Kalicharan Maharaj is a Hindu Monk and a Hindu supremacist leader from Akola in Maharashtra. He often makes hateful speeches derogating religious minorities.

He hailed Nathu Ram Godse for killing Mahatma Gandhi by saying, ‘I pay my respect to Godse for killing Gandhi.’ He was arrested but later released on bail after three months.

Upon his release, he said, ‘I stand by my statement. I said it thoughtfully and have no regrets.

He is an ardent propagandist of the bogey of ‘Love Jihad,’ a conspiracy theory. On December 14, 2022, at a ‘protest’ called by the Hindu Jan Aakrosh Morcha in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, Kalicharan made inflammatory speeches.

He falsely claimed that “40,000 cases of love jihad happen in India on a daily basis. There have been 35 cases of girls in Delhi. Girls are subdued. Ghosts are born in the stomach of those who go to lay their heads on tombs and tombs. They do vashikaran, black magic on these girls.”

The superstitious Kalicharan prescribed a remedy to check love jihad, ‘there is a way to counter this black magic – keep the tooth of a wild boar in water overnight and give that water to a girl stuck in a love jihad case. Make her drink it and she will be immediately out of black magic.’ Then he came to disparaging Muslims and said,’ Muslims have an 800-year-old plan” – the Ghazwa-e-Hind – to “convert India into a country of Muslims’…all Muslims are terrorists’.

Buttressing the cow vigilantism, he said, ‘Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had said don’t trust Muslims. Every day 1 lakh cows are killed. Hindus do not harbor hatred, but now hatred is also flourishing in the minds of Hindus’.

Demeaning Muslim localities, he said that “small scale Pakistan” has been created in India at multiple places and such settlements are equally dangerous; meanwhile, the crowd cheered and clapped.