Understanding lynchings: With silent consent for mob violence, society is outsourcing its guilt – By Ajay Gudavarthy
…While acts of violence could be banal, the silent support for such acts is often the result of a well-thought-out effort to outsource the utility that violence brings with it. This is true of the violence we have been witnessing in India in the last five years: mob lynchings across India, the rape of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir, Dalits being assaulted in several parts of the country. Even the growing use of abusive language and everyday humiliations for people from marginal and minority groups have all received tacit consent.…
In 2015, when I visited the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, I chatted with a young curator at the museum attached to the memorial. I posed a question I had long wondered about: how did Germans view the children with disabilities who were executed by the Nazis?… The curator said that their research revealed that there was silent consent from the parents of the children who were executed. The killers were seen not as monsters but as saviours.…
In today’s India, this attitude seems to be reflected in the way violence is being normalised. The frequent incidents of violence against Muslims, Dalits, women, migrants, the urban poor and students has silent consent in varying degrees. Fear alone cannot explain this consent. Acts of honouring and celebrating those responsible for such acts of violence – including handing them huge victories when they stand for elections and then selecting them for ministerial berths – cannot be explained by fear.…
SEE ALSO:
- Jobs or mobs for India? Words and acts of the violent fringe are mirrored by those in power – By Jyotiraditya M Scindia (Jul 20, 2019, Times of India)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/jobs-or-mobs-for-india-words-and-acts-of-the-violent-fringe-are-mirrored-by-those-in-power/ - A Manipur Muslim family struggles to understand why a lynch mob thought their MBA-son was a thief – By Harsh Mander (Jul 21, 2019, Scroll.in)
https://scroll.in/article/928470/a-manipur-muslim-family-struggles-to-understand-why-a-lynch-mob-thought-their-mba-son-was-a-thief - Law against lynching in Madhya Pradesh: Pointless punishment – By Anando Bhakto (Jul 20, 2019, The Hindu)
https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/article28573334.ece - Hate lynchings will destroy Modi’s government – By Sunil Sharan (Jul 16, 2019, Times of India)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/strategic-insights/hate-lynchings-will-destroy-modis-government/
