Crimes of Calculation

Ifirst saw lynchings during the great Calcutta killings of August 1946. From our thirdfloor windows, we had a view of the chequered neighbourhood, dotted with slums and settlements of both Muslims and Hindus. When the city exploded, we were treated to the spectacle, playing out like an unscripted theatre of violence. There were familiar faces among the killing, rioting, lynching mob. The bloodshed and the cruelty traumatised our family. My younger brother did not eat for days. I was nine years old then.

After the first few frenzied days, when Muslims killed, Hindus had organised themselves into raksha vahinis. In our neighbourhood, they roamed around at night with rods, scythes and sickles, lynching any Muslim coming their way. Things soon escalated into communal riots, in which criminal gangs began to play a prominent role. But once the Punjab violence began, the Calcutta riots paled into insignificance. But lynchings were not as common there. Perhaps it was because masculinity and honour were such a central aspect of a man’s identity in Punjab. Lynching a lone individual may have been seen as unmanly and, often, when mobs attacked, they would kill all the men, spare the women and children and then send them over to relief camps.

Studies now show that violence that starts as a battle of faiths also makes room for various forms of anomic and psychopathic behaviour, where selfishness, greed, exploitation and violation of the rights of others run rife. There is now enough evidence to prove that in the case of both Bengal and Punjab. Yet, I would say, there is a significant difference between the mob violence that erupted in India at the time of Partition and what is happening now. Those were crimes of passion and emotion, with ideas of faith and homeland at the core. What we see now are crimes of calculation. Most of these are very carefully organised and there is always a calculation of political gain and loss. I call it the “chartered accountancy of violence”, because the people who plan these crimes are not driven by faith or fanaticism. Instead of money it is the calculations of political power that apply.

Lynchings are a manifestation of a new type of abstracted, freefloating violence that is emerging in our society in recent times. This violence is looking for a target. And, I believe, it has found its targets—safe targets. This type of violence arises in political systems where there is not even a metaphorical obeisance towards removal of inequality, poverty and injustice. And it takes lethal forms when there is a sense of impunity: you know that you can get away with it. Free-floating violence in alliance with impunity is what explains the mob violence now.

The prime hallmark of such violence is extreme brutality, where humans are not treated as humans. From where does such brutality come? Serious psychological studies have shown that brutality is most powerful when the ‘other’ is interjected within you, as a part of yourself, an intimate enemy, whom you are also fighting. You feel constantly contaminated by them, almost a form of possession that you have to exorcise. Because of that inner push, these lynchings are doubly aggressive.

There is also a state of mind that has been observed in genocides. I believe, it can be observed in perpetrators and onlookers of lynchings, too. It’s called ‘psychic numbing’. In psychiatric terms, it is a diminished capacity or inclination to feel and empathise, a general sense of meaninglessness that closes off a person. One so numbs one’s sensitivities that normal emotions and moral considerations cannot, or do not, penetrate any more. To such a person, brutality, torture, death or the possibility of death look like just an abstract detail, involving calculation of political gains or losses.

An abstracted, free-floating violence in alliance with impunity is what expains the mob violence today

just rolled out a new draft law, for public inputs, comments and review. “Our laws are quite adequate to deal with lynchings,” adds senior advocate and co-drafter Rebecca John. “Murder in any form falls under Section 302 of the IPC.” But there are loopholes—from provisions for compensation, rehabilitation, speedy justice, witness protection, special courts to holding the local police accountable for any lynching that take place in their jurisdiction—that the draft law seeks to plug.

POLITICS OF SILENCE

What makes this moment unique is the silence of the political leadership. PM Modi has spoken against lynchings only twice thus far. And on both occasions, after a considerable stretch of studied silence: eight days after the Dadri lynching in 2015 and after about 20 mob lynchings this year. That silence has become the hallmark of almost all top NDA leaders and chief ministers of BJP states. That silence has also generated a growing belief that our leaders have no answers for the problems that face us.

It took Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar three days to break his silence over Junaid’s killing, although he was active on Twitter. It took the Modi government four days to break its silence on Junaid, with law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad condemning the incident, the first top leader of the BJP to do so. Describing lynchings as “extremely painful and shameful”, he said, “Our government will not tolerate this. Our government is very clear that the law will have to do its job.” It took six days for Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das to own up to “lapses on the part of the official

A MOB PROVIDES COVER FOR RELEASE OF DEEP-SEATED EMOTIONS: ANGER, FEAR, MALICE, PREJUDICE. ONE TRIGGER, AND...

machinery”, despite national outrage over mobs beating innocent men to death over child kidnapping rumours. It took Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje almost a month to react to the Alwar lynching in her state. It was prompted by an open letter to her from 23 former IAS officers, condemning the incident and demanding justice.

