The recurring incidents of lynching are a matter of utter shock and shame

                                           The issue is serious, let’s address it together, and stop this ugly blame game

                                           What I post this week is nothing new but my humble outpouring on this problem

                                           Perhaps a little jarring stuff- neither so sweet , nor so very wholesome!

               Can we stop these lynchings please?

Dhule lynching victim's family: dazed and desolate (Photo taken from the IE reports)

                              

Yet another lynching incident. This time the victim is an innocent ‘techie’ out with his friends in Bidar (district) some 700 odd kilometers from the Karnataka’s cyber city Bengaluru; and near India’s another cyber capital Hyderbad. His fault?  His co-traveller friend from Qatar was trying to be nice to the local kids by distributing to them chocolates brought from abroad. Soon the rumour (that they were child lifters) fanned through WhatsApp went viral and mob frenzy took over. The trio was dragged out of the overturned car and thrashed until one of them succumbed. The police proved too inadequate and unequal to the task to avert the tragedy in the face of   bloodthirsty mob of 400-500 men: Well, if this were a solitary case of such spine chilling barbarity you might want to shrug it off as an aberration. But this is the 20^th case of lynching in just the last 3 months in the country spread by false rumours about ‘child lifters’.  

Likewise, Kathua and Unnao are not once-in-a-long-while, rare, exceptional incidents of child rapes (though terming them as mere rapes is gross understatement; mostly, these perverse sexual violations are accompanied by violence so extreme and blood curdling that one even shudders to imagine how on earth a human being could be so inhuman). Such incidents too have been happening with sickening regularity almost every other day, as we all know.

Vigilantism stalks our streets these days and fear grips the nation's psyche. On the slightest provocation fed on rumour and fanned on social networking sites violence and brutality take over the streets while the administration looks helpless and impotent. The Indian Express has done a good investigative study on the lynching incidents that have singed the nation of late. As reports suggest most of the victims of such lynchings are the poor and the innocent living in remotest parts deep in small village hamlets. They are mostly nomads or tribals living on the margins and making two ends meet the hardest way. They are voiceless, powerless, defenceless, without clout and with no mafia or political godfather to fall back upon. And as the Indian Express reports reveal those perpetrating these senseless lynchings are young boys in their teens or twenties. Most of them are school/college drop-outs. Some are primary pass and some have not even been to the school. They are either unemployed or daily-wagers and represent low income section of society. Most such lynchings were perpetrated under the influence of alcohol. 

        

Dhule lynching: the perpetrators (Photo copied from the IE reports)

While it is difficult to conjecture what goes in the mind of these people to commit such acts of extreme violence, the IE suggests that deprivation, fear, social neglect, injustices, lack of hope and purpose in life drive these frustrated youth to such criminal activities.  Desperation, it is rightly said, drives human beings either to achieve great feats or to commit most sinister crimes.

                               

Dhule lynching: Another victim's family: tears that neither stop nor  shall ever dry (Photo copied from the IE reports)

To the shocked nation, the recent Supreme Court diktat to the government to enact new laws for lynching and hold the states responsible for checking such crimes is timely and welcome. But laws alone do not prevent crimes. Have rapes stopped happening even when new and stringent laws are being enacted? We need also to address the basic issues of good wholesome education particularly at the school level (which in most states is in tatters), social justice, inclusive development, women empowerment, employment, and strict curbs on politicians who exploit religious and communal sentiments of the people to polarize society for political gains.

Then and then alone  we can aspire to be a vibrant, progressive and prosperous  India of Gandhi’s dreams  and what Tagore envisioned when he wrote those immortal lines: “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high…”

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