In the last 7 days, a number of shocking, numbing incidents have happened in India. On Friday, October 15, a group of Sikh Nihangs brutally killed a man and hanged his body, along with his chopped limb, to boast about their actions.
There was more to the act than the lifeless body of poor Lakhbir Singh hanging alongside his chopped off hand. The body was hanged on the metal barricade placed by the police at the Singhu border, a clear message of what the Nihangs think of ‘rule of law’.
Within hours, a number of videos surfaced on social media. Each one was more viscious, more spine chilling than the other. The Nihangs had not just killed Lakhbir, it was much more than that. Lakhbir, a poor, Dalit Sikh, who was a daily labourer and an addict as per some reports, was accused of ‘blasphemy’.
The armed, colourfully dressed Nihangs had first attacked Lakhbir, cut his leg, chopped off his hand and gave celebratory speeches of their valour and boasted about how they are proud of their act. They had hanged a profusely bleeding, delirious Lakhbhir upside down and had interrogated him for god knows how long. They then dragged him, continuing with their boastful charade, and had tied him up at the metal barricade.
Videos of a semi-conscious Lakhbir babbling something incoherent, pleading with eyes enlarged with shock and terror, holding the bleeding stump of his hand are still doing rounds on social media. In a just world, the videos would have triggered an army of media persons, filled headlines all over the country and ruled news space for weeks to come. But sadly, Lakhbir was the ‘wrong’ kind of victim from the ‘wrong’ kind of state. He was not Muslim like Tabrej Ansari, not a resident of a BJP-ruled state, and not the son of a Bollywood celebrity.
Even though he was a Dalit, his murder could not be used to sling mud on Yogi or Modi, unlike Hathras case, so Lakhbir does not get op-eds in Washington Post or NYT. Lakhbir’s family does not get politicians flocking to their house, Lakhbir lays forgotten, buried under the garbage of ‘thank a farmer’ hashtags, and millions of words of the so-called Sikh pride, farmer politics and much more.
Most of India’s self-proclaimed ‘secular-liberal’ intelligentsia washed their hands off Lakhbir with barely a vague condemnation, if not total ignorance.
Osmanabad violence
Last week, on October 19, an unruly mob of around 150 people in Maharashtra’s Osmanabad took to the streets to protest against a social media post that allegedly criticised Mughal bigot Aurangzeb.
Four policemen including one Inspector sustained injuries when trying to control the violent mob. “The mob vandalized a hoarding, a police vehicle and an auto-rickshaw in Vijay Chowk area. Four policemen, including an officer, were injured while they were trying to stop the mob,” confirmed Osmanabad city police station’s inspector Suresh Budhwant to PTI.
The grievance of the mob was somebody had shared a Facebook post that was allegedly ‘offensive’ against Mughal ruler Aurangzeb. A Facebook comment against Aurangzeb was all it took for a mob of over 150 to wreak havoc in a city and start pelting stones. Is it a new phenomenon? No, though Aurangzeb is the new factor here, mobs getting violent over a mere Facebook post “ho chuka hai.”
In August 2020, in India’s tech capital Bengaluru, a Facebook reply by a Congress MLA’s relative triggered a Muslim mob so much that they attacked two police stations, burned the premises, torched dozens of vehicles and tried to burn the house of the MLA while his family was inside.
In our neighbourhood, the majority of Muslims had attacked Durga Puja pandals of minority Hindus, attacked their temples and caused rampant arson, vandalism, even rapes and murders, because someone had placed a copy of the Quran at a Pandal and had made a Facebook post. That someone has now been identified as Iqbal Hossain, who had deliberately triggered the violence against the minority Hindus.
The above incidents are just examples. We live in an environment where all it takes is a Facebook post, a vague blame of ‘beadbi’ (disrespect), or a ‘he said she said’ allegation made to settle scores for religiously fanatic mobs to resort to rampant vandalism, arson and even killing.
