In a recent and unusual stride, the Kerala Police have drawn fierce criticism for their prejudice against the Muslims. Kanhangad Police in Kasargod district had issued a notice to all mosque committees under its sub-division asking them to check the criminal background of their employees before appointing them in madrassas and other religious institutions.

The notice was issued in the context of the alleged sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl by her father, a madrassa teacher at Kottappuram, Neeleshwaram. The notice was issued to police sub-divisions of Bakel, Kanhangad, Rajapuram, Cheemeni, Neeleshwaram, Chandera and Vellarikkund. The notice demands the mosque committee to appoint the teachers and other employees in their institutions only after verifying their criminal backgrounds. It further asks to report to the Police if any employees are involved in any criminal activities. The Kanhangad DSP MP Vinod said that the accused already has criminal cases registered against him and the notice was issued only in a precautious sense. The notice was withdrawn after severe criticism from the civil society.

Prejudice and bias of the Police have alleged before, but it is for the first time in Kerala; a notice is issued by the Police stereotyping and discriminating against an entire community. Sexual abuse cases involving religious persons (from different communities) have taken place in Kerala previously. The cases of Robin Vadakkumcherry, the former priest convicted of raping a minor girl and allegedly pressured the family to take the case back and Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal who have allegedly raped a nun are few among them. However, no stereotyping took place in the ‘other’ cases; at the time, the Police are accused of mishandling of sexual abuse cases in many instances. The Palathay minor rape case involving Padmarajan, a local BJP leader and a school teacher who stands accused of sexually abusing a class four student in a school in Palathayi, Thalassery, Kannur being one of such instances.

In a different incident, in Kuttiady, Kozhikode on July 31, the Police have allegedly assaulted the Narayankadu Juma Masjid executives, Imam Sulaiman Musliar and a staff Shareef inside the mosque accusing them of violating lockdown restrictions. The mosque executives alleged that they went to the mosque to post a notice informing the people that there would not be Eid prayers as the locality has been declared a containment zone. The imam also alleged that the Police insulted him. However, Kuttiady C. I, P. Vinod denied the allegations, and he said that the news that he had beaten the staff and the imam was false. He also stated that he received information about people engaging in prayers in the mosque despite the Covid-19 restrictions and cases have been registered against eight people present there.  

These prejudicial instances are pointing towards a systematic alienation and targeting of Muslim identities in a different dimension. Muslim persons have been facing discrimination nationwide during the lockdown due to a pervieved association with Tablighi Jamaat. To target an identity, systemically is a severe offence, especially at times when religious hatred and violence are predominantly attacking the secular-democratic nature of the nation. A culprit belonging to a particular identity does not mean an entire community is offenders; particularly when ‘specific communities and identities’ are being targeted.  The police action has only contributed to the escalation of prejudice and hatred towards Muslims in an already hatred ridden society, further normalising the discriminations. Targeting of Muslim identities by the Police are fundamentally challenging the fairness of the state and seeding fear in the minds of minorities.

Systemic bias and prejudice are derived from hatred, and it needs to be understood with the Indian society’s history of communalism. Essentially, hate is subjected within the individual bodies, with serious efforts, it can be transferred into institutions. To disseminate hatred individually and institutionally are far different. Both instances should be treated in their respective gravity. Therefore, the involvement of civilians in the perpetuation of hate and discrimination must be distinguished from a police officer or Police as an institution perpetuating it. Both the offences end in generating the same ‘results’ however, different ‘effects’.

No actions have taken against the police officers involved in the controversial notice; the same is with the Kuttiady incident. Most of all, the matter was not brought into the discourse except by a few media organisations. The government, nor the Police department have so far made any comments, which undermines the issue. To maintain an offence as a taboo will not do any good to the society, on the other hand, it will only escalate the socio-political inequalities prevailing in a society.

Indoctrination of communalism by the state forces must be analysed in the milieu of rising Hindutwa forces. The fundamentalist Hindutva ideology, which is challenging to the traditional Hinduism, is empowered with their roots in the state apparatuses. The semi-feudal social system of India has been accommodating to the penetration of Hindutwa forces. The deep-rooted hatred towards Muslims and Dalits along with ethno-religious centric hyper-nationalism constitutes the foundation of Hindutva.

