The Kathua mindset: Divide between ‘Hindu’ Jammu and ‘Muslim’ Kashmir is spreading across India
The
gruesome rape and murder of an eight-year-old in Kathua took place in
January. That it took three months for a court monitored investigation
to be completed, that lawyers from Jammu sought to prevent the police
from filing the chargesheet and a crowd mobilised by the Hindu Ekta
Manch shouted slogans in support of the accused even as counter protests
were held in the Valley, speaks volumes for the steadily deepening
jagged fissure that now exists between a so called ‘Hindu’ Jammu and a
‘Muslim’ Kashmir.
The
Kathua mindset has spread beyond Kathua. Criminalisation of politics
has long been a feature of Indian public life, but the Kathua case has
shown a politicisation of crime, by which the accused are “normalised”
by creating a surreal social equivalence with other crimes. Social
media, an echo chamber of society’s baser prejudices, has unleashed
communal whataboutery on why the media is silent about a rape in Assam
in which the accused is a Muslim. But is a Muslim Ekta Manch shielding
the Assam accused? AUDF MP Badruddin Ajmal has condemned the rape.
The
Kathua mindset is marked by a frenzied obsession with Muslims.
Bakherwals, staunch loyalists of India when Pakistan raiders attacked in
1947, are viewed as “Muslim” nomads. Rohingyas are not destitute
refugees fleeing tyranny, they are only Muslims. Demolition of the Babri
Masjid is not seen as the criminal act it was but an act of historical
vengeance against 500 years of Muslim rule during which certain temples
were razed. Tipu Sultan was not a freedom fighter against the British,
but only a Muslim king. Aurangzeb was not an emperor of India but a
Muslim bigot whose memory must be erased.
This
mindset leads to the law too sometimes becoming subservient to
religious identity. In 2002, those accused of burning the train at
Godhra were swiftly arrested under POTA. By contrast in murder cases
during the 2002 riots state police were reluctant to act until a Supreme
Court monitored SIT probe was set up. The culture of “encounter
killing”, abhorrent in any civilised democracy, is often legitimised.
Sohrabuddin was “encountered” allegedly because he was involved in
criminal activity, but then why was his wife Kausar Bi also killed and
why are witnesses in this case turning hostile?
Those
accused of terrorism in the Mecca Masjid blasts have been acquitted and
the prime accused Aseemanand is now planning to campaign for BJP in
Bengal. In Gujarat, a former BJP state minister Maya Kodnani has now
been acquitted by a high court in the 2002 Naroda Patiya massacre after
being initially held guilty of instigating the mobs. These acquittals
are not a moment for majoritarian muscle flexing but instead must lead
to a thorough examination of continuing failures in police
investigations, especially when governments change.
If
there’s one lesson we must learn from Kathua it is the urgent necessity
of strict equality before the law. The state must be and seen to be,
rigorously neutral. Religious zealotry cannot be used to subvert the
law. When the state is seen as weak and partisan the Kathua mindset gets
emboldened. State agencies like police and law courts can’t have
religious and political preferences and no maulvi or sadhu should be
able to use religion as a weapon to influence the course of justice.
In
the past there’s been a selective application of the law by “secular”
dispensations too. Consequently there are gathering competitive demands
for more inequality and preferential treatment. Victims of 1984 have
struggled to get justice, Taslima Nasreen was not protected, progressive
SC judgment in favour of Shah Bano was overwritten.
If
Akhilesh Yadav shielded Muslims accused in crimes, Yogi Adityanath is
withdrawing cases against Muzaffarnagar riot accused. When Mamata
Banerjee didn’t allow Moharram and Durga Puja processions on the same
day she ended up feeding into the Hindu victimhood on which the Kathua
mindset relies.
Why
are the residents of Jammu calling for a CBI probe when the J&K
police is investigating the case? Why is the same J&K police which
is hailed when it takes on militants in the Valley suddenly not trusted
to handle a case involving Hindu accused in Jammu? Additionally, would
the residents of Jammu have protested as energetically on the streets if
the accused was a Rohingya Muslim, or any Muslim for that matter?
The
Kathua mindset also reveals itself in the fact that groups like the
Bajrang Dal and Hindu Ekta Manch, once called the “fringe” are now quite
mainstream, while their detractors are now the fringe. The chief
executive of India’s most populous state is a Yogi who once headed the
Hindu Yuva Vahini or a Hindu youth militia. Where bans on cow slaughter
were once the demand of sadhus and religious bodies today the ban on
beef is seen as a “nationalist” consensus. Murderers of a cattle trader
in Alwar have got away as have those who attacked Dalit cattle skinners
in Una; nor has there been a swift and vociferous condemnation of such
heinous acts by the ruling political leadership.
To
combat the Kathua mindset, there must be an open acknowledgement of the
“secular” mistakes of the past, and the manner in which these mistakes
are being imitated and maximised by the Hindutva brigade. There must
also be a recognition that there is only one state religion that India
can have, and that is the rule of law. Above all else, Kathua calls for a
moral leadership, one that is not measured by election victories but by
a triumph of compassion and humanity.
