Sabrangindia had reported on this on September 16

On September 14, the Karwan-e-Mohabbat was threatened not to visit Behror, where the dairy farmer was killed in April.

On September 4, a group of activists set out on a month-long journey across India, called the Karwan-e-Mohabbat or the caravan of love, to spread the message of love and peace to counter a growing wave of intolerance across the country. Harsh Mander chronicles eventful moments of the journey, which ends at Porbandar on October 2. You can read more about their mission here and here.

On the 10th day of the Karwan-e-Mohabbat, as we met bereaved and grieving families – Muslim families that had lost their loved ones to cow vigilantism or police aggression – in five villages of the Nuh district of Mewat, we got news of anger and hostility to the advance of our peace caravan to Behror in Alwar district. This town, on the highway crossing between Rajasthan and Haryana, was where dairy farmer Pehlu Khan had been lynched by a mob on April 1. Khan, who was on his way back to his home in Nuh district after buying cows from Jaipur, was accosted by a group of men claiming to be gau rakshaks. They accused him of stealing the cattle even though he reportedly showed them documents saying the animals had been purchased legally.

Earlier that day, it had been reported that the police had closed investigations against the six people whom Khan had named as part of the murderous mob that attacked him before he succumbed to his injuries. They cleared the six after employees of a cow shelter in Alwar said the accused had been at the shelter when the lynching took place.

The Karwan had resolved to place flowers at the site of Khan’s lynching on September 15 in his memory and the memory of others like him who fell to hate violence. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Hindu Jagran Manch and the Bajrang Dal announced that they would not allow the Karwan to enter Behror and pay our tributes at the site of the lynching. The local organisers were told we would be met with sticks and stones if we entered. The owners of the hall where we were to hold a peace meeting cancelled on us and no one was willing to give us a venue.

We in the Karwan resolved that we would proceed to Behror to remember Khan despite the mob opposition. In Alwar, where we arrived to spend the night, senior police and administrative officials tried to persuade us to bypass Behror. We courteously but firmly refused, and said we would visit the police station in Behror to express our disappointment about how the police had let off the men mentioned in Khan’s dying declaration as well as the criminalising of Khan and his sons. We would then place flowers at the site of his lynching. The police officers said no one had been allowed to do this so far. We argued – how can an administration block a Karwan that has set out to try to offer a little solace to families bereaved by hate lynching from paying tribute to a lynched man’s memory?

Blocked at Behror

Friday, the 11th day of the Karwan, became one of unexpected confrontation and tension. 
The Alwar district administration again tried hard to persuade us to bypass the site of Khan’s lynching in Behror. They had agreed to my request to visit the Behror police station and ask the police a few hard questions about their investigations into the lynching, but they were resolute to not permit us to place flowers at the site at which he was killed by the mob. 

The district officers who met me said that violent mobs had gathered with stones to block our passage. I remained determined. I told them that I was convinced that we could not allow a mob to violently block a small mission of love and solace. 

I spoke to my fine members of the Karwan. All the participants unanimously supported my decision to defy the orders of the administration and place flowers at the place where Khan had been lynched. However, I was unwilling to put any of them in any danger, except the unavoidable possibility of the stoning of our bus. I, therefore, insisted that they remain at the bus, while I alone would go the site to place the flowers on behalf of the entire Karwan.

We then drove to the police station. The additional superintendent of police and additional district magistrate were present there to answer our questions. The closure of cases against men mentioned in Khan’s dying declaration, they said, was a decision by the state CID, and they could not comment on it. But I told them that it was they, the local police, who registered criminal cases against the victims of the lynching, dubbing them criminals, immediately after they had been brutalised by a hate mob. I said that it is the duty of the police to defend both the victim and truth. Why did they let them down so badly? They had no answer.

