RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's reading of lynching incidents flies in the face of reason, belies reality
FirstpostThe comments of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on lynching in his RSS Foundation Day speech in Nagpur marking the occasion of Dussehra have drawn attention and a great deal of criticism. If such incidents happen, “the guilty should be punished according to law, without looking at who’s ours and who’s not”, Bhagwat added. Bhagwat took offence to the use of a particular English word, ’lynching’, which according to the Merriam Websters means “to put to death by mob action without legal approval or permission”. According to National Crime Records Bureau data, between 2001 and 2016, at least 523 women in Jharkhand were killed by mob action without legal approval but merely on the suspicion that these women were “witches”. The shocking attempts by police to bury cases against the suspects, and the garlanding of some of them by the BJP’s young Harvard-educated minister Jayant Sinha, are not in line with the RSS chief’s statement that “the guilty should be punished according to law, without looking at who’s ours and who’s not”, and that is where the problem lies.