When Bajrang Dal mobs replace the law
“I HAVE lived here all my life. This is the name people have always called me. I didn’t know a name could make someone so angry.”
What happened at a small shop owned by Ahmad, a 70-year-old Muslim man living with Parkinson’s disease, was not a minor disagreement over a nameboard. It was a public act of intimidation, carried out in daylight, that revealed how fragile the rule of law has become when confronted by organised communal pressure. The episode was not an aberration. It was a warning.
Ahmad is known in his neighbourhood as “Baba.” It is how people have addressed him for years – children, neighbours, regular customers. The word is affectionate, familiar, and deeply rooted in everyday South Asian speech, cutting across religion and region. That shared word became the pretext.
On the day of the incident, Bajrang Dal workers, accompanied by Deepak Kumar, a local gym trainer, arrived at Ahmad’s shop together. They did not come as customers. They came with purpose.
What Happened at the Shop?
The men gathered in front of the shop, blocking part of the entrance. They pointed to the nameboard and objected to the word “Baba.” Their demand was blunt: the word had to be removed.
Ahmad stood behind the counter, visibly unwell. His hands trembled. His speech was slow and uneven, the effect of Parkinson’s disease apparent to anyone watching. He tried to explain that “Baba” was simply the name people had always called him, that it was not religious provocation but habit and affection.
The explanation was brushed aside. He was told that “Baba is a Hindu name” and that as a Muslim he had no right to use it. The claim was not argued; it was asserted. This was not a discussion about language. It was an instruction about limits.
Deepak Kumar, known locally as a Hindu gym trainer in Uttarakhand, defended 70-year-old Muslim shopkeeper Vakil Ahmed when a far-right Bajrang Dal mob demanded he remove ‘Baba’ from his shop name. Confronting the men, Kumar questioned their demand and declared, “My name is Mohammad Deepak,” asserting equality and unity. The incident went viral, triggering threats against him and protests, prompting police to file two cases over intimidation and communal unrest.
There was no physical assault. None was needed. The threat lay in tone, numbers, and certainty. Ahmad was urged to “understand sentiments” and to “avoid trouble.” The responsibility for maintaining peace was placed squarely on him. Customers slowed down. A few bystanders stopped to watch from across the street. No one intervened.
A woman watching quietly said later: “They weren’t talking to him like a person. It was like they had already decided he didn’t count.”
Around the same time, Vakil Ahmad, who had added “Baba” to his own name, also faced pressure. The pattern was clear. This was not about one shop alone. It was a message: Muslims were being told which words they could not use, which cultural spaces they must vacate.
When the group finally dispersed, nothing lay broken on the street. No shop was vandalised. No police siren interrupted the scene. What remained instead was fear – carefully planted and quietly carried home by those who watched.
Communalism as Social Control
Modern communalism rarely announces itself as hatred. It presents itself as sentiment, hurt, or cultural defence. That framing is strategic. By claiming to protect tradition, organisations like the Bajrang Dal conceal the coercive nature of their actions.
Language becomes the battlefield.
The policing of a shop name is particularly revealing. A livelihood is one of the few remaining spaces where identity and survival meet daily. When a mob dictates what a person may call himself or his business, it is not expressing offence; it is redrawing the boundaries of belonging.
An elderly neighbour later said: “Everyone here calls him Baba. Even children do. I don’t know when that became a crime.” Such acts are not meant only to force immediate compliance. Their deeper purpose is psychological. They cultivate permanent anxiety. When minorities begin to pre-emptively change names, remove signboards, or retreat from visibility, intimidation succeeds without further confrontation.
Communalism at its most effective does not require constant violence. It requires memory—the memory of what could happen if one does not comply.
Mobs are not brave collectives. They are mechanisms for dissolving responsibility. Individuals who might hesitate alone find permission in numbers. Shame thins out; accountability blurs.
There is also a performative aspect. Such gatherings are rarely spontaneous. They are demonstrations—aimed at signalling ideological loyalty, asserting dominance, and reassuring supporters that intimidation will be rewarded with silence rather than consequence.
In this performance, the target almost becomes incidental. Ahmad was not seen as a person—a 70-year-old man with an illness—but as an abstraction: a Muslim using a “Hindu” word. Once reduced in this way, empathy becomes unnecessary.
A shopkeeper nearby observed later: “Nothing was broken, but after they left, the place felt damaged.”
Perhaps the most telling feature of the episode was the mob’s confidence. That confidence did not come from moral certainty. It came from expectation—the expectation of impunity.
Police Inaction and the Retreat of the State
No mob operates independently of the state. The true test of a constitutional democracy is not whether laws exist, but whether they are enforced impartially under social pressure.
When intimidation unfolds in public and authorities do not intervene decisively, a message is sent: coercion works. Each time victims are urged to “adjust” for the sake of calm, the law is inverted. Peace becomes the burden of the powerless. Fear becomes an instrument of governance.
This produces conditional citizenship—where protection depends not on legality, but on identity. Over time, people stop trusting institutions. Safety is calculated not through rights, but through silence. A passer-by who watched briefly and kept walking later admitted: “I told myself it wasn’t my business. But it didn’t feel right saying that.”
History shows how this erosion unfolds. It begins with symbols and names. It moves to livelihoods and social boycotts. It ends in open violence. The slide is gradual, which is precisely what makes it dangerous.
Quiet Courage
Against this machinery of intimidation stood Ahmad – Baba to those who knew him.
His courage was not loud. He did not argue aggressively or call for help. For a man living with Parkinson’s disease, courage took a quieter form: remaining present. He did not apologise for his name. He did not collapse into submission. He stood behind his counter, shaking slightly, waiting for the men to leave.
A customer who had stepped back during the confrontation recalled: “He didn’t raise his voice. He just kept saying, ‘This is what people call me.’”
It took a group of men, backed by an organisation, to threaten one frail shopkeeper over a word shared by many faiths. The imbalance exposes the emptiness of the mob’s claim to strength.
They spoke of culture. What they displayed was insecurity—so brittle that it could not tolerate a shared word on a signboard.
A Nation at a Crossroads
This incident is not only about Ahmad, Vakil Ahmad, or the word “Baba.” It is about who gets to decide the belonging.
When organisations like the Bajrang Dal assume the authority to police names, the state quietly abdicates its role. Power shifts from law to intimidation. That shift endangers everyone. Once coercion becomes an acceptable method of settling disputes, it does not remain confined to one community. Power always looks for new targets.
Civil society’s response matters. Silence is not neutrality; it is acquiescence. Each unchallenged act expands the space for the next one. A local reflected later that evening, “We all went home thinking we were safe. But something had changed.”
At stake is more than one shop or one name. At stake is whether citizens must seek permission to exist with dignity.
A society is judged not by the slogans it shouts, but by how it treats those who cannot shout back. If an elderly Muslim man can be publicly cornered over his name without consequence, the damage extends far beyond that street. And yet, his refusal to disappear matters.
Ahmad’s courage does not erase institutional failure—but it exposes it. And exposure, when met with conscience, can still become resistance.
A woman watching from across the street said quietly later: “I kept thinking – if they can frighten an old, shaking man over his name, what will they do to the rest of us when they decide we don’t fit?”
In the digital age, “social media mobs” can coordinate to harass, threaten, and shame individuals, causing severe psychological distress, reputational damage, and, in some cases, forcing victims offline. You ask: Is this the end-goal of technology?
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years old. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
