Ziya Us Salam - Why Lynchings Have Become A Substitute For Communal Riots
Indeed, lynching has
replaced the age-old communal riot as a means of polarization. Lynching comes
without the burden of guilt that used to accompany riots. It is more effective,
lethal and sinister. It strikes at the very identity of the community. It is
far more demoralizing than the traditional communal violence, but serves the
same purpose as riots did in the years gone by: to engender a climate of
distrust and fear. On one side are Hindus who begin to look at any Muslim,
particularly those with conspicuous manifestation of being one, with distrust.
In their mind, all Muslims are beefeaters. And, maybe, even cow slaughterers.
Nothing wrong with that if you are in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and vast stretches of
the Northeast, but often a fatal flaw in north and west India.
To those Hindus denied
the benefit of education and economic cushion, a Muslim is one who deliberately
provokes Hindus by eating beef. They do not know the reality or the history of
beef eating in their own religion. For such a misled vigilante, the Muslim is
the ‘other’ who must be shown his place. For him, a Muslim is what the latest
video, real or fake, on WhatsApp shows him to be. Also, a Muslim is to be
tackled, again, in the way those hooligans do in the lynching videos. That
brings us to Muslims. With each lynching incident, the community slips deeper
into fear, and into its own shell. And a community which is often told to join
the mainstream slips further away.
In an item titled
‘Black Shadow of the Mob’ (Times of India, 29 July 2018), correspondent
Himanshi Dhawan talked of how ‘fear and alienation is changing the way
middle-class Muslims live, from what they pack for lunch, to how they’re naming
babies’. The piece dwelt at some length on the perplex, insecure and increasingly
insular world of a Muslim in urban India in 2018. It talked of well-known
historian Rana Safvi’s experience of living not too far from Dadri where Akhlaq
was lynched soon after Eid-ul-Azha celebrations. .. read more:
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/why-lynchings-have-become-a-substitute-for-communal-riots_in_5c5d6f2ce4b0a502ca34c148?utm_hp_ref=in-homepagesee also
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