The Unnerving Silence Around UP Govt’s Plan to Let Akhlaq’s Killers Walk Free

As the Uttar Pradesh government moves the court for dropping charges against the accused involved in the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq on September 28, 2015 in a Greater Noida village, it’s instructive to underline that chief minister Adityanath’s decision is in perfect consonance with the Sangh parivar’s approach to the killing.

Among the earliest instances when a Muslim was lynched on the suspicion of carrying beef, the case had agitated the nation and led to the ‘award wapsi’ movement – writers, poets and activists returned prestigious government-run awards in protest.

But the parivar had immediately come out to defend the offenders. To begin with, then Union minister of culture Mahesh Sharma, in whose Lok Sabha constituency the village fell, argued that “our soul starts shaking at the sight of beef”. He sought to blame the non-existent cow smugglers whose acts had angered Hindus. As if lending a character certificate to the Hindus who had barged into Akhlaq’s home, the minister went on to tell this reporter in Varanasi: “There was also a 17-year-old daughter in that home. Kisi ne usey ungli nahin lagaayi (Nobody laid a finger on her).”

Soon after, Harayana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar pitched in with a proposition that Muslims must leave India if they want to eat beef. Then, RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya published a cover story which, citing the Vedas, sought the annihilation of those ‘sinners’ who slaughter cows.  “Veda ka adesh hai ki gau-hatya karne wale pataki ke pran le lo.”

At the time when these remarks were made, it was not yet clear whether the meat found at Akhlaq’s home was indeed beef. Subsequent investigations established it was not cow meat at all, but the Panchajanya cover story declared him guilty.

“Aapko Akhlaq dwara ki gayi gau-hatya nahi dikhayi di…Newton had propagated the theory of natural reaction to any action in 1687.” “If you do not respect the feelings of the 80% majority, how could “such reactions be prevented,” it wrote.

Clearly then, the police case against the offenders was an exercise in futility, as the entire establishment was out to vilify the deceased and legitimise the offenders. It emboldened self-styled gau rakshaks and laid the foundation for open violence against Muslims that the country was to see subsequently.

Akhlaq’s lynching was also marked by a spontaneous movement by writers against the rising intolerance under the Narendra Modi government, which was formed in Delhi just around fourteen months before. It began with the Hindi writer Uday Prakash who returned his Sahitya Akademi award on September 4, protesting the killing of Sahitya Akademi award winner Kannada author M.M. Kalaburgi in August that year. The lone voice of resistance didn’t create much flutter, but Akhlaq’s killing suddenly stirred the writerly community.

On October 6, Nayantara Sahgal issued a statement and returned her Akademi award. Hours later, on the same day, Ashok Vajpeyi returned his own award. On October 9, Shashi Deshpande resigned from the Akademi’s General Council. By then, six Kannada and one Urdu writer had returned their state Akademi awards.

The next day, Sara Joseph returned her Akademi award, K. Satchinandan resigned from various committees of the Akademi, and Krishna Sobti returned both her award and the honorary Fellowship, the highest honor bestowed by the Akademi.

Soon many more writers and artists joined in from across the country, from Kashmir to Kerala and Manipur. Nearly all of them cited Akhlaq’s lynching and rising intolerance.

With the Bihar assembly election less than a month away then, an election the BJP eventually lost, the Modi government was rattled and termed the campaign by ‘leftist’ writers ‘sponsored’. Never mind that several writers in the list had been engaged in ideological arguments with the Left over the decades. Then came the ingenuous accusation that the entire campaign was Bihar-centric, aimed at manipulating elections. The parivar now wanted Indians to believe that the statements issued by writers in a deep corner of the North East or in Kerala influenced the voter in Bhagalpur.

Those days need be recounted in detail because the Adityanath government’s move to withdraw the charges a decade later has barely created any flutter. An incident that marked a genuine outpouring of anger against saffron intolerance, a murder that spawned a series of such horrific incidents, now stands eclipsed by victory chants in Bihar. There are fewer voices today to register their resistance. Not because they have turned over, but a sense of hapless resignation has set in. Of the several dozen honorable names who then stood up, persons close to them now tell, some have begun to doubt such protests. They still find themselves in an adversarial position with the establishment, but are no longer certain about the methods that, according to them, end in an inevitable failure.

That is the biggest accomplishment of this regime. It has crushed even the most noble and defiant souls, and made them question their own choices. That’s the true report card on the government’s first decade.

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