As for now, it has succeeded in domesticating various state apparatuses for its murky agendas. The alleged involvement of Delhi police during the recent CAA protests, Delhi pogrom and in the further investigations are standard examples for this. Furthermore, atrocities against Dalits by the state Polices has also been on the rise, the Police brutalities against a Dalit couple in Guna, Madhya Pradesh is a recent case.  The sooner the institutional influences of the Hindutva are addressed, the better it will convey justice.

The communal bias of law enforcement agencies has always been an issue in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, New Delhi, and other Right-wing dominated states. The orientation of Kerala Police towards the same path is worrisome. The partiality of Kerala Police has been in question previously, when Alan and Thala, two Muslim students were arrested on the grounds of UAPA charges in November 2019. To perpetuate discrimination against any community is contrary to the constitution of India. When the offenders are from the law enforcement bodies who are supposed to be impartial, the problem becomes stern. As long as the issue is taken seriously and appropriate means are adopted to prevent further communal attitudes and behaviours from the Police, it will be a burden to the secular fabric of the nation. The matter shall be addressed fairly, and the constitutional offenders must be brought into justice.

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The post Police fuelling Systemic Communalism in Kerala? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Civil society has been enraged since the death of Jayaraj (59) and his son Fenix (31) allegedly due to the custodial torture in the Satankulam police station in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin district. The police booked the deceased for the violation of curfew imposed during the Covid-19 lockdown. Social media is abuzz with the #JusticeforJayarajAndFenix hashtags.

The incident has brought into the limelight, various delinquencies and unethical practices in law enforcement. It is not for the first time that a law enforcement agency in India is involved in severe civil rights violations. Speaking of truth, various law enforcement agencies have often been accused of grave human rights violations. Reports indicate an average of 5 custodial deaths in India daily. The case has further led to the suspension of five police officers, including an inspector and two Sub-Inspectors and all the police personnel posted at Sathankulam police station earlier have been transferred out. Later on, the CBI took over the case.

It is at the peak of Satankulam killings that a glimpse is required into the state of Kerala across the border. As per a report in HuffPost, 8 custodial deaths have been reported in the state since May 2016, when the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government came to power. Unlike the Satankulam case, custodial killings in Kerala are not celebrated, particularly due to the presence of a resilient ‘cyber army’ belonging to the CPI (M). Criticisms against the state authority and the police brutalities are often undermined and confronted by the party led cyber army. The state has often failed to deliver justice to the victims of the torture and custodial deaths. Sadly, the discourse of torture is accessible only after the deaths in police custody. Soon after the newspaper headlines shift from the incidents, the issue is ignored and often covered up.

Rajkumar (49), a victim of custodial death due to torture in 2019, was a remand prisoner in Idukki arrested by the Nedumkandam police on June 12 and died in custody on June 21. His arrest was only recorded on June 15, 3 days after the arrest. He has been subjected to grotesque torture measures by the police, including the ‘falanga’ treatment wherein the soles of the feet are beaten.

The custodial killing of Sreejith (26) by Varappuzha police (Kochi) is another case that brings into discourse the malignant practices in the Kerala police. It is appalling to know that the police mistook Sreejith for another suspect. The police accounts of the incident are, of course, contradictory.

U. Nawas (27) was another man killed in police custody. Manarcad police in the district of Kottayam took him into protective custody on May 21, 2019, due to complaints registered by his family on alcoholic behaviour. Later, he hanged in the police station washroom. In July 2017, at Pavaratty, Thrissur, Vinayakan (19) employed at a beauty parlour, committed suicide at his home in a day after his release from the police custody. In another case, the excise department arrested Ranjithkumar (35) from Malappuram, and he died on the way to the police station. Later on, his postmortem report revealed multiple internal injuries. On October 23, 2019, another man Kunjumon (39) from Kundara in Kollam district died in a hospital at Trivandrum, a day after leaving police custody. In October 2016, Kalimuthu, (48) from Salem in Tamil Nadu arrested for theft, was found dead in police custody in Thalassery, Kannur. Abdul Lateef (45) was found hanging in the washroom of Wandoor police station in Malappuram. He had been booked into custody the previous day, but the police had not recorded his arrest as per a report in Scroll.in

