Hate Crimes: parallels between India and America

Corroded mind-sets such as racially motivated in the USA and religiously triggered fanatics in India would never accept and hardly understand or come to terms that there’s place for everyone to live in respective countries and not just for some. For them, vis-à-vis racially motivated think that America is theirs and Hindu fanatics want India should be only for Hindus. There are a number of parallels these two categories carry out their intent, purpose and mission are the same, the eventual targets are different such as the American society is increasing becoming racist and the Indian society is polarized between those who believe in Hindu rashtra and others who believe in plural identity and secularism.
In recent years America and India have been witnessing a gory of hate crimes surfacing at alarming levels. On the 14th of May, 2022, a teenage white supremacist who raged that people of color are replacing whites in America in a 180-page “manifesto”, zeroed in a minority fragmented store in Buffalo, New York, shot and killed 10 people and injured more than three – almost all of them ‘Blacks’. Payton Gendron, 18, surrendered after the carnage, which he lived-streamed on a social media platform; and was charged with first degree murder in what law enforcement officials described as a racially motivated hate crime, remanded without bail.
India has also been witnessing waves of communal hate violence across the country. Communal violence is toxic and deadly – because for them, they consider “the Other” as “different”. On the 17th of April, 2022, violent clashes broke out between two groups in the Jahangirpuri area in Delhi where several people as well as police personnel were injured. Delhi police apprehended 23 people including two juveniles and of those two prime suspects namely Ansar and Aslam. Sources point out that the probe not only aimed at a possible link of accused with the 2020 northeast Delhi riots and anti-CAA NRC protests.
Moving from India (Delhi) and to draw parallel to another case that happened recently in the state of Karnataka, a BJP-ruled is increasingly becoming a toxic-hub for hate crimes. Recently it sparked yet another communal clash between two communities based on a message posted in the WhatsApp. Suspected miscreants were arrested. Prohibitory orders were clamped till the 20th of April, 22, in Hubballi, 400 km from Bengaluru after a mob went on the rampage. Nowadays it is becoming a common sight wherein in the religious processions and conventions extremists brandishing guns and wielding swords. Indian society is moving from non-violence to violence as violent incidents are increasingly becoming new-normal and a norm.
There appears to be motivation stemming out from red flags about Payton’s extremist views to carry out mass shooting in Buffalo, New York grocery store. Besides the racist opinion, he seemed to have threatened violence and shooting with fellow students. Accordingly, he had been referred for mental health evaluation and counselling. On his way prior to carrying out the dastardly shooting he chose to refer the zip code with a heavy black population, and then he began a live stream that showed him wearing military-style tactical gear with helmet. On the barrel of his rile, the “N-word” is spelled out in white paint, with the number 14. Number 14 refers to 14-word statement which is popular amongst the white supremacists that reads: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white people” …
The statement attributes to the late David Lane, an activist with a white supremacist terror group known as The Order. In a 180-page manifesto that he posted online before going on his killing spree, the big-built teenager espoused paranoid white supremacist views, referring to the “great replacement theory,” which claims Democrats are deliberately importing illegal migrants into the US to achieve electoral dominance while driving whites to extinction. It is aired often in the so-called “Ultra MAGA” constituency, including by some prominent commentators in the right-wing media. Gendron agrees to the fact that he has been radicalized by 4Chan, the online chat group that launched Quron, and he refers to other mass shootings by white supremacists like Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 people in a mosque in New Zealand, and Dylan Roof, who killed nine people in a black church in South Carolina.
There have been multiple racist attacks on Asians – including Indians – in recent years in the United States. Parallel to the happening in America, India is enmeshed with hate crime based on “Hindu majoritarianism and aggressive nationalism” entrenched in the manifesto far-right BJP ‘s manifesto’s, a cultural wing of BJP premised on cultural nationalism has evolved a number of strategies and intervention to purge and root out the Dalits, Tribals and the minorities including the Muslims and Christians from the country. In this the Reds of America and Lotus of India gel well with each other as they resonate the far-right white supremacy in America and Aryan/Brahminic dominance in India. In India festive seasons end hate crimes against the Christians and Muslims. Far-right fundamentalists and cultural nationalists display harmful weapons and hate narratives.
As the chief political executive PM Modi is yet to speak and his silence means many things. More the denials and longer the silence, greater the right-wing outfits gets emboldened. The poison that the Hindutva is injecting is indeed insidious and toxic.
President Biden is different than PM Modi stating that racially motivated hate crime was “abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation” and thus called “Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology … antithetical to everything we stand for in America”. He did insist that “Hate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything … to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism.” America and India, the world’s greatest democracies are built on plurality of identities and respect to mutual co-existence.
In recent times white supremacists and neo-Nazis have injected the white-race supremacy in the American society. In India hate politics with divisive intent is currently the order of the day.
In the last eight years we have been experiencing Hindu fundamentalists and those who tow Hindu majoritarian have been polarizing the Indian society layer by layer. White supremacism as an ideology coupled with neo-Nazism in America and majoritarian politics enjoined with muscular nationalism in India parallelly co-exists and posits a number of similarities.
America and India thus juxtapose in such ways where they are racially and religiously motivated killing and flagrant abuse of blacks, Asians, Dalits, Tribals and minorities taking at alarming levels. America has a long-troubled history of racism, while India is entangled with casteist overtones for centuries.
Brahminism and Hindu fanatism are two sides of the same coin. Spate of killings and massacres of those who are different in race, caste, country and religion underpins hatred because they think the “other” is different. In such a volatile context, peace, unity, reconciliation fails to offer any merit and thus becomes obsolete.
Dr. John Mohan Razu