A nation divided

Govt should address growing polarisation and mob violence

On Thursday evening, an altercation on a train between two sets of passengers turned violent. Several of the passengers in one group, young Muslim men, returning home after Eid shopping in Delhi, were injured and one, a 15-year-old boy named Junaid Khan, bled to death on a railway platform in Faridabad after being repeatedly stabbed. The statement given by the victim’s brother, who was also attacked, is disturbing to read: “They flung our skull caps, beard, slapped us, and taunted us about eating cow meat.” Naturally, the facts of the case still have to be proven. But there are additional disturbing facets to this investigation. For one, the railway station’s CCTV appears to have been tampered with. Second, the man accused of stabbing says he was egged on by fellow passengers. Third, although there were reportedly hundreds of people on the platform, the police have not found a single eyewitness. This could be either because people openly condone such violence and/or because they fear for their own safety.

It is not, of course, the only such incident in India of late. Since the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri in 2015 — where, again, accusations of beef-eating played a role — such incidents have recurred in India’s northern states with depressing regularity. And in a sombre mirror image of these incidents, a mob in Srinagar last week lynched a policeman outside Jamia Masjid, reportedly on the mistaken assumption that he was a Kashmiri Pandit. It is clear that communal polarisation has reached dangerous and unsustainable levels — fed by malicious WhatsApp rumours and even by the mainstream media, in Hindi and English, which should know better. Worse, in many cases, the law and order machinery has exacerbated the problem — as appears to have been the case in the arrest of 15 Muslims in Madhya Pradesh for supposedly cheering Pakistan’s win in the Champions Trophy. Subsequent reports have suggested the case against them has very little foundation.

It is clear that this threat to public safety and order requires particular action and attention from the government. The national leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has not exactly prioritised the response to this growing culture of mob violence. While the arguments that law and order is not the Centre’s domain, and that the national leadership cannot respond to every isolated incident, are valid, yet, increasingly, they fail to persuade. Many incidents have taken place in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, over which Mr Modi has undisputed sway; the law and order machinery will take its cues from the apparent attitude in New Delhi. Moreover, a clear pattern is emerging now and these are no longer just isolated incidents. It would be futile to blame the government for actions that clearly emerge from a citizenry that is more divided among itself, and from citizens who are less willing to live in peace. But it is also true that the government cannot ignore it for much longer because one community is being targeted repeatedly.