About thirty-five km south of Gujarat’s capital, Ahmedabad, in the direction of the great educational and industrial city of Vadodara (previously spelt as Baroda), lies a small village called Undhela. About ten km east of Undhela is the city of Nadiad, where Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was born in 1875.
Kheda, the district to which Undhela and Nadiad belong, is where in the year 1918 Gujarati peasants launched a satyagraha against an oppressive land tax, after securing Mahatma Gandhi’s approval. One of colonized India’s earliest satyagrahas, that 1918 Kheda protest, a milestone in India’s journey to freedom, bonded Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel for life. Kheda was an area I studied closely for my Patel: A Life.
About one-third of Undhela’s residents are Muslims. On October 3, i.e. seven days back, policemen serving the administration of the state of Gujarat flogged five of Undhela’s Muslim men before an applauding crowd. Evidently each of the five was first tied to a pole and then mercilessly thrashed.
Videos of the public flogging have circulated widely.
https://www.vibesofindia.com/fear-rules-this-gujarat-village-after-public-flogging-of-muslim/
Pro-government TV channels and websites have also aired the flogging videos. While displaying the video, the website Opindia calls the beaten men “Islamists”. How or why any and every flogged Muslim can be labelled an “Islamist” is not explained.
The flogging is there for the world to see and cannot be denied. There may be questions as to what happened on the night before. According to some accounts, prominent Hindus of the village organized a garba (community dance festival) on a space close to the village mosque. Evidently this was the first time that the garba was held right next to the mosque. Following allegations that angry Muslims had pelted stones in the direction of garba participants, a number of Muslim men were arrested. The next day, five of them were brought out and flogged before a cheering mob.
According to The Week, “The action taken by the police to beat up the accused in full public glare had received widespread criticism. A video of the incident had gone viral.”
The Week story adds: “Even as a probe has been ordered by the Gujarat Police chief into the flogging of a few Muslim men by the police over a stone pelting incident in Kheda district, a legal notice has been severed demanding an inquiry by a retired high court judge.”
Evidently rights activist Anand Yagnik, speaking on behalf of Mujahid Nafees, has demanded an inquiry by a retired high court Judge. Nafees has said that an inquiry by a police officer against his brother cops does not bring confidence. Arguing that such a probe would be biased, Nafees has demanded action against the lawless police officers.
Uglier than the public flogging, and even more frightening, has been the silence over it of the politicians who currently rule Gujarat and all of India. Awareness that silence has been the standard response of India’s ruling circles even to clinching evidence of cruelty does not pacify troubled minds.
The Undhela horror has been joined by a significant ban in India’s capital on any public gathering in the Muslim-majority locality of Jamia Nagar, which includes the campus of the internationally famed Jamia Milia University. This ban follows the outlawing of a Muslim political party, the Popular Front of India, and the arrests of hundreds of PFI members.
In today’s political climate in India, it will be naïve to imagine that those arrested, whether in Undhela or elsewhere in India, will receive due process. India has signed many charters and conventions on democratic rights, and the Indian constitution assures equal protection to all, but the reality on the ground is of majoritarian bullying. And of pumping up majority victimhood.
The minority may be allowed to weep – preferably behind closed doors. It’s a sad time.