Rajasthan man hacked and burnt alive: Muslims are no longer safe in India

There is no word strong enough to condemn the terror Mohammad Afrazul, a migrant labourer from West Bengal, would have gone through when he was hacked and burnt alive in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan. The pathological hatred against Muslims ingrained in Indian mainstream media, especially the electronic media, scarcely allows them to see the horror Muslims are subjected to by nationalist Hindutva vigilante mobs.

Compare the amount of airtime given to an irresponsible Mani Shankar Aiyar's "neech" remark opposed to the coverage of the shocking murder in Rajasthan. Something in the secular democratic republic of India is cancerously callous. Since 2014, it seems that Muslims are not really seen as human beings.

The clean chit to the accused in Pehlu Khan's lynching, the filmed murder of Afrazul, all show that right-wing mobs are roaming around and killing innocent people with impunity. Afrazul's killing may get dismissed for being a case of "love jihad". Why so?

"Since 2010, 78 cow-related hate crimes have been reported across India, 97 per cent of these after 2014," reported IndiaSpend, an online portal that builds on data to report on and analyse a wide range of issues. This massive rise in hate crimes in India, particularly in northern states, highlights a concern for civilian safety.

Is this a result of RSS-backed Narendra Modi charlatanism at work to polarise the voters or something else? Hard to say. But the more important question is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the person who vowed to wipe out "radical Islamic terrorism", ignoring the spate of crimes against minority communities especially towards Muslims? Isn't Modi's silence responsible for protecting violent Islamophobes?

Blaming Islam and Muslims for all the ills of the India is, of course, an old habit of Indian right-wing politicians led by Modi, social media, Hindutva brigade and some scholars too. There are some scholars who blame polygamy for the population explosion in India, while some thinkers blame Muslims for the rise in hate crimes and gender inequality in the country.

In new India, Hindutva created a rift between Hindus and Muslims and drove a wedge between those astute and sociable leaders, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and Deendayal Upadhyaya. Hindutva rejects diverse Hinduism - which evokes Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Its understanding of Hindu Rashtra is a project in which dissenting voices are silenced, human rights activists and liberal thinkers are victimised, and critics are forced into submission. It is quite clear that there is a relation between the systematic vilification of Muslims and BJP's effectively winning election after election.

Mahatma Gandhi said his mission was to win Swaraj, a humane government and society, which according to him, was realising god on earth. Winning independence politically was only a small part of achieving this goal. Religion, he said, in the broadest sense governs all departments of life, including politics. Unfortunately, it is the misuse of religion that we see in the politics today, and not the use of virtues enshrined in it.

Modi talks about expanding the middle class, giving a boost to the economy, making IT industry robust globally, etc, but his own party instead of being concerned about development, increasingly responds to identity politics. Many social scientists anticipated that after 2014, due to Modi's developmental politics, Hindutva as a political ideology will die a natural death. However, for narrow-political gains today, Hindutva has taken the front seat, while development is riding on the back seat.

Hindutva, is against Hinduism itself. It destroys Hinduism's core tenet which entails an argumentative culture. It aims to rob the very secular fabric of Hindustan and debone India's moral rectitude to nullity. If we will not wake up now then either we have to live under a Hindu-Pakistan or else accept radical Hindutva to be saved.

Also read: Mani Shankar Aiyar media row: India Today reporter on what actually happened