Six years ago, Irshad Ali’s family were forced to flee their home in Muzaffarnagar, northern Uttar Pradesh. They were among 50,000 Muslims who were displaced after the riots in 2013 that killed 62 people and injured scores of others. More than 40 per cent of Muzaffarnagar’s 500,000-strong population are Muslim. Irshad recalls his quiet childhood growing up in Phugana, a little village some 100 kilometres from New Delhi. In the days leading up to the riots, he remembers the hushed whispers and the sinister looks. Others were much less subtle. “They said they wanted to wash their hands with our blood, they wanted to get rid of us ‘filthy Muslims’. They said we would all be dead in a few days,” he said. The riots began three days later on August 27. The cause is still disputed: it could have been a traffic accident. Whatever the case, Hindus in Muzaffarnagar began systematically killing Muslims . Families were slaughtered by their next-door neighbours. Most Muslims fled immediately, but Irshad’s mother refused to leave her family home. “Our family had lived there for so long. She told us to not leave, no matter the circumstances. Then we heard that two of our neighbours had been murdered. They burned down our mosque,” Irshad said. The family managed to escape in the night, seeking refuge in a neighbouring Muslim village. Indian troops deployed to quell Hindu-Muslim riots following killings in Uttar Pradesh Irshad, at age 13, had to patrol the village day and night, fearing a second Hindu attack. Muslims account for 14.2 per cent of the 1.3 billion people living in India – the world’s second-largest Muslim population, after Indonesia . Sadly, Irshad’s experience is far from unique . Caste and faith are India’s biggest dividers and ironically, consolidators. Each political party draws its central support from a select few castes and/or religious groups. The Samajwadi party, for instance, has since the 1990s been popular in states with significant Muslim population and with the Yadavs, who are classified by the government as an educationally or socially disadvantaged “ Other Backward Caste ”. This has pushed the party to power three times in the past 26 years in Uttar Pradesh . The Bahujan Samaj Party, on the other hand, represents the vast population of Dalits – formerly called “untouchables”. It, via party leader Mayawati, has managed to win the chief ministership of Uttar Pradesh on four occasions. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of current Prime Minister Narendra Modi , meanwhile, primarily relies on the trading and upper castes such as the Banias and Brahmins. Caste, Tamil nationalism and the Indian election This combination of caste and religious communalism often makes daily life – to say nothing of politics – a combustible affair. Other major pre-election riots – besides Muzaffarnagar’s 2013 violence – include those that occurred in Meerut in 1987, Orissa in 1989 and Gujarat’s Godhra in 2002 . Such incidents often have a strange effect on the political calculations of the various castes and faiths. In Uttar Pradesh, the Jats – a major agricultural caste in the region – traditionally voted for local party Rashtriya Lok Dal. Following the carnage of 2013, this group overwhelmingly swung to the BJP in 2014’s general election. They represent about 4.4 million votes in Uttar Pradesh and roughly 28 million in the whole of India. What does the future bring on this front? Unfortunately, more turmoil seems to be on the horizon. India’s current shift towards religious polarisation and Hindu nationalism arguably began with the destruction in December 1992 of the Babri Masjid – a mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya. A major electoral promise of the BJP in 2014 was to build a grand Hindu temple on the disputed land. In late 2018, far right-wing Hindu political outfits converged on Ayodhya to force the building of a temple dedicated to Rama on the site, disregarding the fact that the dispute is still before the courts. A centuries-old Hindu-Muslim dispute that can still sway Indian elections The recent attack in Pulwama , Kashmir, that led to the deaths of 44 Indian paramilitary police officers and was claimed by a militant Islamist group, has also inspired a string of revenge attacks against Kashmiris and Muslims across India. It seems as if India will not be free of the scourge of communal violence any time soon. For Irshad, who had wanted to study mathematics, the riots “broke” his education . “I tried going back to school five months after the riot. My classmates beat me within an inch of my life. I never returned after that,” he said. It took him two years to recover and for his family to scrape together his school fees. His new school is no different. His teacher, an alleged “ Islamophobe ”, fails every Muslim student in the class and awards high grades to even the worst Hindu student. “I’ve nearly given up. I don’t go to school any more. I sit at home and study for my exams,” Irshad said. “My Hindu classmates insult me every day. If they fail me this time again just for who I am, then I’ll have no choice but to work at brick kiln. I know of Muslim students much brighter than me who have no choice but to work there.”