Kerala, the so-called No.1 state, has witnessed gruesome human rights violations under the current CPI(M) led LDF government. It is to be mentioned that the Chief Minister himself is handling the Home ministry, which is accountable for the police actions. Naïve explanations by the authority overlook the criticisms against the police actions. As per the information of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Kerala reported eight custodial deaths in 2018-19 while there were three in 2017-18 and five in 2016-17. Kerala holds sixth place in the number of custodial deaths; way higher than Bihar, West Bengal, Chandigarh and Jharkhand. Annual Report published by National Campaign Against Torture finds that majority of the victims of police torture belonged to the poor and marginalised sections of the society who are often the soft targets because of their vulnerable socio-economic status. Also, In custodial death cases, families of victims seeking justice often face intimidation and threats.

It was under the Pinarayi Vijayan government, the extrajudicial encounter of seven Maoists, including two women, took place in 2019. The encounter was alleged to be fake and has drawn severe criticism. According to an investigative report by The Hindu, the Maoists were shot from behind. The presence of cooked food had cited to give some credence to the theory that the police had gunned down the rebels while they were eating in peace. These narratives from India’s most ‘literate’ state is, of course, not a sign of development but an alarm for a withering democracy. The government should be held accountable for their anti-democratic policies which are often leading to the loss of precious human lives and dignity. Violence perpetrated by the state force should be investigated, and respective measures should be taken to forestall the abuse of the state power.
 

*The writer is with the Dept. of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University

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The post Custodial killings in Kerala: Deconstructing facts appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Discourse on hate crimes has gained strength in India with the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq on September 28, 2015 at Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. Mohammad Akhlaq, a 55-year-old farmworker, and his son Danish were dragged out of their house at night and brutally thrashed by a mob following an announcement at a temple that the family had consumed and stored beef. Akhlaqwas killed while Danish managed to survive. Later, urging unity, Prime Minister NarendraModi said,“Communal harmony and brotherhood will take the nation forward”. Akhlaq’s family then left their home for Delhi, have attempted through an arduous legal process to re-investigate the case, while also appealing the verdict in the high court. As of August 2019, all the seven accused of his death have acquitted by Alwar’s trial court. (Quint, n.d.)

Understanding Hate Crimes 

For a better understanding of hate crimes and its consequences, we must articulate the phenomenon as a theory. Hate Crime Watch, a database of religious-bias-motivated hate crime in India has definedthese crimes as ‘incidents that are prima facie crimes committed either partly or wholly motivated by the religious identity of the victim(s)’. Lynching describes as putting to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission (Merriam Webster). It stands for ‘extrajudicial punishment – such as public executions – by an informal group, such as mob, to punish an alleged transgressor. Lynching is one form of vigilantism, itself the act of law enforcement undertaken without legal authority by a self-appointed group of people’ (Cambridge English Dictionary).
 

History of Lynching

The history of mob lynching can be traced back to the racist confrontations at the United States of America. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, white people often used violence as a means of controlling African Americans. Lynching was a prevalent way of punishing African Americans who believed to have committed a crime. Mark Twain has written an essay in late August 1901, in reaction to a newspaper account of the Missouri lynching in which, Pierce City’s White residents, engaged in a ruthless purge of the city’s 300 Black residents, driving them from their homes in pursuit of an alleged murderer of white women. However, he decided, not to publish it, and told his publisher that if he had decided to go on with the publication“I should not have even half a friend left down there [in the South] after it issued from the press.” (The United States of Lyncherdom, n.d.)

