Mob lynchings have been recurring in different parts of India as a result of hate campaigns by communal extremist forces. The victims of this brutal cruelty, which has been unfolding in almost all states under Sangh Parivar rule, largely belong to Muslim, Dalit and tribal communities. The manner in which a cloth merchant named Mohammed Athar Hussain was murdered in Bihar in the first week of December, where the NDA is in power, will shock anyone.. While he was returning from business and searching for a shop to repair his punctured bicycle, the assailants stopped Athar Hussain in Bhattapar village in Nawada, robbed him of all the money he had, locked him in a room and assaulted him brutally. After stripping him and confirming that he was a Muslim, the language of violence turned extremely brutal, with his ear being cut off with pliers and his fingers being smashed with hot bricks and a red-hot iron rod. Crushed by blows that damaged his rib cage and left him gasping for breath, the police arrived after a long delay and took the helpless man to hospital, but within a few days Hussain passed away to a world free of hatred and torture. The assailants, who had stolen his money, also filed a complaint against Hussain accusing him of being a thief. Another martyr was thus added to the long series of anti-Muslim mob violence that is no longer new in northern Indian states.
Even as such atrocities spread across many corners of the country, Keralites were standing tall and proud, as if Kerala were free and safe from all this. The blood from the murder of tribal youth Madhu in Attapadi and Bihar native Rajesh Manji in Kizhisseri, on allegations of theft, lies stained on the pristine white fabric of Renaissance Kerala. The memories of Viswanathan, a young tribal man who ended his life in a noose after being beaten by so-called civilised Malayalis on allegations of theft when he came from Meppadi in Wayanad to the Maternal and Child Care Centre at Kozhikode Medical College to see his newborn child and beloved wife, continue to hang over our heads. There are other massacres and heinous atrocities that we have forgotten, aided by the convenience of selective amnesia. Even then, Malayalis firmly believed that the claim of being ‘God’s own country’ had not been shaken and would not be tarnished. But now here lies yet another lifeless human body in the soil, proving that there is no longer any right to carry that title.
Seeking escape from poverty and in search of a job to feed his family, comprising his wife and two children aged eight and ten, Chhattisgarh native Ram Narayan Vayar arrived four days ago. A group of people masquerading as humans grew suspicious when they saw this man in the Matalikad area of Attappalam in Walayar. Excuses were being put forward that he was beaten on suspicion of theft and because he was seen in a drunken state and that was when video footage of the assault emerged; their suspicion was, in fact, about the poor man’s citizenship. While facing questions like , “Are you Bangladeshi?”, powerful hands rained blows on that frail body. He tries to answer the questions in a faltering voice, barely audible amid the frenzied shouting and assault. They did not stop even after he began vomiting blood due to the severity of the beating. The attackers were intoxicated by the thrill of having caught hold of someone they counted as ideological enemy number one and of teaching him a lesson. No one came forward to provide first aid to Ram Narayan as he lay collapsed by the roadside; by the time the police arrived and took him to hospital four hours later, he was already dead. No one will ask him about his citizenship any more.
The question “Are you Bangladeshi?” and the bloodstains on Ram Narayan’s back and chest remind us that Kerala is not immune to the threat posed by bloodthirsty communal and ethnic extremists. Are we inviting the world to witness a country where hunger, poverty and xenophobia have become reasons for lynching people to death?