The video of a Muslim student being beaten up, slapped and humiliated in front of the entire class in a school in Uttar Pradesh, has only shown how much the hate propaganda against Muslims in India has reached inside our hearts and minds. That a teacher in the primary school is sadistically enjoying when the poor boy is being humiliated in front of the entire class reflects the power of the poison that has been injected in our minds for years and has become the hallmark of the Noida channels. Remember, the teacher is not beating the boy herself but ordering each student in the class to beat him up. She encouraged and said that all Muslim children should be dealt with like this.
The criminal and thuggish teacher identified as Tripta Tyagi is actually the head of the Neha Public School of a village in Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh. This clearly reflects how much poison has been spread in our hearts across the nooks and corners of the country and it should not merely make us feel ashamed of ourselves but worry us. Should we allow such things to happen or do they need a strong socio-political and cultural response? Often BJP and the Sangh Parivar promote their agenda on a ‘non-political basis’ using common prejudices and cultural practices as if they are the sole guardians of the society.
The most atrocious part of these hate crimes is that they are being recorded and spread across the internet by the perpetrators of the crime. In most such cases when there is a huge outrage, the state apparatus acts like it acted in the Manipur case, to punish the person who posted the video on social media. The person who brought it to the notice of the nation becomes a criminal while the criminals who commit such heinous crimes are carefully pushed in the background for some time till someday some outfit of the Hindutva makes the person their leader. Tripta Tyagi actually does not deserve to be a teacher but for certain she is the product of the ‘jahar kee pathshala’ of various outfits of the saffron propaganda militia.
We all celebrated India on the moon yesterday. The G-20 summit is scheduled to happen in the second week of September. The prime minister Narendra MODI has already got an ‘international award’ for his ‘contribution’ but the crisis in India is much bigger than even the BJP can think of now. The poison of hatred has spread across. The Sangh Parivar outfits, and Noida Propaganda channels all have worked hard during the past 10 years. Remember, it is not merely the act of committing the hate crime but justifying it through the vilifying of those who speak up against such hatred. The vilification of the opponents is justified through whataboutery in the prime time. Criminals get normalised on TV. Media will wait for a couple of days till they find some Muslim criminal to have committed a heinous crime to deflate the story. The continuous vilification of Muslims in our media is the biggest achievement of the present dispensation.
India’s ruling party and its Ministers rarely speak on the issue. The officers will wait for the orders of the highest authority and the media will begin to cover up the incident. The Darbaris and loudspeakers on prime time will not allow ‘Hindus’ to be ‘targeted’ for some ‘isolated’ incident and blame the opponents for conspiring to ‘defame’ India when the country has landed on the Moon and G-20 is happening. The ruling party’s response to this will be on conspiracy theory while their ground staff will continue to feed the hatred against Muslims as well as the Bahujan Samaj of India.
Good thing is that the people are speaking. Many political leaders have spoken including Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. It was essential for them to speak against hatred. I am still waiting for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar Netas to speak up on the issue and call for a full-fledged battle against hatred. More than anything else, India does not merely need a ‘Mohabbat Ki Dukan’ but complete demolition of the hate factories built up so powerfully with the help of the power elite. Hate crime flourishes on the strength of distortion of history and fake news. So, the biggest priority of our political parties today in INDIA should be to unite against the culture of violence, prejudices and hate crimes. Do not legitimise news channels that spread fake news and justify hate crimes. Speak up against hatred as otherwise, it will engulf you. You can’t build a stronger and united India on the edifice of falsehood and hatred.
Remembering Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s powerful lines here
‘Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action,
into that heaven of freedom, my father,
Let my country awake
Let my countrymen awake against this culture of hatred which will ultimately affect us as a society and as a citizen of India.
We must stand united and firm against the culture of hatred and bigotry.