The silence from the top is juxtaposed by inflammatory speeches from below: from Sadhvi Prachi’s “those who consume beef deserve such actions against them” to BJP MLA Sangeet Som’s “UP government will pay price for favouring Muslims”, from Hindu Raksha Dal president Bhoopendra Chaudhary’s “cases of cow slaughter will be dealt with in the same way as the Hindus did in Bisada” to RSS leader Tarun Vijay’s “Hindus should not be responsible for peace and order. Muslim victims should remain mute”. The frenzy of hate speeches was leashed somewhat with finance minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley saying “their statements (were) not appreciated by the party at all”.

Long before the arrest of Mahato in Jharkhand, the activity and network of information, informants, surveillance and muscle power of cow vigilantes across states and their role in lynching had started to unravel. Local vigilante leaders publicly hailed some of the accused in the Alwar lynching as ‘heroes’.

“There is disquiet and concern, not just in the BJP, but also in certain sections of the Sangh parivar, over the lynchings of Muslims and Dalits as well as the cow protection issue,” say party insiders. “Will anti-parivar forces embarrass the government and the party by pinning all responsibility on their shoulders?” The worry appears genuine, they say, given the speech RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, the ideological guide of the ruling NDA, delivered in April: “Gau hatya-bandi sarkar ke aadhin hai. Hamari ichha hai ki sampurna Bharat mein gauvansh ki hatya band ho. Is kanoon ko prabhavi banana sarkar ki zimmedari hai (the decision to impose a ban on cow slaughter rests with the government. We want cow slaughter to be banned in the entire country. It is the duty of the government to make this law effective).” In August last year, he had expressed his resentment over PM Modi’s speech on ‘fake’ cow protectors “who wanted to divide the country”. “Gau rakshaks cannot be compared with those undesirable elements who are raking up the issue of cow slaughter or spreading unfounded rumours about slaughter. The latter are busy serving their narrow personal or political ends,” he had claimed, in an attempt to distance cow protectors from the increasing cow-related violence.

It’s not hard to understand why their words have little effect on the ground. While denouncing violence, the RSS brass have not stopped their tirade against Muslims. Former RSS pracharak and Haryana CM Khattar was quoted recently by a newspaper, as saying that Muslims could stay in India but they would have to give up eating beef. The CM later claimed that he was misquoted. Adding to this commotion, the Union government issued a circular, banning sale of cattle for slaughter in cattle markets. The circular was first stayed by the Madras High Court and later by the Supreme Court. Such unprecedented focus on cow protection has made it an easy excuse for lumpen elements to resort to violence in the name of holy cow.

BJP president Amit Shah, meanwhile, is locked in a war of words with the Opposition over non-existent numbers: were there more lynchings under the previous governments or in three years of NDA rule? Shah insists there is “no apprehension or fear” anywhere in the country. He has, apparently, sent out a clear message across party rank and file: “These incidents are most condemnable. As a society, we must contain them and allow the law to take its own course.” Says a senior BJP leader, “The only mistake we’ve made is that our leaders have been slow in condemning the incidents.”

AND LIFE GOES ON

Here is someone who nearly hit the headlines. No, he was not beaten to death, his limbs were not chopped off, he was not set on fire—although there was some talk of it—and no onlooker uploaded his video on social media. Instead, he was made to yell ‘Jai Shri Ram’ at knife point by a dozen men, who blocked his car somewhere on the Palwal-Aligarh road on July 1. They asked him his name, but he was not smart enough to fib his way out of it. Back in his New Friends Colony home now, the 56-year-old Delhi businessman still wakes up to bloodcurdling cries of, “Maans nikaal (bring out the beef)” at night. The thin line between life and death for him that day was a box of kebabs his aunts had packed for him that he had left behind by mistake. What if he had remembered?

THE SILENCE FROM THE TOP LEADERSHIP IS JUXTAPOSED WITH INCENDIARY SPEECHES FROM THE LOWER RUNG OF LEADERS