DNA Edit: Prez, PM take a stand on mob lynchings

After PM Modi’s statement deprecating lynchings in the name of the cow, President Pranab Mukherjee, in his second comment on the issue so far, has also condemned the disgracefully persistent instances of mob justice while asking countrymen to raise their voices in protest against them. President Mukherjee stressed on the fact that the citizenry of this country will have to be vigilant against the challenges to the basic tenets of secularism and equality of the Indian society.

The declaration of the President could not ring truer. In the last two years, India and its people have largely been mute spectators to the spectre of fanaticism and horrific violence that has conflagrated across the heart of the nation. Indiscriminate and extra-judicial mob lynchings have become so common that the gravity of these incidents do not register with the same moral affront as they used to. Every day, many are added to the list of victims, while police investigations probing these instances move at a snail’s pace, frustrating whatever expectations of justice that many unfortunate victims desperately hold on to. Even Modi has condemned this incipient trend of mob justice. Not once but twice.

However, comments from the PM or the President mean little and do even less to dent the recurrence of these events, unless state governments stop implicitly condoning these events. Many of the fringe elements believe that they have political patronage in pursuing such an agenda. PM Modi’s recent statement testifies to the contrary. As he so eloquently put in August last year, many of these self-styled gau rakshaks are closet anti-social elements, who vent their blood thirst in the name of religion. If these fanatics were under the belief that their action is legitimised by the political establishment, then they are sorely mistaken. Now that unambiguous statements have been made by both the PM and the President, it is time to crack down on these self-styled vigilantes, and teach them a lesson or two on the might of the Indian state.

However, things are sadly moving in the opposite direction. Last week, a local BJP leader was held in Jharkhand for the lynching of a meat trader in Ramgarh. Such irresponsible local leadership is side-tracking Modi’s development and growth agenda. After a disastrous, corruption-riddled and paralysis-induced UPA-II innings, the country came together in unforeseen unison to hand over an electoral victory unprecedented in India’s political history. The promise was of progress and prosperity and of peace. Material prosperity is undesirable if it comes at the cost of religious bigotry.