Alok Rai: A climate of impunity emboldens the perpetrators of public murder to post real-time videos online.

NB: Murder as theatre & pedagogic lynching. 'Civilisational revival' is underway in modern India. DS

Having been a teacher for close to half a century, I feel entitled to comment on the novel pedagogic practices that are emerging in our blessed country. After all, all kinds of people are now in the business of “teaching a lesson”. I am, of course, referring to the reported beating to death of Tabrez Ansari, allegedly on suspicion of theft, in Jharkhand. Ansari was reportedly tied to an electric pole, and beaten for eight hours or more. Eight hours - just try and wrap your head around that. The electric pole was on a public street, albeit at night. Still, factor in bystanders, passers-by, spectators, jhal-muri vendors, and of course the heroic “teachers”, beating a bound man. 

The video of this act of performative violence, this spectacle, shows children, on their way to, or from, mere conventional “lessons”; giggling women, probably out to buy vegetables; men hard at work spitting tobacco juice, exhorting the dying man to look into their mobile cameras to give them a good shot, just an ordinary day. So ordinary that the police turned up alright, but only when the man was nearly dead. Still, they took him to a doctor - who failed to notice the head injury that apparently killed him. Eventually, four days later, they even took him to the hospital, where an ECG confirmed that there was no life in that bloody, battered body. He - it? - was taken to another hospital but Ansari remained stubbornly dead. A minister of the state government suggested that the whole incident was a conspiracy to malign the BJP government - in which case Ansari must have been part of the conspiracy - because dying like that, remaining dead, certainly gives the government a bad name. He may be dead, but he’s practically seditious!

Tavleen Singh: I wish PM Modi had pointed out that without rule of law there can be no democracy

Reportedly, 11 accused have been arrested. And we have been assured by relevant authorities that justice will be done. Of course, in one sense, “justice” has been done already - the man is dead, and he is on record as having chanted “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman” before he died.
A mere few weeks into the new government, and we are practically at Hindu Rashtra! However, my theme is not “justice” but “pedagogy” - since the point of the whole arduous exercise - eight hours, in full public view, was “teaching a lesson”. And since learning lessons is the necessary complement of teaching lessons, I wish to explore the lessons that might be learnt from this public pedagogical exercise.

The first thing one notices are the pedagogical tools. Now, the use of physical violence is traditional: Spare the rod, etc. Of course, the traditional teacher did not use iron rods and metal-studded belts. Still, if the goal is efficiency - swiftly reducing flesh to pulp, breaking bones - then robust tools are unavoidable, even advisable (my frustrated chemistry teacher used to throw a wooden duster at us in exasperation. But I don’t remember many broken heads).

The other question that arises concerns the “beneficiaries” of such pedagogy. After all, if the lesson was intended for the deceased Ansari, then all that hard work — eight full hours, hammering away — has been wasted, hasn’t it? But perhaps we are dealing with an advanced form of deflected pedagogy: The intended beneficiaries of this pedagogy are not the obvious ones — who end up, all too often, dead. The real “beneficiaries” are the ones who identify with the victim, harbour some brief spark of empathy for what was once a fellow human being. These intended “beneficiaries” could include “the Muslim community”, “urban naxals”, “anti-national libtards”, etc.... read more:

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/hate-crime-india-dalit-caste-violence-jharkhand-tabrez-ansari-death-mob-lynching-case-5809782/