Inaction, silence over vigilantes weakens us

In his “Mann ki Baat” broadcast on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to make a pointed reference to the “purity” of the Ramzan month and its culmination, the Muslim festival of Id-ul-Fitr (being observed today) to celebrate which believers “share their happiness with others”. But it should be no surprise if Mr Modi’s invocation of the spirit of the most significant festival of the Islamic calendar is greeted with scepticism.

This is because Junaid, a Muslim teenager, was beaten up and stabbed to death on the eve of Id by a bunch of vigilante criminals for being a “beef-eater” and “anti-national” — due to his religion — on board a running train between Delhi and Mathura. The boy and his brother had gone to the big city to make Id purchases and were returning to their small town in Haryana when they were rounded on by the criminals, beaten up and stabbed, and thrown out of the coach. Junaid’s brother survived the attack.

If the PM had made a reference to this tragedy, he might have won hearts. He might also have indirectly issued a warning to the so-called cow protectors, who have gone on a rampage, specially in BJP-ruled states, starting with the killing of Akhlaque, a Muslim villager, on Delhi’s outskirts in 2015. But Mr Modi didn’t refer to Junaid’s killing at all, let alone express sorrow. Instead, he narrated a happy story. He spoke of the sterling work done in an overwhelmingly Muslim village in UP whose residents made their village free of open defecation.

In remaining silent on the attack motivated by the beef issue, the PM has stuck true to form. While a number of beef deaths have occurred between Akhlaque and Junaid, Mr Modi spoke just once, to call the so-called cow-protectors “anti-social elements”. This is surely a new and relatively harmless way to describe murder, and a decidedly new way of not calling a spade a spade.

The criminals themselves, the state administrations under whose jurisdictions (Haryana, Rajasthan, UP are the regular stomping ground of goons who proclaim their hyper-nationalist fervour and attack Muslims, and sometimes dalits, on one pretext or another) cow-crimes are committed, and the mushrooming outfits in the name of nationalism, the Hindu religion, and cow protection — in effect, the killer armies — have been boosted by the echo of the benign silence at the top.

The first man to be arrested in the Junaid murder told television journalists on camera he was inebriated and was egged on to kill “beef-eaters”. But, in an unconscionable bid to hide an unpleasant reality, the police insists that “beef” had nothing to do with the murder. This is the way to divide society and weaken national unity.