Guns and roses

After we emerged from the police station, the administration again tried to dissuade me from the small journey of a few hundred yards to the spot at which I would place the flowers. They said that a furious mob had gathered there with stones and sticks and would cause me harm. I said I was prepared for it, and would not agree to discarding the plans of a floral tribute. I said I would go there alone as I did not want to risk any of my Karwan colleagues being attacked or hit by a stone.
I told the policepersons that from my years of experience as a district officer, I knew that it would have been simple to prevent or disperse the small crowd of protestors armed with stones. The senior police officer answered me hotly, saying, “They have the constitutional right to protest”.
I answered, “I am not sure that anyone has a constitutional right to protest with violence. But even if you so believe, then surely I have at least the same constitutional right to protest armed with nothing other than flowers.”
I began to walk to the site, but the police blocked me. I then sat on the ground in a spontaneous dharna. They would have to either arrest me, or allow me to walk to the location and make my floral tribute. I sat for about half an hour, as they confabulated.
Finally they relented.
With two fistfuls of marigold flowers, and surrounded by a few police officials, I walked the couple of hundred yards to the spot where the ageing Khan had been cruelly lynched. It was a dirty, nondescript stretch of a sidewalk. I knelt down there, and said, “I am not a believer, so I cannot pray. But I believe in insaniyat aur insaaf – humanism and justice. Therefore, for humanism and justice, I place these flowers here. In memory not just of Pehlu Khan, but of hundreds of others like him who have fallen to hate violence across our land.”
I returned to the bus, and the police bundled us in rapidly. As we drove past, the protesting men threw a few stones at the bus.

On the way, people of the small town of Kothputli had planned a small welcome for the Karwan. But in the presence of the police, a bunch of young men arrived, tore down the banners and threw away the flowers, The police said they were helpless to stop them. The police then asked just two organisers to meet the bus outside the police station. I emerged with a couple of colleagues, and the policemen said we had only a couple of minutes. They handed over packets of packed breakfast, and a few men gathered. One of them took off his shoe to throw (at us) as the bus drove away.

The Karwan now had police escort vehicles both ahead and following the bus. It was only with this that the state administration would allow the Karwan to travel through Rajasthan. A sad day when a caravan of love can travel only with the protection of the police. We don’t need or deserve protection. It is the bereaved families we have met in these days of our journey whom the police should protect but have failed so profoundly.

The article by harsh Mander has been indepedently sent to Sanrangindia
 

The post When Our caravan of Love defied the Mob & Paid Tributes to Pehlu Khan: Harsh Mander appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The enterprise of intellection is in peril in India. Lest it be read as an alarmist, rhetorical rant from a confirmed anti-RSS pseudo secular, it would be useful to know what is happening in places away from the eyes of the metro media. The most recent incident is being reported from Mohanlal Sukhadia University of Udaipur. Effigies of professors of Philosophy are being burnt there. The minister who looks after education in the state of Rajasthan has issued orders to lodge an FIR against the professors. What has enraged the defenders of Hindutva is ironically a lecture in defence of Hinduism by professor Ashok Vohra, who is a well known scholar of Philosophy and has recently retired from Delhi University after having taught for more than four decades.
 
The latest news is that the dean of the university, Farida Shah, has herself lodged a complaint against Sudha Chaudhary and Ashok Vohra for having ‘hurt religious sentiments’. Meetings are being held demanding the arrest of Chaudhary and Vohra. The RSS and its different wings like the ABVP, Durga Vahini, Bajrang Dal are aggressively active.
 
What was poor Professor Vohra trying to do?  He explains, in a letter to the Prime Minister of India, after he learnt of the real threat of a criminal case filed against him: “I had, quoting influential scholars like Wendy Doniger, Paul Courtright et al, shown how these scholars are misinterpreting and making false, maligning, derogatory and misleading propaganda in the name of scientific and objective study about Hindu gods and goddesses. I had argued in my lecture that these scholars without understanding the context – culture, values and form of life, misunderstood completely the narratives in the Hindu texts. I had shown that the all-inclusive character of Hinduism and its total neglect of the zeal for conversion is an enigma for the Westerners. They have to be educated about this distinctive characteristic. Not challenging these scholars is like being a pigeon who closes his eyes and thinks that the cat has disappeared and the danger is over. To evaluate the theories supported by these scholars one has to use their vocabulary, their descriptions and their interpretations. I had just done that and established my thesis that the claim of these scholars to being objective, psychoanalytic and scientific is a pseudo claim. Their claim is the outcome of their prejudices and misunderstanding.”
 
Now, this is something many of us may find problematic. But our reservation is not relevant here. Professor Vohra was delivering a lecture on the need and possibility of a dialogue on religion. He was speaking in the specific context of Hinduism. He was trying to understand why some scholars or observers from other traditions failed to initiate such a dialogue, which, he says is imminently necessary. According to him, such scholars, and he names some of them, instead of objectively observing and analyzing rituals and protocols attached with what is known as Hinduism, use the lens of their own traditions. It prevents them from comprehending the significance of the symbolism of Hindu traditions.
 
