I/III. http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/10/01/dadri-lynching_n_8224506.html
Dadri Lynching: Isolated In Their Grief, Muslim Family Contemplates Moving Out Of Village HuffPost India | By Rituparna Chatterjee Email Posted: 01/10/2015 08:32 IST Updated: 2 hours ago As the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) sought a report from the district administration after a Muslim man was beaten to death over rumours that he killed and ate a cow, his despairing family said they are thinking of leaving the village they've lived in for two generations, according to reports. Speaking to the Indian Express, Askari, the 75-year old mother of victim Mohammad Akhlaq, said no one from the village had come to share their grief even two days after her son was lynched by a Hindu mob. "Once our child (Danish) is treated and he is in a stable condition, we need to make arrangements to live somewhere else. Who will buy this house? The government should help us out," Askari told IE. Danish, Akhlaq's son, was also beaten up by the raging mob on Monday night after it dragged both father and son out of their homes. The NCM stated it was monitoring the measures being taken by the district administration to bring the perpetrators of the "ghastly" crime to justice, reported PTI. Also Read: Hindu Mob Lynches Muslim Man Suspected Of Killing And Eating A Cow "The NCM strongly condemns this cowardly and reprehensible attack on an innocent Muslim which also resulted in severe injury to his 23-year-old son. The Chairman, NCM has already spoken to DM, Dadri and asked him to send a report on the incident to the NCM at the earliest. After receipt of the report, we will be taking up the matter with both the Union Home Minister and the Chief Minister. It will also be discussed in the next weekly meeting of NCM," Commission member Praveen Davar said. Tension prevailed in the village, where nearly 40 percent of the 1,500 residents are Muslims, after some cows and buffaloes went missing. A temple priest stoked the communal fire by allegedly announcing that the family had slaughtered cows and stored the beef in their house, an AP report said, quoting District Magistrate Nagendra Pratap Singh. Singh said the mob dragged Akhlaq and his son from their home and beat them with sticks and bricks. Akhlaq was declared dead at a nearby hospital, while his son was being treated for serious injuries. A group of protesters also torched police vehicles after the arrests, forcing police to open fire, the Indian Express reported. An FIR has been filed against 10 people for attacking the family, six of whom were arrested, police said. Meanwhile, a report in the Times of India said that there is no mention of beef in the FIR filed by the police. Police is were looking for two youths who had allegedly forced the village priest to announce over the temple loudspeaker that the family had beef in the house, the report said. "We have lodged an FIR under sections 147, 148, 149, 302, 307, 458, 504 and 7 of the IPC. So far, 10 people have been named in the FIR and six were arrested. All the accused are in the age group of 22 to 28 years. Four of the accused are graduates and employed in the private sector, while others are unemployed," DSP Anurag Singh told TOI. II/III. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/30/a-mob-in-india-just-dragged-a-man-from-his-home-and-beat-him-to-death-for-eating-beef/?tid=sm_tw A mob in India just dragged a man from his home and beat him to death — for eating beef By Michael E. Miller September 30 at 6:50 AM An Indian woman sprinkles yoghurt paste onto a cow’s forehead during a Hindu Bach Baras ritual to bless the animal in the Rajasthan city of Udaipur on September 9, 2015. (Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images) Mohammad Akhlaq was in bed when the mob arrived. The commotion began in the distance, but crept closer and closer like encroaching thunder. Suddenly, there was a pounding at the door. Then the door broke inwards and men dragged the 50-year-old farmer from his sheets and into the street, according to the Indian Express. They beat him with bricks found underneath his own bed; beat him until the bricks broke in their hands; beat him until Mohammad was dead. Akhlaq’s alleged crime? Eating beef. The attack on Monday night in the northern Indian city of Dadri has shocked the country, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise. For the past six months, meat has been a matter of major debate in India. Eighty percent of the country’s of 1.3 billion inhabitants are Hindu — many of whom avoid beef for religious reasons. Roughly 250 million Indians are not. That tally includes almost 25 million Christians and up to 140 million Muslims, like Akhlaq. The issue has raged in India for years. