Punjab 'Sacrilege': How Silence & Whataboutery Normalise Lynchings

Resorting to ‘whataboutery’, as has been the wont after each incident, is the most successfully abused storyline.

Two people in Punjab were lynched to death recently. 

(Photo: The Quint)

Let’s start by negating the usual narrative – the lynching’s of the Sadhus in Palghar district, and that of a Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri are equally despicable and shameful. Neither is justifiable nor needs any rationalising context, as the law simply cannot be taken into individual hands. Period. It is, simply put, savage vigilantism. Neither justifies the other. The latest incident is from Punjab – a day after a man who attempted to desecrate the Guru Granth Sahib was killed by a mob at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, another man was beaten to death by locals in Kapurthala district of Punjab for disrespecting the Sikh flag.

We Ascribe Differential Value to Lives

Resorting to ‘whataboutery’ by voluble partisan elements, as has been the wont following each incident, is the most successfully abused storyline that has ensured that we do not introspect the barbarity of lynchings beyond partisan prisms. Worryingly, we have increasingly normalised the differential value of individual lives, depending on the victim’s religion/ethnicity/political affiliation, or any other societal ‘divide’. Such a polarising and discriminatory attitude is akin to the concept of diya or diyat (blood money) in authoritarian environments like Saudi Arabia, where the worth of life or death depends on the religion of the individual.

Directionally, the world’s largest democracy cannot be normalising and heading in the direction of the suffocatingly regressive and majoritarian instincts of some illiberal Sheikhdoms in the Middle East – for such societies, picking up a disagreeing voice like Jamal Khashoggi in a foreign country, and strangulating, dismembering, and dissolving his chopped body in acid, may become par-for-course.

When a society accepts barbarism for ‘others’ (out of a misplaced sense of historical revenge), it inadvertently becomes barbaric for everyone, eventually.

Across the Line of Control (LoC), Pakistan had ‘bettered’ India in racing towards intolerance with its headstart of General Zia’s project of Shariaisation in the 80s – the irretrievable curse of societal revisionism, puritanism and ‘othering’ had been sown.

Most Victims Are the 'Othered' Group

Today, the phenomenon of lynching is a natural pro(re)gression, and most victims are indeed the ‘othered’ citizenry. Willy-nilly, officially sanctified by a combination of legislation, leniencies and political pandering, the monster of religious intolerance recently led to the horrific lynching of a Sri Lankan expatriate in Pakistan. Insincere condolences and platitudes notwithstanding, the political class across the line was complicit in poisoning the environment by infusing religion onto politics, deliberately facilitating so-called ‘fringe-elements’ with dog-whistles and echo chambers, and above all, by remaining mealy-mouthed or silent, when the situation demanded explicit condemnation and action.

In partisan politics, silence is an invaluable tool of dangerously nudging the cadres to persist with a wrong, with the plausible option of official deniability should the lid get blown. But because Prime Minister ‘Taliban Khan’ has consistently run with the hare and hunted with the hound in tackling religious extremism, not only does he have to face the ignominy of FATF officials for sponsoring terrorism, but lynching numbers become a cold statistic.

The way hundreds of gleeful people around the burning body of the Sri Lankan were taking smiling selfies and the police loitered around helplessly ought to frighten an average Pakistani, irrespective of his/her societal denomination.

Ancient lands of the sub-continent and its relatively new nations have a complex and undeniable history of religiosity in politics. There are beliefs with real and imagined fault lines that need to be healed, and certainly not invoked or scratched by the State or politicians towards electoral ends. However, these subliminal faultlines are political goldmines that have been routinely abused by all political parties without exception.

Politicians Reap the Dividends

Relatively speaking, Bangladesh and its politics (with all its shortcomings) have done a more honest job of positing socio-economic development over religion, and the consequential socio-economic trajectory of Bangladesh vis-à-vis a Pakistan or India is hardly surprising. Bangladesh, as the youngest of the three nations, is now ahead of India and Pakistan in per capita terms, growth, and many other social metrics. A cursory look at the conversations, aspirations and factors besetting the ensuing Indian state elections and its ‘manufactured emotions’ should tell us whether we truly put development over matters that warrant no state intervention, i.e., matters of personal faith.

The recent news of the Durga Pooja vandalism by the Jamaat-BNP combine (who do conflate religion with politics) notwithstanding, Bangladesh has considerably fewer instances of lynching because the State tends to delink religion with politics and comes hard on those who do. Recently, a Bangladeshi court sentenced 13 to death and 19 to life imprisonment for lynching six students – the unequivocal message was that only the law enforcement agency has the license to exert violence, on behalf of the society, against any wrongdoing.

The throes of religious resurgence, oppression or even sacrilege, are driving and empowering the citizenry to take the law into its own anarchic hands. Politicians sit quiet and ensure that the official machinery does nothing either.

There is, after all, electoral harvest to be reaped from dissonance and passions. Such willful accessions by politicians in a democracy enfeebles the various institutions and constitutional mandate, thereby weakening the wiring of checks and measures in a participative democracy.

This battle to be ‘holier than thou’ amongst the political classes is a comical circus, and masses fall prey and make crucial decisions basis the same. Meanwhile, development be damned! Strong partisan loyalties in such times afford the necessary cover and contexualisation for acts of mobocracy, and the tragic moment often comes where even lynching gets normalised and condoned.

The 'Idea of India' Deserves Much Better

Lynching is the outcome of perceived covert support by the powers-that-be, and should that imagined sense of comfort get raptured, the murderous confidence would automatically deflate towards the lawful assertion of the law of the land by the state machinery.

Administratively, the full impact and power of the state machinery to curb such instances is underestimated, and, ironically, downplayed to a level where miscreants are emboldened.

All it takes is one or two unbiased public stances by the highest offices of the land to unambiguously point fingers at those responsible, bring them to immediate justice and disown anyone offering any semblance of context/whataboutery. But has it happened across the political divide in our federal polity?

The profound civilisational and moral ‘Idea of India’ deserves much better than advertently normalising despicable acts like lynching, and that too in the name of religion.

(Lt Gen Bhopinder Singh (Retd) is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands & Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)