Shillong, November 5: The London Assembly unanimously passed a motion put forth by a British Indian assembly member, calling on the Metropolitan Police to collaborate with the local Hindu community to encourage the reporting of hate crimes against them.
As per IANS, expressing concerns that Hindu hate crimes are not effectively recorded by the Met services, the assembly also urged the police to include a breakdown of hate crimes by religion on its crime dashboard.
Assembly member Krupesh Hirani, who introduced the motion, expressed the need to hold the Metropolitan Police accountable to build trust within the community. He cited incidents such as meat being thrown at school pupils and women wearing a red bindi mark on their foreheads being taunted, highlighting a worrisome rise in hate crimes against the Hindu community.
According to the 2023 Crime Survey for England and Wales, Hindus, making up 5.15% of London’s population, are the second most likely religious group to be victims of religiously motivated hate crimes. However, the Met Police dashboard does not currently break down hate crimes by religion, making it challenging to assess the number of recorded crimes against Hindu Londoners.
Better recording of hate crimes is essential to address the issue of Hinduphobia, said a member of the Labour group representing Brent and Harrow constituencies, emphasizing that recognition is the first step toward tackling these issues.
Home Office statistics indicated that there were 291 hate crimes against Hindus in 2022/2023, accounting for 3% of recorded crimes by the police in England and Wales. This marked a significant increase from 58 hate crimes in 2017-18 to 166 in 2020-21, reflecting a nearly 200% rise in just four years.
The survey conducted by a London-based think tank in April found that 51% of Hindu parents reported that their children had faced discrimination in UK schools.
Following riots in Leicester after an India-Pakistan match, over 180 Hindu organizations and temples wrote an open letter to the then British Prime Minister Liz Truss, stating that they felt “under siege.”
