Shambhavi Peetadhishwar aka Swami Anand Swaroop Maharaj is a Hindu militant priest and the president of Shankaracharya Parishad known for his genocidal statements against India’s religious minorities especially Muslims.

Swaroop led the vilifying campaign accusing Muslims of ‘land jihad,’ a conspiracy theory that alleges Muslims of acquiring land across India as a means to “take over the country”. 

In October 2021, he had demanded that non-Hindus should be banned from entering Uttarakhand state.

“If the entry of non-Hindus is not banned, then Hindu priests will take to the streets. Members of the Muslim community are creating a ruckus here, spreading non-vegetarianism, throwing meat and cow meat in the Ganga to defile it (sic). If we don’t take note, then it will become Kashmir. There should be one state for Hindus at least. If a title suit on the lines of Ayodhya would be fought for Uttarakhand, Hindus will win it,” Swaroop said in a Facebook video.

In another video posted on his social media at around the same time, Anandswaroop had called on his followers to crush the “external and internal Taliban” and “train youth to behead” enemies.

Swaroop also works closely with Hindu militant groups like Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) and Sanatan Sanstha.

In January 2021, Swaroop while delivering a speech in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh said that if Muslims want to live in India they should “stop reading the Quran and stop offering namaz.”

“One who reads the Quran becomes a beast, they are no longer human. We should ask the Muslims that if they have to remain associated with us, first and foremost they should stop reading the Quran, stop offering namaz. We cannot say anything to them because even today, the Constitution is the rule of law. You should take it upon yourself that you will not buy anything from a Muslim. If you destroy them socially, politically and economically, they will begin converting to Hinduism,” Swaroop said. He further added, “We want an army of one crore Hindu youth. We don’t need swayamsevak, we need a swayam-sena now. Pick up swords, guns or whatever you have, war has been declared and it will go on till we have a Hindu rashtra.”

Between December 17-19, 2021, he was a speaker at the Hindu Dharma Sansad (Hindu Religious Parliament) in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, where he made genocidal statements.

“The decision of this Dharma Sansad would be a word of God and the government will have to listen to it. If it won’t, then we would wage a war that would be more gruesome than the revolt of 1857,” Swaroop said at the Dharma Sansad.

“The street in which I live, every morning I used to spot a Mullah [derogatory word for a Muslim] with a big beard and nowadays they keep a saffron beard. This is Haridwar, Maharaj. There is no Muslim buyer here, so throw him out,” he added.