Lynching in India

Since 2014, exactly when the RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh (RSS)-dominated NDA II Government came into power, India has seen anenormous rise in the number of various hate crimes, among which mob lynching is a significant crime. The extent of hate crimes is often unimaginable within a secular democratic nation. Hate Crime Watch project, launched in October 2018, that has been tracking religion-based hate crimes in India since 2009, has found that 64 per cent of cases of religious violence was against Muslims and the rest were Dalits (outcastes, untouchables) along with the Christians. (“Hate Crime Watch,” n.d.) India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the central organization that tracks crimes across the country, collates information on a wide range of crimes, does not count hate crimes–primarily because there are no specific laws to deal with such crimes. Majority of these attacks has been associated, with cow vigilante groups, accusing victims of smuggling livestock, slaughtering cows, keeping beef, or just being beef eaters (Citizens Against Hate, 2017). The other type is associated with rumours of the kidnapping of children to harvest their organs. Violence in the sake of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is the new mantra of Indian politics; the focal point to trigger another wave of high profile contentious controversies; the magic wand that Prime Minister NarendraModi and the BharatiyaJanata Party’s adversaries believe will deliver them from the disgrace of a crushing defeat and infuse some life into what appears to be the terminality of their existence. The arguments against these hate crimes are being confronted with naive ‘nationalistic’ discourses overlaid by the extremist Hindutwaorganisations and espoused by hatred driven politicians. 

Hindu-Muslim conflict in India

In the case of India, the Hindu-Muslim conflicts are not only religious, rather historical. Hindus who have a majority share in the population (78.35 per cent) have been socially and politically dominating the nation, whereas Muslims have a share of 14.2 per cent and Christians a share of 2.34 per cent. The rule over the Indian subcontinent by “Muslim emperors” (Turks, Afghans, Mughals) has caused a perpetrated resentment among the Hindu majority region with arguments that with these rules came mass conversions into Islam. Later, the British followed divisive measures to colonialise India and to counter its freedom struggle. This policy continued till the division and Independence of India and Pakistan, which was later followed by the followingorganisations and Governments. The separation was the disastrous consequence of the age-old Hindu-Muslim split, of the two communities’ failure to settle on how and to whom power was to be transferred (Chandra, B., Mukherjee, M., Mukherjee, A., Mahajan, S., &Panikkar, K. N. 2016). Partition of India has been called the most massive mass migration in history and also led to intense violence. Since independence, there have been inter-community clashes and killings in massive figures.

The religious tension in India got worsened when the 16th-century Babri Masjid was demolished on December6, 1992, in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.  Hundreds of right-wing volunteers or karsewaksof theVishwa Hindu Parishad (V.H.P.) and allied organizations, claiming it has built after demolishing a temple marking the birthplace of Lord Ram. The demolition took place after a political rally organised by Hindu nationalist organizations at the site turned violent. Ten years later, the burning of Sabarmati Express train on February 27 2002, which carried Hindu pilgrims from Ayodha to Godhra, Gujarat, killing 59 most of them Karsewaks, was alleged to have been the handiwork of Muslim extremists. This was followed by the post Fenriary 27, 2002 Gujarat violence. Gujarat witnessed the nastiest violence since the partition of India. Over 2000 individuals killed, 150,000 displaced and over 800 women and girls raped. These atrocities have been supplemented by widespread destruction, arson attacks, looting and vandalizing of businesses, homes, private property and the demolition of 132 mosques and religious tombs. Nearly all of the victims of the well-organisedriot were Muslim. The wounds remain raw, with thousands still deprived, living in relief camps, always in fear of their lives. The massacres initially described as a ‘spontaneous reaction’ by the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, NarendraModi (Gujarat Ongoing Genocide, 2002) Which later turned out to be the stringent headway to RashtriyaSwayamsevakSangh’s political endowment and NarendraModi’s Prime ministership. Allegations of religious intolerance had shadowed Modi’s career since 2002, when he, as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, was accused of deteriorating to do enough to stop Hindu-Muslim riots that killed more than 1,000. For this, he has been denied a visa to visit the United States on religious-freedom grounds, making the trip only after he became prime minister in 2014 (Washington Post n.d.)

