MOB A WEAPON, FAKE NEWS A TRIGGER
CLIMATE OF FEAR Lynchings are proliferating as lines between communalism and nationalism are blurred
A special series by Hindustan Times takes a deep look at the hate all around us. Hatred is becoming a constant and cruel reality in India as hostile mobs kill in the name of religion, race, ethnicity, gender and identity
It is time to pause, reflect and have an open conversation.
Join us and share your views at hatetracker@hindustantimes.com
Part six: Senior TV journalist Ravish Kumar on how the mob is becoming a reliable weapon
As I got into my car after voting in the UP assembly elections earlier this year, a few school teachers who recognised me came up to say hello. As we were chatting, a boy in his early 20s walked past me yelling “anti-Modi, anti-Modi!”
I did not react and continued talking to the teachers. Within minutes, however, their tone changed, and they told me to leave. They rapped on my car and insisted that I go. Unsure of what was wrong, I drove ahead and looked in the rear-view mirror.
The same boy had joined up with a few other young men and they were running in my direction, shouting expletives. Even though that boy was half my age, he was part of a mob now, and considered himself powerful.
With my eyes transfixed by the image on my mirror, I drove on. The group receded into the distance. Like a dried leaf that travels far in a gust of wind, the dread that a mob can evoke lingered even as the boys finally went out of sight.
The mob is the most reliable weapon in today’s political scene. Hate is the ammunition. Fake news is the trigger. This is a weapon that can be manufactured, loaded, and fired at any time. It is formed by not just the gau rakshaks, but also angry civilians or even public servants, as happened recently in Rajasthan. It can be wielded anywhere: at a UP polling booth, as I saw, but also in a local train or thickly populated suburb in the heart of the national capital region. It can be aimed at teenagers minding their own business or journalists reporting a story.
Officially, our government does not support the mob, but you can see clearly which parties have tended to keep silent, who backs the accused, and who doesn’t visit the victims. But the lynch mob has its own logic and its own rulebook.
Our culture has changed as a result. For a large section of the majority, the lines between communalism and nationalism have blurred. They feel that hating Muslims means greater love for India. For their confused sense of motherland, brotherhood has no meaning. Gone are the days when patriotism was taught as unity in diversity and respect for each other. Today, nationalism means toeing the line and shutting up.
We shut up out of fear; and what we fear, more than anything, is the mob.
Its authority is rarely challenged. In the murder of 16-year-old Junaid, the police nabbed suspects with the help of CCTV footage. But initially they failed to find a single eyewitness from the crowded railway platform where Junaid lay dying. His brothers, who were on the train with him, said that nobody attempted to help them as they were attacked.
Even members of the majority have been targeted by mobs. In May, Bhup Singh and Jabar Singh of Greater Noida were returning home from a neighbouring village with a cow when a group surrounded and began thrashing them. Their pleas of being dairy farmers and Hindus fell on deaf ears. Since they were being beaten up in the name of the cow, nobody came to their rescue.
Reporting on the Ikhlaq case from the village of Bisada affected me deeply. The most disturbing encounter was with a young man who wanted to click a selfie with me. I got into an argument with him when he justified the murder in the name of ‘sentiment’ and ‘feelings’. I gave up after a while, but it left me deeply troubled how these young minds had been poisoned so completely.
Only once have the victims of this wave of fear stood in revolt. In Gujarat, Dalits protested the flogging of a family in Una by refusing to dispose of the carcasses of dead cows, their job by tradition. “Tumhari mata hai, tum sambhalo (It’s your mother, you take care of it)” chanted locals. This has been the sole act of resistance; every other section of society is busy swallowing their fear.
Indeed, new kinds of mobs are proliferating. Last month a deputy superintendent of police, Mohammad Ayub Pandith, was surrounded outside a Srinagar mosque and killed by his own neighbours. This isn’t going to be the last such attack. The forces directing the mob remain powerful.
GONE ARE THE DAYS WHEN PATRIOTISM WAS TAUGHT AS UNITY IN DIVERSITY AND RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER. TODAY NATIONALISM MEANS TOEING THE LINE AND SHUTTING UP