Dadri was mob justice, religion just made it scarier
A friend called to enquire about my recent trip since we hadn't spoken in that period. Around the end of our brief conversation, I asked him how he had been. Dadri wasn't on my mind when I did that, but he was reassuringly sarcastic or sarcastically reassuring: "If you watched TV or followed social media, we are in big trouble and my human rights are being snatched by the government in power at the Centre. Outside that, life is the same. Boring." He chuckled, and I didn't. We said our goodbyes and made promises to meet next week. But that triggered a question in my mind: "Are we, in the media, overplaying the Dadri lynching case?" The answer is: No. There's nothing like overplaying such a diabolical murder by mob. But then there are other questions too, questions that we aren't asking.
Forensic reports have come in, saying the meat in Mohammed Akhlaq's fridge was not that of a cow, but of a goat. As if it was ever about beef! The Dadri lynching was about a society poisoned. Our habitats of peaceful coexistence are now powder kegs and it takes just a spark, any spark, to turn into a raging flame. That we have a right-leaning government at the Centre has its own complications. When law and order failures of states are slapped on the BJP and its leader Narendra Modi, it sticks, irrespective of the facts pointing at others. The BJP also has some loudmouth leaders who would happily take credit for communal incidents even if they arrived late on the scene.
Communalism wasn't invented by the BJP or Narendra Modi, as many commentators would have you believe. The BJP has been discovered by majority communalism as a political ally. The party has found its use, so have the other political streams. They feed on each other. Yet, Dadri was also about another thing: mob justice, something that doesn't attract as much media attention as this case did, because it came mixed with communalism and was followed by verbal violence in these super-charged times.
Law vs the mob order?
Mob justice is what differentiates us from developed countries. In our country, from the minor traffic rule violation to major mass murders, the respect for law or rather the lack of it plays the pivotal role. Akhlaq was beaten to death by people for they believed Akhlaq had committed a wrong. It just takes that belief to punish someone, instead of handing the person to the law. This is far too common in this country and is at the heart of the Dadri lynching, but we don't want to address the elephant in the room.
Drivers of vehicles involved in accidents get lynched. People accused of crimes get lynched by people who otherwise wouldn't kill a mouse. This happens too often and often in front of the protectors of law. Sometimes, the protectors of the law are on the receiving end. Nothing happens to the mob, because it has no face; only force, brute force. So much so that we demand summary executions when we are outraged about a crime.
This mob justice mentality is also at the heart of communal riots. Because there is no justice for mob justice. Hence, very few get punished for their role in communal riots. Take Bhagalpur. Over a thousand died and count the convictions. Or the Gujarat riot cases. Of course, some did get their just desserts. But in a mob that has hundreds of screaming heads, only a few are identified. That in turn emboldens future mobs. The Muzaffarnagar riots were triggered by a mob beating two people to death.
The Dadri lynching had the potential to trigger a similar riot. The reprisal wasn't swift because the victim was from a community outnumbered by the oppressing community. Also, the fact that the two communities do not have a history of enmity. They had just celebrated Bakrid together. Akhlaq's daughter said some of his murderers had dinner in the former's home the previous week. It took a rumour to kill Akhlaq and the trust of decades.
State's complicity
The perceived wrong led to a real murder that would shake the conscience of the nation. Like the rumour called god, that continues to kill those who are called god's children. Any insult to this imaginary person's (persons') symbols is taken as a real insult and real lives are lost. Is it time for India to stop recognising, at least officially, the injuries to sentiments, especially religious sentiments?
For far too long, the state has recognised these hurt sentiments and taken action by making laws and enforcing them. This has led to competitive chest-beating about hurt sentiments and people demanding a ban on things that they claim hurt their sentiments. Christian sentiments, Muslim sentiments, Hindu sentiments. From Babri to Dadri, human lives have been less important than the symbols of faith in fancy tales and imaginary deities.
We have banished artists, writers and rationalists over these fake claims. These sentiment-wallahs have killed and maimed people who they believed hurt their sentiments. The state continued to surrender more space to the senti-mental mob who occupy more public space today than they ever did. It has come to our dinner plates and fridge stocks now!
Where is the evidence?
Imagine if A walked into a police station demanding an FIR against B because B stabbed him. Cops recover the knife used in the stabbing, but A's body has no injury at all. Will the police register a case? No, until A can show blood or a stab wound. Yet, in case of religious sentiments the state does exactly that. Someone goes crying that this book has hurt my sentiment, the cops register a case, seize the book and book the author. That's if they go to the police. The normal recourse is to burn the book and beat up the author.
That's what happened in Dadri too. We as a nation kept accommodating these people, recognising their sentiments as genuine grievances, and look where we are today. Barely distinguishable from Pakistan. The Ganga-Jamuni culture has become as muddied and poisonous as the Ganga and the Yamuna. There's no amalgamation of ideas in this new idea of India. Just competitive victimhood and competitive crying fowl and gnawing at our cherished togetherness.
A play is banned because Christians don't like it. A book is banned because Muslims don't like it. A food is banned because Hindus don't like it. There's no end to it. Religion is the enemy. It keeps us in ages they came about. They have nothing new to say. Yet, we keep going back to it as if outside the faiths, we have no identity of our own. Our fake secularism that recognises religions has not helped. Religions should ideally have no rights. People have rights. If religious rights are more important than human rights, there's something wrong in where we have placed religion in our public life. It's time individual rights reclaimed their supremacy in the scheme of rights.
Instead, there is talk of redrawing the map. Some troublemaker has already floated the idea of carving out a land where Muslims can practise their faith freely. Muslims like my friend do not accept that communalism has won or it will ever decide the course, even if it dominates the discourse today. He would throw two lines from Rahat Indori's words:
Abke jo faisla hoga wo yahin par hoga
Humse ab dusri hijrat nahi hone wali
(Whatever will be, will be here and nowhere else. We will not be separated a second time.)