Hate as a Cultural Phenomenon

To get a clear picture of hate crimes, we should also look into hate as a cultural phenomenon. Aristotle has differentiated anger from hatred in that ‘anger is customarily felted towards individuals only, whereas hatred may felt towards whole classes of people’ (Baird, R. M., & Rosenbaum, S. E. 1992). Hate works to align individual along with collective bodies through the very intensity of its attachments. Those alignments are unstableexactly given the fact that hate does not exist in a subject, object or body; the instability of hate is what makes it so powerful in generating the effects that it does. Likewise, even though hate does not exist positively in a subject, body or sign, this does not mean that hate does have effects that are structural and mediated. Hate becomes attached or ‘stuck’ to particular bodies, often through violence, force and harm. It also reflects the part of what hate is doing can precisely understand in terms of the effect it has on the bodies of those designated as the hated, an effective life that is crucial to the unfairness of hate crime (Ahmed, 2001).

Sara Ahmed asserts that many hate crimes are said and caused because we love, not because we hate. People are obsessed and love themselves with their beliefs so much that anything that goes against them is seen as a threat. She also explains that some bodies are already encountered as more hateful than other bodies by people in societies that centres on one culture. India, being a Caste Hindu majoritarian state, the hatred thus drives towards the Dalits, Muslims and other minority communities. Hate is not integral in a sign; its effect is a clustering effect, which involves attributing signs to histories that frame bodies but do not reside in them. In other words, emotions are in transmission; never quite residing in a sign or body, instead, they become attached to signs and bodies, an attachment that can and does involve violence and fixation for some and movement for others. (Ahmed, 2001).

‘Threat’ is another term we should consider while analysing hate. Hate is communicated in India through the narratives of threat. Hindus, who constitute the majority of the population, consider the minority communities as a rising threat. “What is so substantial in hate stories is exactly the way they envisage a subject that is under threat by imagined others, whose proximity threatens, not only to take something away from the subject (jobs, security, wealth and so on) but also, to take the place of the subject itself. In other words, the existence of this other is envisaged as a threat to the object of love. It is this perceived threat that makes the hate reasonable rather than prejudicial”(Ahmed, 2001). The SanghParivar and its allies are communicating the same concept of a threat to justify their hate towards minorities. There are numerous instances where Hindu extremist leaders are asserting Muslims as a threat to the nation. With the recognition of extremist leaders, the ground-level workers of these extremist organization indulge themselves in gruesome hate crimes which often breaks the lines of human rights and dignity. On 1 January 2018–the year eight states went to the polls–union minister of state Giriraj Singh said “a growing population,especially Muslims, is a threat to the social fabric, social harmony, and development of the country”, Likewise,BanwariLalSinghal, a B.J.P. legislator from Rajasthan, said “while Hindus have one or two children and focus on educating them, Muslims are worried about how to take over the nation by increasing their population” (Firstpostn.d.)These narratives are grasped by the local workers as a green flag to commit violence against the minorities. 

Power Relations and the Hate Crimes in India

India’s social and political power and dominance are very much associated with the hate crimes happening around the nation. Power is a property of relations between the social groups, institutions or organizations; social power is defined in relationsto the control exercised by one social group or organization (or its ‘members) above the actions and/or the minds of (the members of) another group, thus limiting the liberty of action of the others, or influencing their knowledge, attitudes or ideologies. Power is based on privileged access to highly valued social resources, such as wealth, jobs, status, or indeed, preferential access to public discourse and communication” (Van Dijk, T. A. 1992). Dominance is here understood as a form of social power abuse, as a legitimate or illegitimate exercise of control over others in one’s interests, often resulting in social inequality. Both the Social Power and dominance are often organised and institutionalised, to allow more effective control, and to enable routine forms of power reproduction. Dominance is seldom absolute; it is often gradual and may be met by more or less resistance or counter-power by dominated groups. (Van Dijk, T. A. 1992). 

 As mentioned before, in India,Power and dominance have played a crucial role in the access and construction of discourse. The discourse on hate crimesis structured according to the right-wing Hindu ideologies, including the RSS and other SanghParivar allies. RSS led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has not released any data on the hate crimes. The only official data available is that of Hate Crime Watch, which is cited by media organizations like Washington Post, Aljazeera, Economic and Political Weekly, and Human Rights Watch. But, the websites citing hate crime data are blocked in India, including, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Factchecker.in.