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power last May, however, incidents have increased, as they tend to do whenever a conservative government has been in power. Cows are seen at the Shree Gopala Goshala cow shelter on Sept. 7 in Bhiwandi, India. (Allison Joyce/Getty Images) Modi is a Hindu nationalist who, as chief minister of Gujarat state, presided during religious riots in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people — most of them Muslims — were killed. For years afterwards, Modi was blocked from visiting the United States because of his role in the riots. [New Indian leader draws cheers, criticism from diaspora as he arrives in the U.S.] All that changed last year, however, when Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power. Modi campaigned on a vision of India finally fulfilling its economic potential — a promise highlighted by his recent tour of Silicon Valley. Yet, critics claim Modi’s tenure also has been marked by a concerted cultural shift that undermines secularism and threatens to drag India back into sectarian bloodshed. In the past, Modi has complained about India’s “pink revolution” of rising meat exports and backed the idea of a national ban on cow slaughter, according to the BBC. Since Modi’s election, Muslims have grown worried about a string of inflammatory statements and actions by Hindu nationalist leaders. Accused Islamist terrorists have been executed ahead of non-Muslims, stirring anger. Meanwhile, BJP lawmakers have openly called for Hindus to out breed Muslims to “protect Hindu religion.” That same politician, Sakshi Maharaj, invited outrage when he called Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin a “patriot.” (Nathuram Godse was a militant Hindu activist who killed Gandhi for “appeasing” Muslims.) Finally, India’s foreign minister has called for the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, to be declared a “national scripture.” Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Saurabh Das/AP) Hindu leaders have also launched efforts to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism and warned against romantic relationships with members of other religions. It is beef that has drawn the most blood, however. India’s 36 states and territories have long been a patchwork quilt when it comes to their laws regarding beef. Some said that only old cows could be killed. Others allowed only bulls or bullocks to be sent to the butcher. In the past 15 months, however, many states have tightened their laws — with encouragement from Modi’s political party. The most prominent example is the western state of Maharashtra, home to the bustling metropolis of Mumbai and many of the country’s Muslims. Under BJP leadership, the state passed the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Bill back in 1996 but it was blocked from becoming law because president Shankar Dayal Sharma of the Opposition Congress Party refused to approve it. With Modi’s election last year, however, times have changed. And in March of this year, BJP members in Maharashtra convinced the current president to approve the law. The move effectively banned beef overnight, putting thousands of predominantly Muslim butchers out of a job and putting anyone eating beef in the state at risk of arrest. A woman packages toothpaste made from cow waste at the Keshav Srushti cow shelter on Sept. 7 in Thane, India. (Allison Joyce/Getty Images) Despite legal challenges to the ban, the new law immediately brought results. Just days after the law’s implementation, two people were arrested for allegedly slaughtering two calves, the BBC reported. Last month, four more people were accused of smuggling beef into Mumbai, according to the Indian Express. The crackdown on cow-eating is driven by a desire for religious/national purity, but critics point out that it’s already creating political and practical problems. “Some Hindu hard-liners insist the idea of eating beef was introduced by Muslim invaders, despite references to its consumption in ancient texts like the Vedas, written more than a millennium before the time of Muhammad. By eradicating this ‘alien’ practice, they hope to return the country to values they hold dear as Hindus,” wrote novelist Manil Suri in a New York Times op-ed. Suri said it was part and parcel of a broader conservative cultural shift under Modi and the BJP. “With the recent re-criminalization of gay sex, bans on controversial books and films and even an injunction against the use of the colonial-era name ‘Bombay’ instead of ‘Mumbai’ in a Bollywood song, the new laws join a growing list of restrictions on personal freedom in India,” he warned. Since his election, Modi has said he is committed to secularism at the same time members of his party openly push to outlaw beef, the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt pointed out in April. “That’s why while the idea of cow mug shots may be amusing, the beef ban is deadly serious,” he