When The Seeds Of Legitimising Mob Violence were sown….

 I Became aware of mob violence when Safdar Hashmi was chased down the narrow lanes of Jhandapur, Ghaziabad & bludgeoned to death by Congress goons for a street play, Halla Bol.

Imagine the messaging & confusion when his sister Shabnam Hashmi began standing up for this very political party & speaking on everything except her brother’s murder.

As a young Indian I witnessed first hand the horrifying mob violence,Sikh Pogrom of the congress party in 1984. 

Imagine the messaging & confusion when Buta Singh, Giani Zail Singh, KTS Tulsi, MMS, Amarinder Singh were/remain important members of this political party.

Mob violence under CPI -M in West Bengal headed by Jyoti Basu was legendary. On one hand despite no social media we heard horrifying stories of torture, murder, mayhem on the other he was feted as this sophisticate of great personal integrity

Mamata Banerjee has taken every page out of this book along with Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan sans the urbanity & sophistication.

Imagine the confused messaging that our young people receive when the victims of this violence somehow don’t touch a chord in the conscience of our media & intellectuals.

For decades, our establishment whitewashed & sanitised mob violence that even Sajjan Singh found no shame in declaring 34 yrs later that the High Court ruling was ‘sudden & unexpected’……

All those who have woken up today gleefully tom-tomming Naseeruddin Shah’s comment must be asked why were they deaf, dumb, blind with pliant spines in the years before 2014? 

Those were the years that laid the seeds of legitimising mob violence in this country …..