A Disregard for the Rule of Law
Violence has always been an undercurrent in our society. Unfortunately, we didn’t recognise it for what it was—which is why we couldn’t take pre-emptive steps. We put it down to aberrant behaviour by some obnoxious people. In India, you have a society in transition, people on the boil because of obstructions to upward and horizontal mobility, and a partisan police force.
I have heard people say this is not the India we grew up in. It surprises me a little. Did they have their eyes shut? There was so much violence in the country from the beginning. People should have woken up earlier. Then we would have established proper rules: how to handle violence and make sure our reaction is an active deterrent, in which task we need politicians to be on our side. I don’t think any society by nature is violent or non-violent. A lot depends on the context. There is no perfect country. But the more you find impartiality in law enforcement, the better are the chances of curbing violence.
In Jhajjar in 2003, four Scheduled Caste boys were skinning a live cow, or so they said. The boys were killed. The police had tried to save them and locked them up in jail. But I went to Jhajjar and saw jail bars were bent and prised open and these boys were pulled out. There is a great degree of social connivance, otherwise lynchings won’t happen. When there is active acquiescence, lynchings become a pathological phenomenon that can only be controlled by the rule of law. The more you are exposed to this, the higher your threshold for violence.
Even the way we conduct ourselves in political debates is so violent that the atmosphere of resolving issues, the setting up of rational discussions, becomes collateral damage. From there to violence is just a short step. For Mahatma Gandhi, verbal non-violence was very important. I’m always surprised how people indulge in verbal violence in Parliament and congregate under Gandhi’s statue.
These lynchings are part of a pretty long, unholy tradition. You take the law into your own hands and you think you are doing a right thing, you are proud to do it. If you really want to bring about peace, every political party must confess it has sinned. Whenever a lynching happens, it has to be condemned, because it is barbaric.
People are always violence-prone, selfish, looking out for their own interests. What keeps them in check is the fear of the law. The lynchings happening today are in many ways a continuation of our inability to impress the rule of law upon people. When politicians speak violently, it engenders physical violence at another level. So what leaders say, and how, is very critical. The silence of leaders over lynchings gives encouragement. In riot after riot in the ’70s and ’80s, politicians were silent.
The point right now is not that the cow is wonderful, which probably she is, but that you have this person who has been killed by a mob. I can understand, up to a point, four people ganging up and killing somebody. But what I can’t understand is when 100 people or more congregate, as in Jharkhand, to kill one Muslim. Obviously, there is something wrong with society. I can guess: frustration, venting of anger, people looking for easy targets. But I can’t say any of this with certitude. In my work with the Shiv Sena, I have found Shivsainiks great brothers, sons, uncles, friends. Yet they thought it was a heroic thing to go and kill people.
And social media adds to it. I don’t think social media adds to democracy. It involves some amount of narcissism. You think people are watching you, listening to you. That gives some high. But what’s really upsetting is the language used. And violence, from verbal to physical, is a very short step. We don’t respect the law because we don’t see other people as we see ourselves. This inter-subjectivity—that I could be that person, that person could be me—can only happen through the medium of democracy, through the rule of law. Because the rule of law is universal.
The point isn’t that the cow is wonderful, which probably she is, but that you have this person who has been killed by a mob
resentment, frustration, prejudice, malice. One trigger and things suddenly get out of hand, she explains. “This is not to justify mob lynchings, but to recognise lynchings and riots do not necessarily rely on criminals.” It’s what Freud described as ‘mass psychology’ in the wake of World War I.
As India gears up to celebrate big events on the national calendar—from the most radical tax reform to 70 years of Independence—the ordinary citizen seems to be in the throes of an epidemic of anger, points out Kolkata psychiatrist Dr Jai Ranjan Ram: with their incomes, their quality of life, their relationships, their political leaders, the lack of jobs, healthcare, decent education and opportunities. “With all the grave uncertainties of life, the thin crust of civilisation we take for granted slips easily.” Rage spills over into collective violence. “People take the law into their own hands when ‘fear’ takes huge proportions, making it an issue that they feel must be dealt with instantly.”
COWS BETWEEN US
Until that evening of April 1, Yadav was just another 19-year-old in small-town India. You could see him anytime around Behror—60 km from Alwar in Rajasthan—vrooming about on his motorbike, hair slicked back, shirt flapping, with his trusted lieutenant ‘Mithun’ (so called for his intense admiration for Bollywood hero Mithun Chakravarti) and his pack of friends— most of them college-educated, and working in schools and colleges. Born to well-off, socially prominent OBC parents—his mother Preeti (alias Babli) is a village sarpanch—he was given wide latitude in whatever he wanted to do. The doting parents even put up giant billboards with Vipin’s image in front of their two-storied house, congratulating the first-year BA student of Government PG College, on becoming the student union president.
Yadav also happened to be a junior volunteer cow vigilante, one of the many in the state, who mobilise networks of information—via local WhatsApp groups, shopkeepers and petty traders around the highways and even local constables—and then chase down trucks suspected of carrying cattle to slaughter on motorbikes or set up road obstructions. “It’s a huge network of young people, who are enrolled as members, given ID cards, responsibilities,