The aftermath of the Jharkhand lynching

Radhika Ramaseshan
Senior Journalist

On June 26, Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence on the lynching of  Tabrez Ansari at Jharkhand’s Seraikela Kharsawan on the suspicion of theft. Ansari was bludgeoned by a mob for nearly 18 hours before the police admitted him to a hospital where he succumbed to injuries. Although the provocation for Ansari’s killing was not because he had ‘attacked’/ ‘killed’ a cow or consumed beef — reasons for torment and assaults in Jharkhand and other states since 2014 — the episode qualified as a hate crime. It was inflamed by communal passions because Ansari was coerced into saying Jai Shri Ram and Jai Hanuman as he was being pummeled. 

Replying to the motion of thanks on the President’s address to Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, Modi said Ansari’s lynching ‘pained’ him. He called for rigorously punishing those who were culpable  but qualified the condemnation by censuring the Opposition for defaming Jharkhand as a ‘hub of lynching’ and ‘insulting’ its people. 

It was a double-barrelled statement that invoked a sentiment wrung dry by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat after the 2002 communal violence. As Chief Minister, Modi was touchy about an adverse allusion to the looting and killings and spun around the Opposition's critiques and campaign as an affront to Gujarat's "asmita" (self-pride).  His persona, politics and the violence conflated with the state's "self-respect" but the counter-attack that themed his discourse in the 2002 Assembly elections brought the BJP, a handsome victory.

Jharkhand votes in October this year with Haryana and Maharashtra and there's more than a hint in Modi’s response that regional ‘pride’ would likely become the dominant narrative for the BJP as it fights to keep its government in Ranchi. 

The test is awaited, but Jharkhand’s Opposition remained muted on the Ansari lynching, indicating that the Congress and its allies were defensive in openly supporting hate crime victims of the minority community. 

Indeed, Ansari’s killing was quickly overshadowed by another development, this time in Congress-ruled Rajasthan. Pehlu Khan — a lynch victim who was done to death in Alwar in April 2017 because he and his sons were taking home cattle purchased at a fair in Jaipur — was posthumously charge-sheeted by the state police as a ‘cow smuggler’ and arraigned by the Rajasthan Bovine Animal Act, 1995. Following howls of protest by rights activists and minority opinion-moulders, Ashok Gehlot, Chief Minister, was forced to clarify that the charges pertained to a separate case which the preceding government had investigated and registered. Gehlot claimed his government would henceforth be ‘vigilant’ in ensuring that such a situation did not recur. 

But the occurrence — unwittingly or deliberately — underlined an emerging trend that under a powerful BJP regime, the Opposition will think several times before pronouncing its stand on communally ‘sensitive’ issues that were open to multiple interpretations or misinterpretations.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress government endorsed a proposal to strengthen the MP Cow Progeny Slaughter Prevention Act 2004 against cattle offenders and provide for a jail term of six months to five years to those found being violent towards the bovine species. 

The Congress said the move was intended to fulfil a promise enshrined in its election manifesto but apparently, the party is in a mood to outplay the BJP on cow protection. Kamal Nath, Chief Minister, began his innings early this year by booking three Muslims under the National Security Act. Nath disregarded the ensuing protests. 

Those hoping that the Opposition would press for a separate statute to punish lynching should not expect anything because the BJP has determinedly set the agenda for the political establishment. The Opposition imagines that a deviation would be on peril of further alienating the majority community that tilted decisively towards the BJP in the 2019 elections.   

How is one to read Modi’s nuanced rejoinder to Ansari’s lynching? In September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq, a 52-year-old ironsmith, was dragged from his home in west Uttar Pradesh’s Bishahra village and lynched when it was announced that he had ‘slaughtered’ a cow. It was the first instance of lynching after the BJP came to power. Akhlaq’s killing grabbed international attention and seemed like reflecting adversely on the Modi government’s slogan of social inclusion and fairness.  He said nothing for a long time. A year later, on August 6, 2016, at a town-hall style meeting in Delhi, the Prime Minister told the audience he was ‘very angry’ with ‘criminals masquerading as cow protectors’ and said he had directed the state governments to draw up dossiers on them because he believed that ‘70 to 80 per cent’ were ‘anti-social elements’. It appeared like a watershed moment that carried the potential to end the attacks and killings done with impunity under the garb of cow vigilantism. 

The next day, Pravin Togadia, then the international working president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, turned apoplectic and in a press conference, alleged that the dossiers were tantamount to the ‘racial profiling’ of those Hindus who were ready to ‘sacrifice’ their lives to save the cow. 

It was unclear if Togadia’s tirade was sanctioned by the VHP or not. However, his fulmination set the BJP’s teeth on edge because the party's insiders could not get a measure of how Togadia’s message would be received by the rank and file.  It was a matter of time before lynching started again. 

The political class’ indifference and inertia prompted rights activist Harsh Mander to petition the Jharkhand High Court after Ansari’s killing and seek the implementation of the directives issued by the Supreme Court in 2018 for curbing mob lynching.  The apex court proposed enacting a special law to deal with lynching and the appointment of a nodal officer in each district to confront the threat. 

Cow protection is an integral part of the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s ideology. The Opposition is too wary to challenge lynching. Therefore, a law seems unfeasible in the foreseeable future.