said. “India’s triumph has been forging a nation in which Hindus and Muslims can live happily together. The fear is that the beef ban is part of a process that is gradually undermining the compromises that made that possible.” Kashmiri Muslim protesters and Indian police and paramilitary soldiers during protests after the Eid al-Adha prayers in Srinagar, India on Sept. 25. (Farooq Khan/EPA) Rowlatt’s words proved prescient when protests erupted earlier this month in India-administered Kashmir, where the Supreme Court suddenly enforced a 83-year-old beef ban on the Muslim-majority state. Beef again became a pretext for violence during Monday’s mob attack in Dadri, a city of roughly 60,000 near New Delhi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where a near-total ban on beef is in effect. The attack allegedly came moments after an announcement at a nearby Hindu temple that Mohammad Akhlaq had slaughtered a calf. The calf had gone missing several weeks earlier, according to the Indian Express. Rumors quickly spread around the neighborhood that Akhlaq was the culprit. Incited by the announcement, the mob broke down Akhlaq’s door and dragged him into the street, where 100 men beat him to death with bricks, his family members told the Express. The invaders also dragged Akhlaq’s 22-year-old son, Danish, outside, beating him until he was close to death as well. “They accused us of keeping cow meat, broke down our doors and started beating my father and brother,” Akhlaq’s daughter, Sajida, told the Express. “My father was taken outside the house and beaten to death. My brother was dragged to the courtyard downstairs and they used bricks to hit him on the head and chest, leaving him unconscious. They also tried to molest me and hit my grandmother on her face. They threatened to kill me if I said a word to the police.” A cow looks on with colored dyes and paste on its forehead after being blessed by Indian women during a Hindu Bach Baras ritual in the city of Udaipur on Sept. 9. (Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images) Sajida said her family had never suffered from Islamophobia in the past. “Every time there was a feast in this house, Hindu residents of the village would attend such functions,” she said, standing in a ransacked house littered with bricks and blood splatter. “Even on [Muslim holiday] Bakr-Id, we had guests. But suddenly they started doubting us.” Police appeared to confirm the account. “Preliminary investigations revealed that an announcement was made from the temple” about the family consuming beef, senior superintendent of police Kiran S told the Express. “We have been told that a group of people entered the temple and used a microphone to make the announcement. However, investigations are still underway. We do not know if any of the accused are associated with the temple.” When police detained six people, including the temple’s priest, on Tuesday, protesters set fire to two police cars. One person suffered a gunshot in the riot, although the priest was released after questioning, according to the Express. In a cruel irony, Akhlaq’s family insists that the meat in question wasn’t even beef. “There was some mutton in the fridge which was taken away yesterday,” Sajida told the Express. “They thought it was beef.” “The police have taken it for examination,” she said. “If the results prove that it was not beef, will they bring back my dead father?” Michael E. Miller is a foreign affairs reporter for The Washington Post. He writes for the Morning Mix news blog. Tweet him: @MikeMillerDC III. http://thewire.in/2015/10/01/the-pink-revolution-is-marching-on-12061/# COMMUNALISM The Pink Revolution is Marching On BY SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN ON 01/10/2015 Forget about your right to eat what you want. The fight is now over your right to not be killed for what you eat Relatives mourn the death of farmer Mohammad Akhlaq at his home in Bisara village in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, about 45 kilometers from New Delhi on Wednesday. Villagers beat Akhlaq to death and severely injured his son upon hearing rumours that the family was eating beef. Credit: PTI If Narendra Modi last year conjured up the spectre of a ‘pink revolution’ – cow killing on a mass scale – in the event of the BJP’s defeat in the 2014 election, what metaphor will he use to describe the murder of a Muslim father at Dadri on the outskirts of Delhi for the imaginary crime of keeping beef in his home? Were he to call the ugly incident by its proper name – a lynching – he would have to cross an ideological line that he and his party have helped place at the centre-stage of Indian politics over the past year and a half: That the slaughter of cows poses a more serious threat to the country than the slaughter of human beings in the name of cow protection. The Prime Minister owes it to the