Man Killed by Mob Near Delhi Over Beef Rumours // Sandip Roy: Someone’s dinner is now part of a criminal investigation in UP
NB: A man is murdered inside his own house over a rumour about his food habits. He happened to be an agricultural worker. This is the fanatical culture that is being propagated in India under the so-called Sangh Parivar. And the police actually think it is relevant to send the food for forensic examination. If the meat turns out to be beef or buffalo meat, what then? Will the murderers be hailed as national heroes? DS
DADRI, UTTAR PRADESH: A 50-year-old man was
beaten to death by a mob near Delhi on Monday night, allegedly over rumours
that his family had eaten beef. Mohammad Akhlaq and his son, 22, were dragged
out by villagers in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, around 45 km from the capital, and
beaten with bricks. Akhlaq died before he could be taken to hospital, and his
son is critical.
Before assaulting the father and son, the villagers broke
into the house, wrecked everything and even attacked the women. "My
husband was bleeding. His head was smashed. They beat the family...my husband
had no enemies...," said Akhlaq's wife. The men were still being beaten
when the police arrived. Six men were arrested from the spot.
Akhlaq's daughter said they only had mutton in their fridge. The police say they have taken the meat and sent it for forensic testing. The family had lived in the village for over three decades. The police are investigating how the beef rumours started. "We found out that the people beat them because they consumed cow meat. More people will be arrested," said S Kiran, a senior police officer. News of the arrests led to tension in the area as villagers clashed with the police, forcing them to fire in the air.
Akhlaq's daughter said they only had mutton in their fridge. The police say they have taken the meat and sent it for forensic testing. The family had lived in the village for over three decades. The police are investigating how the beef rumours started. "We found out that the people beat them because they consumed cow meat. More people will be arrested," said S Kiran, a senior police officer. News of the arrests led to tension in the area as villagers clashed with the police, forcing them to fire in the air.
Sandip Roy: Someone’s dinner is now part of a criminal investigation in UP
Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi, shot dead ...
The rumour of beef and pig tallow greasing cartridges is
supposed to have spawned what the British called the Indian mutiny. That was
1857. Now in 2015 rumours of eating beef can get you killed. The Indian Express story about a 50-year-old man
beaten to death and his son critically injured in UP’s Dadri after rumours
spread that they were eating and storing beef has divided us on predictable
lines.
Folks on one side see this as another sign of growing
intolerance towards minorities in the acchey din India of Narendra Modi. Those on the other
side see it as another case of selective outrage because it’s not like such
incidents have not happened in pre-Modi India. If a Dalit and Muslim were stripped
for skinning and eating a cow in Karnataka allegedly by
Bajrang Dal activists in 2008 did anyone point fingers at the UPA sarkar?
What’s lost in the din is the essential point in the story.
Whether it happened before in 2006 or 2008 or 2015, someone has died because
someone else did not like the food they ate.
The most poignant part of the entire story was this excerpt.
Akhlaq’s daughter, Sajida, said the family had “mutton in
the fridge” and not beef. "Can they bring my father back if it turns out
it was not beef?"
Cow slaughter is banned in UP but that someone needs to say this, in order to plead for their lives, is what is truly shocking, truly horrendous. “We have collected meat samples from Akhlaq’s house and sent it to the forensics department for examination,” said the Senior SSP Kiran S to IE. Someone’s dinner is now part of a criminal investigation. That is the reality that cannot be captured in the language of a law that bans the slaughter of a particular animal or puts limitations on it.
Cow slaughter is banned in UP but that someone needs to say this, in order to plead for their lives, is what is truly shocking, truly horrendous. “We have collected meat samples from Akhlaq’s house and sent it to the forensics department for examination,” said the Senior SSP Kiran S to IE. Someone’s dinner is now part of a criminal investigation. That is the reality that cannot be captured in the language of a law that bans the slaughter of a particular animal or puts limitations on it.
This is not about whether this is a new phenomenon or an old
fault line. As Akhilesh Yadav is the chief
minister this is his faultline now. As Narendra Modi is the prime
minister it is his faultline. Not what happened in Dadri per se but the larger
polarization happening around food as a way of defining the “other”. It does
not matter if this polarization is an old one. It does not matter if it’s not
really part of a great conspiracy. This is now something he has to grapple
with.
Narendra Modi also knows that his party is held to higher
scrutiny and will always be when it comes to minority issues because it is
perceived as a Hindu nationalist party. The Congress too would be held to
higher scrutiny by its opponents when it came to accusations of pandering to
minorities as Rajiv Gandhi found out with the Shah Bano case. That is why
something a group of Bajrang Dal activists did in 2008 is viewed differently
than what the same group does in 2015. The accusation, which the PM has to
constantly guard against, is that his being in power at the centre has
emboldened these groups. The fringe thinks it has impunity now.
That might be a blatant falsehood but the PM has done little
to squelch these accusations. He has mostly just ignored the issue. When Obama
was accused of following a church leader alleged to have extreme views he came
forward to confront the touchy issue of race head-on in a speech that could not
have been easy for him. That is precisely what an Arun Shourie was getting at
when he told Karan Thapar “If Modi tweets on Sania Mirza’s
victory and wishing on somebody’s birthday and then he doesn’t say a word on
critical issues like Ghar Wapsi, Churches and Love Jihad, it will draw an
inference." The PM says sarcastically that children welcome him by reciting
Sanskrit shlokas in Ireland but it would have raised questions about
“secularism” if it had been done in India. But when food bans actually test our
ideas of secularism, the PM is conspicuously silent. The silence does not douse
flames, it fans conspiracy theories.
That silence is interpreted as loaded because as Mukul
Kesavan has pointed out in The Telegraph, while the BJP election manifesto
consigned Ram Mandir to Page 41, Modi on the election trail gives speeches that
press religious hot buttons. "In Bihar, Modi made speeches where he re-mixed the
cow-slaughter theme song under a new title, the ‘Pink Revolution’. The lyrics
of his cover version went like this: the Congress government had subsidized
cow-slaughter, butchers had grown rich on the back of meat exports, did Yadavs
really want to make common cause with people who killed the sacred cow?" The story is not about timelines and tu tu main main. The
Maharashtra cow slaughter ban might date back to 1976 but extending the ban to
bulls and bullocks happened under Devendra Fadnavis’ watch. Jammu and Kashmir’s
cow slaughter ban dates back to 1932 even though it was rarely enforced but
because a high court orders enforcement now, it’s the current government’s
problem.
Indulging in a fight about dates really dodges the main
issue. And it bears repeating. Even as the Prime Minister wows Silicon Valley
with his vision of a digital India of superfast i-ways and connected villages
and farmers on WhatsApp, someone has been killed because a mob did not like what
they thought he was eating. That should be hard to digest for all of us.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/beef-ban-extremism-someones-dinner-is-now-part-of-a-criminal-investigation-in-up-2450092.htmlKannada scholar MM Kalburgi, shot dead ...
