On Saturday, 12 November 2022, a video went viral on social media where a student of the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE) in Hyderabad, Himank Bansal, was being beaten up by the other students of the institute and forced to chant ‘Allahu Akbar’. Post the assault, Himank had filed a police complaint and the perpetrators were booked under stringent sections of 307, 342, 450, 323, 506, R/W 149, IPC, and Sec 4(I),(II), and (III) of the Prohibition of Ragging Act of 2011.
In the complaint, Himank had detailed the circumstances of the assault where he revealed that one Umar was the first to initiate the assault. In his complaint, Bansal mentioned that one of his friends from 1st year BA-LLB course, Dipasha Sharma, called him a paedophile for being friends with a girl 3 and a half years younger than him. When Bansal tried to defend himself by saying he doesn’t want any sexual relations with her and cited references from Islamic scriptures to explain how he is not wrong, the girl shared his messages with everyone else in college.
As per the complaint by Bansal, subsequently, 15 to 20 guys burst into his hostel room and beat him up while accusing him of hurting religious sentiments. The assaulters further asked him to chant Allah-hu-Akbar while beating him up. He was also threatened during the course of the assault, as were his family members.
The group of students also asked him to remove his trousers, and upon refusal further physically assaulted him. Himank Bansal has named several of these people in his complaint with details of their respective actions during the assault.
Let us simplify this – Himank Bansal was assaulted because the Muslim students believed that he had insulted their Prophet and therefore, deserved to be brutalised.
After the case of Nupur Sharma, where her innocuous quoting of the Hadiths ended up in her getting death threats from thousands of Islamists and Islamic countries en masse demanding an apology from her, there was a thunderous conversation about how such mindless blasphemy violence, in action and words, can be stopped. If lessons are to be drawn, the first and foremost thing that we must realise is that with the Islamists, threats are never “just” threats. Soon after the Nupur Sharma incident, Salman Rushdie was shot in consonance with a Fatwa that was issued against him over 3 decades ago. Therefore, it is safe to assume that once the Islamic community believes that an individual has committed blasphemy, they are doomed for life – sooner or later, some fanatic with a knife (or a gun) is going to get to them to avenge the perceived insult to their religion.
Armed with this knowledge, one would imagine that the establishment in India would be far more circumspect when it comes to allegations of “blasphemy” – it is a choice that has to be made, essentially – does one want to endorse the perpetual threat to life for spoken words or recognise the fanaticism and danger of endorsing such action by the Islamists.
There have been several cases where the spoken word led to violence because of the fanaticism of one community. Recent ones that come to mind include Kishan Bharwad, Harsha, Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana from Pakistan, Samuel Paty from France and so many more. In India, two cases that perhaps garnered the most attention were that of Kamlesh Tiwari and Kanhaiya Lal (A result of the hate that was showered upon Nupur Sharma post her remarks). In the case of Kamlesh Tiwari, before he was murdered by Islamists, he was jailed by the authorities for alleged hate speech – of course – the thousands and lakhs of Muslims who had taken to the streets calling for his death with slogans of “Sar Tan Se Juda” were not touched. In fact, even Owaisi, who had so much as called for his murder, was not booked for his speech. Kamlesh Tiwari was not only thrown in jail for his alleged speech, but his murder also garnered little sympathy from the usual suspects, including the Judiciary, because the establishment held him responsible for his own murder. The trope that we heard often back then was, “we condemn violence and murder, however, his speech was hate speech – we must condemn such sowing of hate as well”.
In the case of Kanhaiya Lal too, his brutal murder, the video of which was splashed all over social media, was met with a wall of silence or whataboutery, that essentially blamed him for his own fate – “Nupur Sharma committed blasphemy and indulged in hate speech against the Muslim community, therefore, when one supports such hate, hate is going to come to them, even though violence in condemnable”.
While the establishment has always been rather thoughtless when it comes to Jihadi violence, in the case of Kanhaiya Lal, one would imagine that being blind to the Jihadi hate would be rather difficult, considering the killers videographed the brutal murder and then gloated about their “service to Islam”, also on video. With the visuals of the pavement being turned red with Kanhaiya Lal’s blood being viral, one would think that no matter how strong the urge to whitewash the crimes of the Islamic community was, at least this murder would shake their conscience.
