A brutal hate crime recently occurred in Rajsamand town of Rajasthan, where one man hacked down and burnt a human being alive. How do we know this? The attacker had himself videotaped and publicised the entire blood-curdling incident. The supposed reason was some nebulous grievance that the attacker had; not against this particular person but his entire community. How has this unapologetic barbarity found expression in a country that crores of Indians and I look upon used to look upon as a shining beacon of plurality, diversity and generous acceptance? Where did this naked hate come from? How and when did we lose our way?
A man identified as Shambhunath Raigar asked one Afrazul to come to a location promising him work. Raigar then attacked Afrazul with an axe and sickle repeatedly from the rear while the victim begged for mercy. Raigar then proceeded to burn Afrazul while he was still alive. All this was filmed by Raigar’s 15-year-old nephew. Raigar is a smalltime trader who has been out of work for about a year since demonetisation ruined his business. Afrazul was from Malda, West Bengal; he came to Rajasthan as a labourer and had been doing small time contract work along with his brother.
The alleged reason for this brutal murder was retaliation for the supposed phenomenon of love jihad; a phenomenon that primarily exists in the fervid imaginings of the paranoid, fanatical mind. In any event; Afrazul had no connection with any such incident; imagined or otherwise. His only fault was that he was Muslim. Raigar has also spoken about his deep hatred for Muslims on video; he has called on voters to unite in the name of religion.
According to a statement by Pankaj Kumar Singh, Additional Director General Police (Crime), such an incident was unheard of in India; that the butchering of an innocent Muslim man by a Hindu fanatic was reminiscent of brutal beheading videos that the Taliban and ISIS have released in the past. “We have never encountered such a brutality and brainwashing, where a minor boy makes a video of the killing at the behest of his maternal uncle who executes a man begging for mercy,'' he was quoted as having said.
Certainly, the almost casual brutality and the extreme hate of this incident is a new low. But given past incidents that have been permitted – often with the tacit support of the authorities and without significant punishment of the perpetrators – something like this wasn’t really unexpected. In Dadri, Mohammad Akhlaq – whose son is in the Indian Air Force – was killed inside his own home upon the suspicion of storing beef; when his killer died, the body was draped in the national flag. 16-year-old Junaid was killed on a Mathura bound train by a mob as he returned after Eid shopping. Pehlu Khan was murdered in Haryana by about 200 vigilantes connected to Hindutva groups on the suspicion of cow ‘smuggling’, although he had the papers to prove purchase of cattle for milk production. These are just a few incidents that made national headlines.
The fact that 2017 has been the worst year for lynchings – as many as 20 cow-terror attacks were reported in just the first six months, with most victims being Muslims – points to a culture of impunity that has been permitted to build up in the past few years. People in positions of power – and this includes major opposition parties – are either silent or are guilty by virtue of issuing so mild and belated a rebuke, as to render it completely ineffectual. While sections of civil society have expressed their anguish by way of spontaneous movements such as NotInMyName, many of us remain silent and are complicit by our very silence.
Those who explain away these incidents as mere law and order problems are either deluding themselves or are being deliberately disingenuous. Let us be clear here – these incidents are a deliberate persecution of minorities born out of vicious hate and the need to assert the right of a majoritarian mindset. 97% of all cattle related lynching incidents from 2010 onward took place in the last three years; a majority of the incidents reported from BJP ruled states.
These are telling statistics that point to an unashamed, unapologetic zealotry that has grown in the past few years; an environment that has emboldened fanatical groups who have gone about committing hate crimes without any fear of reprisal. Often no arrests are made, when they are; charges are watered down.
What must worry all sane, reasonable people here, is the normalisation of such incidents – where we feel justified in outraging against the cinematic portrayal of a character of legend but avert our eyes; choosing to say nothing about the brutal hacking of a living breathing human being while the murderer proudly tapes and publicises his viciousness.
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