Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a clarion call to bring vikas (development) back to the centre of public discourse in the country. He urged his flock to move ahead with only one mantra, “Vikas, vikas, vikas. The schemes for development and the benefit of common people should be taken to the last village and last person.” This is the kind of feel-good statement I like to read while sipping my morning cup of tea. But there is a problem. The ringing endorsement of vikas came when the gruesome images of the lynching of two Muslim cattle traders, one a teenage boy, in a remote village in Jharkhand’s Latehar district were still fresh.
The two had been mercilessly beaten, then hanged from a tree. Their relatives said they were taking buffaloes to a cattle market nearby when a mob attacked them. The police have arrested five men for the ghoulish murders, including one with links to a local cow protection group. The images of vikas and vigilantism are clashing. Development does not happen in chaos. There are factors that are conducive to development and factors that militate against it.
Delivering a lecture in Bengaluru earlier this month, Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser to the government, said how a country deals with its social divisions plays a major role in the trajectory of its economic development. But then he chose not to elaborate. “When I leave office I will speak of it more freely,” he said. We await Mr Subramanian’s memoirs with bated breath. Meanwhile, however, there is an urgent need to ask a fundamental question: Can vikas and vigilantism co-exist?
Social divisions exist in every country. And countries develop despite them. But the question today is what happens when such divisions are allowed to deepen? What happens to the development story when mob sentiment is not reined in and allowed to erupt into mob justice? Back to Jharkhand’s Latehar district, one of the poorest patches in a state that has one of the worst levels of malnourishment among women and children. How does vigilantism play out in a place like this?
There are two ways you can look at the situation. You can either tell yourself that these are aberrations, isolated instances, mere law and order problems. That it has happened before, that mobs have attacked non-Muslims too, that tribal women have also been lynched. And so on. Or you can start asking questions, as many are asking.
Would the latest reported instance of mob justice not add to insecurities of minorities? In the public imagination, would it not bring up memories of Dadri when a Muslim family was attacked following false rumours that they had beef in their fridge? The father, an old man, was beaten to death; his son was severely injured. What about the killing of a truck driver in northern Himachal Pradesh for attempting to take cattle to a slaughter house?
There has also been the case of the Bajrang Dal activist who forced closure of slaughter houses being hacked to death in Mangalore. All of these are equally reprehensible. Vigilantism or mob justice is not a new phenomenon in India. Nor is it unique to this country. But where are we headed when people can openly incite violence in the name of faith and cow protection?
Check out just one sample, the website of Gau Raksha Dal — http://protectyourcow.blogspot.in/2010/08/about-us.html. In its objectives, this group clearly says it has no “trust on government support because the Government of India and other state governments are involved in cow slaughtering” and that its objective — “protection all cows” — can only be “achieved by killing all killers of cows”.
Cow slaughter is banned in most states. But does that justify an open call to murder in the name of protecting the cow? Can instances of vigilantism be shrugged off as aberrations, mere law and order problems? What does it say about the rule of law in this country? In fairness, it must be said that Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons have condemned such acts of mob violence. The trouble is, in the same breath they often say the cow must be protected, that anybody even thinking of slaughtering a cow must be punished.
In Jharkhand where the BJP is in power, chief minister Raghubar Das said he has directed the state administration to ensure that incidents like the Latehar lynchings are not repeated, but then curiously added, “In Jharkhand, an act is also there that no one can take animals outside the state.” The BJP’s central leadership has spoken little about the savagery. It was a hideous incident; violent tactics used by self-styled cow-protectors who take law in their hands in the name of cow worship should be met with zero tolerance from every quarter.
And the sternest action. But even while the inquiry was ongoing, Mr Das was hinting at possible cattle smuggling. Why? This deliberate attempt to shift the focus on the victims and not the crime is what fuels a feeling of insecurity in the country. Especially since everybody knows that many cow protection vigilantes are ideological kin of the same Hindutva brigade that provides ideological fuel to the party in power.
A country on the fast track to development should have no place for vigilantes no matter what “cause” they espouse. Economic growth alone is not an adequate measure of development. Rule of law and human rights matter a great deal. The chilling frequency with which vigilantes are striking shows total defiance of the rule of law, a prerequisite to development. The better the rule of law, the richer a nation.
Fear, on the other hand, is inimical to development. Which company, community worker, doctor would go to places pockmarked with violence and where there is an uneasy relationship between different groups? Vigilantism makes news because of the horrific nature of mob violence. It scares people and pushes away a vigorous debate on the real issues — the nuts and bolts of vikas.
How many children who enrol in schools drop out and why? What is the state of primary health centres? And what jobs await our burgeoning youthful population?
Instead, what we are getting are repeated instances of mob violence and tepid responses by the powers that be. That is a downward spiral that negates attempts at vikas.
