A videograb of the flogging in Kheda district of Gujarat Last week, police officers in Gujarat publicly flogged Muslim youths in front of a cheering crowd of Hindus who shot videos and yelled ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’. It should shame us that men who swore an oath to uphold law and order should flagrantly break the law but judging by the reactions of the crowd in the village of Undhela, and on Twitter, there is worrying support for the lawless policemen. The argument that those who support jungle justice make is that Muslims need to be punished for attacking Hindu religious processions and the justice system takes too long to do this. The obvious solution is to reform the criminal justice system but in ‘new India’, nobody seems interested in doing this.
Instead, we seem to have an increasingly large number of ‘new Indians’ who believe that jungle justice is the only way in which Muslims can be taught a lesson that they well deserve. The public flogging sends many messages and all of them are disturbing. The most important of these messages is that too many Indians seem unaware that the foundational pillar of democracy is the rule of law.
When those who swear an oath to preserve it fail to do this, they become criminals. When people cheer them on, they show that they have no problem with the rule of law being replaced by the law of the jungle. At least for Muslims. It is hard to imagine Hindus being flogged publicly just as it is hard to imagine Hindu homes being demolished by bulldozers as punishment for public violence. The other disturbing message the flogging sends is that the police wanted to make it clear to Muslims that they would not hesitate to humiliate them publicly. If they wanted simply to punish the men they arrested, they could have taken them away in the police van that is clearly visible in the video of the flogging.
Equally worrying, for me personally, is that the mighty Indian media does not see what happened in Gujarat as a story important enough to be followed up with a full investigation. Except for this newspaper, everybody else treated the public flogging as if it were a matter of no consequence. The reason why I personally find this scary is because just as we have got used to bulldozer justice, we could someday soon grow accustomed to public floggings. It is worth remembering that when Yogi Adityanath began practicing jungle justice, there was a considerable degree of horror expressed in the media but now the bulldozers arrive and tear down some Muslim’s property and we barely pay attention. We should pay more attention because even convicted murderers and rapists do not deserve to have their families made homeless.
The people who are noticing India’s increasingly discriminatory treatment of Muslims are international watchdogs and soon we might need to face censure in the United Nations. Last week the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Minority Rights, Fernand de Varennes, talked of the ‘magnitude and gravity’ of the violations of minority rights and said that there was a ‘pattern of stigmatization’. He concluded that, “Nothing short of an international investigative mechanism – as has been done by the UN Security Council, and Human Rights Council for countries such as Syria, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia – may be necessary.” It should shame us that India should be mentioned in the same breath as the countries listed above.
Whenever some international observer has bad things to say about India, the reaction of the Government of India’s thin-skinned officials is usually to whine about how western observers never understand India’s concerns. They seem not to understand that when human rights are violated as blatantly as the rights of Muslims and Dalits are in ‘new India’, it will be noticed. But more than international opinion, we should be much more concerned about what is going on inside India.
As someone who has spoken out often against radical Islam, what I have lately been troubled by is the possibility that the demonization of all things Muslim could lead to moderate Muslims becoming radicalized. So far, the numbers of Indian Muslims joining international jihadist organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS has been remarkably small. But this could easily change if our law enforcement machinery starts resorting to public floggings. With the second largest Muslim population in the world, this constant humiliation of the community will lead inevitably to radicalization. If even as little as two percent of our Muslim communities become radicalized, we can give up our dream of becoming an economic superpower.
What happened in Gujarat last week was shameful and not only must it never happen again but the policemen responsible for the flogging must be sacked. I say this although I know that this will not happen because the hate speeches, the cow vigilantes, the lynchings and the silence of our leaders have created an atmosphere in which ordinary Indians have been infected by the poison of hate.
The media, I am forced to sadly admit, is as much to blame as our political leaders. There are famous TV anchors who use their primetime shows to demonise Islam and Muslims daily. Last week was a good one to watch them in action. While most of them banged on about ‘love jihad’ and Muslims attending Navratri festivities only to lure Hindu women away, the public flogging barely found mention.