By and large, Hindus and Muslims live side-by-side in relative
peace across India. But every now and then, the calm is punctured by moments of
madness — and deadly violence. The sleepy, dusty, mostly Hindu village of
Bisara, near the country's capital, became such a place this week.
According to
eyewitness accounts, this blood-curdling sequence of events unfolded in a
matter of minutes Monday night: A Hindu temple announced sacrilege; villagers
formed an angry mob; and normal people, fueled by each other's presence, became
assailants.
A Muslim
blacksmith, Mohammad Akhlaq, and his son Danish were battered by people who
knew them. The father died, and his son was has been hospitalized with critical
injuries.
What triggered
the bloody assault? A rumor that a cow was slaughtered in that nondescript
neighborhood, home to mostly Rajputs — a high-ranking valiant Hindu caste
meaning "sons of the kings."
In Hinduism, cows
are deemed sacred and their killing a sin.
'It was blood all over my son's face. He is
gone'
"Two young men came to me that
night and asked me to announce on the loudspeaker that there's a carcass of a
cow lying nearby," the temple priest, Sukhdas Mahatma, told CNN.
"They
pressured me to make that announcement. What could I do? I had to make that
announcement," he said, moving his fingers on his flowing white beard.
Soon after his broadcast, villagers crowded around the temple
compound, and decided to set out for Akhlaq's home through the winding, narrow
and broken lanes. They believed the 50-year-old blacksmith was the culprit
because his faith doesn't prohibit eating beef. And his was one of the two
Muslim households in that neighborhood of more than 6,000 people.
"I heard loud
bangs on the front door of our house," said Asghari Begum, the mother of
Mohammad Akhlaq. "Then I heard them shouting expletives," she said. Before
she could react, a group of men scaled the walls and jumped into the house.
"They pushed me,
then punched me on my face, in the abdomen," Begum said, pointing to her
bruised and swollen eye.
The mob then ran to
the first floor of Akhlaq's home and dragged him out, along with 22-year-old
Danish. Both were beaten with "whatever they (attackers) could lay their
hands on," police superintendent Kiran Sivakumar told CNN.
"It was blood all
over my son's face. He is gone," moaned Begum, sitting on a cot in her
dark, ground-floor room.
Six arrested
Upstairs, the telltale signs of the raid
were still everywhere. A refrigerator that stored meat lay down broken on the
floor. The ransacked rooms were still strewn with shattered vases and sewing
machines.
Police have so far arrested six of the 10 men Akhlaq's family
has named in their initial police complaint. These were people they knew. More
arrests are likely, Sivakumar said.
Unease was
palpable in the village as the murder drew widespread media attention. No one
in the village admits to being part of the mob.
"My son is
innocent. He has been falsely implicated," said Ombir Sisodia, father of
one of the jailed men. "He was sick and sleeping when mobs gathered around
after the temple announcement," Sisodia said.
Police have
seized meat samples from Akhlaq's home for testing. The family says the meat is
goat and not beef. Regardless of what kind of meat it is, "it doesn't
absolve (the attackers of) the crime," police superintendent Sivakumar
said.
Sacredness of cows
Cow slaughter is banned in most of
Hindu-majority India, including in Uttar Pradesh.
This year, the
western state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, became one of the latest to
outlaw beef.
"The sacredness
of cows in India might be a cliché, but it is deeply felt, rooted in the
history of Hinduism," said novelist Manil Suri in a New York Times
column.
But
"imposing ideals from a mythic past is not the answer," he wrote in
the April op-ed. "The true lesson to take away from history is how
utilitarian goals can shape religious custom. Hinduism has always been a
pragmatic religion; what today's India needs is accommodation."
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