23 November Saturday

Mob Lynchings: Defeat this Medieval Barbarity

Sitaram YechuryUpdated: Friday Jul 27, 2018

AS the prime minister was labouring  to deliver his one and half hour  long speech at the end of the noconfidence  motion debate on Friday,  June 20, Rakbar alias Akbar Khan was  being lynched to death in Alwar district  of Rajasthan over allegations of cow  smuggling. 

Till now, the prime minister has not  once paid even lip service of expressing  concern over the spate of lives lost  due to lynching by private armies that  have mushroomed under the rule of the  BJP governments. These governments  continue to patronise vigilante squads  in the name of ‘cow protection’; ‘moral  policing’; ‘love jihad’; ‘child lifters’  etc., etc. This is the third such lynching  in the Alwar district since April 2017.  Pehlu Khan first and then Umer Khan  and now Akbar Khan. Between Pehlu  Khan and Akbar Khan, India has seen  at least 46 reported lynching deaths,  mainly Muslims and dalits across at  least a dozen states.

 Many were hoping that in his reply  to the no-confidence motion debate,  the PM, in accordance with the Supreme  Court observations, would announce  that the government would bring a  new comprehensive legislation against  “mob lynching” in this current session  itself. The Apex Court observed that:  “It is the duty of the State to ensure  maintenance of law and order so as  to protect secular ethos and prevent  mobocracy.” But no such announcement  came. Likewise no reference was  made to the dastardly attack on Swami  Agnivesh in Jharkhand. 

As is its wont, the Modi government  has on July 23 formed a group of  ministers (GoM) to consider the framing  of a new law. By now it is established  that such steps are only means to  delay and sabotage the Supreme Court  direction. 

OBNOXIOUS JUSTIFICATION 

A union cabinet minister from  Rajasthan cynically responded by  saying that such lynchings are “a  conspiracy” as a result of the “rising  popularity of Prime Minister, Modi.”  The local BJP MLA went further to issue  a warning last December that if anyone  was indulging in cow smuggling  or slaughter of a cow, he will be killed.  This must be read to mean anyone  whom the RSS/BJP alleges as indulging  in such activities, albeit, falsely, would  be killed. 

Now has come the most objectionable  justification by the RSS. Its leading  spokesman, Indresh Kumar says,  “lynchings will stop if people don’t eat  beef”! Apart from being a gross violation  of peoples constitutional rights, what  about the lynchings being done in the  name of “child lifters”, “love jihad” etc.,  then? 

The prime minister’s silence speaks  more eloquently than his words. PM’s  silence is naturally interpreted as the  government’s explicit encouragement  to such violence and anarchy against  the minorities and dalits. 

CLASSIC DOUBLE SPEAK
 Indulging in their typical double speak,  one section of the Hindutva forces  patronise these private armies and  venerate the criminals, while another,  forever continues to deny any links with  such people when they are caught and  their terror activities get exposed. Such  denials come even when in Jharkhand  a union cabinet minister openly felicitates  and garlands such criminals.  RSS affiliated organisations and  associations protect such criminals  and at times prevent law enforcement  authorities from taking any action  against them. The perpetrators of the  horrendous dehumanising gang rape  in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua were  protected by local BJP leaders and  lawyers prevented from taking the legal  recourse against the criminals. The  murderers of Pehlu Khan have been  set free despite being named in the  dying declaration. 

During these years under this PM  Modi led BJP government, Mahatma  Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse is  being venerated and hero worshipped  in some places. Yet, the RSS claims that  Nathuram Godse was not with the RSS  when he shot dead Mahatma Gandhi – a  claim strongly contested by Nathuram’s  brother. Here is what Nathuram’s  brother Gopal Godse had to say in a  media interview, “All the brothers were  in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself  and Govind. You can say we grew up  in the RSS rather than in our home. It  was like a family to us. Nathuram had  become a baudhik karyavah (intellectual  worker) in the RSS. He has said in his  statement that he left the RSS. He said  it because Golwalkar and the RSS were  in a lot of trouble after the murder of  Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.”  (Frontline, January 28, 1994). The point,  here, is not the technicality of somebody  being a current member. The point  is the venomous ideological  indoctrination that the RSS and its  affiliates undertake which nurtures and  promotes such violent militancy. 

