Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur
Islamophobic Remarks :
Pragya Singh Thakur is a politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an extremist Hindu monk. She represented the Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, constituency in the Lok Sabha from 2019 to 2024. Her active engagement in the student wing of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), during her undergraduate years is the reason for her early involvement with various affiliate groups of the RSS.
Before leaving the ABVP in 1997, Thakur had been a member since 1993 and held the position of state secretary. She was also connected to the radical Hindu Jagran Manch, the Rashtrawadi Sena, and Durga Vahini, the women’s section of the Bajrang Dal. Most remarkably, she was a founding member of the RSS offshoot Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti.
Thakur was one of the accused in the 2008 bombing in Malegaon, Maharashtra, which happened close to a mosque, killed six people and injured about 100. Investigators alleged that a motorcycle registered in her name was used to plant the explosives. On 31 July 2025 a special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai acquitted Thakur and the six other accused, citing a lack of evidence.
She was arrested in October 2008 on terrorism-related charges and spent more than eight years in custody. The Bombay High Court granted her bail in April 2017, after the National Investigation Agency had dropped the charges it had brought against her under the organised-crime law MCOCA.
In the 2019 general election, Thakur ran a strong campaign and won the Bhopal constituency, drawing a lot of attention. Political analyst Christophe Jaffrelot claims that she turned into the “symbol” of the 2019 election, during which vague, ancillary aspects of the Hindutva ideology gained traction.
Her campaign comments and later public utterances, which frequently targeted the Muslim population, have drawn harsh condemnation and legal repercussions. Thakur spoke during the 2019 general election about her role in the 1992 destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Due to her remarks, which violated the Model Code of Conduct and inflamed communal tensions, the Election Commission of India requested the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) against her. As a result, she was barred from campaigning for 72 hours.
At a Hindu Jagarana Vedike convention in Shivamogga, Karnataka, in December 2022, she repeated the “love jihad” conspiracy theory about Muslims and urged Hindus to keep weapons at home, saying, “If nothing else, at least keep your knives sharp.” Police registered a case against her over the speech.
