By Faraz Ahmad for TwoCircles.net,
What happened to the three African students is a shame and a disgrace for any civilized society, having pretensions of being modern and democratic. It was horrible to witness the three young boys being beaten up mercilessly by a lynch mob. The police and security personnel are being blamed for not saving them and rightly so, though eventually it did reach belatedly to rescue them and take them to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.
But what about hundreds of those standing grinning and watching the spectacle, photographing the assault with their mobile cameras and occasionally raising slogans: Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Matram? Just shows the political affiliation of the attackers. The fact that the Police has refused to budge and take any action against those involved also indicates that the Police has a fair idea who the agent provocateurs were and why they are beyond the pale of law.
In the coming days Delhi is going to witness more and more such mob lynchings. They almost did it to Rajdeep Sardesai in Madison Square, New York, the young Muslim boys in Muzaffarnagar and Moradabad were beaten to death the same way and now the Africans are targeted in the Delhi Metro. We have Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India who presided over the Gujarat pogrom of Muslims in an identical manner. He let loose the Sanghi, Bajrangi, VHP mobs on the hapless people of Gujarat and by now the Sanghis have perfected this as an art. So trust them to try this again and again.
But why blame the Sanghis alone?. Earlier Delhi AAP MLA from Malviya Nagar Somnath Bharti led a mob against African women and forcibly punished the Police officer who tried to educate him on the limitations of law about entering the premises of women residents at the dead of night and detaining and molesting young African women on the road, just because their skin colour happens to be different from Bharti’s. Curiously be it in Delhi Metro or Malviya Nagar majority of those mobsters were educated middle class, some quite prosperous who played the game of blood and gore. Again this bears a striking resemblance to the way rich men and women drove in their BMWs and Mercs to loot and plunder Muslim shops in Ahmedabad before setting them on fire in February 2002. Ironically Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyaya is raising an accusing finger at Somnath Bharti. I would like to see Upadhyaya accompany the Police to get his ABVP goons arrested and charged with attempt to murder for the Metro assault while I dare Arvind Kejriwal and his so-called progressive AAP to assist the Police in sending Bharti to jail.
Does the colour of skin make you any the superior or inferior? In this day and age when we take great pride about becoming a world power, sending the mission to Mars, it is these incidents which prove how regressive we actually are. And mind you this racial bias cuts cross caste and religion. The Sanghis anyway flaunt their Aryan lineage and proudly declare themselves as ‘Aryavrat’. In this respect the Muslims are hardly any better, we proudly flaunt on our chest our bias on the basis of skin colour.
And who can be our role model? Even Mahatma Gandhi while in South Africa agitated not to secure parity for all citizens of South Africa. But simply to be given a status higher than the original inhabitants of South Africa and what was the issue: The Indians did not want to enter the Post Office through the same gate as the dark skinned natives. Gandhi did not ask that everyone should enter from the one gate reserved for Whites alone. He wanted one more gate to be opened for the Indians who were largely merchant class in South Africa.
Such racially biased people can be fixed only by an Idi Amin. They deserve him. The Africans are a simple people. The poor fellows spend a fortune to secure admissions first in fraudulent teaching shops like Lovely University, Sharda University and such other shams mushroomed all over the country. Sitting there they imagine India as the land of Jawaharlal Nehru and land up here to confront an India of Narendra Modi and Somnath Bharti.
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Faraz Ahmad is delhi-based journalist and author of ‘Assasination of Rajiv Gandhi: An Inside Job?’.