What lynchings say about the Indian state:

What lynchings say about the Indian state: (Live Mint, Editorial)

Context:

• In the last few years, cow vigilantism has been the catalyst of violence across India.
• The government fails to respond to mob violence in line with constitutional principles.

Briefing of the incident:

• Just when on 29^th June, 2017 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a public statement about condemning for killing in the name of cow protection, a small mob lynched a man in Jharkhand.
• The victim is beaten to death for allegedly carrying beef.

Aspects of the problem:

• One of the major aspects of such lynching is executed either for religion or caste.
• The second aspect is the individual notions of justice in its crudest form over the constitutional ideals. It is a deep-rooted problem in Indian polity.
• Many are of the opinion that Muslim men are becoming soft targets in the name of beef trade.
• They further added that these lynching are not accidents but a deliberate act of few groups supported by the administration.
• The minorities were the target of 51 percent of violence centered on bovine issues over nearly eight years (2010 to 2017).
• Moreover, millions of people in the minority Muslim and lower-caste Hindu communities depend on work in the meat and leather industries.
• Finally, with every lynching new excuses are found to justify the violence, statistics are reeled out of lynching during a previous administration in an attempt to create a moral equivalence between a murder and targeted violence.

Government’s negligence

• Governments at both the Central and state levels must take on themselves for such violence in the nation.
• The Government has often looked away, and in some instances, been direct enablers, either victim-blaming or equivocating.
• The judiciary too has not always played its role adequately either.
• As for example, Mahesh Chandra Sharma’s Jago Janta Society v. State of Rajasthan & Ors, 2017 ruling in the Rajasthan high court recommends in making the cow the national animal, and life imprisonment for cow slaughter—and made it clear that his ruling was informed by religion.
• Lynching does not find mention in the Indian Penal Code. No particular law has been passed to deal with lynching.
• Lynching is one of the standard techniques of popular politics in India, which are rarely prosecuted or even treated as crimes.

Consequences:

• When the government is unable to control such lynching, the state’s capacity to keep society’s worst impulses in check is further eroded.
• The recent lynching in Jharkhand has provoked the Muslim women to pick up arms in future to save their men. If this happens so, there will be a massive communal violence.
• Each violent event hardened community boundaries, none more so than the widening divide between the majority and the minority.

Solution:

• There’s an urgent need for police reforms by improving organizational capabilities or insulating the police from political pressure.
• A concrete result will require political will to initiate reforms.
• Government needs to hold the law and order machinery accountable through transparent mechanisms when it fails to deliver.
• Mob violence in India has stemmed from ignorance and would recede with education and modernity.

Conclusion:

• Lynching is not only shameful for  the cumulative effect on the moral life of the nation and also for those who excuse them and the troubling message it sends about the state’s abilities and prerogatives.