[Reader-list] Mari Marcel Thekaekara: The murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh shows India descending into violence (Guardian)

Patrice Riemens patrice at xs4all.nl
Thu Sep 7 11:12:49 CDT 2017


Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/07/gauri-lankesh-murder-hindu-extremists-hate-crime-minorities

The murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh shows India descending into 
violence
by Mari Marcel Thekaekara, The Guardian, Thursday 7 September 2017

Hindu extremists go unpunished, leading to a culture in which lynching, 
mob violence and hate crimes are increasingly, horrifyingly, widespread


Once quiet, civilised Bangalore is shaken to the core by the news of the 
shocking murder of its most famous journalist, Gauri Lankesh. In big 
cities and small towns across India thousands of people are protesting 
at the murder of a gutsy woman who fought for the marginalised, who 
called Dalit victims her sons, and who protested against injustice and 
venal politics in the face of death threats.

When you know someone, their death hits you harder. Lankesh was the 
recipient of endless hate mail from Hindu extremists. She was vilified 
on two fronts. She dared to take on the powerful Bharatiya Janata party 
(BJP), currently ruling most of India. She criticised them and their 
cohorts for attacking minorities and creating a culture that enabled 
lynching, mob violence and hate crimes. She also defended Dalit rights, 
provoking the ire of many dominant-caste Indians across the political 
spectrum.

I have been told off for comparing the current political climate to Nazi 
Germany. “Don’t go over the top, you’ll lose credibility,” critics 
advise. Yet for 16-year-old Junaid, a hapless Muslim youth recently 
stabbed more than 30 times on a public train when he had merely gone out 
to buy festive clothes for Eid, the pattern is chillingly similar to 
films we’ve watched on the attacks on Jews in Hitler’s Germany. J

Junaid and his friends were first pushed, then abused as “dirty 
Muslims”, then told to vacate their seats, their distinctive skull caps 
thrown on the ground. They tried to escape but Junaid was held down 
while his assailant stabbed him multiple times. The other boys, who were 
merely beaten or stabbed, were the lucky ones. They escaped with their 
lives.

Harsh Mander, former civil servant and activist writer, has appealed to 
the majority of peace-loving Hindus of India to stop the violence, to 
stand with the minorities. Even as Lankesh was being lethally mown down, 
a peace pilgrimage, or yatra, had been initiated in faraway Assam. 
Called the caravan of love, Karwan e Mohabbat (Kem), it aims to atone 
for the violence against minorities, and beg for peace and harmony to 
replace the politics of hate. Currently Muslims, tribal groups (the 
Adivasi), Dalits and Christians have been singled out in violent 
attacks.

A US state department report quoted in The Hindu says: “Authorities 
frequently did not prosecute members of vigilante ‘cow protection’ 
groups who attacked alleged smugglers, consumers, or traders of beef, 
usually Muslims, despite an increase in attacks compared to previous 
years.”

Kem proposes to travel across India, to meet the families of people 
victimised, attacked, raped and murdered for being minorities. It began 
on 4 September when Mander and other activist writers visited two women 
whose teenage sons had been brutally killed.

The cousins, Riyaz and Abu, had gone fishing on their day off. Someone 
screamed that they were cattle thieves. Within minutes a mob assembled. 
The boys were thrashed mercilessly while pleading for their lives. Their 
mutilated bodies came home with eyes gouged out and ears cut off. Two 
carefree, laughing boys left home promising their mums a fish feast. 
Instead the women received the worst news possible for any parent: their 
children had been murdered.

Kem urges Indians to fight to uphold the values of the Indian 
constitution, which promises its citizens liberty, justice, equality and 
fraternity after centuries of oppression. Now we appear to be turning 
into that which we hated, that which we fought against: oppressors, 
cruel tyrants, intolerant murderers.

In the last two decades, the voices of Hindu extremists have become more 
vocal, frighteningly shrill. They’ve become emboldened with the culture 
of impunity which seems all-pervasive. When minorities are killed, often 
falsely accused of trading, eating or carrying beef, by cow vigilantes, 
our most vocal, always tweeting Prime Minister Modi says not a word. The 
silence is deafening. This has encouraged the fanatics to lynch, attack 
and kill people.

Shockingly, the fanatics glorify Nathuram Godse, the man who 
assassinated Gandhi, because he believed Gandhi had caved in to Muslim 
demands by allowing the creation of Pakistan. The once-banned Godse cult 
is now thriving. Social media are powerfully used to propagate lies, 
hate and distorted facts.

Critics of Hindu nationalists’ fanaticism are being murdered to scare 
all dissenters into silence. Two years before Lankesh’s death, the 
eminent intellectual MM Kalburgi was also shot dead outside his home. 
That same year, Govind Pansare another vocal critic of extremist Hindu 
groups, was murdered. In August 2013, the Dalit campaigner and atheist 
Narendra Dabholkar killed. All of these martyred Hindus were fighting 
for the idea of India. They were battling to save Hinduism from bigots 
and charlatans.

Never has India witnessed the flood of hatred and vitriol currently 
being so openly spewed

All over India, people are waking up to the reality that their beloved 
country could be destroyed. Never has the country witnessed the flood of 
hatred and vitriol currently being openly spewed. The voices of sanity 
plead: “Stop the descent. We cannot become Kosovo or Rwanda.”

Mander issued a challenge to India, but especially to the Hindu 
majority. “It’s a call of conscience to India’s majority,” he says. “We 
need our conscience to ache. We need it to be burdened intolerably.” 
Silence can mean complicity. The silent majority needs to speak up. And 
to speak out now. Otherwise the Hindu stalwarts who fought for justice 
will have been martyred for nothing.

In spite of these dark, dismal days, hope has not died. People are 
protesting: “Not in my name.” And India’s supreme court has just ordered 
all states and union territories to appoint police officers in every 
district to track down and prosecute cow vigilante groups. Perhaps 
sanity will be restored. Perhaps peace will return to this beleaguered 
nation again. Perhaps Lankesh and the martyrs who preceded her will not 
have died in vain.

• Mari Marcel Thekaekara is a human rights activist and writer based in 
Gudalur, Tamil Nadu



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