The biggest irony is, the above mobs are not named and shamed by the ‘liberal-secular’ intelligentsia of this country. Stone pelting men and women are called heroes protesting against oppression, vandals damaging telecom towers are ‘farmers’, political goons squatting on public roads are called ‘brave protestors’ when they belong to a certain religious and political group.
For Hindus, because it is mostly Hindus who had voted for the BJP, all it takes is a mild social media comment to be branded an extremist, a terrorist, or member of an ‘online mob’.
Rana Ayyub has declared India a ‘fascist state’ because Shahrukh Khan’s son was arrested for drugs and Shah Rukh Khan is a Muslim. Aryan Khan was arrested with a dozen others, none of them has got bail, but they do not matter. Just because Shah Rukh Khan is a Muslim, his son should never be arrested, this is the ‘Liberal’ logic.
Not just Rana, a whole lot of so-called ‘journalists’ are going berserk over Aryan Khan’s arrest. As per their logic, as Shah Rukh Khan is (?) a superstar and is a Muslim, his son cannot be arrested.
The fact that courts have found the arrest legal, and allowed for custody does not matter. The fact that it is an ongoing investigation and a dozen others are also under investigation does not matter either. Just because he is Muslim and SRK’s son, he should not have been arrested, this is what they claim.
Hindus tweeting about FabIndia is ‘extremism’
While the Nihangs were casually chopping off people for alleged ‘blasphemy’, Muslims were pelting stones for disrespectful posts against Aurangzeb and in Bangladesh, Muslims were attacking and vandalising Hindu places of worship over a Facebook rumour, Hindus in India committed a major crime.
The fascists Hindus, blinded by their devotion to RSS and emboldened by the fascist Modi regime, unleashed brutal terror, on the internet, as per our ‘Liberals’. The Hindu terrorists were so blinded by hatred that they launched an online campaign against Urdu, the favourite language of Bollywood. Reading some tweets, you would think Hindu fanatics in India are out with swords and stones, pelting, cutting, wreaking havoc across cities. But no, the Hindus were tweeting.
A FabIndia ad that tried to call Diwali festivities as ‘Jash-e-Riwaaz’ had depicted morose, anorexic models sitting gloomily clad in Indian clothes, looking as if they are mourning. Hindus objected to it, pointing out that it is ‘Diwali’, not Jashn-e-Riwaz, and Diwali is about joy, food, frolic, brilliant rangolis, traditional clothes, happy faces, loud celebrations and lots of laughter, all of which was missing from the ad. Thus Hindus were branded, hateful bigots.
Since Hindus disliked the FabIndia ad, and some said they would not want to buy from a brand that doesn’t represent their culture well, they were indulging in acts of terrorism, as per ‘liberal’ journalists.
After Tatas withdrew their ad over fear for their employees after threat to showroom, Fabindia withdraws tweet over a hashtag calling for a boycott. Economic terrorism on the rise, unchallenged.https://t.co/c6LChvMCdL
— Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) October 19, 2021
Here are some more examples of our ‘secular-liberal’ elites highlighting how the Hindus of India are spreading hatred and terrorism across the country.
Rana Ayyub peddled her article again with the example of the FabIndia controversy, asserting again that Hindus are hateful and fascist because they dislike FabIndia ad and tweet about it.
It is notable here that for these so-called ‘liberals’, disliking an ad, tweeting about it, and announcing that they are not going to buy products from a particular brand is equal to ‘terrorism’, because it is done by Hindus.
These people live in the same country where lakhs of Islamists had marched calling for the public beheading of Kamlesh Tiwari, where Islamist mobs ran riots at Azad Maidan in Mumbai over Rohingya issue, where Islamists kill, behead, burn and loot over things as superficial and insignificant as Facebook posts.
They live in the same country where Nihangs chopped off a man into pieces while he was alive, and shot videos to boast about it. But Hindus are ‘terrorists’ because they tweeted about their dislike for brands misrepresenting Hindu festivals and giving them non-Hindu names.
This is the reality. A Hindu is painted as dangerous for merely sharing his/her opinion, expressing dislike for certain things in benign social media hashtags, while our elite ‘liberals’ ignore rampant violence and riots by real extremists.
