By Prasun Goswami
02 July 2020
Illustration:
Pariplab Chakravorty
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Most people who consider themselves members of a civilised society, tend to see instances of lynching – mobs driven by bloodlust to kill individuals as a way of handing down ‘instant justice’ for some presumed offence – as an aberration.
They see
such heinous acts as the handiwork of ‘anti-social’ or criminal elements that
can be addressed by the strictest application of the law of the land and the
most punishing sentences.
But is that really so?
It is an
issue I have reflected upon in my capacity as an educator. However, this
question has assumed greater significance for me in the last one year – since
August 28, 2019, to be precise, when I was almost lynched by a group of
respectable, well-qualified men, in a restaurant in the heart of Jaipur.
Activists
staged a protest in June, 2018 in New Delhi in the wake of sudden spike in
lynching cases. (Photo: Getty Images)
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It took virtually no time for friends gathered for a convivial evening, to become a lynch mob intent on depriving me of my dignity so as to dehumanise me and inflicting physical pain to the extent of killing me.
That
evening, I went to the restaurant – located near Rangoli Plaza, in Vaishali
Nagar – on the spur of the moment. I had been in Jaipur for over a year,
working as a researcher for an organisation which focuses on the state of
prison systems in India.
As I was
leaving the restaurant, two men seated at a table nearby called me over and
asked my name. My reply did not satisfy them; they said that with my long
beard, I could not be anything other than a Muslim. They were convinced that I
was faking my identity.
I showed
them my passport (I used to carry it with me as I did not have an Aadhar card
then) but like it happens with photographs taken at some point in time, I did
not have a beard then. The men concluded that it was not my passport.
Suddenly, the
15-20 people who were in the restaurant, had gathered around me, wanting to
find ‘proof’ of my being a Hindu — like a Janeu, which I don’t wear, or the
ability to chant some mantras, which I couldn’t.
The next
step was to strip me of my clothes to see whether I had a circumcised penis or
not. The entire incident was captured on video.
The shoving
and jostling turned into brutal kicking and hitting, with the mob alleging that
I was a Pakistani terrorist with a plan and hence was faking my identity. With
my heavily accented Hindi I could even be a Kashmiri, they said.
Rummaging
through my office bag they found my work diary, with some information I had
collected from the National Crime Records Bureau website. To the mob the jottings were ‘confirmation’
that I was a terrorist with a dastardly plan. The punches and kicks got more
vicious.
The entire
incident was being recorded by CCTV cameras, but the mob was not bothered.
Completely
surrounded, completely helpless and at the mercy of men who refused to listen,
I waited for the police to come and rescue me. Then one of the men suggested
that it was perhaps time to call the police.
The cops
arrived and hauled me away to KarniVihar Police Station, Jaipur (West). The mob
followed the police vehicle, shouting ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’.
Any hopes
of being rescued by the police evaporated as soon as the Thana in-charge started hitting me, demanding
to know my ‘real’ name. He was not
interested in seeing the passport I was holding out to him, to check my
credentials. In fact, he was flanked by the men who had attacked me in the
restaurant.
As one of
them started filming the thrashing I was receiving at his hands, a lower-level policeman made him
delete that strand, saying that human rights activists would create a ruckus.
An FIR was
filed against me under Section 107 (‘disrupting public tranquility’) and I was
asked to sign it. I protested, saying I was the one who was the victim of an
attack by a Hindu mob. The thana
in-charge thrashed me again and forcefully made me sign the FIR.
Not only
did they not heed my request to let my office know where I was, I was stripped
of my clothes and thrown into the police lock-up at around 10 pm.
The
following morning, I kept requesting the thana in-charge to inform my office,
but no one paid any heed. I was kept in lock-up till 4 pm on August 29. It was
only because I was to be taken to the court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM)
sometime after 4 pm that I was finally allowed to call my office so that I
could arrange for bail.
I was taken
to the CJM court where I was completely alone. There was no one to stand by my
side. The ordeal appeared to be
unending.
Then
everything changed. I was taken to the restaurant by the police, the CCTV
footage was collected and, ultimately, on the basis of an FIR lodged by me
(607/August 29, 2019), the perpetrators were apprehended and charged under
Section 323, 341, 143, and 67A of the Indian Penal Code.
My
harrowing experience made me realise two things: I had got out of the mess
primarily because of where I was placed in life at that time – I was fortunate
that I could count on the support of my office team.
