1. Home
2. Columnist

Resort to mobocracy to checkmate tribal resistance

By Arun Srivastava. Dated: 7/21/2018 4:27:56 PM

Irony of Agnivesh attack and Supreme Court lynching order

It is a strange coincidence that on a day Supreme Court ordered the Union and state governments to come up with a law against "the horrendous acts of mobocracy", the Hindu vigilantes were busy thrashing Swami Agnivesh and making him immobile in Jharkhand's Litipara. This was happening just as the SC said that "the "recurrent pattern of violence cannot be allowed to become the new normal".
The apex court was so cut up at the recent lynching incidents that it virtually censored the Union government. The order made it apparent that the court was not happy at the way the governance was being administered. It said, "There has been an unfortunate litany of spiraling mob violence and agonised horror, presenting a grim and gruesome picture that compels us to reflect whether the populace of a great Republic like ours has lost the values of tolerance to sustain a diverse culture. Besides, bystander apathy, numbness of the mute spectators of the scene of the crime, inertia of the law enforcing machinery to prevent such crimes and nip them in the bud and grandstanding of the incident by the perpetrators of the crimes, including in the social media, aggravates the entire problem. One must constantly remind oneself that an attitude of morbid intolerance is absolutely intolerable and agonisingly painful."
Agnivesh, the 79-year-old Arya Samaj scholar and social activist spearheading a campaign against bonded labour system, was waylaid and brutally thrashed by Hindutva vigilantes for accusing the BJP government of "acquiring tribal land by displacing them and giving it to corporate houses".
Though Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das ordered a probe into the incident, Swami on his part alleged that the attack was carried out at his behest. He alleged that the attack was "pre-planned" as "there cannot be an attack without rhyme or reason". He also alleged; "As soon as I came out of the venue, BJYM (Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha) and ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) activists attacked me. They alleged that I was speaking against Hindus." He was in Pakur to attend an event of the Akhil Bharatiya Adim Janjatiya Vikas Samiti, a body of tribals.
The vigilantes raised the slogan: "If one wants to live in India, he has to chant Vande Mataram". Though the state BJP denied the involvement of its activists in the crime, its general secretary Deepak Prakash, nevertheless, advised Agnivesh not to play with the sentiments of other religions.
Earlier Agnivesh had accused the Jharkhand government of not providing even minimum wage to workers under the MGNREGA scheme and reducing the number of employment days from the mandated 100 to only 42-43 days. He said primitive tribals constitute the bulk of the bonded labourers. He was to discuss the issue of the tribal people with the Governor Draupadi Murmu.
The leaders of almost all the parties condemned the attack. They included Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechuri and RJD's Tejashvi Yadav. They demanded stern action against the culprits. Senior lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan tweeted it happened on the day when the Supreme Court had passed a judgment to allow for stringent laws against mob lynching and public vigilantism.
Since 2014 Jharkhand has been witnessing "sweeping" incidents of lynching as "an affront to the rule of law and to the glorious values of the Constitution". The Raghubar Das government has not initiated any stringent action against these vigilantes. In fact, a recent survey revealed that Jharkhand tops the list of lynching incidents. That the Hindu vigilantes enjoy the blessings of the Union government was evident from Union minister Jayant Sinha honourig the lynching culprits who were awarded jail sentence.
Lynching was used to silence the critiques of the government and also to terrorise the tribals from raising the issue of land rights. For the past four years the poor adivasis have been resorting to peaceful agitations and bandhs to press their demand. But the Das government has been crushing the agitations.
The problem would not have spiralled out of control if the Modi government had acted decisively against these elements. Modi simply issued a one-liner assurance that the government was alive to the situation and would take action. He never sounded serious as any action would have gone against the interest of the Sangh Parivar.
Now the Supreme Court has asked governments "to ensure that the machinery of law and order functions efficiently and effectively in maintaining peace so as to preserve our quintessentially secular ethos and pluralistic social fabric in a democratic set-up governed by rule of law… In times of chaos and anarchy, the State has to act positively and responsibly to safeguard and secure the Constitutional promises to its citizens".
The Centre and states have been given four weeks to ensure compliance and file reports. The court warned that "lynching and mob violence are creeping threats that may gradually take the shape of a Typhon-like monster as evidenced in the wake of the rising wave of incidents of recurring patterns by frenzied mobs across the country, instigated by intolerance and misinformed by circulation of fake news and false stories".
The three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud also recommended to Parliament to create a separate law for lynching and provide adequate punishment for such acts. At least 97 per cent of cow-related violence (61 of 63 attacks) in the period between 2010 and 2017 occurred after May 2014, when Modi came to power.
--(IPA Service)