The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, termed vigilantism and mob lynching as unacceptable and also put the responsibility on the state government to tackle them. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra observed, “Nobody can take law into their own hands. It is the obligation of the concerned states to see that these incidents are prevented. These kinds of incidents cannot occur. It can’t be accepted in the remotest sense.” CJI Dipak Misra further added, “The concept of vigilantism is not about any particular incident or motive…it is about mob violence…members of any concerned group cannot take the law into their hands…even if there is no law, they are nobody…”
The observation made by the Supreme Court is a scathing indictment of liberal media and leftists who almost instantly label incidents of mob lynching as Hindu/Saffron terror and always looks for religious and casteist angle in unfortunate and despicable lynching cases. If the victim is a Muslim then ample amount of coverage is given to the incident and it is presented as if s/he was lynched for his/her religious beliefs and come up with manufactured outrages claiming that minorities are unsafe in India. Junaid lynching case is a perfect example of this where the mainstream media gave a religious angle to a scuffle over train seat and huge manufactured outrage ensued.
If the victim is a Dalit Hindu then liberal media, with all its might, try to portray the unfortunate incident as if the victim was lynched because of his caste and if the victim is Hindu belonging to any other caste lynched by the people belonging to any other community then forget the coverage, even the lip service will not be paid. The fourth pillar of our democracy acting as propaganda machinery of leftists and religious fundamentalists is not healthy for the democracy. It is the fourth pillar of the democracy so it should work with sensibility and responsibility towards the society and the nation. By terming the incidents of mob lynching as Hindu Terrorism, saffron terrorism, Brahimnvaad, Brahmin terrorism, Hindutva violence etc, Media only show its bigotry and hatred against Hindus.
With its historic statement, the Supreme Court once again proved that why it is the most trusted and credible institution of Indian democracy. It deserves applause for its historic statement. Sick people are sick people irrespective of their religion and castes. The reason behind the violent behaviour of mobs is the concept of Deindividuation. One of the explorers of Deindividuation phenomenon, Gustave Le Bon, in his work The Crowd: A study of the Popular Mind characterized his posited effect of crowd mentality, whereby individual personalities become dominated by the collective mindset of the crowd. He viewed crowd behaviour as “unanimous, emotional, and intellectually weak”. Le Bon theorized that a loss of personal responsibility in crowds leads to an inclination to behave primitively and hedonistically by the entire group. This resulting mentality, according to him, belongs more to the collective than any individual, so that individual traits are submerged. When people lose their sense of individuality and get submerged into a group for whatever reasons they act violently and all the fear of law and order is vanished. A crowd provides an individual a mask to hide behind it.
But the semi-educated and propagandist media leaves no stone unturned to present unrelated lynching cases as ‘hyper-nationalism’ and ‘cow vigilantism.’ Mob lynching and mob justice is unacceptable in civilized society and using mob lynching for settling political and ideological scores are also equally unacceptable. Dadri case of Akhlaq was used to target PM Modi, right-wingers and the entire Hindu community. The focus was less on ensuring justice but more on making a political capital out of it. Media’s mentality is more dangerous than the frenzied mob. There is no difference between mob justice and Kangaroo court run by the Media. As Mark Twain has said, “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’ speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.”
The Supreme Court must be lauded for this scathing indictment of media’s propaganda, manipulation and blatant lies.