While the USA media, senators and Obama need to be reminded that the imperialist USA state is the largest violator of human rights worldwide and need to be bluntly told that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones on other’s windows, the fact is that the ‘Hussains’ in India are not safe; the threats to their freedom are becoming increasingly irreversible, writes Tarak Mehta.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to India in the early hours of June 26 after his six-day visit to the USA and Egypt, many BJP leaders including the party chief JP Nadda were present at the Delhi airport to receive him. BJP MP Manoj Tiwari told reporters that Narendra Modi on his arrival asked the party chief about what is happening in India. Nadda ji told Modi that party leaders were reaching out to people with the report card of the nine years of his government, and the country is happy. How happy are the people of this country, particularly, the largest minority community was revealed a few hours later, when news portals reported that a Muslim man has been lynched in Maharashtra — a state ruled by BJP and its ally (Eknath Sindhe faction of the Shiv Sena).
On Monday morning (26 June), the Maharashtra police reported that a man named Affan Abdul Ansari has been thrashed to death by a mob of Gau Rakshaks (Cow Vigilantes) in Nashik district on suspicion of smuggling beef. The incident took place on Saturday evening when Affan Ansari — the 32 years old victim, along with his friend Nasir Ghulam Hussain Qureshi, was transporting cattle meat in a car to Mumbai. The duo were allegedly intercepted and thrashed with steel rods and wooden sticks by a mob of self-declared cow vigilantes and left bleeding in their damaged car. The police admitted both of them to hospital. Affan Ansari succumbed to his injuries after two days while undergoing treatment, while Nasir Hussain is still recuperating from injuries.
The police have registered a murder case and taken ten people into custody thus far in connection with the incident; the cattle meat in the car has been sent for a forensic test to find out if it was buffalo meat or beef.
This is the second time in this month that a Muslim man has been lynched in the state of Maharashtra. A week before, on 8 June, in another incident of lynching in the same district, a Muslim man named Lukman Suleman Ansari was beaten to death while transporting cattle in a vehicle by a mob affiliated with the a Hindutva outfit named Rashtriya Bajrang Dal (RBD).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US invited sharp criticism by many in the USA. US President Joe Biden’s administration has been criticised and questioned for its decision to accord a red-carpet welcome to Narendra Modi despite the assault on democratic institutions and attacks on minorities in India under his leadership. 75 United States Senators and Congressional representatives of the Democratic Party even wrote a letter to President Biden outlining their concern, and asked the President to raise the rise of religious intolerance and shrinking of political space in India during his meeting with the Indian Prime Minister.
At a rare two-question press conference that Modi agreed to face in Washington, he sought to allay such concerns of his critics by boldly stating that there is absolutely no space for discrimination in India. Replying to a question by Sabrina Siddiqui from the Wall Street Journal on the alleged persecution of Muslims and human rights violations in India, Modi replied, “Bharat ke loktantrik mulyo mein koi bhed bhav nahi hain, na dharm ke aadhar par, na jaati ke aadhar par, na umar ke aadhar par…(there is no discrimination in India’s democratic values, neither on the basis of religion, nor on the basis of caste, nor on the basis of age…)
Barely 72 hours have passed, and the truth of how Muslims in particular are being treated in India under his rule, have come out in the open. The news of the lynching in Maharashtra was preceded by the news of Indian Army storming mosques in Kashmir and forcing Muslims inside to chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’. And for over a month Manipur showed no sign of returning to normalcy with ethnic clashes resulting in killings, burning down of hundred of churches, fleeing of over 50,000 people to shelter camps. Narendra Modi has kept mum and refused to speak.
The continuous refusal of Prime Minister Modi to acknowledge targeted violence against Muslims and other minorities reflects the insensitivity of his Party and Government to injustice and violence in general. News on TV channels, newspapers, social media platforms and in everyday conversations of Muslims in India being profiled, attacked and lynched by mobs, flogged and humiliated in public and incarcerated by the state on flimsy grounds, their homes and shops bulldozed and burned are becoming all so common that there is a fear of the majority Hindu community becoming normalised to such barbarity, losing all sensitivity towards violence and injustice inflicted on their fellow citizens belonging to other faiths.
