Image Courtesy: The Telegraph
The Telegraph reports yesterday’s impassioned debates in the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian parliament, oft called the Conscience Keeper of Parliamentary Democracy when it spent hours, and worthy words on the lynch culture that has overtaken India under Narendra Modi. No other newspaper has reported the debates so graphically.
(In fact, Sabrangindia’s headline for this piece is inspired by The Telegraph’s own heading and we are grateful for the same)
On July 19, the occasion was an informed debate in the Rajya Sabha on lynchings of minorities and atrocities on Dalits in several parts of the country. It began with the erudite contribution of general secretary of the CPI(M) Sitaram Yechury:
APRIL 20, 1939
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
From Strange Fruit, recorded by Billie Holliday in 1939 to protest the lynching of African Americans.
(The opening lines were quoted in the Rajya Sabha by Sitaram Yechury of the CPM.)
MARCH 18, 2016
Md Mazloom Ansari, 35, and Inayatullah Khan, 12, were lynched and their bodies hung from trees in Jharkhand.
The grim statistics – listing as many as 77 instances of atrocities on Dalits and lynchings as well as attempts at lynchings on marginalised sections of the population – were then read out in the Rajya Sabha by Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress. He read from the list for 15 minutes and handed over the papers to the House.
(The Telegraph has prepared a map based on this list, See map)
1478
The Spanish Inquisition, under which Muslims and Jews were asked to convert to Catholicism or leave Spain. It is believed that around 150,000 people were charged with crimes by the Inquisition and 3,000 to 5,000 were executed. Yechury narrated how Muslims and Jews were picked out for persecution. They were served pork soup, which is forbidden in Islam and Judaism, and refusal to consume was taken as a telltale sign of their religious belief.
SEPT. 28, 2015
Food habits are telltale signs in modern India, too. Muhammad Akhlaq was dragged from his home and lynched for allegedly keeping beef in his fridge in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. The allegation was proved wrong, which is immaterial because no civilised society can condone murder in the name of food.
1860s TO PRESENT
Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist thugs who targeted African Americans and carried out lynching campaigns. Yechury then referred to the Klan’s trademark conical hats, a dreaded symbol in America until the 1970s.”One legacy that the Spanish Inquisition left behind was the triangular cap that was taken over by the Ku Klux Klan in the USA,” Yechury said.
JUNE 22, 2017
The Inquisition again embraced the Klan on a train in Haryana. Teenager Junaid Khan and others were picked out because they were wearing skullcaps. Then they were taunted as beefeaters and Junaid was stabbed to death.
There were several impassioned speeches in the Rajya Sabha today. Trinamul’s Derek O’Brien felt that “cow vigilante” was a misnomer and “cow terrorist” was more apt. O’Brien articulated the fact that “cow terrorism” was being used as a diversionary tactic to divert attention from the government’s failure on various fronts, particularly in creating jobs.
Naresh Agrawal of the Samajwadi Party referred to the recent statements by the Prime Minister decrying killings in the name of the cow. “You are having God’s name on your lips and knives in your pockets,” he said.#
The Centre, predictably was in complete denial mode, smelling a conspiracy to defame the NDA government, ruling out a specific law to tackle lynching and appealing to the Opposition not to lend a communal colour to criminal acts.But civil society drafting a Manav Suraksha Kanoon (Masuka) against lynching have pointed out that those inciting and plotting such attacks get away under the existing laws. Prosecution hinges on how police frame charges, and lynchings are usually classified as heat-of-the-moment crimes
Now that the Opposition in the Upper House, has caught the bull by its horns, literally, we hope that it will also hit the streets and build up a crescendo of widespread protest against this deterioration into the medeival. Only when public spaces become safe again, can we claim that the writ of the Constitution rules and the future is ours.