BJP's reaction to the attack on Swami Agnivesh has a message for lynch mobs

Through its penchant for blaming the victim, a clear signal has been sent to lynch mobs that their cause would be championed by the government

The premeditated attack on Swami Agnivesh in Pakur in the state of Jharkhand by an organised mob came within hours of the Supreme Court judgment calling mob lynching unacceptable and holding local administration, state and central governments responsible for preventing it.

Agnivesh was there on the invitation of a Paharia tribal organisation. The youth front affiliated with the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha – had announced that it would show black flags to him. Its leaders accepted that they had planned to do so as Agnivesh justified eating beef and was a Naxal supporter. But they then denied the involvement of their members in the attack and, in the same breath, rationalised it by saying that it was a natural reaction to what Agnivesh has been doing.

It was a horrendous scene. A 78 year old man being shoved, pushed and beaten up by nearly a hundred musclemen – his clothes torn and his head made bare! To look at the picture of a shaken and disheveled Agnivesh was itself torture.

It reminded one of a similar attack on Medha Patkar in the Sabarmati Ashram in 2002. The attackers belonged to the same organisational network.

It is very clear that the assault was not a spontaneous outburst of the local people as is being sought to be portrayed. While disowning the crime, the leaders of the BYJM and the BJP are justifying the cause. This is consistent with their stance in all cases of mob lynching done in the name of beef eating or illegal cow trading. They deny their involvement but defend the “offended” people . They put the entire blame on the victims themselves, who by their sacrilegious act provoked the otherwise peace loving people to commit the crime. Thus those who have been wronged are charged with double crime: the first which offended the people and second leading them into doing something they are incapable of.

The BYJM allege that Agnivesh was there as part of a conspiracy to brain wash the gullible Paharias, to convert them into Christianity, to spread unrest, etc. While explaining their stand on the attack, they blamed Agnivesh for not informing the administration and police about his visit and minute-to-minute programme. Even if it were true, how does it become a cause for attack? The abject failure of the police in not only not preventing the the attack and after that not apprehending the criminals who can easily be identified through the CCTV recordings.

How does then one then view the attack on Swami Agnivesh? Why would it be wrong to call it an instance of mob lynching? Why should it also not give us an understanding of how mobs are formed?

One has to see the audacity of the attackers. Agnivesh is a national figure. If he can be assaulted in this manner with impunity, all political and social workers are vulnerable. The affiliates of the ruling party think that they are the police and army of this country and it is for them to identify the anti-state and anti-nationals, judge them and also punish them! Since they cat in the name of the nation, their act cannot be called criminal.

Let us pause for a minute and think: if a central minister thinks it fit to visit the accused of the lynching of a Muslim who were also convicted by the first court even if they managed to secure bail by the high court, another goes to the family of the accused in another case of lynching and weeps for his helplessness in helping them out, a third goes to the funeral of an accused and and salutes him while his body is draped with the national flag, what is the message that goes out to those who plan and execute these lynchings? Would it be wrong to say that the mob is in fact one with the government or the government is going all out to show that it is one with the mob?

The message has been sent to the lynch mobs that their cause would be championed by the government and the ruling party even if it strategically distances itself from the actual act. The mob understands the constraints of the party and the government. Gopal Godse wrote that they didn’t want to embarrass their organisation and therefore they didn’t make their association with an issue. Rather, they didn’t not object when the organisation distanced itself from him and his brother. Similarly, the act of the demolition of the Babri Masjid was disowned by the RSS and the BJP but the cause defended.

One needs to understand that mob lynching is one of the forms of violence. How would you differentiate the violence done to the Babri mosque from the violence done to Akhlaq or Pahlu Khan or Qasim or Swami Agnivesh? In a fundamental way they belong to the same category. Most of the instances of violence against the Muslims and Christians are premeditated. Mobs are prepared and a spontaneity given to them to make them look like a reaction at the spur of the moment to some offence. There is an organisational machinery working overtime to prepare ground for such spontaneity to strike root and flourish.

The Supreme Court has rightly taken a strong view of the epidemic of mob lynching in the country. But its reasons are deeply political. To turn people into mobs, unthinking multitude who do what would be unthinkable to a deliberative mind is the main project of this politics. It keeps creating diverse causes for this violent streak of the people to take hold of them. It keeps arousing their baser instincts. Once they get caught in such a situation they lose their sense of discrimination. They become complicit in an act of violence. They find that they have turned into criminals.

This politics of violence thus criminalises the masses. They become a prisoner of this situation. Those who point at this criminality turn into their enemies. They are thus caught in a vicious circle.

The attack on Swami Agnivesh took place in spite of the reprimand by the Supreme Court. It was also legitimised. How can then such violence be stopped? Laws do make an impact but this is about a political culture which thrives on violence. Unless the patrons and leaders of this politics are thrown out of power, it would be impossible to implement what the Supreme Court wants from the state.

Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University.

Published in arrangement with The Wire.