On 28 June 2022, social media websites were awash with a gut-wrenching video of a Hindu man, Kanhaiya Lal, being beheaded by two Islamists for supporting former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma after religious zealots, instigated by Mohammed Zubair, targeted her for her remarks on Prophet Muhammad.
In the horrific crime that has emerged following the Nupur Sharma controversy, it has been learnt that the incident took place near the Bhoot Mahal on Maldas Street in Udaipur. The victim who is a tailor and proprietor of Supreme tailors was killed in broad daylight amidst the hustle-bustle on the adjoining road. The Udaipur Police rushed to the scene after the enraged merchants in the surrounding area complained of the inhumane incident.
In the video posted by Delhi BJP politician Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, it could be seen that one Muslim man entered the victim’s shop as a customer while the other was possibly shooting the video. While the tailor was taking the man’s body measurements, he grabbed his neck and attacked him from the back. After this, the man started hitting the tailor, with the victim pleading with him to let him go.
Mohammad killed tailor in Udaipur,Rajasthan for Supporting Nupur Sharma on his Facebook Status. Mohammad said he wants to Kill PM Modi. This is the result of @ashokgehlot51 Muslim appeasement and anti Hindu policies,today Hindus are unsafe in Rajasthan pic.twitter.com/Lhoa0jYQ4C
— Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (@TajinderBagga) June 28, 2022
The gruesome video of Islamists murdering Kanhaiya Lal in cold blood sent shivers down the spine of viewers and evoked feelings of horror and anger among those who could not bring themselves to believe what they were viewing with their eyes. The video showed that the Islamist barbarity was not a result of the spur-of-the-moment rage but an outcome of a cold, calculated plan aimed at silencing those who dared something as innocuous as extending one’s support to the beleaguered ex-BJP leader.
Soon after the video went viral on the internet, many social media users, including journalists and left-leaning liberals, tried to water down the incident by understating the impact of Mohammed Zubair’s dog-whistling and the inherent radicalisation among the Muslim community that brought the situation to pass.
In their efforts at whitewashing the horrifying atrocity and laying claim to the moral high ground, they made platitudinous appeals to their followers on social media to not view the incident from a religious prism and condemn the act of terrorism, which they claimed had no religion. Intriguingly, they also asked people not to watch or circulate the video of Lal’s murder, citing the blood-curdling content of the clips to make their case.
Even law enforcement officials partook in this exercise to dissuade people from watching the video and encouraged them against their circulation. A Rajasthan police official warned against watching the video, stating that it was too grisly to watch. Several appeals were made on Twitter and other social media platforms, including by well-meaning folks who demanded justice for the Hindu man. But they, too, requested their followers to abstain from sharing and circulating the gory video of Lal’s murder.
The appeals against the circulation of the Kanhaiya Lal beheading video are meant to downplay the extent of Islamism plaguing the society
As requests asking people not to share Kanhaiya Lal’s beheading are made, it is worth noting what the gruesome clips reveal and what limiting their circulation would achieve. The videos, in essence, illustrate that Islamic terror attacks are no longer limited to well-trained terrorists wielding sophisticated weapons but even seemingly ordinary citizens brainwashed with supremacist beliefs and religious zealotry are capable of matching them in their barbarity.
The attack on Kanhaiya Lal and the savagery with which it was committed busts myths about the equality of all religions. For far too long, the propagandists and apologists of Islamists have peddled the straw man of “All religions are equal” to shield Islamists and whitewash religiously motivated crimes.
But the brutal beheading of Kanhaiya Lal by Islamists egged on by the incendiary dog-whistling from Mohammed Zubair puts paid to the propaganda and brings to the fore a stark reality that all religions are not equal and one particular religion is an outlier whose followers feel no qualms in espousing violence and murdering adherents of other religions over alleged ‘blasphemy’ against their faith.
The apologists and propagandists do not want Hindus and others to know that the Islamist next door might behead them at the slightest ‘provocation’ or after being incited over ‘blasphemy’. It is for this reason that they are appealing against watching the videos of Kanhaiya Lal’s beheading, which showed how Islamists, egged on by religious fanaticism, killed the Hindu tailor for simply extending his support to Nupur Sharma.
Pictures and visuals have a powerful agency to stir a collective conscience and the Left wants to rob Hindus of this agency
The apologists of Islamists do not want Hindus to wake up from their slumber and take cognisance of the threat facing them. They want Hindus to remain oblivious to the danger posed by the Islamists as the awakening could mobilise Hindus and prove catastrophic to their political relevance.
Pictures and visuals have a powerful impact on the psyche of people. They possess the ability to stir public opinion and shake the collective conscience of the society, which is why the drowned image of a Syrian kid or the picture of a man pleading with folded hands were so widely shared across platforms.
The spine-chilling video of Kanhaiya Lal’s egregious beheading stands to expose the religious zealotry of the Islamists and their readiness to kill non-Muslims over alleged ‘blasphemy’. The Islamists are literally waiting for incitement to unleash their murderous zeal on non-Muslims and Kafirs. The apologists of such Islamists do not want Hindus to reckon with the unfortunate reality of Islamic fundamentalism that has slowly but steadily gnawed away at the country’s plural ethos. For these reasons, they are continuously imploring people against the circulation of the video, for the video has the potential to marshal Hindus in a way that no other means can and bring a realisation of the threats lurking in their neighbourhood.
