Lynching is nothing but terrorism

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/lynching-is-nothing-but-terrorism

 In Mob Lynching in India: A Record 2014-24, a team of eight Muslim editors and researchers led by Zafarul-Islam Khan, brings forth a dispassionate accounting of the phenomenon since Narendra Modi took office as prime minister. The 744-page tome sponsored by five Muslim and left-liberal NGOs carries a stinging analysis of the several hundred lynching incidents compiled.

The book is the latest in the series by publishers Pharos Media on human and minority rights in India. The collection forms a cogent counter-narrative to the officially propagated view on India’s internal security painting India’s Muslims negatively. The series is a resounding repudiation of the narrative bandied about at high volume in the strategic discourse.

The book presents a prominent perspective held by large sections of India’s Muslims: that lynching is a terror tactic designed to further marginalise Muslims. Lynching is mob violence indulged in on ascriptive grounds. If terrorism is minimally defined as violence with a political purpose to cow-down a target audience wider than the immediate target, then lynching wholesomely satisfies the definition.

Muslims have been in the sights of right-wing perpetrators under guise of cow protection, love jihad or for no other reason than their looks. Some non-Muslims have ended up as victims for being mistaken as Muslim. The targeting is amplified by social media to elicit a wider impact.

The political purpose is the physical, social and psychological invisibilisation of Muslims by constricting spaces of Muslim presence, articulation, visibility, economic activity, social engagement and national contribution. This Othering is a shaping of the battle-field for manufacture a majoritarian nation and state.

The tactic provides a distraction for the masses from the social inequity that revivalism foists on non-minority communities. Participation in collective activity – even if with a negative purpose - gives a sense of identity to substitute for the ennui of modern life and persisting lack of economic opportunity for participants, themselves largely deprived. The participants are conditioned to a ‘call up’ in short order as and when necessary. Having shed their inhibitions, they are ‘on call.’ Their leaders chalk up a manly image in local communties; while their handlers can claim political clout.

Its intellectual legitimation is to avenge historical wrongs. It is to (re)kindle machismo in the majority, considered servile in a particular narrow ideology. The purpose of crafting of a majority for electoral perpetuity and social revivalism is well served.

The impunity attending lynching indicates this larger game-plan, the unsaid part of viksit bharat. Antipathy for the illegal immigrant – read Bengali Muslim – alone is not the driver of back-to-back strategy benchmarks being rolled out: starting with the citizenship amendment bill, through the special intensive revision and set to culminate post-census in a national register of citizens and delimitation. No wonder Foreign Minister Jaishankar says that if he were to reveal the regime’s grand strategy to anyone, it would be necessary to kill the recipient alongside.

The book’s compilation of instances of lynching recounts what happened in each case and the aftermath. Essentially perpetrators were left-off on bail to begin with, before being allowed to proceed scot free; some being feted. Worse, it’s gone a step further with victims being charged for ‘provoking’ the attacks in first place, such as by transporting cattle or striking up relationships with non-Muslims. While laws for cow protection were enacted to place the minority offside, draft legislation prohibiting the proliferating phenomenon of lynching never saw light of day. The complicity of right-wing politics, police and lower courts is copiously documented, showing up state capture.

The book includes instances of lynching as part of one-sided mob violence, as occurred against Muslims in Delhi in 2020, including by members of security forces. It also counts the beating to death by mobs of non-minority victims, mostly from downtrodden communities and of women for alleged witchcraft. It shows the country-wide nature of the practice by including instances such as against alleged child-lifters, when even Hindus were preyed on. The book does not include the encounter killings, that now number in four figures, though any uniformed outfit indulging in such acts is no less than a lawless mob. Since the police that ought to maintain such records abstains from doing so - lest it let the cat out of the bag - the book is a necessary corrective.

In the decade covered, an outsourcing of societal surveillance and disciplining to vigilante groups has taken place. Their foot-print expanded in sync with the ascending electoral fortunes of the ruling party. In sum, the state abdicated on its responsibility of monopoly of violence to ideology-inspired and controlled micro-terror groups.

The result is evident across Delhi’s streets today, when saffronite foot-soldiers with police complicity go about intercepting youth protesting the chief election commissioner’s shenanigans. It also explains the boast by a right-wing heavy-weight once that his organisation can whistle up a militia in a mere three days.

Pharos Media’s preceding publications set out an alternative reading of India’s internal security. Dr. Khan’s earlier works dwell on the weaponization of the kanwar yatra against Muslims along its route and how the disinformation surrounding Covid was used to scapegoat Muslims and divert attention from the colossal tragedy akin to Partition that was the lockdown.

Also in the catalogue are works by intellectuals Shamsul Islam, Subhash Gatade and Ram Puniyani that unmask anti-Constitution ethnic nationalism. The security-centric volumes are by two redoubtable policemen, RB Sreekumar on the Gujarat pogrom and SM Mushrif on an under-studied angle to Mumbai 26/11.

Given the paradigm dominance-like status of the popular security narrative, such works are confined to the margins with mainstream publishing houses – never very steadfast - maintaining a discreet distance. For their part, strategic analysts are loath to give such findings credence, fearful of peer pressure and reputational costs of being termed conspiracy theorists. Settling the jigsaw pieces does not command the attention it deserves since the strategic community has fallen in line, as have all institutions. Thus, a dubious narrative gets a free pass.

What these publications do is to fill a gap in furnishing both facts and analyses to generate a democratically healthy scepticism of the received wisdom on internal security. These have a historical value and stand as an embarassing witness. But, in light of the recent flicker of hope generated by the ongoing street protests against the regime’s hubristic over-reach, such works acquire an immediacy. Civil society has stepped up where the state has stepped back to furnish the arguments against a viksit bharat forged in violence.

Dr. Khan, a product of Al Azhar, Cairo and Manchester universities, is known for the moral courage he demonstrated in his stand as Delhi Minorities Commission chairperson in turning the spotlight on the actual perpetrators in the commission’s investigation of the 2020 violence in Delhi. Clearly, he is unfazed by motivated actors seeking to silence him when he was last in the news lamenting the isolation of Indian Muslims. His book amounts to a guerrilla counter-action to reclaim security studies and strategic good sense.

Zafarul Islam Khan, Mob Lynching in India: A record 2014-2014, New Delhi: Pharos Media, 2026, pp. 746, Rs. 900/-, ISBN 81-7221157-0