We do not have an effective Government in Delhi to speak of anymore, what with Prime Minister jet-setting across the world with hardly any time for India. He has visited over 60 countries in the last four years spending a total of Rs. 3600 million of Indian taxpayers money for his travels. Meanwhile, Talibani mobs rule the country.
I was shocked to learn about the mob attack on Swami Agnivesh in Jharkhand today. The mob removed Swami’s saffron robes and tried to disrobe him in public.
I spoke to Swami Agnivesh a few hours after the incident happened and he said that the mob would have lynched him had he not managed to escape.
I have known Swami Agnivesh for over 25 years. He is an apostle of peace and a fighter for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized.
For over 30 years now, he has been at the forefront of the fight against child labour in the country. He laid the foundation for our understanding of the gross violation of human rights that child labour and bonded labour is.
The later work on child labour by the UN and other agencies in India has much to be thankful for because of Swami Agnivesh.
His historic struggle against bonded labour in the Brick Kilns in Haryana in the late 1980s and his legal fight against bonded labour ended with a seminal Supreme Court judgement against the mafia that ran the brick kilns in Haryana with bonded labour.
The word Agnivesh means one who is dressed in flaming robes. The flaming robes that Swami wears are the flame of truth, nonviolence and justice for the poor and the oppressed.
Those who know him know that Swami Agnivesh is a fighter. He single-handedly fought against the Brick Kiln mafia three decades ago and won a historic battle for the bonded labourers there.
An Indian Talibani bunch of cowards attacking and trying to lynch him will not stop Swami Agnivesh. It will only add strength to his resolve and to the historic non-violent struggle that he has carried out against oppression and fascism.
Swami Agnivesh is well-known across the world and the world community would be aghast at the moral decline that India has been witnessing in the past few years.
That a person of Swami’s stature can be attacked in daylight in public by a violent mob, shows that India has travelled many centuries back in time in a matter of four years.
The attack yesterday by a similar Indian Talibani mob on the office of Dr. Shashi Tharoor due to some of his comments shows the extent of the breakdown in public morality that the country has recently been witness to. He is the former External Affairs Minister of the country and former Under Secretary General of the UN.
Mobs run the country today. Mob lynching has become commonplace across the country. Initially, they were mobs lynching Muslims for allegedly killing a cow or for allegedly carrying beef. But now not only Muslims, but Hindus and people belonging to all faiths and castes are being lynched across the country for a variety of reasons. The latest round of lynchings is on suspicion of being child lifters.
Many innocent lives have been lost to lynch mobs in the last few months.
We do not have an effective Government in Delhi to speak of anymore, what with Prime Minister jet-setting across the world with hardly any time for India. He has visited over 60 countries in the last four years spending a total of Rs. 3600 million of Indian taxpayers money for his travels.
Meanwhile, Talibani mobs rule the country.
Democracy in India is descending into Mobocracy. The mob attacks on Swami Agnivesh and Dr. Tharoor are the latest examples.
The author is the Additional Chief Secretary of Government of Kerala. He was a Chief Technical Advisor at International Labour Organization. He also has a master’s in Solid State Physics.