It is the cult of violence that has spread in India

You have Akhlaq lynched at his dinner table because of the allegation that he was eating beef. It happened in 2015. Two youngsters in Latehar in Jharkhand were hanged because they were taking their cattle to the cattle fair. They were Muslim boys. You have Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, lynched in Alwar. In Una, there were Dalits, who were skinning dead cows; that is the job, which, Dalits, unfortunately are to do. You have them lynched. The boys were whipped and lynched. And that was filmed. We’re just talking about social media. It was viral on social media. You had the case of Junaid and his brothers. You had the case of Zafar, who was killed by officials in Rajasthan because he asked them to stop filming a woman defecating in the open. Look at the level of intolerance and the gruesome tales that are taking place. 

Sir, I recollect the words used by Rabindranath Tagore when he returned his Knighthood. What were the words that he used? He said, “Give me a voice of thunder, that I may hurl imprecation upon this cannibal whose gruesome hunger spares neither women nor children.” That is the degree of dehumanisation that we have arrived at. 

Why we have arrived here is something that needs to be understood and debated. And we have to reach a conclusion on that in this august House. Yes, we have international experiences of lynching. It comes down from medieval times during the Spanish Inquisition. How did they identify who’s a Muslim and who’s a Jew? By giving them a broth of soup, which contained pork. Those who did not drink that soup were identified as Jews and Muslims and persecuted. One legacy that the Spanish Inquisition left behind was the triangular cap that was taken over by the Ku Klux Klan in the United States of America. Till 1940, they were persecuting the black saying that they were inferior human beings. I am sure some of my old colleagues still remember the famous song by Billie Holiday which is titled “Strange Fruit”. The song begins by saying, what is the strange fruit on the southern trees with blood on the leaves. The “southern tree” means Southern America in those days. And “the blood on the leaves” means that it’s the black man hanged there.

During the Spanish Inquisition what they had to identify Muslims and Jews was, “Who eats pork?” and you have “Who eats beef?” to identify who is a Hindu and who is a non-Hindu in India in 2017. Is this what my country is coming to? 

And what about the private armies, which are now roaming around? The Prime Minister has said that it is a state subject and that it is a law and order problem. These private armies have to be banned by a central order. There should be a central order to ban private armies, who are taking law into their own hands. You had the Ku Klux Klan taking law into its own hands. You had black and brown shirts of Hitler and Mussolini taking law into their own hands. They cannot be banned by any one state government. They will have to be banned by the state and that is the central government. That is the only way by which you can stop the private armies trying to implement the law of the land for which they have no authority and that is why we immediately ask for a ban on these vigilante groups of all nature, whether it be moral policing or whether it be cow vigilantism, who are resorting to such actions. These groups must be banned by a central order. And that is a demand my party would like to make to the government. 

But why is this happening, Sir? This is not happening because we suddenly have a rise in crime in the country. This is happening because of a certain ideological project that is at work and that is something we have to understand, Sir, since you and I, and all of us have inherited the independent India and the Constitution. This was a product of a battle between three visions. The mainstream vision during the freedom struggle was that of the Congress. They talked of the future independent India being a secular, democratic republic. 

We, the Left, had a difference with them. We said that we could not stop at that. We told them that they had to move forward to convert our political independence into economic independence and that could happen only under socialism, otherwise, the social democratic republic could also become vulnerable.

There was a third vision, which had a twin expression. You had the Muslim League talking of an Islamic India and you had the RSS talking of a Hindu Rashtra. Both of them wanted the country, independent India, to be a theocracy guided by the religious affiliations of its people. 

Unfortunately, the Muslim League went ahead and the country was partitioned. For my generation, even for me, all that is history because we were born after that... (Interruptions)... That is apart. But the point is, the religious affiliations being the basis for statehood. That is at variance with the other two visions that were there — a secular, democratic republic. 

After Independence, India became a secular, democratic country. When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated out of that anger, when that assassination happened, after that, there was a ban on the RSS that was initiated by Sardar Patel — of all the people, Sardar Patel! What did the ban order say, which he drafted himself on the 4th of February, 1948? 

Sardar says — I quote — “The objectionable and harmful activities of the Sangh have, however, continued unabated and the cult of violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims, the latest and the most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself.” It is the cult of violence that has spread. I am not saying what they say that all these gau rakshaks are RSS people. We are saying they are anti-socials, they are criminals. The Prime Minister has said so. They are criminals by night and they may be something else by day. But why are they getting this courage to act? It is because of the spread of this cult of violence. That is what has to be contained.

Edited excerpts of a speech by Communist Party of India (Marxist) member of Parliament Sitaram Yechury in the Rajya Sabha on July 19 during a short-duration discussion on the situation arising out of the reported increase in incidents of lynching and atrocities against minorities and Dalits across the country