It is difficult to ascertain the exact number of vigilante-killings, as India’s laws do not make a distinction between cases of murder and lynchings, so cow-related lynching cases are not reflected in official crime statistics. In 2017, the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) collected data on cases of mob lynching, hate crimes etc. But it was observed that the data was unreliable and NCRB decided to stop collecting data on lynchings and mob violence. The Ministry of Home Affairs informed Parliament on December 15, 2021, that no separate data on people killed or injured by vigilante groups, mobs or crowds is maintained by the NCRB.
There are some non-governmental sources like IndiaSpend website who are trying to document such cases and from them we can get an idea of the extent of such hate crimes. According to journalism website IndiaSpend that records such hate crimes in India, a total of 117 cow vigilante attacks had occurred in India between 2010 and mid 2017. About 90 per cent cases were reported after Narendra Modi took office in May 2014, and about half occurred in states with governments ruled singularly by BJP or in alliance with other parties. In these attacks, 28 Indians – 24 of them Muslims – were killed and 124 injured. But IndiaSpend has now disassociated itself from the database called ‘Hate Crime Watch’ that it had been maintaining since October 2018.
As per Quint, 88 people were killed in lynchings since 2015 across India. According to a report from Human Rights Watch, between May 2015 and December 2018, nearly 300 people have been injured in more than 100 attacks by cow vigilantes. At least 44 people were killed in such attacks by Hindutva groups in those three years, and 36 of those killed were Muslims. In December, 2018, cow vigilantes shot dead a police officer in Bulandshar, Uttar Pradesh, even filming his dead body.
The incidents of lynching in Maharashtra this month are by no means an isolated occurrence. Violence on Muslims, including lynching, allegedly for eating beef and transporting or smuggling cows by the Hindutva brigade is not new in India. Cow vigilante groups affiliated to various fringe Hindutva organisations were active even before Modi assumed power in Delhi in 2014. But there has been a remarkable surge in mob-lynching cases in India since 2014. The 2015 Dadri incident, the 2016 Jharkhand mob-lynching, the killing of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Alwar in 2017 and the lynching of Tabrez Ansari in 2019, and the recent incident in Haryana’s Bhiwani where burnt bodies of two Muslim men were discovered in a car, are a few amongst the numerous lynching incidents that have caught national attention. These cases represent the failure of the Indian State to curb mob-justice and implement proper dispensation of justice to the victims.
What changed after Modi came to power was the support and ideological backing these groups began to enjoy from ruling party politicians and the administration to their criminal and communal actions. In August 2019, Indiaspend reported findings of a survey that revealed every third Indian police person thinks it is “natural” — “to a large extent” or “somewhat”–for a mob to punish “culprits” when there is a case of “cow slaughter.” Politically, too, the reaction to such mob violence is either muted in case of opposition parties for fear of losing majority Hindu community votes or in support of it by the ruling BJP which thrives on manufacturing hatred towards the Muslims. Only in 2017, after a number of such lynchings grabbed national and international headlines, Modi broke his silence on the matter and appealed to people to not take the law in their hands in case they suspect cow slaughter, but to allow the legal system to do its work (a large number of BJP ruled states have made slaughtering of cattle a criminal offence). In 2019, Modi again condemned lynchings but also asked rhetorically if they began only in 2014. But he has maintained silence and refused to act on his party leaders’ ties with murderous vigilante groups and open support to the lynchers.
The complicity of the ruling political class along with the administration and the silence of the opposition out of fear of losing majority Hindu votes, lynching of Muslims in particular on mere suspicion of eating or carrying beef became the part of the new normal. The only ray of hope arose when in 2018, the Supreme Court of India while hearing a slew of petitions related to cow vigilantism and lynchings, in Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India & Ors, observed that:
Hate crimes as a product of intolerance, ideological dominance and prejudice ought not to be tolerated; lest it results in a reign of terror. Extra judicial elements and non-State actors cannot be allowed to take the place of law or the law enforcing agency. A fabricated identity with bigoted approach sans acceptance of plurality and diversity results in provocative sentiments and display of reactionary retributive attitude transforming itself into dehumanisation of human beings.