Along with the missing of data, there are attempts to whitewash the hate crimes in India by the same organizations. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, on 8 October 2019 asserted that “lynching is not the word from Indian culture, its origin is from a story in a different religious text. We Indians trust in brotherhood. Don’t enforce such terms on Indians” (The Telegraph n.d.) The speech was a handwashing approach to escape from the national and international criticism on the rising hate crimes in India. We should also take into account of the sedition case charged against 49 intellectuals who have written a letter demanding action to the Prime Minister NarendraModi regardingthe rising number of mob lynching. The case was closed later as the police could not find supporting evidence.

“Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.”

(Foucault 2012). Foucault’s argument is correlated in the case of India being a patriarchal, casteist, communalist and ethnocentric nation. These power structures have been insisting on passing on the fear of alienation on the minority communities for decades, among which Muslims being the prima faciecause. The mutual alienation of minority communities in India has thus maintained a Brahminical power structure. Power elites in India are keen on tackling the notice from the communal violence and atrocities. Foucault is relevant again when he says “the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the mechanisms of institutions that seem to be neutral and sovereign, to criticize and attack them in such a way that the political violence that has always exercised itself ambiguously through them will be unmasked so that one can fight against them” (Chomsky, Foucault, 2006). Analysing the current situation in India, it is clear that legislature and related institutions have failed in maintaining social order in society. In many of the cases, the interventions of these institutions have slightly intensified the fear among the minority communities. It is frightening that the concerns for the rising intolerances are addressed in an insensitive manner by the RSS-led Government and its SanghParivar allies. The recent incidents have been ‘normalised’ through the narration in the media. It has caused a reductive effect on the consumption of hate crimes by society. “There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible – the new normal” (Hewett, Martin A., 2004).

The disappearance of JNU.studentNajeeb Ahmed should be analysed in this context. Najeeb went missing on October 15, 2016. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a report without decisively investigating the case. It is alleged that some students allied to the AkhilBharatiyaVidhyartiParishad (ABVP), a student wing of the RSS, were said to have been involved in a brawl with Najeeb before his disappearance and the police. The CBI did not even question the suspects before closing the case calling allegations of saving them from the trial (Caravan Daily, n.d.)

Maintaining Islamophobia in India 

The victims of religious ultra-nationalism in India have been Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Dalits. Within the past decade, the scale of targeted violence against religious minorities has increased, with the rise of the BJP as the ruling party, facilitating its deployment through various mechanisms of the state against demonized and vulnerable social groups. This approach is familiar to the watchers of the political currents in the U.S and Europe against the setting of the rising tide of Islamophobia that has been fueled and organized by extreme right-wing groups to gain legitimacy. It has monetisedinto votes at the ballot box. Till date, there has been no trustworthy evidence, academic engagements or scholarly reports that documents this rising tide of Islamophobia in the Indian setting. This lack of documentation, both complicates and deters the fitness of those challengingIslamophobia. As a result, the activists and advocates are often left to speak of individual incidents of violence that undermine the scale of the issue as apparentlyremote cases or use of “communal violence” to lighten the seriousness of the problem. This case-by-case approach is highly problematic, limiting the ability of advocates to assign responsibility to political elites and point to the deployment of coercive state power utilized against structurally-created marginalized and invisible populations. Ultranationalist political elites strategically select their targets and assess their chances of holding or expanding power on its basis (Bazian, H., &Itaoui, R. 2019).

