In India, where religion pervades every cubic inch of public space, the question of whether Muslims have the right to pray in the open has turned into a contentious debate, stirred up by Hindu nationalist groups and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Across the country, Hindu processions routinely tie up traffic, mosques use loudspeakers to call their faithful to prayer, and popular Christian preachers advertise themselves on billboards. Religion isn’t just plainly visible, it’s part of the fabric of daily life.

On Friday, however, right-wing Hindu activists in Gurugram, on the outskirts of Delhi, disrupted at least ten small groups of Muslims offering namaz in the open: by the side of the road, or in a park, or on vacant plots of land. The practice is a common one; Muslims who happen to be out of their homes and away from a mosque during the working day drop to prayer in the nearest convenient spot. Friday’s string of disruptions was the second such incident in two weeks. On April 20 – also a Friday – a prayer session was interrupted in Wazirabad, in Gurugram. A cell-phone video showed members of the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti, a collective of a dozen Hindu nationalist groups and political parties, instructing a crowd of praying Muslims to rise and disperse from an otherwise-empty square of land.

The National - Hindu nationalists disrupt Muslim prayers in India