Basant Rath - We the Cows / Pratap Bhanu Mehta - May the silent be damned
NB: Thank you Basant. India needs police offers like you to uphold our constitution and the rule of law, which is being buried on a daily basis by the votaries of Hindutva - DS
Who resolved to
constitute India into a sovereign, secular, democratic republic on November 26,
1949? We, the People of India, or We, the Cows of some states of India? Does
the protection of cow override the fundamental rights of Dalits and Muslims as
the citizens of this nation? From Jhajjar to
Jharkhand, from Dadri to Latehar and from Una to Alwar, a reign of terror in
the name of cow protection has spread in some states in the country.
Irrespective of the veracity of the claims – real, rumoured or WhatsApped – of
the criminal mobs bent on taking law into their politically protected hands,
the moment an Akhlaq in Dadri or a Naeem in Shobhapur is justified in
dettol-sanitised TV studios, the cause for lynching becomes arbitrary.
Any alleged harm to
the cause of cow protection has suddenly become reason enough to justify
street-level mafia-style instant justice at the hands of a mob baying for human
blood and bones. No proof needs to be provided and no legal procedures to be
followed. If a mob suddenly decides one fine morning that the cow is being
wronged, it can chase anyone, drag them out of their houses and kill them.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta - May the silent be damned
Every week mobs are lynching, torturing and humiliating innocent Muslims and Dalits in the name and under the pretext of cow protection. They have unleashed a reign of terror. And the police have turned inaction into an art form.
Their ability and willingness to turn a blind eye to the organised criminal activities of the so-called cow protectors has ended up making the organised gangs and their leaders confident enough to commit crimes in full public view and film their heinous acts with their smartphones for publicity. This criminal behaviour is not an offspring of an unanticipated emotional hour, the abrupt outburst of uncontrolled anger, or the irrational brutality of an insane mob. It represents the contrived, cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent criminals who know that they’ll get away with their inhuman deeds and that they have enough political and police protectors to take care of the legal consequences.
Every week mobs are lynching, torturing and humiliating innocent Muslims and Dalits in the name and under the pretext of cow protection. They have unleashed a reign of terror. And the police have turned inaction into an art form.
Their ability and willingness to turn a blind eye to the organised criminal activities of the so-called cow protectors has ended up making the organised gangs and their leaders confident enough to commit crimes in full public view and film their heinous acts with their smartphones for publicity. This criminal behaviour is not an offspring of an unanticipated emotional hour, the abrupt outburst of uncontrolled anger, or the irrational brutality of an insane mob. It represents the contrived, cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent criminals who know that they’ll get away with their inhuman deeds and that they have enough political and police protectors to take care of the legal consequences.
Talking about the law,
let’s remember this. All cows are created
equal, but cows born in Karnal or Kanpur or Alwar are more equal than cows born
in Kochi or Kohima or Imphal. In Haryana, the
maximum sentence for a convicted rapist is three years less than for a
cow-slaughtering offence. As many as 67 cases per day of crimes against women
are being recorded these days, but the truth is that molesting a woman is a
smaller offence than being in possession of beef. Haryana, second only
to Uttar Pradesh, in the number of complaints against the police, can take
credit for another indicator. Over the last 15 years, crimes against
Scheduled Castes in Haryana have shown a seven-fold increase, second only to
Rajasthan in absolute numbers. Haryana, Uttar Pradesh
and Rajasthan are in good company. Jharkhand is fast catching up. Perhaps the
police leaders in these states believe that silence is not only golden, it
leads to a goldmine for their careers as well.
As a member of the
Indian Police Service myself, I have, in fact, a few questions for my fellow
officers in these states: How many of you saw
that photograph of the young man from East Singhbhum, Jharkhand – blood
trickling down his head and drenching his white vest, hands together in
supplication and eyes filled with fear - pleading for mercy and struggling to
convince those hunting him that he is innocent? Did you avert your
gaze? Did you look at his eyes? Did you look and not feel sick with bile that
rose in your mouth? Did you look and argue What, If, What If and But? Did you
feel his indignities in your bones? Did he remind you of Qutubuddin Ansari,
whose pleading image in front of a rioting mob in Gujarat in 2002 became the
face of one of independent India’s worst communal episodes?
His name was Mohammed
Naeem and he was the father of three children. He cried like a helpless infant
about to be mauled by a group of mad dogs. They lynched him anyway, in
Shobhapur, less than an hour’s drive from Jamshedpur. Another group of three
men were killed less than 20 kms away in a string of raids triggered by rumours
about child kidnapping gangs. The police reached the spot before the last of
the fatal blows landed on him. Their inaction follows a familiar pattern. Question is, what
makes men kill other men even if they don’t like what they eat ? When did the
mob start meting out morality, trashing the Constitution which refuses to
distinguish between citizens on the basis of identity? And why are these
lynch-mobs, masquerading as cow-protection groups, growing by the day?
As we celebrate the
70th year of independence a few weeks from now, let us recall the nature of the
freedom struggle that became the bedrock of the Constitution. We swore to
become a sovereign, secular, democratic republic and have tried to keep the
faith for decades. Until now. Today the sanctity accorded to the most precious
right of all, the fundamental right to life, under Article 21, is under grave
threat. But We, the People,
are and must remain sovereign. The cows, on the other hand, must go back to
where they belong, in a ‘gaushala.’
Basant Rath is a
2000-batch IPS officer who belongs to the Jammu & Kashmir cadre.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta - May the silent be damned
A monstrous new moral order is unfolding, irrigated by the blood of our citizens. But this monstrosity is also wickedly clever. It is unfolding slowly, picking on individual victims, manifesting through a thousand cuts, rather than through a big cataclysm....This violence is now united by one single thread, of showing minorities their place. All of us are innocent till proven guilty; minorities, whether on a train, driving a truck, transporting cattle, distributing sweets, are guilty until proven innocent. This violence seeks to alter the fundamental moral and constitutional order: The victim of the lynching is presented as the criminal, while the ideologies that justify this killing enjoy the patronage of the state. This is what makes it induce so much fear. A fear exacerbated by the fact that our public conscience seems to have been all but dismantled.... read more:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/junaid-pehlu-khan-mob-lynching-religion-minorities-hindu-muslim-politics-4723451/