people of this country to say it isn’t so. To declare loudly and clearly that even if that piece of meat which the Uttar Pradesh police have now mischievously taken away for ‘forensic’ analysis turns out to have come from a cow, the mob had no night to invade the home of Mohammed Akhlaq and murder him. Modi has a responsibility to speak out this time because the violence that occurred on Monday night is a direct product of the hysteria which is being deliberately engineered in different parts of the country over the issue of cow slaughter – an issue he brought up repeatedly in stump speeches during the 2014 general election. Modi’s 2014 rhetoric In an attempt to better understand the politics behind the campaign, I went back and listened to some of those speeches. Both in western Uttar Pradesh – not far from Dadri – and again in Bihar, Modi spoke at length about the dangers of “pink revolution”. The speeches are amazing for the ease with which Modi slides between fact and fiction, using the words ‘pashu’ and ‘gai’ and even ‘mutton’ interchangeably to paint a picture of Indian villages being emptied out of their cows as the Congress government in Delhi – in pursuit of ‘vote bank politics’ – is hell-bent on promoting a ‘pink revolution’ or ‘gulabi kranti’. “The agenda of the Congress is Pink Revolution,” he said. “We have heard of the Green Revolution and White Revolution but never pink and this means the slaughter of animals (pashu). You see, the colour of mutton is pink, and they are committing the sin of exporting it and bringing revolution… Because of this, our animal wealth is being slaughtered, our cows are being slaughtered, or sent abroad to be slaughtered… And now the Congress is saying, ‘If you vote for us, we will give you permission to kill cows’.” In his Bihar speech, Modi asks how the leaders of the ‘Yaduvansh’ – the Yadavs – like Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad can ally with the Congress. “I want to ask [them], how can you support such people who want to bring pink revolution? When a pashu is cut, the colour of its meat is called pink revolution… In village after village, animal wealth (pashu dhan) is being slaughtered, pashu are being stolen and taken to Bangladesh, big slaughter houses have been opened across the country… The Congress won’t give subsidies to a farmer or to a Yadav who wants to tend his cows. But if someone opens a slaughter house to kill cows, kill pashu, then the [Congress] government gives them a subsidy.” Imposing food choices Leaving aside the hypocrisy involved in the Modi government presiding over a huge increase in ‘carabeef’ (buffalo meat) exports, the BJP – since coming to power at the Centre, and in states like Mahararashtra and Haryana – has moved to impose its dietary preferences on people at large. WATCH WHAT YOU EAT: The remains of the Akhlaq family’s fridge after a mob attacked the house. Credit: PTI Where earlier, farmers were allowed to sell bulls and even cows above a certain age to slaughter houses, the law in these two states now compels them to bear the burden of maintaining these animals for the rest of their natural lives. Maharashtra has also made the possession of beef – regardless of whether it is from outside the state or from abroad – a criminal offence. The Devendra Fadnavis government, along with several other BJP-ruled states recently imposed a limited duration ban on the sale of mutton and chicken during the Jain festival of Paryushan. The Union Culture Minister, Mahesh Sharma, has publicly advocated a nine-day national meat ban during the navaratras. In Jammu and Kashmir, the RSS is pushing to ensure that a colonial-era ban on beef be strictly enforced across the state Staying alive In response to the meat ban, the journalist Vir Sanghvi joked that if you vote for the Gujarat model, you get the Gujarat diet too. But the Dadri incident tells us the politics of food is no laughing matter anymore In any democratic society governed by the rule of law, there would still be space to have a debate on the citizen’s right to make her or his own dietary choices without interference from the state. After Dadri, it is clear that that argument is over. Make no mistake – that is how far our political goalposts and moral compasses have moved in the past 16 months.We have gone past the stage where we can expect political parties and the courts to defend the right of a citizen to eat what she or he likes. The issue at stake now is a family’s right to not be attacked and killed because of the food they eat, or would like to eat – or are suspected of eating. We are now at the next stage of the pink revolution. When we get to discover that the colour of human flesh is the same as the colour of what Modi innocently – or not so innocently – calls “mutton”. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. 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