By Sushil Kutty
Lynching over the ‘gaumata’ is back in currency and poll-bound Haryana is where it has returned with a vengeance. In one incident, a Class 12 student was mistaken for a cow-smuggler and shot dead by a group of gau-rakshaks. In another incident a Muslim migrant from West Bengal was brutally lynched in a Haryana village for allegedly consuming beef. Now, his fellow travellers haven’t stirred outdoors. They want to return to the safety of West Bengal ASAP.
Rag-picker Sabir Malik’s lynching set other Muslims in the village in CharkhiDadri thinking. “It could have been me if I hadn’t been in the police lock-up,” said one of them. The irony isn’t lost. The police locked Muslims up as behind the bars was a safer option than being a free-bird under the open sky.
Sabir wasn’t in the lock-up. He and a friend were lured to a bus-stand and set upon. Gau-rakshaks are notoriously ill-informed and more often than not innocent people are lynched. Sabir’s mistake was he went to the bus-stop. It is hard to believe he was killed on the suspicion he had consumed beef.
How the killers came to determine he had consumed beef is lost on even the police, who arrived long after Malik was no more. Getting KIA on the battlefield is an honour but to be killed by gau-rakshaks is a tragic waste of precious human life.
Could it be that Haryana is poised for assembly elections and during elections, anything and everything is fair? The story doing the rounds is that rag-picker Sabir Malik and his friend were told to come to a scrap-shop near the bus stand. The friend escaped the vigilante, but Sabir couldn’t. The lynching was pre-meditated cold-blooded murder.
The killing fields of Charkhi-Dadri have many migrant workers from Assam and West Bengal. Police have increased security in the area. The politically-charged atmosphere is to blame. The police are also keeping an eye on social media. Cow politics is rampant in Haryana where vegetarians outnumber non-vegetarians, especially the Jat community.
Sabir Malik went without thinking. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. There are lots of unemployed youth in Haryana with nothing to do except loiter the streets. And protecting the gaumata is an honourable pursuit. The most number of gau-rakshaks in India are in Haryana with Rajasthan a close second.
Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi is a protector of black-bucks and has actor Salman Khan in the crosshairs. There is talk that young men in Haryana are going around on foot, asking people what their food preferences are? And they quote chapter and verse from the cow protection law, which also comes in handy when getting the police on their side.
That the Bharatiya Janata Party has to consolidate Hindu votes to win the upcoming elections also tells a story though Modi’s party makes sure lynching is not taken as a BJP-pastime. Fact remains that pollsters have predicted a tough election for the BJP and reports say Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not welcome.
Haryana has a cow protection law, the Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan (HGSG) Act, which bans “cow trafficking, slaughter, and beef possession and consumption.” It was enacted in 2015 by the then Manohar Lal Khattar government, a year after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister.
Today, with Chief Minister Nayab Saini at the helm and elections looming, there is renewed focus on cow protection. The Haryanvi is peculiarly reverent towards the cow. Youth who take up cow protection, forming gau-rakshakdals, are feted and honoured. Gau-rakshaks like Monu Manesar and Bittoo Bajrangi, both of whom gained folklore notoriety for their exploits, are local heroes.
The Khattar government made a great show of arresting them but not before they attained near-cult status. Today, Chief Minister Nayab Saini is downplaying the lynchings and talking more about how the gaumata should be protected at all costs. Police said eight people were arrested and one of them jailed. Two juveniles are in the child correction centre while five remain in police custody.
Malik’s friends haven’t stirred out of their shanties since Malik was lynched. Courage has fled the shanties. The meat Malik and his friend bought that fateful day on August 25 was “not cow meat, it was buffalo.” Police stood mute spectators when gangs of youth barged into shanties asking to inspect the food the residents of the shanties had prepared for dinner.
“Are you Bangladeshi?” was the refrain and Aadhaar cards were inspected. Haryana, on its way to elections, is a dangerous place for Muslims. What people ate or planned to eat hasn’t yet become an election issue but police took away some of the meat from the shanties and sent it for testing.
The fact remains that elections are just round the corner and incidents of lynching have become frequent. The unemployed Hindu youth have nothing else to do and cow protection is thought of as a noble calling. Cows stand a better chance than human beings of certain faith in election-bound Haryana. The Class 12 student whose car was chased by ‘gaurakshaks’ was killed by shots to the neck and chest. He wasn’t Muslim but collateral. Also, there were women in the car. (IPA Service)
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