India: Lynching in the name of vigilantism
Aryan Mishra’s death shows how unchecked violence and ideology-driven crime plague India
The ogre of hate crime in India — that has seen no let up despite BJP returning to power as part of a coalition government — bared its fangs once again, this time on a school going boy. A class 12 student, Aryan Mishra was out late night with friends to eat noodles when he was shot dead in cold blood.
The car the teenagers were travelling in was in a high-speed chase for 40 kilometres by armed men on the deserted Delhi-Agra National Highway and one bullet was fired directly at Aryan’s chest. The attackers were not highway robbers, this was another calculated assault dictated by ideology.
The police say the assailants ‘mistook’ the boys to be cattle smugglers — only in the stone age would that crime justify a murder. Just as casually as the boy was killed, the murder has also been dismissed as a ‘misunderstanding’ by the murderers, the police and a plaint media. That it even made news is because the boy was an upper caste Hindu unlike when 15-year-old Junaid was stabbed to death on a train.
Aryan’s killer reportedly apologised to the man who ‘carried my youngest son’s body on my shoulders,’ the father was told his son was murdered but ‘now he regrets killing a Brahmin (upper caste).’
No Robin Hoods
In other words, there would have been no remorse over the killing of a child from a minority faith. The tragedy apart, all that is problematic is summed up by the reaction to the heinous crime.
The narrative of a ‘mistake’ underlines not just state support but also blurring of boundaries between official law enforcement and so-called cattle ‘vigilantes’ who are no Robin Hoods. Instead, they run amok across highways, predominantly in India’s north, armed or with sticks.
Calling themselves ‘Gau Rakshaks (cow protectors)’, the suspects are members of a nationwide umbrella of ‘vigilantes’ linked to the right-wing who claim to protect cattle from slaughter — banned in several Indian states — but have instead laid bare the weaponising of intent with islamophobia.
Nothing empowers mob justice more than silence, both of a political class and of civil society. Three days after Aryan’s killing, Sabir, a ragpicker was beaten to death, he too was suspected of consuming a banned meat item. In India, human life is not just cheap, it is also not a priority.
The Chief Minister of Haryana where the lynching took place, Nayab Singh Saini’s response was to say, ‘who could stop them?’ there is no compromise on ‘cow protection.’ It is rare for BJP leaders to condemn such attacks including when they are fatal.
'Vigilantes' roaming fearlessly
When a child is killed, a line is crossed, for children are the weakest link and to attack them when they have no chance to retaliate or save themselves calls for the strictest punishment. Yet, the rot is so deep that our collective outrage is conditional, it is dictated by ideology while on the other hand the wheels of justice unfortunately grind slowly.
In 2018, Indian Supreme Court issued a directive, ‘lynching is an affront to the rule of law and to the exalted values of the Constitution itself. These extrajudicial attempts under the guise of protection of the law have to be nipped in the bud; lest it lead to the rise of anarchy and lawlessness which would plague and corrode the nation like an epidemic.’
This hate crime first made headlines in 2015 when 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was killed in Uttar Pradesh by an angry mob. Since then, there have been almost 30 killings which have hardly raised an eyebrow. As the number of these extrajudicial killings rise, correspondingly ‘vigilantes’ roam fearlessly and share their crimes openly on social media, impossible without patronage.
As things stand, the next victim is only hours away like 72- year- old Ashraf Ali Sayyed was on a train to meet his daughter when he was brutally assaulted.
Tomorrow there will be another innocent Indian and as Aryan’s death shows, no life is sacred. What then is the definition of a crime and, its enforcer? In the absence of answers grieving parents like Aryan’s mother will keep asking, ‘Are minorities not humans, Are they not our brothers?’