Union home minister Rajnath Singh has asked the Nagaland government to take strict action against those involved in lynching a rape accused man in Dimapur. In a telephonic conversation with chief minister T R Zeliang Singh has asked him to be mindful of law and order in the state.
Meanwhile, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi has also written to the Centre expressing serious concern. It is understood that he has asked for “adequate security” for Assamese labourers working in Nagaland and has also said that such incidents could have serious repercussions in Assam.
Syed Farid Khan, a 35-year-old second-hand car dealer, was accused of raping a 20-year-old Naga woman on February 23 and 24 at different locations. Police arrested Khan on February 25 and a lower court sent him to judicial custody. Khan, who hails from Assam, was dragged out of the jail by an angry mob and then lynched.
Several sobering lessons need to be learnt from the incident. The alleged rape last month is reported to have triggered off the mob fury. The mob running into thousands raided a local jail, got Khan out, paraded him naked, and killed him in full public view. The police did nothing, and the mob seemed to have no sense of shame in what it was doing. Though the state government has ordered a judicial inquiry, the complicity of the local police can’t be ruled out.
From a larger perspective many lessons seem to emerge from the macabre tragedy. In an ironic way, the lynching represented the total failure of the Indian state. It happened because the state has been unable to make the rule of law stick anywhere.
Nagaland, for example, is one of the most highly policed states, with the army having a strong and permanent presence there in order to control the local secessionist movements. But the rule of law does not operate there, just as it does not in the rest of India to varying degrees.
The next logical corollary to the failure of the state to maintain law and order is the tendency of the citizens to take the law into their own hands. The only counter to this is a determined effort to improve law and order. After all, the legitimacy of any government depends on the rule of law, and establishing efficient policing and a judicial system that is fast, fair and transparent should be our top priority.
The incident also underlines the fact that such xenophobia is not the monopoly of any religious or ethnic group in India—or elsewhere. The Nagas who killed Khan were not merely protesting against rape in general, but rape by an “outsider”. This is as patriarchal as you can get, where the issue is not really the crime, but about “those guys” doing it to “our girls”. This is the only thing that can explain the widespread public backing for a public lynching and brutal, mob-delivered justice.
The liberals who enjoy taking potshots at the offshoots of the RSS family must concede that their favourite whipping boys had no hand in the Dimapur lynching. Nagaland has a more than 90 per cent Christian population, and has been so for decades. Its church plays a very important role in the lives of ordinary Nagas. So, the chances are no documentaries will be made on this daughter of India.
Another home truth is that the concerns over illegal immigration of refugees from overpopulated Bangladesh are not confined to Assam. Nor is it the result of the anti-Muslim hate campaign allegedly launched by the Sangh parivar. Almost the whole of the North-east is being affected by illegal migration, and four of these seven states are not Hindu-majority states.
The Bangladeshi influx and differences in population growth rates have impacted the religious and ethnic demography balances of all north-eastern states. In Nagaland, the 2001 census showed Muslim and Christian populations up by nearly 70 per cent while the Hindu share was falling. The bulk of Nagaland’s Muslims are in Kohima and Dimapur. The details of the 2011 census are awaited. But it is more than likely that Nagaland’s local Christians have begun to get worried about the Muslim influx.
In a way the Naga anger against “outsiders” is symptomatic. If we can’t control or regulate who comes into India or goes out through a citizenship law that can be enforced rigorously, how can we control our own destiny?
It is time we realised that secession is often just another face of bigotry. The Naga fury against illegal immigrants is directed by the “us versus them” that is being played out on almost all secessionist movements.
The liberals never tire of accusing the Indian state of oppressing small sub-national groups, whether in Nagaland or Jammu and Kashmir. This may be partly true because the Army is being used to impose law and order and prevent secession; but the other half of the coin is bigotry: local groups that couch xenophobia as the right to self-determination.
More than the Delhi gang rape, which saw peaceful protests that brought national focus to this issue, Dimapur tells us a more important story about where we are failing. It’s not about India’s daughters, but India’s sons, who are not getting any concerted societal attention. The Dimapur lynch mob was largely male, even though a few women were visible in videos. It’s almost as if the Naga men were turning more brutal in order to compensate for their own guilt on how they treat women.
If our inability to protect our girls is one of India’s fundamental social problem today, it is equally important to ask if we have been able to bring up our boys right. The demographic advantage, where the sex ratio is still heavily skewed in favour of boys, is soon going to turn into a demographic disaster if we do not think of how boys are growing up in our society.
No doubt our girls need safety, security, and a level field to succeed. But this cannot be ensured without dealing with the other side of the equation: boys. Better policing, stricter laws and fast track trials are only short-term solutions. The only real solution to women’s emancipation is male emancipation.