Muslims ‘in constant fear’ amid hate campaign in India’s Himachal Pradesh

The Congress-ruled state has been witnessing anti-Muslim rallies for weeks, forcing many migrant workers to flee.

Shimla, India – Farhan Khan says he still feels a chill down his spine when he recalls the day an anti-Muslim rally was held in his sleepy town in northern India’s Himachal Pradesh state.

On September 17, the 26-year-old tailor opened his shop in Solan as usual at about 11:30am when two men wearing saffron clothes approached him. One of them recorded the encounter on his mobile phone.

“They pointed the camera at my face, hurling abuses and demanding to know why I had opened my shop. Then, another group of men joined them and they all turned violent,” Farhan told Al Jazeera.

He said he was then “dragged by the crowd” to help identify more Muslim-owned shops in the area. “I identified five or six shops and urged them to close,” he said.

The scenic state of Himachal Pradesh, a popular destination for Indian tourists escaping the brutal summer and autumn heat of northern India, has been on edge for more than a month after far-right Hindu groups demanded the demolition of a mosque in the state capital, Shimla. That demand soon morphed into a larger anti-Muslim campaign aimed at instituting an economic boycott against them and even included calls to drive Muslims out of the state.

According to a report in The Hindu newspaper, a clash between a Shimla resident and some labourers in Shimla district’s Sanjauli town over the payment of wages on August 31 snowballed into religious tensions within days.

On September 10, residents in Sanjauli, led by some Hindu groups, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), gathered outside the five-storey mosque in the middle of the town, claiming it was an