Published in oHeraldo on August 02, 2018
The unprecedented rise in lynchings in some States has evoked widespread reactions from a cross-section of Indian society. The Supreme Court has come down heavily on the government by pointing out that “Mobocracy can’t be allowed in a democracy” and even issued directions for enacting an anti-lynching law. But predictably the debate on these lynchings will be stuck in the usual denial, blame and farcical opinions from politicians and intellectuals who beat around the bush. The saffron brigade is desperate to play down the issue by claiming that lynchings are like any other law and order problem. For the last seventy years since independence it has been the default stance of the hate ‘parivar’ to rubbish any communal motive attributed to various riots.
The Union Home Minister too has joined in rationalising the insignificance of the present lynchings by positioning the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as the biggest lynching episode in the history of independent India. Another Union Minister claims these lynchings to be a sign of the Prime Minister’s growing popularity, while another MP argues that the lynchings are a result of the growth in Muslim population. The very compulsion of the right wing forces to deny, justify and rationalise these lynchings coupled with their reluctance to outrightly condemn lynchings is enough reason to believe that these crimes are far from being the outcome of spontaneous mob reactions triggered by social media. These lynchings appear to be planned and executed by those who have marketed this hatred for minorities over several decades. If not, then how is it that the Hindu traders who top in beef export from India and those Hindus who eat beef continue to face no threat of lynching?
Circulation of rumours and provocation by hurting religious sentiments leading to communal clashes and killings is nothing new in independent India. The only difference is that ‘Digital India’ has added sophistication and lethality in the operations of the ‘Rumour Spreading Society’, as these fanatic groups are popularly known. There is now a speed and efficiency in their craft of rumour mongering which is no more by mere word of mouth but laced with provocative fake visuals intended to plant misinformation and biases and sow distrust, anger and fear against certain communities all by the press of a key. Blaming digital technology for the lynchings is just to distract public attention from the real game. The rumour of yesterday is the ‘Fake News’ of today to lend a degree of deception quite similar to the play with terms like ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindutva’. With partition blamed on the Muslims, a false perception created that communal riots are the legacy of British and Congress rule and a myth that no communal riots occur when the BJP is in government, it becomes necessary that the communal riots of the past get refashioned as ‘lynching’ and ‘gau raksha’ to deceive and confuse society and statistics.
The lynchings need to be understood in the context of the psychopathology of hate which cannot be tackled by TV debates which pitch liberals versus the religiously orthodox and bigots and by enacting new laws. It requires the intervention by psychologists and psychiatrists to detoxify those who are mentally intoxicated with hate. Laws by themselves can do little to prevent crimes without the simultaneous interventions from mental health experts. We see how the stringent anti-rape law has failed to deter rapists. Since lynching is about human behaviour, just that one-off fake news in the social media cannot always trigger such spontaneous mob violence. The background as to why people think and manage their feelings in the way they do is of utmost importance to comprehend such lunacy.
These barbaric episodes need to be understood in the context of a history and pattern if effective responses are to emerge. The culture of mobs delivering justice and death on the streets cannot be viewed independently from a mob in black robes almost lynching a JNU student activist or an accused rapist within the court precincts, or even the attack on Swami Agnivesh on the street. So, propaganda over a significant time period about religious or cultural superiority when coupled with prejudices and stereotyping of certain communities as being a threat to the cow, nation and the Hindu culture contributes to creating an explosive cognitive cocktail generating negative feelings in members of a community. It is in such a mentally corrupted and emotionally bankrupt ecosystem that one fake message or provocation is enough to arouse barbaric behaviours. Lynchings are only the end result of the fanatical brainwash.
It would be unfair to limit the blame for lynchings entirely on social media and the public. The ideological preferences and communal prejudices prevalent within the ranks of the police force and politicians have as much a role to play. This is exactly why those convicted of lynching get garlanded by MPs and MLAs and the hate crime accused languishing in jail is glorified and deified in Ram Navami processions. The perpetrators of such crimes know that they have the State’s license to kill.
The latest lynching of Rakbar Khan in Alwar amply demonstrates the mindset of the police for whom housing the cows which were seized in a ‘gaushala’ took precedence over admitting the dying man in a hospital. In the Hapur lynching there is visual evidence of cops protecting the mob which is dragging the victim. In fact, these fresh video clippings of minorities lynched by mobs become new resource material for fanatics to circulate and agitate their followers for future attacks. The tears and threats against such crimes which come from those in government after much prodding seem more for public consumption and meant to portray an impression globally that something is being done. Going by the role of the government and the investigating authorities in such lynchings, will the nation ever know whether there is a role played by the saffron brigade in these lynchings while playing innocent?
(The author is a social worker.)
https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Opinions/The-lynch-sport-of-desi-Neros/134187.html
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