Response of the media, liberals and civil society to lynching leaves questions unanswered

The pattern is now familiar. Every time a lynching takes place, it is followed by outrage on social media. It is followed quickly by a parallel narrative questioning the victim’s conduct and character and blaming him for the incident. The most popular thread is to dismiss the victim to have been a thief or a cattle smuggler. The question of why even a thief should be made to chant , “ Jai Shri Ram’ or ‘ Jai Hanuman’ or why a mob should be allowed to take law into its hands and kill a fellow human being is rarely addressed. Nor is the provocative question asked whether similar mobs would be justified in lynching thiefs from other communities and religious beliefs.

Equally disappointing is the role of the media, which fail to ask pertinent questions and fail to do sufficient groundwork before rushing to air such news.

In March 2019, in a case of custodial death of two Muslims in Bihar’s Sitamarhi, media’s omissions were glaring. (https://newscentral24x7.com/bihar-two-muslim-youths-die-police-custody-sitamarhi-custodial-killings-ground report/). This extensively well-investigated report missed out on the fact of allegation that the two Muslim youths were wanted by the Sitamarhi police in a case of bike-snatching and killing of a couple.

Once such allegations are downplayed by the liberal-secular media, and are then pointed out by majoritarian forces on social media in response to the liberal outrage, the whole story gets an unsavoury spin and complexity. It breeds suspicions and ends up diluting the outrage.

Therefore, rather than ignoring any such concocted or true allegations, responsibility of the liberal-secular forces is to sensitise and mobilise the masses that mere allegation (or even conviction) of theft does not make one liable to be killed by a mob.

Lynching of Tabrez Ansari, 24, in Jharkhand ahead of the Assembly election in the state is a case in point.

Tabrez Ansari belonged to a village Kadmadih (Adityapur, also called Gamhariya Block, near Jamshedpur, in the BJP ruled Jharkhand). He was caught by a mob in a nearby village, Dhatkidih, in the intervening night of June 17/18. This is a village of 135 houses (626 people) as per the census 2011. Tabrez was tied to an electric pole on the street, and was beaten mercilessly; was coerced to confess that he was ‘attempting’ to steal a bike, all video-recorded spectacularly. Tabrez is said to be 18th victim of lynching in Jharkhand in the last three years.

As per reports, the bike in question was without any registration number. Which villager of Dhatkidih is the owner of the bike which was allegedly being stolen by Tabrez? What are his antecedents? Thus far, to the best of my knowledge, this question still remains unanswered.

Another question that remains unanswered is: did Tabrez have any reason to be in the village Dhatkidih on the evening of 17th June? It has been reported that Tabrez was returning from Jamshedpur to his home village Kadmadih. Did Dhatkidih fall on the route to Kadmadih? Or, did Tabrez Ansari have any specific, justifiable reason for having been in the village at the time?

The eleven people of Dhatkidih, arrested by the Saraikela police, accused of lynching Tabrez, include a man called Pappu (Prakash) Mandal. The local and national media have hardly reported much about the personal details, educational-economic profile, political affiliations, etc., of the accused.

Sections of local Hindi dailies, particularly the Dainik Jagran, have however published details about the village Kadmadih and informed readers that Kadmadih, a Muslim dominated village, is infamous for theft and that police have often recovered stolen items from that village. Generally, the local sub-regional editions of such Hindi dailies are very particular about reporting the stories of theft. Such stuff is quite popular among the semi-literate news-consumers. Yet, the spectacularly video-graphed incident remained un-reported in these Hindi dailies on the following day (June 19). These were reported only after the death of Tabrez, when the perpetrators were not able to avoid facing judicial processes.

Till Tabrez was in police custody, the collusion between the local police and the alleged offenders like Pappu Mandal was evident. Thus, besides the criminal justice procedures, and the role of the police, there is a pressing need to examine the role of these kinds of local vernacular media. Civil Society groups as well as the relevant agencies of press ombudsman must examine the roles of the vernacular dailies. A quick rebuttal to these incendiary and misleading news reports should have been brought out. It needs to be added here that at least since the late 1980s, sections of vernacular media have been playing a vicious role in communalising the social space, particularly in the Hindi belt.

In the initial reporting about the eventual death of Tabrez, why did the liberal media omit the allegation that Tabrez and two others were accused of attempting to steal a bike?

For about four days, during 18-23 June, the grievously, in fact fatally, injured Tabrez was in police custody and jail. Yet, the civil society groups committed to providing legal aid to lynch victims remained un-informed. Because of which no intervention could take place. Such an intervention could have ensured not only legal aid but also proper and timely medical care to the unfortunate person, who, reports later informed, worked as a welder in Pune, had married some months ago and had come home to take his bride with him back to Pune. Why indeed would such a person try to steal a two-wheeler ?

Another pertinent issue is: the Pasmanda activists, mainly confined to social media, have all along been saying that most of the lynch victims are from Pasmanda or backward Muslims. True. What they have been downplaying is that most of the perpetrators are also from Dalit-Bahujan background. It is therefore needed to explore as to how have they been communalised and made to hate the similarly located counterparts of theirs? Sections of Dalit-Bahujan activists as well as Pasmanda activists ---“ethno-political entrepreneurs”---have been advocating and working for a unity of the oppressed caste-groups, transcending/ dismissing the religious identities.

Lynching incidents have been rising. This should make all justice-loving people to introspect why the hate-mongers are succeeding in winning over subaltern groups.

Proportionate representation of the oppressed groups in the structures and processes of power remains a prerequisite for stopping such incidents. That does not mean that other and no less important efforts such as providing legal aid to the survivors, mobilising funds to extend financial help and strengthening solidarity among communities to prevent hate crimes be ignored.

One observed a similar failure in the case of encephalitis deaths of malnourished children in Muzaffarpur in June 2019. In the efforts to extend charitable medical help to prevent and manage the tragedy, one could see an obvious absence/under-representation of doctors from OBC/Pasmanda location. Worse still, pointing it out on social media met with abusive and hate-filled trolls from such social media activists. They resorted to bigotry and intolerance.

Pertinently, no activist with Scheduled Caste and Hindu OBC identity was among the trollers; only the Pasmanda activists came out to troll me on social media. In fact, some of the Hindu OBCs frankly admitted the fact that the doctors from the oppressed social groups must have come out to rescue the children. Most of these poor malnourished children were from oppressed castes, such as Paswan, Musahar (Manjhi/Rishideo), Mallah (Nishad), and other most backward Muslim communities. Let it be noted that, in Muzaffarpur, the runner up candidate for Lok Sabha was a doctor from Nishad community.

In this era of ominously communalised society, politically and administratively backed hate-crimes, and a comatose opposition, those who fight for justice have several lessons to learn.