The Indian citizens who 'deserve' to be killed !
text_fields
“He was killed because we thought he was a Muslim. I regret killing a Brahmin by mistake." This is the apology offered by Anil Kaushik, a notorious criminal and Bajrang Dal leader, as he touched the feet of Siyanand Mishra, the father of Aryan, a teenager killed by cow vigilantes in Faridabad, Haryana. The zenith of Muslim hatred contained in his regret is as shocking and terrifying as the murder itself. What is seen as a mistake that the one shot dead was a Brahmin, and it would have been acceptable if it had been a Muslim! That is what he regrets. He repeats this to the police as well. What resounded in that expression of regret is the gunshot of racial terror, where right and wrong are judged by caste and colour consciousness. Anil Kaushik's apology is reminiscent of Godse's confession, where he proudly claimed to be a Hindu and a Brahmin after shooting Gandhi.
After Narendra Modi became Prime Minister for the third time, more than 30 Muslim youths, seven Dalit and Bahujan youths, and one Christian woman fell victim to Hindu mob lynchings. Recent events confirm that a sense has naturally developed among people that Muslims and backward classes are destined to be killed and beaten to death in India. In Kalyan, Maharashtra, a 72-year-old man, Ashraf Ali Syed Hussain, was brutally beaten by a group of Hindu extremists on a train on charges of consuming beef. Even though there was clear video evidence of them shouting and throwing him off the train, the accused were only charged under bailable sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. They were granted bail within a day. The depth of agony of Muslim life is well reflected in an article written by actress and social activist Swara Bhasker expressing her disappointment with these unabated attacks and the criminal indifference of the public towards them.
"We are all aware of the mob attacks in Kalyani, but we don't like to talk about them. Indian society, the majority of its citizens, institutions, mainstream politicians, Indian popular culture, media, law enforcement, and the judiciary have all let down the Muslim citizens of India." Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has openly accused the BJP government of backing such hooligan groups. TV journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and others have been trying to awaken civil society with warnings that Muslim hatred is becoming the norm in politics and civil society and that demonising them on social media is becoming routine. But the fact is that none of this is effective in combating the violence of the Muslim hunt.
The Assam government led by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a staunch racist, has under the guise of the Citizenship Amendment Act, uprooted 28 Muslims from their families and shifted them to detention centres. However, the same government has issued an order stating that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, Jains, and Christians in the same category need not appear before the tribunal. The mainstream media and the public have accepted this state-sponsored racial discrimination with a passive response to mean that "these things happen all the time."
The mob lynchings of Muslims and Dalits that we witness today represent not simply a breakdown of law and order. Rather, we must realize that they are facilitated by the government through discriminatory laws and the selective enforcement of existing ones. A new law and order system is being declared that alienates a section of the country's citizens. These killings and mob lynching are a joint venture between government forces and Hindu extremist groups who revel in applauding each other on the act. In Delhi, Haryana, and UP, numerous videos can easily be found on the social media pages of notorious gau raksha hooligans, which show them taking the law into their own hands and harassing the vulnerable. As long as it remains non-controversial, neither the government nor the police are willing to file cases against them. They aim to universalise hatred, specifically Muslim hatred. That is why the country is seeking solace in the fearless words of Aryan Mishra's mother, even after hearing her son's killer's apology. But the question remains: are the government and civil society willing to listen? The mother said: "They killed my son because he was a Muslim. Why are Muslims being killed; aren't they human beings? Muslims are also our brothers. All my neighbours are Muslims. We live very lovingly. They help us. I see them as brothers. I have nothing more to say. No one has the right to shoot the culprits. Justice is what we (everyone) deserve." Will those who make and enforce the law listen to this mother's words?
