If the politics of the Narendra Modi tenure in government has taught us anything, it is that two entities of our national life must always remain above and beyond slur, not to say any active questioning; namely, the security forces of t he realm and the cow. Indeed, even at the most liberal of forums it has been gravely risky to speak one irreverent word about these two defining poles of the new “nationalism.”
Think how democratic voices have been routinely lambasted whenever a critical opinion , however well- founded, has been expressed with respect to the conduct of the security forces in Kashmir. The least sympathy expressed with a hounded and humiliated Kashmiri, including traumatized teenagers risking opposition to strong-arm measures and gratuitous civilian killings has quickly been dubbed as “anti-national” activity engaged in by “urban naxals” to weaken the state. However justified their resentment, protesting Kashmiris have been characterized as enemy mobs out to give a bad name to the security forces. Any reference to possible causes for the unrest has likewise been rubbished as a ploy to find excuses for doing dirt on the forces heroically committed to shore up the land. And every tactic employed by the forces applauded as above and beyond faulting. The ultimate act against the honour of the state has been seen to be the standing upto jawans or policemen committing excesses, even as armed violence committed by militants Is justly condemned.
So we may be excused if we have thus far assumed that the utmost test of our loyalty to the nation rests in how we look at our security forces. Wrong.
Switch to the recent violence in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh and a different order of priority emerges.
On a day when local Muslims were holding an Ijtima(a Tablighi gathering), some carcasses, instantly promulgated as those of cows, were found in an open field nearby.
Before you knew, a mob of hundreds gathered on the spot, accused some Muslims of the heinous act, and lodged a First Information Report.
Just when the local police were intending to bury the carcasses, some leaders of the mob belonging to organizations affiliated to the Hindu rightwing prevented this from happening , and set about vandalizing whatever came in their path.
You would have thought that the very first report of a security man being thus killed would have brought the hyper-nationalist Chief Minister of the state rushing to the spot, visiting the victims family, flaunting “nationalist” outrage, and ordering a prompt hunting down of t he treacherous murderers.
Well, think again. Not only did the redoubtable scion of militant-Hindutva nationalism continue to spend time watching a sound and light show in faraway Gorakhpur, followed by attending a Kabbadi match in another city, but when he did speak to the murder of the police Inspector some three days after the event, called it an “accident” and not a case of “mob lynching.” A veritable dog-whistle to those entrusted with investigating the murder ?
Both the local police high-ups who lost , by all accounts, an officer of high repute, and the Chief minister articulated the view that the important thing was to investigate the cow killings rather than the lychings or the murder of t he officer; Intelligence agencies came to suspect a “deep conspiracy” in the matter.
Conspiracy indeed, said the brother of the slain police officer, suggesting that whoever had killed the cow(s) and left the carcasses in an open field nearby on the very day that Muslims were holding a religious gathering had clearly intended the carcasses to to be seen and found. An angry and tearful sister of the slain officer asserted on television that her upright brother had been killed because he had been investigating the lynch-mob murder of Akhlaque (who, it will be recalled, was the first victim of the post-2014 mob-lynching phenomenon), and , according to her, had refused to favour the accused in that murder. Another person, one Shikhar Agrawal, also named in the FIR, told a Television Channel that the Inspector “had provoked the crowd.” Agrawal is said to belong to he Bharatiya Yuva Morcha.
Both Yogesh Raj and Shikhar Agrawal have been circulating video-recorded statements protesting their innocence, but the police is thus far either unwilling or unable to nab them.
Lesson: if the goings-on in Kashmir have brought home to us the “nationalist” dictim that no dishonor to the nation exceeds that of dishonor to the security forces, Bulandshahr has foregrounded an alternate dictim: ergo, a dead cow clearly supercedes in” nationalist” import a murdered police officer. Everything depends, seemingly, on who does the killing. When harmed by protesting mobs in Kashmir, a security man comes to symbolize the ultimate call to “nationalist” sentiment; but not when killed by a cow-vigilante lynch mob. Clearly, cows, we are now taught, have precedence over security forces as well.
Thus, caught between the two, we must yet again declare our true allegiance between a security officer seeking to do his constitutional duty in ernest and a lynch mob sanctified above the Constitution by its holier commitment to the cow.
It will remain to be seen how the security forces view that new pecking order. Reports suggest that that they are dismayed and demoralized. Most security personnel might be excused for thinking that It is one thing to be upbraided for sparing an “anti-Hindu,” “anti-national” “other”; but quite another to be actually executed for letting cows go unavenged.
Young, poltically disgruntled Kashmiris out protesting on the streets of t he valley are thus “anti-national mobs”; but culturally disgruntled murderers in Bulandshahr are not lynch-mobs but holy warriors; and no security man may be allowed to stand against them.
We live and learn.