Not in Anyone's Name

By: Satarupa Mishra

“I rise with blood in my eyes

I burn in fury, and the poor man cries

Don’t you dare mess with me

For I am the beast whom no one tries

I am the MOB who’s mastered the art of elusion

I dissolve into darkness before the sun could rise…”

Image Source: The Internet

Over last two years, a new anger has unleashed in India; a new level of intolerance – a level, I am scared, could relapse to the days of Partition. Cow vigilantes are up with sticks and tricks of torture to punish the men with skull caps in order to protect their holy animal mother (gau mata). And when a 17-year old boy in skull cap, Junaid Khan could not reach home for Eid this year, having been brutally murdered in a running train in Faridabad with allegations of being an ‘anti-national’, and ‘beef eater’, the masses from all over the nation launched a protest campaign against the rampant trend of mob lynching, #NotInMyName.

·         The Hindutva agenda is on a high in the country? Agreed.

·         Cow protection seems to have become the new pseudo definition of nationalism? Agreed.

·         An upsurge of the Hindu anger is more conspicuous these days? Agreed.

·         Organizations like Vishwa Hindu Parishad have given the cow vigilantes an extra zeal? Agreed.

·         Thanks to elements like ISIS, Al-Qaeeda, Zakir Naik, etc., a wave of Islam phobia is flowing across India? Agreed.

·         Mob lynching is all about cow slaughter and Muslim torture? Disagreed.

Let’s not confine this mob into brackets of religion, caste and political inclinations, for such confinements tend to mislead the prime focus from the serious issue of mob lynching. The tendency of mob fury in India isn’t absolutely new. And while some of these cases of lynching might be secretly fuelled by political and religious agendas, it gives goose bumps to realize that the Indians have tasted the blood and are beginning to love it!

A little recollection and the pictures of the bygone cases of mob lynching come alive – violent cases whose roots weren’t based in communal disharmony. As a resident of Guwahati, I can never forget the photograph of a stark naked Adivasi woman running frantically for a piece of cover in the middle of a laughing and gawking mob at the Beltola area of the city in 2007. The All Adivasi Students Association of Assam (AASAA) had taken out a rally demanding Scheduled Tribe status for the Adivasis in the state. The rally turned into an agitation, and soon the usually normal-looking, sober locals of the area turned into a beastly mob. Following the incident, I used to stare at the innocent-looking local shopkeepers and the daily pedestrians in that area, and imagined that some of these very people must have stripped that Adivasi woman, Lakshmi Orang and enjoyed her look of horror and helplessness! Yes, these people were not a Hindu or a Muslim mob; neither did they share any common political affiliation. They were people, who, without even knowing the main agenda of the AASAA rally, simply plunged into self-satisfying violence at the very hint of an agitation.

Satisfied were also the egos of the family of a young woman and their supporters in a village at Tara Nagar, Rajasthan, when they tore the clothes of a 25-year old man, pulled off hair from his skull and nails from his toes, and beat him up ruthlessly. What was his crime? Well, he allegedly had a romantic affair with the young woman of that family. How could they have waited for the law to intervene when it was such an urgent matter of saving ghar ki izzat (the grace of the family)!

Another case of ghar ki izzat rose in the capital town of Nagaland, Dimapur in 2015, on a larger canvas, of course. A man (suspected to be a Bangladeshi) was detained at the Dimapur Central Jail on allegation of raping a local woman. An angry mob of around 7000-8000 people dragged the man out of the jail, paraded him across the town in naked condition, and beat him to death. The worst reactions came from people across the nation supporting the act on grounds that rapists must be tortured to death. It’s a pity that only after his death did the Nagaland Government report that the concerned female victim wasn’t raped. It was rather an act of consensual sex. So did the mob serve a term of imprisonment? Are you kidding?

Image Source: The Internet

If you observe closely, you will see that mob lynching has one typical characteristic – to victimize the weak. Now this weakness could be described in terms of number, social status, or physical strength. That’s one reason that women fall major victims of these mob lynching. If I start relating incidents of women in the country lynched to death on suspicion of sorcery and black magic (witchcraft), this article will protrude into abnormal lengths.

And then there was the very recent tragedy of a mentally challenged woman, Otera Bibi, in a village in West Bengal. Otera, who stayed with her parents, had strayed into a nearby village, where she was found hiding inside the hut of a local villager. Suspicions sparked of her being a child-picker. Immediately, a furious mob dragged her out of the hut and tied her to a tractor. Her clothes were ripped; her head shaved; and she was beaten for three hours with sticks and stones until she gave in to death.

If you think such incidents of mob lynching only happen in the backward rural areas, or with people belonging to only the lower strata of society, the case of Mohammad Ayub Pandith, the Deputy Superintendent of Police in Jammu & Kashmir, defies the widespread perception. On 23 June 2017, near the Jamia Masjid at Nowhatta in Srinagar, a mob violently attacked Pandith and put him to death. The DSP was suspected to have had been clicking pictures and recording a video of the stone pelters. He was also alleged of firing at the mob in self-defense. The firing could not save his life nevertheless.

Being a part of a mob is easy. You let that beastly side come out from the heavy lid of civilization, justifying it on shrewd hypocritical grounds of morality. You satisfy the animal in you, and then seamlessly close the lid back, dissolving inconspicuously into the crowd. Such kind of a tendency in humans reminds me of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”. The novel exposed the Satan (Beelzebub) usually lying latent within every human under the obligations of the laws and rules of a civilization. The Satan keeps looking for an opportunity for the civilized society to break free from the rules, and indulging every wish and desire even at the expense of others.

The same theory applies on the mob too. A disintegrated mob consists of usual, average humans working hard to lead a decent life. A lot of these humans also breed grievance, jealousy, and anger against many other humans. These negativities mostly remain buried under the codes and conduct of a civilization. Given a chance, a stir inspired and instigated by a few co-humans, an aggrieved human rises in violence to settle personal scores, or merely to derive beastly pleasure. Assured of anonymity in a big gathering, these humans are also able to let go off the fear of punishment on being detected as crooks. And remember, these humans try to justify the actions on ridiculous moral grounds. In order to bring the so-called justice, they end up becoming the lawbreakers. The same way as Jack, one of Golding’s protagonists, turns into a beast while trying to hunt down the beast.

The goodness in humans prevails due to the fear of being punished – by Law, and by God. Hence, it’s of pivotal importance that the Government of India quickly comes up with an anti-lynching law. And as suspected by many, if the Government itself is strategizing its political goals and policies around mob lynching, I believe that’s where the civil societies like National Campaign Against Mob Lynching (NCAML), and the mass protest campaigns like #NotInMyName have to play a crucial role: to pressurize the Government until the demands for anti-lynching legislation are met. Secondly, education (not mere literacy) holds an important key. Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of a spiritually educated India makes a lot of relevance in today’s time. If only there could be courses in the school curriculum, not just of the Sciences, Literature, Mathematics, Civics, and History, but also of Philosophy and value education that the morality and conscience in the humans could eventually be rekindled for a Law-abiding society, where the inner demon is weakened and put to sleep.