Hindutwa-centred nationalism has created a false binary of the ‘nationalist’ and the ‘terrorist’. Certain identities are recognised and others excluded. The social inclusive and exclusive policy in India has been Islamophobic since the beginning. Speaking of recognition, the recent updates of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam is critical. For inclusion in the NRC, 33,027,661 people have applied through 6,837,660 applications; a government statement said on August 31, 2019. After reviewing appeals and claims, 31,121,004 are found eligible for inclusion, leaving out 1,906,657, including those who did not submit claims. (IndiaSpendn.d.) The process of NRC has drawn various criticism on the grounds of its wrongful inclusion and exclusion, especially when the majority of the excluded belongs to minority communities. “If certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within the certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense (Butler, J. 2016). What is life? The “being” of life is itself established through selective means; as a result, we cannot refer to this “being” outside of the operations of power, and we must make more accurate, the specific instruments of power through which life is produced. We have decided that some precise notion of “personhood” will determine the scope and meaning of recognisability. Thus, we put in a normative ideal as a former condition of our analysis; we have, already “recognised” everything we need to know about recognition. There is no challenge that recognition poses to the form of the human that has traditionally served as the norm of recognizability since personhood is that very norm. The point will be to ask how such norms operate to form certain subjects as ‘recognisable’ persons and to make others decidedly more difficult to recognize (Butler, J. 2016).

Representation of Hate Crime Rate in India

Various statistics are showing concern over the rising figures of hate crimes. As of April 2, 2019, Hate Crime Watch has verified 282 attacks which resulted in 100 deaths and at least 704 injuries. Muslims–who cover 14% of India’s population–were victims in 57% of the incidents, Christians–2% of the population–were victims in 15% cases. Hindus, constituting the majority, i.e., 80% of the people, were victims in 13% cases. In 12% or 30 of the incidents, the religion of the victim is not stated. Considering that, only in the 252 cases where the religion of the victims was identified, Muslims were identified victims in 64% attacks, Christians in 16% cases and Hindus in 16% cases. Overall, of the 282 cases, Hindus aresuspected perpetrators in 56% of the cases and Muslims in 12% of the cases. In 85 cases, the religious identity of the perpetrator isunknown. Of the 196 cases for which religion of the alleged perpetrator has reported, 81% of cases involved Hindus, 18% Muslims, and 1% Sikhs. (“Hate Crime Watch,” n.d.) It is at this context we should listen to the United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s warning to India that its “divisive policies” could destabilise economic growth, stating the narrow political agendas were marginalising vulnerable groups in an already unequal society. “We are receiving accounts that indicate increasing harassment and targeting of minorities – in particular, Muslims and people from historically underprivileged and marginalized groups, such as Dalits and Adivasis,” she said in her report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, The ongoing atrocities against minority communities in India. 
 

Figure 3. According to the Hate Crime Watch statistics. *The Hindus mentioned here represents the Caste Hindus, not to be confused with the dalit Hindus

Officials in the government of Prime Minister NarendraModi had tracked various crimes. Still, they selectively released results, picking to share figures about attacks perpetrated by left-wing extremists but not religious-based crimes oratrocities against journalists, this comes at a time when there has been anescalation of caste-oriented and religious-based hate crimes. Hindu vigilantes continue to beat up and kill members of India’s minority Muslims and its lower castes, and human rights activists accuse Prime MinisterModi and his political allies of fueling an atmosphere of Hindu extremist nationalism that has backed to the violence. Most often, the attackers go unpunished and acquitted of the trial. (The New York Times (n.d.). The construction and maintenance of discourse on hate crimes in India is thus protected by the power structures which are emphasising on hatred. Along with that, the published data on the Internet either goes missing or is blocked. Text and talk appear to play a crucial role in the exercise of power. Thus discourse may directly and coercively enact power, through directive speech acts, and through text types such as laws, regulations, or instructions. Power may also be manifest more indirectly in the discourse, as represented in the form of expression, description, or legitimisation of powerful actors or their actions and ideologies. Text and talks appear to play a crucial role in the exercise of power. Thus discourse may directly and coercively enact power, through directive speech acts, and through text types such as laws, regulations, or instructions. Power may also be manifested more indirectly in the discourse, as represented in the form of expression, description, or legitimation of powerful actors or their actions and ideologies (Van Dijk, T. A. 1994). The national and International English media organizations –The Times of India, The Hindu, The Indian Express, FirstPost, The Wire, New York Times, The Huffington Post (in association with The Times of India), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC India), Scroll, and The Quint– are amenable to coverage of communal atrocities in India. The mainstream media also believes that these so-called cow-vigilantes and lynch-mobs have the backing of the SanghParivar, the ideological parent of the BJP government as well as direct B.J.P. backing.

