Bulandshahr murder: Youth poisoned by hate
IT IS PART OF A MILITANT NATIONALISM THAT IS GROWING DAY BY DAY
. . . no one bothered to ask why would Muslims...kill so many cows when they are aware of stringent laws and social consequences of such an act?
The disturbing visuals of the body of a uniformed officer dangling from a blue police jeep shocked India early this week. The officer’s head touched the ground, his legs lay on the driver’s seat and a limp left hand rested on the farm field as bullet shots and voices of angry youngsters rang out in a video circulated in mainstream and social media.
More than one video of the police officer, Subodh Kumar Singh, were made as young protesters took a close look at his body.
Singh, the father of two grown-up sons (Abhishek, 17, and Shreya Kumar, an economics graduate), was shot just above the left eyebrow. The officer, who was in charge of a police station in northern India’s Bulandshahr district, was killed when he tried to disperse a crowd of youngsters who were protesting what appeared to be mass-killing of cows, an animal considered sacred by Hindus and protected by stringent laws in most parts of the country.
The protesters had loaded cow carcasses on to a tractor before blocking a road, burning down a police outpost and several vehicles, in a sudden eruption of violence that led to Singh’s tragic death. Another man, who was passing by, was also shot and killed.
While a special police team has launched investigations, arrested four people and booked 23 others, the incident on December 3 has unmasked a deeply disturbing trend — youngsters fed on a diet of steady and aggressive cultural nationalism are increasingly becoming militant in the country’s rural landscape. In a nation where prepaid data is available for as little as Rs10 (50 fils), access to information or rumours is quick and easy for the villagers.
Rapid information exchange
Spreading content through WhatsApp or Facebook among youth is not difficult in villages where 57 per cent of mobile internet users are below the age of 25. The police is now investigating reports that the killing of the cows and subsequent violent protests were staged to disturb peace at a time when a large Muslim religious gathering was taking place in the area.
Located two-and-a-half hours’ drive from the capital New Delhi, Bulandshahr is largely agrarian and a big producer of foodgrains, potatoes and sugar. Like any other agrarian district in India, Bulandshahr has complex social dynamics driven by economic and social factors and to a lesser extent by cultural and religious factors.
Rural hierarchy
Land is owned by the Jat community which employs Muslims and Dalits as farm workers, with an economic dependency that creates a rural hierarchy that is mutually beneficial and more importantly, works as a counter to conflicts or communal disturbance, keeping the social fabric intact.
However, these dynamics are disturbed when ideological factors — religious or cultural — overshadow basic bread and butter issues. On December 3, this is precisely what happened. Around 25 cows were allegedly found dead in a farm and the suspicion immediately fell on the meat-eating Muslims. When religious passions fly high, common sense is the biggest casualty — no one bothered to ask why would Muslims, a poor community of farm workers, kill so many cows when they are aware of stringent laws and social consequences of such an act?