NEW DELHI - It has been a year since the Dharam Sansad in Haridwar, where dozens of Hindu supremacist priests clad in saffron robes called for the genocide of Indian Muslims, write Apoorvanand and Alishan Jafri in Scroll.in.

This gathering was a culmination of a series of anti-Muslim hate assemblies across the country, including in the capital city Delhi, at which prominent Hindu clerics made equally vitriolic statements.

Bajrang Muni, one of these “respected religious leaders” – as he was described by the Indian government’s lawyer in the Supreme Court – had publicly advocated Hindu men to commit mass rapes against Muslim women.

Yet, the police did not find a problem with such corrosive speech, just as it did not find anything wrong in the open calls for arming Hindus that were made at the gathering in Delhi. It said this was merely a defence of “community ethics”.

We are told that there is a silent majority that is upset by this vulgarity. One wonders why ordinary Hindus or the state apparatus, which identifies itself with them, does not feel offended by this rhetoric. Of course, there is a limit to our tolerance.

This level was breached in December when actor Shah Rukh Khan purportedly insulted the sacred hue of saffron by getting co-star Deepika Padukone to wear a saffron bikini in a sequence for the song Besharam Rang – shameless colour – in his film Pathaan.

A film critic of long standing even wondered about the wisdom of choosing this outfit because saffron, this person claimed, is India’s national colour.

To identify only this particular colour as being shameless is a display of obvious bigotry: Padukone changes costumes at least six times during the song.

However, this one short shot has forced parliamentarians and Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra to react. A prominent priest in Ayodhya burnt an effigy of Khan and casually threatened to burn him alive as well.