BJP leaders and
workers burn an effigy of the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee,
in protest against the murder of a BJP worker, Trilochan Mahato, aged 20, in
June. The BJP alleges that it was a political murder linked to the violent
civic polls in the state, earlier the month
THE entire political class is to blame for the
“polarisation and radicalisation” of India that has spawned mob violence, the
Moderator of the Good Shepherd Church of India, the Rt Revd Joseph d’Souza,
said this week.
After dozens of lynchings in recent months,
people of all religions needed to join in countering the “mobocracy” he
said.
The Telegraph reports
that, in the past six months, 31 people have been killed across ten states, in
most cases after being accused of kidnapping children in viral posts on
Whatsapp and Facebook. Among them was Mohammad Azam Usmanseb, 32, an IT
technician beaten to death by a mob of 200 last month.
Last month, the Chief Justice of India, Dipak
Misra, condemned “horrendous acts of mobocracy” and urged the government to
take action to combat lynchings and stop the spread of internet rumours that
fuelled the violence.
“The people involved in mob violence believe
that they have their own people in power, and the police don’t act when they
should act,” Bishop d’Souza said on Tuesday.
Dalits, Muslims, churches, and Hindu leaders
had all been targeted, he said.
“You cannot say directly that Modi and his
government is involved in this, because no sane government can back this. But,
you can trace it to the radicalisation of groups along very radical
interpretations of Hinduism, which most Hindus do not subscribe to. So there
are many moderate Hindus now fighting this. . .
“The political class as a whole, in my
opinion, not just the BJP, is to be blamed for the polarisation and
radicalisation of Indian society along caste and religious lines. In an attempt
to get votes during an election they appeal to the narrow identities of people
and their insecurities.”
The All India Christian Council — of which he
is President — was leading efforts to find “fraternal partners between
religious communities across the world to address these issues”. This would
entail work to “challenge the lies that are being spread”, from claims that
Christians were involved in forced conversions to the “demonisation” of
Muslims, accused of being “terrorists and anti-national”, to reports that Dalits
seeking rights were “Maoists”.
Social media was a “huge problem”, he
confirmed. India had 600 million mobile-phone users, and “probably the largest
Whatsapp community in the world. . . It’s a very effective tool now if you want
to galvanise your friends and colleagues.” It had been used, he reported, to
recruit the perpetrators of the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Kashmiri
girl.
As President of the Dignity Freedom Network
(formerly the Dalit Freedom Network), Bishop d’Souza said that the situation of
Dalits was “both hopeful and also very challenging”. He highlighted the
affirmative-action benefits granted to Dalits, and the success of the Network’s
104 centres and schools, currently educating 27,000 children. Seventy per cent
of the 2300 graduates had entered higher education, and one young woman had
secured a doctorate in pharmacology.
But Dalit and tribal women remained the
primary victims of the country’s sex trade, and gender-selective abortions and
female foeticide had resulted in the loss of almost 20 million girls.
The caste system “poisons all of society”, and
as Dalits began to assert themselves, violence had been unleashed, he said. He
cited the case of Rohith Chakravarti Vemula, a PhD student at the University of
Hyderabad who committed suicide in 2016. He was a member of the Ambedkar
Students’ Association, which fights for the rights of Dalit students.
“The societal mindset of caste has permeated
all of the religions including Christianity, it is shameful to say, in the
South where there is so much of caste in the Church,” he said.
Born into a middle-class Christian family, he
had been “blind” to their cause, growing up. But after marrying a Christian
woman from a tribal background, and witnessing the caste protests of the 1990s,
he had “had to wake up”.
“Now, of course, it completely dominates me,” he said. “I don’t
think you can really do the full gospel if you ignore the issue of justice and
righteousness and reconciliation.” ~ https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/17-august/news/world/indian-bishop-decries-mob-violence
