Falsehoods can have fatal consequences. The mass shooting last week at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, which left 10 people dead and three injured, has brought to the global centre stage an old conspiracy theory that the killer referenced in a sprawling manifesto. Called the ‘Great Replacement’, the white nationalist theory claims that elites in the United States of America and European countries are trying to socially engineer demographics so that people of colour outnumber Caucasians. The Buffalo killer listed his principal aim as killing “as many Blacks as possible.” Eleven of his 13 victims were black. Since the killings, a growing chorus in the US is demanding action against people in positions of influence who have regularly amplified this theory, including members of Congress and powerful media personalities. Yet the mass murder is not the first to be rooted in this belief that white people are under threat from blacks, Muslims, Asians and other ethnic and religious identities — communities that for centuries were, in fact, victims of colonialism. This theory was what guided Anders Breivik, who massacred more than 75 people in Norway in 2011; Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; and shooters who have attacked synagogues and black churches in the US.

And its dangers are real for India too. A central narrative of Indian majoritarian politics involves the claim that Muslims are procreating much faster than Hindus and could very soon become the single biggest community in the country. That is demonstrably false. Muslims constitute 14 per cent of the national population, Hindus 80 per cent. The recently released National Family Health Survey concluded that the Muslim fertility rate is dropping the fastest among all Indian communities and now stands at 2.3. That is still the highest among religions in India, but the gap with the Hindu fertility rate is shrinking. In absolute numbers, the Hindu population has grown consistently every decade. But that has not stopped extremist, self-styled priests and some leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party from propagating the lie. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, himself once referred to relief camps after the 2002 anti-Muslim riots as breeding grounds for the community. At a time when India is witnessing regular genocidal calls against Muslims, the Buffalo killings are a reminder of the deadly bomb of bigotry that the country is sitting on. The time to defuse it is running out.