Professor Vohra uses the categories of “Antarik” (Insider) and “Bahya” (Outsider) for two different kinds of observers or scholars. He says that Hinduism is unique precisely because it does not treat anybody as “Bahya”. It is all-inclusive. Even the Charvakas and Meemansaks were not consider non-Hindu.

Professor Vohra was delivering a lecture on the need and possibility of a dialogue on religion. He was speaking in the specific context of Hinduism. He was trying to understand why some scholars or observers from other traditions failed to initiate such a dialogue, which, he says is imminently necessary
 
And yet, there is an outside of or to Hinduism. For example, it cannot claim Islamic or Christian traditions as its own. It is a different matter, as Prof Vohra argues in his lecture, that Hinduism is not interested in drawing people from other traditions to its fold or is indifferent to them. But for scholarship to start you do need to have an ‘ other’ or  an outsider. Who would this ‘other’ be? Is this ‘other’ denied the right to discuss something he or she does not belong to? There are ‘others’ and there are ‘others’. Who are those ‘others’ who help us further our understanding of our own traditions, including religious ones?
 
To  build his argument, Professor Vohra quotes a French traveller Baptiste Tavernier, who had visited India in the 17^th century. He records his observation of the rituals attached with the ‘Puja’ being offered at the Bindu Madhav temple of Varanasi. It is a dispassionate description without any adjective attached to the rituals or idols of Gods and Goddesses. Vohra calls it an academically valid observation by an outsider. He is observing and recording his experience dispassionately without imposing  his own understanding of what is truly religious or spiritual. What is most important is that he is non-judgmental.  
 
Vohra contrasts this with the observations of other ‘outsiders’. They also observe and record the Hindu religious protocols and rituals but rarely  without using adjectives like ‘demonic’, ‘grotesque’ – or a milder qualifier – ‘funny’. Vohra says graver than this is the problem which arises when they use analytical categories derived from their own traditions. To strengthen his contention he quotes from these scholars. It is obvious even to a person of modest intelligence that Professor Vohra is presenting their views only to demolish them. However, this is what went against him and his host Dr. Sudha Chaudhary. It is being alleged that Vohra used references which are derogatory to Hindu Gods and Goddesses and Dr. Chaudhary committed the crime of giving him a platform for his blasphemous act.
 
The defenders of Hinduism expressed their outrage by burning the effigies of Vohra and Chaudhary. This is a privilege mostly politicians enjoy. Academics would surely not like to join this club. Local newspapers chose to play along with the vandalisers. The minister of Human Resource Development of Rajasthan promptly asked the police to file an FIR against the offender- professors. One of the deans of the university said that such lectures could not be allowed on the campus. The university succumbed and ordered an inquiry into the whole affair. The committee appointed to “inquire” into the whole affair has not inspired too much confidence, however.
 
Professor Vohra is protesting. He says that he was using the truly Indian way of polemics. In this method you have to faithfully present the viewpoint of the “Poorva paksh”. Only after that are you allowed to dispute or refute it. This is the minimum one expects from academics.
The defenders of Hindutva would have none of it. They want to blunt our hearing. One must say that they have succeeded in their mission to a dangerous extent. Otherwise, how is it that a sharp ear like Karan Thapar failed to appreciate the rhetorical device used by Amir Khan to drive home the insecurity that is gradually engulfing not only the Muslim and Christian minorities but also other liberal and independent minded people? Thapar went on to sagaciously advise Khan to stay on and fight the irrational forces in India.
 
Was the fear of Kiran Rao, partner of Amir Khan misplaced? Should we ignore her as if the issue only concerns Muslims? As we can see from the attack on Sudha Chaudhary and Ashok Vohra in Udaipur, the seemingly innocent act of scholarship is now under threat. When scholars like Vohra are forced to seek protection from the high office of the Prime Minister, are we to understand that scholarship is no longer a ‘normal’ business in India? Would scholars be unpatriotic if they chose foreign universities for their pursuit of knowledge? For, is it not that the land of knowledge is where scholars live?  Would they be advised by our ministers that they should face criminal charges bravely staying in India or they would be declared anti-nationals? Should all researchers and teachers secure anticipatory bail before publishing their work or attending seminars or even before entering classrooms?

(The author teaches Hindi at Delhi University)
 
 

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