Lynch Files
The Forgotten Saga of Victims of Hate Crime
- Ziya Us Salam - Associate Editor, Frontline
Chimma, a Dalit, lynched by the mob for entering a Hindu temple.
In the recent years, the cases of mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits have increased to an alarming extent. These cases are discarded and forgotten without any justice served to the victims. The emergence of mobocracy from the roots of Hindutva and gau rakshaks has put India’s secularity and democratic constitution to test.
Lynch Files pieces together the tragic stories of the people at the receiving end of mob violence and looks inside the mind of the lynchers who flout laws with impunity. Further, the book discusses the Supreme Court judgement against lynching and tries to restore faith in the court’s capacity to curb this violence.| A Substitute for Communal Riots |
| Cow, a Sacred or a Political Animal? |
| The Oft-present Political Hand |
| Gaurakshini Sabhas: Walk down to the Nineteenth Century |
| Bhartiya Gau Raksha Dal: Part-time Professionals |
| Mind of a Gau Rakshak: All Hate, No Love? |
| Dadri: Akhlaq |
| Pune: Mohsin Shaikh |
| Alwar Lynchings |
| Chittorgarh Lynchings |
| Rajsamand: Afrazul |
| Ballabhgarh: Junaid on Delhi-Mathura Train |
| Kurukshetra: Mustain Abbas |
| Hapur: Qasim and Samiuddin |
| Ramgarh: Alimuddin Ansari |
| Giridih: Usman Ansari |
| Latehar: Mazloom Ansari and Imtiaz |
| Jammu: Sammi |
| Himachal Pradesh: Noman |
| Satna: Siraj Khan and Shakeel |
| Delhi: Rizwan, Kamil and Ashfaq |
| Hamirpur: Chimma |
| Una: The Lynchings and the Dalit Uprising |
| 10 States and Many More Lynchings |
‘Lynch Files is bound to make a sensitive reader feel the meaning of being born as Akhlaq or Mohsin Shaikh in a non-secular/non-spiritual culture that allows the nasty politics of “gau rakshaks” to insult the foundations of a civilization nurtured by the likes of Kabir and Tagore. A must-read!’
‘Lynching is an act of terror. It is a weapon of a psychological war waged against people, Muslims in particular, but also Dalits. It is to tell their youth that they are not safe and that the killers can pick anyone they wish to, anywhere, anytime. Lynching is not limited by geography and cannot be contained as a communal riot can be by bringing in the army. Ziya Us Salam’s timely study exposes the threat and the politics. For me, it is clear: If Muslims are not safe, no minority is safe, even if their youth are not being lynched.’
‘Lynch Files makes for compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand how the largest democracy in the world was coerced into maintaining stoic silence over the broad daylight lynching of its own citizens just because they belonged to a particular faith or caste confi guration. Ziya Us Salam succeeds in dissecting the ideological undercurrents behind these ghastly hate crimes and exposes their diabolical modus operandi. The author’s analysis about ‘lynching’ being the new substitute for‘ communal riots’ is veracious as these ‘low-profi le’ but ‘high-intensity’ incidents have achieved their sinister purpose of creating communal antagonism. A must-read for all concerned citizens of this nation.’
‘Lynching is a word added to the national lexicon in the four years of the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Reports of people being lynched by mobs have become routine and no longer excite the moral imagination of India. The target of these lynchings have been primarily Muslims. What is special about the murders of Muslims by the mobs is that they cannot even protest as Muslims. While there have been cases of Dalits being killed by mobs and also some stray incidents of other kinds of lynching, there is no denying the fact that killing of Muslims in this manner has a genocidal tone to it.’
‘Ziya Us Salam performs a painful duty of recording this episode in the history of independent secular India for us and for the posterity. The book very convincingly demonstrates that rather than being isolated and unconnected unfortunate incidents, these lynchings are an integral part of the genocidal project of the Bharatiya Janata Party directed mainly against the Muslims.’