The Big Story: Sleight of hand

Anytime a politician says something should not be politicised, you can rest assured that it was political to begin with. That phrase usually translates to, “this is uncomfortable for me to answer, so I’d rather no one brought it up,” or “I do have a clear opinion on this, but I prefer to reveal that in dog-whistles, while insisting that everyone should unite behind the safe view.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi is no different, and his remarks from an interview to ANI this weekend, on incidents of mob lynching take exactly this line.

“It would be a great travesty to reduce these incidents to mere statistics and then indulge in politics over them. That shows a kind of perverse mindset that looks at violence and criminality as something to be milked, instead of unitedly opposing,” Modi said. “Even a single incident is one too many and deeply unfortunate. Everyone should rise above politics to ensure peace and unity in our society. My party and I have spoken in clear words, on multiple occasions against such actions and such a mindset. It is all on record. Also, we are people who go beyond just words.”

Go beyond words is exactly right. How else would you have a union minister garlanding those convicted of lynchings, another union minister visiting the family of another lynching accused who villagers had draped in the national flag and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders from across the spectrum speak up against the victims of lynching incidents, insisting that police should file cases of cow smuggling on them rather than investigate the mobs that murdered them.

The travesty is the fact that this government has been unable to crack down on gau rakshak lynchings, because a rabid section of its base is favourable to such action. Could the sight of such people acting with impunity have empowered other mobs to thrash and lynch people because of child-lifting rumours? It is impossible to draw up a directly causal relationship, yet it seems obvious that if gangs of unruly men are able to get away with murder out of a sense of righteousness, and actually get state support, others will believe that justice delivered through a mob is acceptable behaviour. The actions of young, obnoxious, often intoxicated men on the Kanwar yatra over the last few weeks only confirms this.

On the face of it, Modi’s remarks condemning lynchings are welcome. But his demand for them not to be politicised reveals what the prime minister actually thinks about the subject. Unfortunately, that means, going into an election year that is bound to be full of charged situations, we are unlikely to see BJP governments take the question of mob violence seriously. Brace yourselves.

The Big Scroll

Punditry

  1. “At 71, I could be an aged alarmist, and wrong on all counts. Somehow, I think not. Let’s pray for a more just India at 81. The India that we had dreamt of in our tryst with destiny,” writes Omkar Goswami in the Indian Express.
  2. “The Delhi High Court’s judgment [decriminalising begging] marks a crucial step forward in dismantling one of the most vicious and enduring legacies of colonialism. It is as significant and important as a judgment delivered by the same court more than nine years ago, when it decriminalised homosexuality,” writes Gautam Bhatia in the Hindu.
  3. AR Venkatachalapathy writes in the Telegraph of rediscovering Dharmanand Kosambi, who helped reinvigorate Buddhism in modern India.
  4. “At the end of the day, it was the absence of proper management – and a killer instinct needed to take on the ‘new BJP’ – that proved to be the undoing of the Opposition in the election of the Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha,” writes Neerja Chowdhury in the Tribune.

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