are going to keep chicken and mutton shops open during Navratri, no Hindu will tolerate this,” he said. “If you want to insist on keeping them open, then we will throw pork right before mosques.”
“If they open mutton shops tomorrow, then I will release pigs in Pathanwadi. Record this, I am telling the police, too,” he said. “In our pure (vegetarian) Navratri of nine days, if you can’t simply shut down mutton shops, then we know where to open pork shops.”
On 29 September 2024, in the northeastern Maharashtra city of Amravati, Nitesh Rane urged his audience to consider an economic boycott of Muslims.
“The money they earn from us, they use in jihad,” he told them. He went on to urge them to discard concepts like Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava, a Gandhian term denoting equality for all religions.
“I will tell my Hindus, you should not accept Sarva Dharma Sambhav,” said Nitesh Rane. “This is a Hindu rashtra (nation) and in this Hindu rashtra, Hindu interests will always be considered foremost and everyone else will come after.”
Through the speech, Nitesh Rane referred to Muslims as “bhadwes”, ending with a call to action. “Henceforth, in Achalpur, if any of these jihadis look at a Hindu woman with crooked eyes, break his legs and only then report him to the police,” he said.
About 22 minutes into the speech, he lost his voice and could barely speak.
After a few attempts to speak, Nitesh Rane told his audience with a smirk, “Evdhi gaand maarli ki awaaz gela… madarchod,” (I abused them so much that I’ve lost my voice…motherfucker)”
The audience responded with laughter and applause.
FIRs, On Paper
Emboldening Nitesh Rane’s rhetoric has been the lack of response from the Maharashtra police.
For over two years now, especially after the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in Maharashtra, little-known Hindu right-wing outfits, such as the Sakal Hindu Samaj, have organised rallies and marches across Maharashtra.
These events are largely held around the themes of “love jihad” and “land jihad”, the latter another imagined conspiracy that Muslims were conspiring to illegally acquire land belonging to Hindus.
Between December 2022 and September 2024, there were 120 such events, according to a report by Citizens for Justice and Peace, a Mumbai-based nonprofit.
Nitesh Rane spearheaded many of them, delivering hate speeches that attracted police FIRs, often under pressure from courts.
According to Nitesh Rane’s own affidavit filed before the Election Commission of India in October 2024 and accessed by Article 14, the Maharashtra police have filed no chargesheet in these 20 FIRs.
Until July 2024, court documents reveal that the previous Maharashtra government led by the Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde in coalition with the BJP, had not approved Nitesh Rane’s prosecution, without which no criminal case using section 153A and 153B of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code, 1860, can proceed.
Article 14 sent texts seeking comment from Sanjay Saxena, Maharashtra’s additional director-general of Maharashtra, law and order. There was no response. We will update this story if he responds.
Such reluctance to act against hate speech, violence and threats against minorities is part of a broader pattern evident lately in Maharashtra, mirroring similar reluctance in parts of north India.
No Police Response
Mumbai-based activist Aftab Siddiqui approached the Bombay High Court in 2024, when she heard about Nitesh Rane’s speeches in and around Mumbai. She was, she said, concerned about the fallout of the speeches.
That concern played out on 21 January, as Muslims allegedly attacked Hindus when they entered a Muslim neighbourhood, loudly chanting Jai Shri Ram slogans and honking in Mira Road on Mumbai's eastern edge.
Nitesh Rane arrived in Mira Road on 23 January and threatened Muslims there with violence and home demolitions, declaring that Hindus were ready for a war (with Muslims) if required. Hours later, violence broke out in the area, after Hindus shouting Jai Shri Ram vandalised Muslim shops and injured many Muslim men, The Wire reported.
Less than 20 days later at a rally in the eastern Mumbai suburb of Govandi on 10 February he warned that Hindu nationalists would demolish “illegal mosques” in the area.
A month later, on 10 March, he threatened Muslim hawkers in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar suburb with violence and encouraged local Hindus to boycott these hawkers and “do whatever you need to do (with them) for the Hindu religion”, assuring them protection from the consequences.
Siddiqui said she started receiving messages from Muslims in Mira Road in the run-up to the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on 22 January 2024.