Secondly,
the incident showed the apathy on the part of the administration to address the
spread of majoritarian sentiments among ordinary citizens. How can I forget
that the men who seamlessly transformed into a mob had got together for dinner
at an upscale restaurant!
From my
conversations with their family members following their arrest, I discovered
that none of the accused had any previous criminal record – far from it. One is
an engineer working for an IT firm, another an MBA professional in a marketing
job. Among the others who were part of the mob were the owner of a posh beauty
parlour, a high court lawyer, a student pursuing his studies in Australia, a
businessman, and government employees. That is as respectable as one can become
in our society.
Recently, I
received a call from an unknown number, with the person claiming to be from the
office of one of the perpetuators. He said that the accused was prepared to
offer me money and a written apology if I withdrew the case.
I refused,
pointing out the brutal nature of the crime and explaining that it was the
state which was pursuing the case against the accused. Talk about compounding
the crime!
Clearly, in
my case, the accused don’t fit our conventional notions of people likely to
participate in a mob lynching. But, these too can be the descriptions of the
perpetrators of lynching.
What makes
a common citizen of this country, without any previous criminal history,
indulge in a brutal and dehumanising crime such as lynching? According to IndiaSpend, as many as 25
Indians were killed by mobs in 60 incidents over cow-related issues between
2010-2017, with 97% of these killings taking place after the BJP came to rule
at the Centre in May 2014.
With the
BJP-Sangh Parivar combine in control at the Centre, their task of polarising
society as a way of political mobilisation for their Hindutva agenda has
gathered pace. So much so that the range
of aggression/violence that accompanies the expression of majoritarian
sentiments has become almost normalised across all walks of life, be it
individuals or institutions.
Also, while
expressing our outrage at instances of mob lynching, we tend to forget the
systemic violence that pervades our society, be it the violence of caste,
gender, community, or class discrimination.
In a
society where a Dalit can be attacked for keeping a ‘proud’ moustache,
youngsters who marry outside their caste are hunted down for ‘honour’,
infanticide and female foeticide exist, and women experience brutal levels of
sexual violence, mob lynching is normal.
As I
personally experienced, prejudice carried to the extreme can turn even people
from ‘good families’ into a baying mob. All it needs is a trigger – religious,
cultural, ethnic or and socio-economic.
In the case
of Akhlaq or Pehlu Khan or Junaid or Tabrez, the mobs enacted the language of
communal hatred against a minority. In my case, too, the mob got after me
because of my long ‘Muslim’ beard. They
had also thought I could be a Kashmiri (Muslim), which added another layer of
prejudice. I wonder, were these men among those who had expressed a desire,
after the reading down of Article 370, to marry Kashmiri women and buy land
there as a triumphalist gesture?
In the case
of Abhijeet and Nilotpal, there was an ethnic dimension. As for RituparnaPegu’s
lynching, a trivial issue escalated due to the element of machismo and violence
that frequently accompany arguments in the name of pride in our cultures.
It is not
just society that believes in retributive justice. The fact that several death sentences have
been handed down by the apex court in the name of assuaging the collective
conscience of the community, ends up playing into the popular impulse for
vendetta.
The killing
of four rape-accused in an encounter by Hyderabad police in December 2019 or
the hanging of Dhananjay Chatterjee (2004) and Afzal Guru (2013) were also
instances of seeking to assuage the collective conscience of society, which
clamoured for revenge.
What then
prevents other groups, or mobs, from assuming the role of dispensers of instant
justice on the grounds that it is what society demands?
I barely
escaped being lynched by a mob, but I do question the idea that rigorous
sentences for perpetrators alone will curb such acts. It is equally if not more
important to address deeper issues such as the conditioned mindsets that made
the men in the restaurant become hate-filled figures at the mere sight of a
long beard.
This is not
just about Prasun Goswami and the men who almost lynched him. It is about
understanding the juncture we are in and the deeper power-dynamics at work
which is mirrored in the act of lynching.
Prasun
Goswami is an educator and rights activist based out of Northeast India. He has
worked in the conflict zones of India in various issues for over half a decade.
Original
Headline: '15-20 Men in an Upscale Jaipur Restaurant Saw My Long Beard and
Almost Lynched Me’
Source: The Wire
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-politics/with-long-beard-i-be/d/122276
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