In response to the July 23 letter of 49 eminent filmmakers, artists, writers, and prominent historians and social scientists — none of whom can be deemed to be having a political axe to grind — urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take strong legislative action in cases of lynching deaths (which are no different from murders in cold blood), the government has put out a morally and politically vacuous, and wholly untenable, response through minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The minister trotted out the standard Sangh Parivar line — to point out such a thing was to “communalise” ordinary acts of criminality. But coming from someone like him, these words could be coming from Uncle Tom directly.
The evidence is not on the government’s side. As the prominent citizens note after a due fact-check to which they allude, as many as 90 per cent of the 254 religious identity-based hate crimes between January 1, 2009, and October 29, 2018, in which 91 persons were killed and 579 injured, were reported after May 2014.
Such shameful occurrences, reminiscent of the Middle Ages, have frequently been accompanied by the religious slogan “Jai Shri Ram!” The artists and intellectuals have observed, not unreasonably, that this slogan — sacred to millions — has degenerated into “a provocative battle cry”.
The PM’s preference for silence even when responsible and respected citizens, whose high contributions in many fields are widely acknowledged, address him personally out of deep concern for negative goings-on in society brings to mind a monarch’s disdain for his subjects. Even so, the Modi government owes it to India to make mob lynch attacks a non-bailable offence, as demanded by those who wrote to the PM.