“Locals were texting me to say that Hindu right-wing group members were gathering outside the Al Shams masjid in Mira Road from January 19 onwards,” said Siddiqui, “And the police would drive them away each time, without any concrete action.”
Worried this would lead to a larger, bloodier conflagration if unchecked, Siddiqui wrote to senior police officers in the area and at police headquarters in Mumbai. “I sent them texts as well as videos, but they refused to act,” said Siddiqui.
It was on the night of 22 January that violence erupted in Mira Road.
After that, despite high tension in the area, police allowed Nitesh Rane and local BJP legislator, Geeta Jain, to deliver hate speeches against Muslims. Siddiqui said she was surprised that no one reined them in.
This lack of police action was a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s orders in April 2023, when a bench of Justice K M Joseph and Justice B V Nagarathna ordered police officials across the country to take “suo-motu cognisance” of hate speeches and book those accused of delivering these speeches, without waiting for complaints.
Police Forced To Take First Step
In January 2024, after the violence in Mira Road, Siddiqui said she finally understood police reluctance to act against hate speeches against Muslims.
“I messaged a senior police official about the need to rein in the hate speeches, to which the official, not just refused to intervene, but instead asked me why I was getting so bothered with the speeches,” she said.
“That’s when I decided, after speaking to some other activists I know, that the only way to get the police to act would be to approach the Bombay High Court.”
Siddiqui then filed a writ petition in March 2024, asking the Court to order the police to file FIRs against Nitesh Rane.
Responding to the petition, the Mumbai police, through the public prosecutor H S Vengekar, told the Court on April 23 that they would file FIRs against Nitesh Rane in all the three cases.
On 9 July, Vengekar told the Court that the police had “submitted papers to the State Government for obtaining sanction to prosecute the accused herein”, and, as soon as the sanction was received, it would be presented in court.
He also said the police would be filing chargesheets in the cases within eight weeks, but by October, the chargesheets had not been filed, according to Nitesh Rane’s affidavit.
Mumbai-based advocate Vijay Hiremath, who represented Siddiqui in court, said the FIRs were just the first step in a long battle.
Reward For Rhetoric
“It is only because of pressure from the Court that police file FIRs in such cases,” said Hiremath. “It needs a lot of tenacity from people to follow-up on these cases, from filing an FIR to seeing how the investigation proceeds. In the current atmosphere, not many people have that (tenacity).”
Perhaps emboldened by the inaction, on 4 November, in the run-up to the Maharashtra assembly elections on 20 November, Nitesh Rane told reporters in Mumbai, that “green snakes” should not obstruct Hindu festival celebrations.
“These jihadis should remember that they are just a handful: 90% of the country are Hindus,” he said. “We can crush you under our feet, and you won’t even know it.”
Pune-based political scientist Suhas Palshikar believes that the ministership is a reward to Nitesh Rane.
“He has identified himself with a more aggressive effort to militarise Hindus in Maharashtra, something that the BJP has officially not done earlier,” he said. “His cabinet ministership is a reward for what he has done and it is an indication that despite the majority it (the BJP) has got, it won’t tone down the Hindutva rhetoric.”
Yet, Palshikar warned, rewarding Nitesh Rane is not just about an individual, but what comes next for Maharashtra.
“The mobilisation around Hindutva in Maharashtra isn’t just for electoral gains,” said Palshikar. “Like in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and now Assam, the idea is to capture the social sphere and turn the state into a Hindutva platform.”
‘Tightening’ The Police
Nitesh Rane told Article 14 that Maharashtra would soon see a slew of “policies” that would address the “grievances of Hindus” in Maharashtra.
He said he was pushing for an anti-conversion law, on the lines of existing laws in at least 12 other Indian states requiring the consent of the government for religious conversion.
“We also want to fight land jihad, through which these people (Muslims) put up green chaadars everywhere and build a mazaar (shrine) there and claim the land,” Nitesh Rane added.
An important emphasis, he said, was on “tightening” the police and the bureaucracy in Maharashtra to act on the Hindutva agenda.
“They have to be given a message that jihadi activities will not be tolerated in Maharashtra,” he said, “Now that we have a Hindutva-wadi chief minister.”
(Kunal Purohit is an independent journalist and the author of H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Popstars.)
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