After the infamous attempt to brand India as an ‘intolerant’ nation in 2015, exertions are now being made to portray India as ‘Lynchistan’, a land that is unsafe for its minorities. A concerted effort is being made to link the recent, unfortunate cases of vigilante justice perpetrated by mobs as being sanctioned or even promoted by the state.
Our mainstream media, like always, is on an overdrive, trying to somehow, howsoever tenuously, ascribe the motivations of religion and caste to all of these cases. As always, those peddling the lies of ‘ Lynchistan ‘ are not acting out of a sense of philanthropy to safeguard the rights of Indians and maintain the social fabric but by a visceral hatred of Narendra Modi and BJP governments at the centre and states.
After having failed repeatedly to overpower Modi and BJP through democratic means, vested interests are now resorting to the familiar policy divide and rule. The existing fault lines of religion and caste are being exploited with the sole aim of destabilizing the government and making it lose its credibility. What else can explain these Lynchistan trends on Social media at a time when the Prime Minister is visiting the US to strengthen India’s stature on world stage.
Cows, unknowingly, find themselves at the centre of ‘ Lynchistan ‘ debate. For millions of observant Hindus, beef continues to be a taboo because of social and religious reasons. For Hindu haters, beef consumption is a symbol of outraging Hindu sentiments and enabling them to play victim if there is a reaction.
Take the case of Junaid for example. His fellow passengers in the train got into an argument with Junaid and his brothers, ostensibly over seats. Things escalated quickly, Junaid was stabbed and died later. His brothers were also beaten up badly. Mainstream media was quick to report that Junaid was killed because he was believed to be carrying beef.
This was a completely unsubstantiated claim, seeking to strengthen and further the agenda of minorities being unsafe in India. Junaid’s cold blooded murder was a criminal act by hoodlums who deserve to be punished severely. But there are thousands of such criminal acts across the country every day, even those involving people from different religious communities.
Media couldn’t have sold an ‘ordinary’ criminal story and hence invented the beef angle to ‘spice it up’. Rahul Kanwal, Aaj Tak/India Today reporter said as much when he tweeted that Journalists are changing jobs to escape editors who want more ‘communally polarising’ stories.
There have been other such cases of mobs dealing with people believed to be smuggling cows in a severe manner. In all such cases, Media has attempted to portray the incidents as being proof of India being unsafe for its minorities, whereas the truth is quite banal, perhaps nothing more than ineffective administration of law and order by concerned agencies.
Reporter from another network applied for a job. He's exasperated. Says Editor has asked him to look out for communally polarising stories!!
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) June 21, 2017
Mainstream Media and other liberal and progressive elements would have us believe that India became Lynchistan after May 2014 when Modi took power. Sadly, in a country where law agencies are widely excoriated for their inefficiency and ineffectiveness, mob justice has existed forever.
As per reports tabled in Rajya Sabha, 127 women were branded as witches in Jharkhand between 2012-14 and were lynched.
There were several other notable lynching instances in Madhya Pradesh, where a railway staff was burnt alive by a mob angered by children being run over by a train. Or in Assam, where locals lynched 3 men, assuming they were molesters. Or in progressive West Bengal where the husband of a CPM candidate was lyched by a TMC mob.
https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/879329948846006272
And many more such Lynching cases across the length and width of the country. Aided perhaps by Congress’s doles and freebies, India was still Hindustan then, not the Lynchistan of today.
Indian liberals and Media have also proven that not all lynchings are equal, some lynchings are more equal than others. That is to say, India is a very selective Lynchistan.
As per our eminent intellectuals, security forces that get lynched by mobs in Kashmir deserve it because they are agents of Indian state in Kashmir. Upper caste Hindus that get lynched, deserve it because it is social justice. Hindus getting lynched by Muslims must have been caused by a grave provocation, basically meaning they deserved it, while, Lower castes getting lynched by Upper castes, Muslims getting lynched by Hindus etc. is a grave threat to the social fabric of the country and deservedly, India must be labelled as ‘ Lynchistan ‘. The real complication in this equation comes when Muslims and lower castes find themselves on opposite sides. Something that happened in Karnataka recently, where a pregnant Muslim woman was lynched by her family because she had married a Dalit man. That horrific murder was dismissed by the Media as a mere criminal incident.
There are two ways to approach the Lynchistan debate. One is to accept that our law enforcement agencies have been emasculated and corrupted by politicians over the last 7 decades or so and lynchings are society’s way of enforcing justice. The solution to prevent Lynchings is to ensure that justice is done and seen as being done in as short a period of time as possible. The other way is to look at the recent Lynchings as an opportunity to attack Modi government and use the chance to discredit the government, destabilize the country and serve petty and vested interests.
Incidentally, Our liberals and Media are remarkably clear with what they intend to do with the Lynchings.