LEGACY OF MILITANT TRAINING 
The RSS’s record on the issue of  imparting militant training to the  Hindus has a long history. It was V  D Savarkar who coined the slogan  “Hindutva,” clearly stating that this  has little to do with religiosity and was  a political project of establishing a rule  of the Hindus. To achieve this objective  he gave the slogan “Hinduise all politics  and militarise Hindudom”. Inspired by  this, Dr B S Moonje, mentor to RSS  founder Dr Hegdewar, traveled to Italy  to meet the fascist dictator, Mussolini.  The meeting took place on March 19,  1931. His personal diary notes of March  20 reveal his fascination and admiration  of the manner in which Italian fascism  was training its youth (read stormtroopers)  militarily. Upon return to  India, Dr Moonje established the Central  Hindu Military Education Society at  Nasik in 1935, the precursor to the  Bhonsala Military School established in  1937. Investigations earlier had put this  on the terror radar. 

RSS’s Guru Golwalkar, in 1939,  exults Hitler’s purging of the Jews under  Nazi fascism saying that it is “a good  lesson for us in Hindustan to learn  and profit by”. Much later in 1970, he  says “Generally speaking, it is a matter  of common experience that evil forces  (read non-Hindus) do not understand  the language of logic and sweet nature.  They can be controlled (only) by force”. 

Communalism and fundamentalism  feed on each other. The RSS efforts to  impart militant training to achieve its  objective aids the process of creating an  atmosphere of hate, violence and terror,  in order to “control by force.” This often  leads to explosive communal riots.

Every single judicial enquiry into  communal riots in independent India  – starting from the reports on the  Ahmedabad riots in 1969, Bhiwandi,  Jalgaon and Mahad riots in 1970,  Tellicherry riots in 1971, Jamshedpur  riots in 1979, Kanyakumari riots in 1982,  the Srikrishna commission report on  Mumbai riots of 1992-93 to the plethora  of reports by constitutional bodies like  the National Human Rights Commission  and independent inquiries into the  savage state-sponsored communal  carnage in Gujarat, 2002 – have all  indicted the RSS, by name, for fuelling  tensions and perpetrating the attacks  against the minorities. Mind you, every  single one of these commissions was  headed by a respected member of the  highest echelons of the judiciary, and all  of them were Hindus! Hence no question  of any bias arises. 

CULT OF VIOLENCE

It is necessary to recollect, in this  context, what India’s first deputy prime  minister and home minister Sardar  Vallabhai Patel said (whom the RSS/BJP  today seek to (mis)appropriate) soon  after the assassination of Mahatma  Gandhi. Sardar Patel had penned a  communiqué banning the RSS. This  communiqué says: “The objectionable  and harmful activities of the Sangh  (RSS) have, however, continued  unabated and the cult of violence  sponsored and inspired by the activities  of the Sangh has claimed many victims.  The latest and the most precious to  fall was Gandhiji himself.” The point  being made by Sardar Patel in the  communiqué dated February 4,  1948 was that the RSS and its  affiliates sponsored a ‘cult of  violence’ that claimed many victims  including Gandhiji himself. The  atmosphere in the country, today,  unless prevented by the unity of all  Indian patriots who cherish the secular  democratic foundations of our republic,  is fast degenerating to the levels where  private armies, are buttressing this cult  of violence. 

It is this track record that continues  to embolden the nurturing of private  armies ala the fascistic storm troopers  that Hitler and Mussolini reared  through the Black and Brown shirts. 

Such spread of violence, terror and  anarchy undermines the foundations of  our constitutional edifice. The secular,  democratic republican character of our  constitution is precisely what the RSS/  BJP seek to undermine to facilitate the  metamorphosis of the Indian republic  into the RSS project of establishing  a rabidly intolerant fascistic ‘Hindu  Rashtra’. The BJP is the political arm  of the RSS functioning to achieve this  objective. 

This danger must be defeated. India  has to be saved today in order India has to be saved today in order to change it for the better tomorrow.

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