Rana
Ayyub
A
spiritual leader was lucky to escape with his life this week. Yet Narendra
Modi’s ruling BJP keeps fanning the flames
•••
On 17
July the supreme court of India condemned the epidemic of mob lynching in
India, and asked the Indian parliament to draft legislation that would stop
people from taking the law into their own hands.
Within
hours of the judgment, in the provincial state of Jharkhand, Swami Agnivesh, a
spiritual leader and former minister known for promoting communal harmony in
the country, was brutally attacked. The assailants were allegedly members of
the youth wing of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) of the prime
minister, Narendra Modi.
Most
Indians see the 78-year-old Agnivesh as an elegant and soft-spoken seer in
saffron robes, his head wrapped in a turban; yet on Tuesday afternoon, the
Swami was kicked and punched by young men chanting “Jai shree Ram” (victory to
Lord Ram) – his bare head on the ground, his turban flung at a distance as he
pleaded with them to show mercy.
In an
interview with a news agency, CP Singh, a minister from the same BJP-ruled
state, justified the attack. “He talks against Hindus,” he said, “makes
anti-national comments, supports Kashmiri separatists and Naxals.” Singh speaks
the language of the mob, a mob that has been given the responsibility of
creating a new order in India, where the minority – Muslims, Dalits and anybody
who speaks on their behalf – are attacked with impunity.
In
India, killing cows and the consumption of beef is banned in most states. Since
Modi and his party assumed power in 2014, this beef ban has been used by Hindu
nationalists to justify their attacks on innocent Muslims in public.
‘Narendra Modi is creating a dangerous precedent before the
next general election, setting the tone for an India whose syncretic values and
democratic principles are under threat.
Barely a
month ago in the city of Hapur, an hour’s drive from the capital, Delhi, two
Muslim men were attacked on the street while police stood by guarding the mob.
One of the two was kicked and dragged along as he lay unconscious and later
died of his injuries. The other, an elderly man, was pulled by his beard and
dragged through a field, blood dripping from his face as he begged for mercy
while they kept thrashing him with wooden planks. The emboldened crowd recorded
a video of this inhuman act and shared it across WhatsApp and social media, a
common practice associated with these acts of mob violence.
A report
by the data-based news organisation India Spend found that “Muslims were the
target of 51% of violence centred on bovine issues over nearly eight years
(2010 to 2017) – and they comprised 84% of 25 Indians killed in 60 incidents.
As many as 97% of these attacks were reported after Narendra Modi’s government
came to power in May 2014.”
One
would have expected the prime minister to call for an end to this violence. Yet
a week after the attacks in Hapur, Jayant Sinha, one of the most important
ministers in Modi’s cabinet, honoured eight convicts accused of lynching and
killing a Muslim man. This is not an isolated incident. In 2015, soon after the
conservative BJP came to power, a legislator from the party honoured the body
of someone accused of a similar assault with the national flag.
This is
encouraged by Modi’s government, which routinely disseminates fake news,
targeting and demonising Indian Muslims. Modi is creating a dangerous precedent
before the next general election, setting the tone for an India whose syncretic
values and democratic principles are under threat.
Modi was head of the state of Gujarat
when hundreds of Muslims were killed with impunity in the riots of 2002. As he
gears up for re-election, that legacy looms large over the whole country.
