The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal have once again begun their campaign against non-Hindus attending garba events during Navratri. In addition, the right-wing Hindutva groups also want to bring back another one of their recent Navratri inventions – sprinkling cow urine on those attending garba events.
Gujarat VHP president Hitendrasinh Rajput, according to The Times of India, has said that if entrants are sprinkled with cow urine and greeted with a tilak, it will work to separate Hindus from non-Hindus. It is assumed that at this point they will also be questioned about their identity. Several Bharatiya Janata Party legislators too have said the tilak entry system is required to prevent “love jihad”, the newspaper reported. Love jihad is a bogey peddled by the Hindu right, without evidence, to claim that Muslim men are marrying Hindu women only to convert them.
In Maharashtra, the VHP announced that those wanting to attending garba festivities will have to produce their Aadhaar cards. “Every individual participating in festival revelry should be subjected to thorough scrutiny to ascertain his/ her Hindu identity,” VHP joint general secretary Surendra Jain said on Sunday, Indian Express reported.
“Festival organisers should make Aadhaar card compulsory to verify credentials of participants. They should apply tilak (red vermillion) on the forehead and tie kalva (sacred red thread) on the wrist,” Jain said.
Ever since 2015, Hindu right-wing groups like the VHP have been campaigning to keep non-Hindus out of religious and cultural festivities. Last year in Gujarat, an altercation occurred when a garba event was planned very close to a mosque. Muslim men were publicly beaten by police officers after the incident. In Madhya Pradesh, the houses of three Muslim men accused of throwing stones at a garba location were razed by the authorities.