It was a video Daesh would have been proud of: On Dec. 6, Shambhu Lal Regar, a Rajasthani Hindu, lures a migrant Muslim worker named Mohammed Afrazul with promises of finding him work and then attacks him with a pickaxe and machete. After hacking him to death, he pours kerosene over Afrazul’s corpse and sets it on fire. Then he turns to the camera, which is being operated by his 14-year-old nephew, and gives a speech saying that he killed Afrazul as a warning to all others who are committing “love jihad”. The video ends with the killer providing his bank details for all those who may want to donate money to him after seeing his bloody commitment to the cause. For those unfamiliar with the lexicon of Hindutva radicals, “love jihad” refers to what they see as a conspiracy by Muslim men to decimate the Hindu population of India by seducing, converting and then marrying Hindu women.

On right-wing websites, online forums and WhatsApp chat groups, lurid stories about love jihad are widely shared and circulated, and all have the same theme: That India’s Hindus are being targeted by a massive and well-funded campaign aimed at ensuring a Muslim majority in India. Such spurious tales are also usually accompanied by impassioned appeals to Hindus to “wake up” and take action. Regar was not just a consumer of such propaganda, but also actively made and posted his own video “appeals”, painting himself as a warrior bent on salvaging the pride and securing the future of a community that makes up the overwhelming majority of India’s population. Indeed, it is a curious characteristic of modern nationalism that it is defined by a majority seemingly made insecure by a relatively powerless minority. As laughable as that may seem, this is something the Hindutva brigades seem to believe, or at least are willing to cynically exploit in order to secure political gains. Regar was certainly a believer, and he proved that with his bloody sacrifice.

He is one among many: Following his arrest, about INR300,000 ($4,600) was deposited in his wife’s bank account to help him fight the criminal case against him, before police froze the account. Of the more than 700 people from across India who donated, police have reportedly arrested two local businessmen after they proudly posted pictures of the receipts of their donations on social media. Hundreds of Hindutva activists stormed the district court in Udaipur, clashing with police and unfurling a saffron flag atop the court’s gate. Truly, it was something Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, would have been proud of. After all, he’s the one who reputedly said: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.” And, in another pertinent quote: ‘The rank and file are much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.” Love jihad fits the bill on both counts.

Brutal murder by far-right Hindutva radical comes as ‘love jihad’ anti-Muslim propaganda is given a platform by Indian politicians and media.

Zarrar Khuhro

But even propaganda is insufficient without state sponsorship, and here we have seen plenty of that.

None other than Yogi Adityanath, the right-wing chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has used his platform to rail against the dangers of love jihad, while the Hindu Yuva Vahini, the hard-line youth militia he founded, has been linked to numerous attacks on inter-faith couples. Other BJP leaders have also played their part, aided by a supine and fawning media that routinely devotes hours of sensationalist coverage pandering to right-wing fantasies and delusions. Indeed, when reporting on Afrazul’s murder, the headline on the Times of India read: “Reprisal for love jihad? Man kills laborer, sets body on fire in Rajasthan.” It seems it’s not enough to just repeat a lie often enough, the truth must be prefaced with a lie. That’s not all, none other than the Supreme Court of India itself gave credence to this conspiracy theory in August this year, when it ordered Hadiya, a Hindu convert to Islam, to move back to her parents’ house instead of living with her husband, whom she had married a year after converting to Islam. Not content with this, the court also ordered India’s National Investigation Agency to probe whether this was a case of love jihad. It seems Goebbels was correct on yet another point: “Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics… has its roots in the street.” Clearly, it works the other way around as well.

• Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News. Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro