What do you think about the “Not in My Name” protests held all over India against mob violence?
I would have supported a movement against mob justice, if not for the blatant anti-Hindu posters played around and sheer political opportunism around.
See here someone is abusing Hinduism’s holy symbol of Swastika [not the Nazi one] – imagine what would have happened if another religion’s holy symbol was used.
And people complained I was cherry picking. These posters I found in 2 minutes were the “exceptions”. Fair enough. And how about the protests just because 5 idiots among 500,000,000 right wingers did a criminal thing?
It is horrific for a child to die and it is equally horrific to have mob lynching. This happens a lot in India and as a society it makes sense of us to fight this. Hundreds of innocent people die every year due to mob anger for a variety of reasons. However, I didn’t see a bulk of protestors fighting for the concept. Rather they are abusing the death of a child to have potshots on a religion and further their own political agenda. As they say never waste a tragedy when you could chase ambulances.
You don’t seem to be fighting for justice. Rather it is dancing on top of a dead child.
And he is not Muslim or Hindu boy. He is a boy. If you are going to add religion and caste to every crime, you are not looking forward, but backward. Everytime a bomb exploded, shall we report how many “Hindu boys” died?
You don’t assemble mobs to fight mob justice.
A friendly note to the liberals:
As a nation, we often don’t know how to fight the right way. During the Nirbhaya rape case, there was an opportunity to tighten the rape laws & improve security. However, once the movement became anti-men [admission refusal of Indian applicants] and anti-India [India’s daughter] things quickly fell apart. In the same way, the Jallikattu protests went sane until people started taking potshots on India.
In general, if you want to kill your own movement, paint as broad a stroke as possible. If you want to fight successfully for an idea, fight with as sharp a focus. For instance, the first two waves of feminist movements succeeded because they were not anti-anything. They asked for their due rights and they got. Same for the Indian independence movement where Gandhi carefully avoided making anyone the enemy or villain.
Once you start making villains of good people [in the name of religion, gender, nation] etc you are nailing a coffin on your protest. Rather than ending mob violence, this protest is not going to change anything on the ground.
If you guys say, we as Indians are going to fight mob violence of all kinds – not just for cow, but for goat, hen or whatever idea/ideology, then I’m with you. Let’s fight for justice.
Author: Balaji Viswanathan
CEO of Invento
This article was originally published at Quora.
