{"id":35835,"date":"2018-11-01T11:57:03","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T06:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=35835"},"modified":"2018-11-01T11:57:03","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T06:27:03","slug":"its-time-to-enact-an-anti-lynching-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/its-time-to-enact-an-anti-lynching-law\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time to enact an anti-lynching law:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/its-time-to-enact-an-anti-lynching-law\/article19423114.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s time to enact an anti-lynching law<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With escalating numbers of lynching cases, the country needs a concrete anti-lynching law devoid of socio-political loopholes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The Act against lynching:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The The National Campaign Against Mob Lynching\u2019s (NCAML) draft Protection from Lynching Act, 2017 defines, for the first time in Indian legal history, the terms \u2018lynching\u2019, \u2018mob\u2019 and \u2018victim\u2019 of mob lynching.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It makes lynching a non-bailable offence, criminalises dereliction of duty by a policeman, criminalises incitement on social media, and stipulates that adequate compensation be paid, within a definite time frame, to victims and survivors.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also guarantees a speedy trial and witness.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The loopholes:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0I<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t is difficult to fault the intent or the provisions of the draft legislation. Nonetheless, two aspects merit close scrutiny:<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The potential for abuse of the legilation, and the underlying premise that a generic anti-lynching law could address India\u2019s lynching problem.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the question of misuse, the provisions empowering local law enforcement officials to take pre-emptive action could easily be invoked to criminalise peaceful public assembly, especially if the gathering is of workers or members of marginalised communities agitating for their rights.For instance:<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The police could use this law to detain a group of laborers planning a dharna, on the grounds that they constitute a mob that poses a threat to company officials.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A major reason for the recent rise in lynching is impunity, i.e., exemption from punishment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem is not mob lynching, but the mob lynching of minorities, for that is where impunity comes in.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The Anti-Communal Violence Bill:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Anti-Communal Violence Bill was buried because it was felt that it threatened the autonomy of States by raising a parallel structure that undermined federalism. But this is a misrepresentation, and the Bill needs to be revived for three reasons:<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It fixes command responsibility for communal incidents.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It recognises that targeted communal violence disproportionately victimises minorities.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It creates a mechanism to insulate investigations of communal violence from political interference.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moreover, the draft for anti-lynching law needs to be revised to incorporate these key elements of the Anti-Communal Violence Bill.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, the demand for an anti-lynching law needs to be supported by a parallel campaign for police reforms.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s time to enact an anti-lynching law: Context: With escalating numbers of lynching cases, the country needs a concrete anti-lynching law devoid of socio-political loopholes. The Act against lynching: The The National Campaign Against Mob Lynching\u2019s (NCAML) draft Protection from Lynching Act, 2017 defines, for the first time in Indian legal history, the terms \u2018lynching\u2019,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/its-time-to-enact-an-anti-lynching-law\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">It\u2019s time to enact an anti-lynching law:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704776094},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}