On July 17, 2018, the Supreme Court denounced such instances of lynching and mob violence against Muslims and Dalits as “horrendous acts of mobocracy” and urged the Parliament to draft legislation making lynching a distinct offence with a penalty. The court observed “earnest action and concrete steps have to be taken to protect the citizens from the recurrent pattern of violence which cannot be allowed to become ‘the new normal”.
Despite the very stringent words of the court and a detailed time-bound framework, the union governments have done little to implement the judgement by enacting a law and even the Supreme Court failed to ensure strict compliance of its own ruling. In July 2019, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court turned down a request for an urgent hearing of a contempt plea against states that had failed to comply with the Tehseen S. Poonawalla guidelines. As of now only four states Manipur, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have enacted laws against mob lynching but they are still awaiting the president’s assent. This is ironical because the union Home Ministry has consistently pointed out in parliament that lynching are law and order problem and that ‘police’ and ‘public order’ are state subjects and that state governments are responsible for law enforcement; yet the Central government has kept state legislative Bills on lynching indefinitely pending.
The frequency of such violence, mostly targeting the country’s Muslim minorities, and the failure of the legislature and the executive combined with the inaction of the judiciary to stem the rise of hate crimes and mob violence in the country has led to an institutional vacuum and has left its victims vulnerable and helpless. Narendra Modi might prostrate before Gandhi’s statute upholding non-violence and proclaim India as the ‘mother of democracy’, the ‘largest living democracy’ etc. on foreign soil to appease his detractors and critics, but once in India, he is more comfortable with the followers of Godse.
The new poster boy of rabid communalism and a rising star in his party, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma allayed any doubts about how the BJP perceive the Muslims when he launched an Islamophobic attack on ex-US President Barack Obama. Responding to a sarcastic tweet by journalist Rohini Singh about whether the Assam’s police force would take action against Obama for his remarks in an interview about Biden raising the issue of “protection of the Muslim minority in a majority-Hindu India” with Modi and suggesting that “… if you do not protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, then there is a strong possibility India at some point starts pulling apart,” Himanta Sarma tweeted:
“There are many Hussain Obama in India itself. We should prioritize taking care of them before considering going to Washington. The Assam Police will act according to our own priorities.”
By laying emphasis on Obama’s Muslim middle name and declaring that members of the Muslim community in India would be taken care of, Sarma has announced the priority of the Modi regime. The incidents of lynching in Maharashtra preceded by the targeted communal violence and exodus of minority Muslim community in Purola in Uttarakhand shows how ‘Hussains’ in India are being taken care of by this government.
Besides attacking Obama, Sabrina Siddiqui, the women journalist from WSJ, who questioned Modi about the rights of minorities in India and what steps his government was willing to take to improve them during the press conference in Washington was heavily trolled and harassed online. Antithetical to the very principles of democracy that were on display by Modi during the USA state visit, the online abuse of the women journalist was led by his party’s IT cell chief Amit Mallavya, many BJP leaders and his fanatic followers with allegations that her question to Modi was “motivated” and calling her a “Pakistani Islamist”. The online abuse was so vicious that the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had to issue a statement saying, “We certainly condemn any efforts of intimidation or harassment of a journalist or any journalist that is just trying to do their job. And so, I just want to be very clear about that.”
While the USA media, senators and Obama need to be reminded that the imperialist USA state is the largest violator of human rights worldwide and need to be bluntly told that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones on other’s windows, the fact is that the ‘Hussains’ in India are not safe; the threats to their freedom are becoming increasingly irreversible. The spurt in non-judicial killings are against Article 21 (right to life and liberty) of the Constitution, and a serious breach of several international obligations and every commitment to human rights made by the Indian state.
But the critics of the Modi regime in India who look up to imperialist powers like the USA to reign in Modi are being naive and playing into a trap. The American state doesn’t care a bit about whether Modi is authoritarian or not as long as he serves the strategic imperialist interests of the American state, buys its weapons of mass destruction, allows more access to American corporations to enter India and smoothly appropriates profits from its shores. The struggle against fascism in India will be led by the Indian masses — the workers, the peasants, the women, the oppressed minorities etc. And that struggle will invariably be against both domestic and international corporations and will be intricately linked with the Indian peoples’ struggle against imperialist forces like the USA.