AjoyMahaprashasta of The Wire says, “It is common knowledge that these gaurakshak dals do not function independently, and are aided and abetted, both monetarily and socially, by various wings of the SanghParivar. Militant groups like the Hindu Sena and Bajrang Dal have become foot soldiers for the cow protection campaign. In most places across North India – where the menace of this hooliganism has been acutely felting – members of the BharatiyaJanata Party (B.J.P.) double up as ‘gaurakshaks.’ (Mahaprashasta, 2016). B.B.C. in almost all India related article in recent years refers to Prime Minister NarendraModi as a “Hindu nationalist”. At the time, the regional media are misrepresenting the issue of mob violence with justification to cow slaughtering. Among which Hindi television news channels are in the first row. The reportage on hate crimes by media organizations like Republic T.V and Zee news has drawn fierce criticism regarding their double standards in reporting on the perpetrators. 
 

Conclusion 

The Prime Ministers’ High-Level Committee on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India,” commonly known as Sachar Committee Report, found nation-wide and long-term marginalisation and socio-economic deterioration of India’s Muslims, near the bottom of the national ladder, since thestate’s independence in 1947 (Rajindar Sachar, 2006). Recently, the post-Sachar Evaluation Committee in 2014, found that Muslims continued to suffer excessively from lack of access to the health care, low educational achievement, and economic deprivation, particularly in urban areas, which can be attributed to the rise of Hindu religious parties such as the B.J.P. (Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee Report, 2014). In the cases documented from 2017 onwards, it has beendemonstrated that the BJP’s electoraltriumph and following implementation of ultra-right-wing nationalist policies, accompanies by legitimisation of an aggressive discourse, have intensified such attacks against Muslim sites, neighbourhoods and spaces of worship. Most concerning is the direct impact of such violence on the patterns of discrimination and theghettoisation of Muslims. The decreased social and spatial mobility further limits the ability of Muslims to access the socio-economic opportunities vital to participate in national economic growth. It does also causes increased housing insecurity and an intensified geographical division of Muslims from the Hindu majority in an increasingly Islamophobic space. According to the 2015 statisticsfrom the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), more than 67%  accusedin India’s jails are defendants under trials, and 55% of this population is made up of Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis – together constituting only a combined 39% of the country’s total population (Bazian, H., &Itaoui, R. 2019). Being a ‘Sovereign’ ‘Secular’, ‘Socialist’ ‘Democratic’, ‘Republic’, it’s time for India to take necessary actions to prevent the rising religious bias and intolerance. We should be able to maintain a holistic view of the social inclusion policy of the nation. Rather than engaging in an ethnocentric (Aryanism), we as a nation should be able to bring forth, unite and make sure equity among the very individuals of the country. Instead of alienating identities, we should be able to reach to the vulnerable sections of society. To that, Hate crimes, including mob lynching, should be taken seriously and must be dealt with, with exactitude. Muslims and other minority communities were living in India even before the birth of India. Still, the current polarisation on the grounds of xenophobia and casteism is dangerously affecting the minorities, often leading to complex communal tensions. In the words of Judith Butler, “The problem is not just how to include more people within the prevailing norms, but to consider how existing norms assign recognition differentially. What new norms are conceivable, and how are they formed? What might be done to form a more egalitarian set of conditions for ‘recognizability’? What might be done, in other words, to change the very terms of recognizability to produce more radically democratic results? Let us acknowledge that these are all organisms that are living in one sense or another; to say this, however, is not yet to furnish any considerable arguments for one policy or another. After all, plants are living things, but vegetarians do not usually object to eating them. More generally, it can be argued that courses of life themselves require destruction and degeneration, but this does not in any way tell us which sorts of destruction are ethically salient and which are not. To determine the ontological the specificity of life in such instances would lead us more generally into a discussion of biopolitics, concerning ways of apprehending, controlling, and administering life, and how these modes of power enter into the very definition of life itself” (Butler, J. 2016).

(The author is a student at the deparment of Mass Communications, Pondicherry University)

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