It is impossible to comprehend the policy of New Delhi to Kashmir without recognising that for people on both sides of the ideological divide in India, Kashmir has a supreme symbolic importance well beyond just the land and its people.
India is in danger of mutating into a republic of both hate and fear. Each feeds on the other. All those who defend the idea of India as a humane, pluralist, rational and inclusive society are also bullied into fear and silence by mobs, online and on the streets.
A broken slab of marble, soiled surgical gloves cast off by police investigators, and sniffing dogs mark the spot in Rajgarh, in Rajsamund district of Rajasthan, where Shambhulal Regar hacked, attempted to decapitate and then set fire to Afrazul Khan, a resident of Malda district in West Bengal, on December 6.
India, as we know it, is being unmade with every passing day. In this bewilderingly changing land, hatred and bigotry are fast becoming the new normal. Hate-mongering is led powerfully and charismatically from the top – a kind of “command bigotry” – and Muslims are fast being reduced to second class citizens.
Within the span of one month, in two commuter trains in two opposite corners of the planet, men acted out their hate against young teenaged children. In both compartments, knives flashed, blood flowed, and people died, only because of the fury of prejudice.
The harrowing journey of our caravan of love laid bare a country both divided and devoid of compassion. People are compelled to live with fear and hate, and a hostile state, as normalised elements of everyday living.
I worry that, if allowed to go unchecked, lynching could become a national epidemic. More and more people feel emboldened to join or incite mobs. There is an enabling climate for hate speech and violence that is fostered by a majoritarian social climate.
I did not know him when he lived. But in his death, in the way he died, I mourn him like a son.
His dreams were unfamiliar to my agnostic world.
By affirming that he bore Muslims no ill will, Yashpal Saxena, whose only son Ankit Saxena was murdered by the family of the Muslim girl he loved, demolished one of the most widely used rationalisations for communal hatred.
It was raining outside the Jai Prakash Narain Central Jail in Ranchi on Friday. Seven members of a lynch mob walked out of the gates; one had been released a day earlier.