[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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