The bottom fell out of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s strategy of wooing Pasmanda, or backward caste, Muslims in the picturesque town of Purola, in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. The happenings there show Pasmandas are not exempt from the wrath of the Hindutva brigade taught to perceive Muslims and Christians as the “internal enemy”, a term Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s M S Golwalkar coined for them.

At Purola, the tryst of Muslims with horror began on May 26, the day Ubaid Khan and Rajinder Saini were nabbed allegedly abducting a minor Hindu girl. It was promptly deemed a case of love jihad. Gloss over the contradictory narratives on the abduction, and instead focus on the events following the news of the love jihad case spreading across Purola, where Muslims are, at best, three-four per cent of its estimated population of 13,000-14,000. The town’s market shut down as a precautionary measure.