14 October 2026: At the Rang Morla Navratri Garba event in Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India) an announcement was made on stage requesting all non-Hindus to leave the grounds. During this address a helpline number run by the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) was given for the public to report any suspicious activity. It has now become routine procedure at Navratri, across Gujarat and other Indian cities for VHP and their youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, to carry our checks at Garba events to ensure only Hindus are allowed entry. The Rang Morla event featured the internationally acclaimed Gujarati folk and pop artist Aditya Gadhvi, who quickly distanced himself from the announcement. On an Instagram post he explained, “What happened at the event was not my doing… For generations, people of every faith in Gujarat and across India have played garba side by side”. Aditya soon received support from another Gujarati folk artist, Hardik Dave.
Both Gadhvi and Dave now face criticism from a section of the Hindu community who feel both artists seek to secularise Navaratri. Most vocal has been Gujarat-based Hindu human rights and social worker, Kajal Hindustani, who specialises in rescuing and rehabilitating female Hindu victims of sexual grooming and forced conversion.
Calls by Hindu activists such as Kajal and the VHP to restricting Garba to Hindus is driven by a pattern of Muslim men using Garba events to target Hindu women. These men invariable come to garba alone or in groups of other younger men and use Hindu pseudonyms to hide their identity. Responding to both artists, Kajal said, “Invite members of minority communities to your homes and make them play garba with your sisters and daughters…and when Hindu girls are targeted by love Jihad (grooming) you are not there to pick up the pieces”. In his support for Gadhvi, Hardik Dave compared the request for non-Hindus to leave Garba events to the Nazi expulsion of the Jews. To this Kajal Hindustani retorted as to why Hardik went too far to the history of the Jews but didn’t remember how Hindus were driven out of the Kashmir valley in 1990 or even more recently when Hindus where murdered in Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
Imfarhad7, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons