Understanding Mob Lynching in India

What is Mob Lynching ?

It is an act of extrajudicial killing by a group of people to condemn or punish a person or persons without a chance for free and fair trail.

• There is always an element of prejudice involved, where the victims are believed to have committed a crime. 
• The social background of the victim is more often the reason for the prejudice. 
• Lynching involves acts of violence. The victims may be hanged, beaten many a times leading to death, and subjected to other acts of violence like stone pelting to punish the victims. Some times the victims are also shamed by being stripped and humiliated.

Why Lynching happens ?

The mob lynchings often happens on the pretext of safeguarding the values of the social group or protecting their members or properties from outsiders.

The values can be religious based, caste based, race based any thing which is considered sacred to the social group.

The breach of these values upsets the community as a whole and the action against them is seen through mob violence and rage.

Who are the Victims of Lynching ? 

When a member of the same social group commits  a crime which is considered detrimental to their belief systems, he may be boycotted from from the community, but will be given a chance for representation, even if the punishment is of violent nature would rarely involve killing and mob rage. 

But when the victim is of different social group, often lying lower in social hierarchy, his act of crime would be seen as a collective threat by the most or whole community, and the community members would take a collective action against the victim which involves violence like tying up the victim, striping and beating him up. 

There would be very less effort shown to investigate whether the victim really had the intention to commit such an act, he would not be given any fair trail.

Let's See Some Examples.

Religious based :

The Cow is a sacred animal for Hindus in Indian society. But at the same time there are other communities which consume the meat of cow and at the same time these cattle are source of income for many in India, where income is generated through selling milk.

The communities like Muslims, dalits have meat in their dietary habits. Where one community has religious significance of cow sacrifice and other community were/are scavengers for food and had practice of consuming meat from dead carcass as part of scavenging when untouchability was practiced.

These communities are often seen with suspicion of cow slaughter. And also these communities are of minority groups and marginalized. They rarely have any access to justice system and bureaucratic authorities may be less keen to help them due to popular, political pressure and in cases may not be able to establish the crime.

Security based :

The  communities generally have little trust on outsiders. They see the outsiders as an imminent danger to the community. They may be suspected to be child abductors, thief, people with ulterior motive to change the religious, political views of the group.

Some times the social background of the outsiders may be the reason for the prejudice. Like an African country person may be seen as a drug dealer or a thief, similarly laborer from a specific state may be suspected to be a thief or child abductor.

Person belonging to particular caste may be suspected as performing witchcraft, which they believe is the reason for the unfortunate incidents happening in a community or a family.

Is Social Media Aiding Lynching ?

The recent lynchings witnessed in India are aided by the technology i.e by social media. There have been false rumors spread through the social media applications which have ignited sentiments of the people, and there were no efforts put into finding the authenticity of the news especially when the news has been approved by their local political leaders.

In many parts of the country the rumors that the child abductors are active in their regions have led to suspecting and beating up of outside strangers seen in their locality.

Also the opinions which are not in favor of authoritarian groups are challenged openly and threatened with violence, which are circulated in social media putting in danger the lives of dissidents.

Few use the communal and polarizing agenda to gain political mileage, spreading culture of intolerance and prejudice. This is done effectively through social media where their supporters are easy to reach.

What Should be Done ?

There is no simple solution for this problem, especially when a democracy like India is seeing rise in such cases.
There is a need for behavioral change, inducing culture of tolerance, strengthening democratic institutions so that individual rights are given primacy.
We need laws which punish the perpetrators of such barbarous crime and punish those who take laws into their hands.
Also there is a need for a system where people who justify such acts are identified and punished or censored. The culture of glorifying the perpetrators as heroes need to be checked.
There is need to promote awareness among the people about fake news circulated in the social media, and bureaucracy need to work closely with communities spreading awareness.
Bureaucracy, especially police need to act quickly on complaints and establish the truth as soon a possible, so that people gain confidence regarding maintenance of law and order in the community.
The government has asked NCRB to register cases of mob lynchings, which will provide the demographic details of the victims like their caste, religion, age, sex, race which would help the government in shaping the policies.
The social media and the government collectively should be able to tackle such fake news using AI's or algorithms. There is a need to study the patterns and identify them so that such outward incidents may be predicted early and  such incidents be stooped.

CONCLUSION.

The mob lynching is not just a by product of social media, but is rather an amalgamation of  intolerance, political interests, behavioral aspects, lack of clear laws which are leading towards extrajudicial killings, which is highly undesirable for unity and diversity of our country. To solve this problem efforts are needed by both the government and the society.

READ MORE

Panel on Lynching- HT

Local Authorities must show good faith- The Hindu

Data on Hate crimes - How to count? - Indian Express