So what emboldened the entire Left-Liberal ecosystem to either maintain stoic silence or whitewash the gruesome murder of Kanhaiya Lal? When Nupur Sharma approached the Supreme Court for a mundane plea, hoping to get the investigation clubbed so she does not have to travel to remote parts of the country with death looming over her head, she was chastised for “hate speech”, the death threats against her were justified and instead of the Jihadis, it was Nupur Sharma who was held responsible for the murder of Kanhaiya Lal.
The court said:
- “She has a security threat or she has become a threat to the security of the nation?”.
- “The way she has ignited the whole country and she has the cheek and courage to come to the court to ask for discretionary relief?”, “This lady is singlehandedly responsible for the burnings in the country”.
- “This lady [has a] completely loose tongue that she keeps on making all irresponsible statements and she claims that she is a lawyer with 10 years standing? This is shameful”.
- “This is the outcome of what happened unfortunately at Udaipur”.
- “Even if we have laid down that law, this is a fit case that we refuse to apply that law”.
- “These are the people who are not religious at all. They have no respect for any religion. A religious person will have respect for other religions also. It is all to gain cheap popularity and just to achieve some political or nefarious agenda that all these statements are made”.
- “This petition also shows her obstinate character and her arrogance that she thinks that the Courts of the Magistrate are too small for her”
- “Yes everyone has a right to speak, in a democracy, the grass has the right to grow and a donkey has the right to eat”.
- The case of a journalist is at a different pedestal as compared to a citizen or spokesperson who goes on the channel and starts lambasting others making irresponsible statements without even an inkling of the ramifications and serious consequences that how seriously it will disturb the fabric of the society”.
- “When the conscience of the Court is not satisfied. We must mould the law accordingly”.
The court had said, at that time, that it was Nupur Sharma’s speech quoting the Hadith which ended up in the country burning and led to the murder of Kanhaiya Lal by Islamists. Essentially, if Nupur Sharma had just not exercised her freedom of speech when a Muslim panellist was insulting her faith, the fanatical Muslims would not have been angry enough to pick up the knife and murder Kanhaiya Lal. In the process, the court had at that time refused to give her the relief sought (which they had given to several people before that) because they believed she needed to pay for her speech – even if that meant risking her life.
Without saying as much, the court insinuated that the Muslim community could legitimately chant “Sar Tan Se Juda” and act on their threat because they had been offended by someone talking about their religion – the act of aggression was “understandable” because of the initial spoken word. If one looks at the comments objectively, there was really no substantial difference between the pronouncement by a Sharia Court and the pronouncement by our Supreme Court in this case – or perhaps – the difference was that the Sharia Court would have been merciful and killed the “accused” immediately while the Supreme Court refused to get their hands dirty and threw Nupur Sharma to the wolves instead.
With the court’s conduct in cases of serious death threats and murder when it comes to “blasphemy” allegations against Islam, one has to imagine that those who brutalised Himank Bansal truly believe that they can get away with their assault – or at least – suffer no serious consequences for it.
If one truly removes their glasses, chequered with prejudice, bias and an undying urge to protect the Islamists from any criticism, the cause for the death threats given to Nupur Sharma, the murder of Kanhaiya Lal and Kamlesh Tiwari and the assault against Himank Bansal have a common thread – Islamic fanaticism – a beast difficult to tame when the establishment is enslaved by debilitating spinelessness.
In the case of Nupur Sharma, the court refused to call out Islamic terrorism and violence, as a result, the observations of the court are, till today, cited to justify the branding of any speech about Islam as “hate speech” with a caveat that “hate begets hate” and therefore, any death threats that accrue to the person who dares to comment on religion are justified. The court in this case, and in most cases, justifies rampant and often fatal violence in the name of “blasphemy” by giving the preceding speech the colour of “hate speech”. First and foremost, there is no law that truly defines what “hate speech” is in the Indian Constitution. We mostly have IPC section 295 (A) which prescribes punishment for deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage the religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.
Such branding of “hate speech” hinges on the fact that all religions must be respected and co-existence comes from mutual toleration and admiration for different religions. When we say that all religions need to coexist without taking offence to each other, we are essentially saying that one of the most important tenets of survival in a multicultural nation like India is religious pluralism and stemming from that argument, the court came down heavily against Nupur Sharma expecting even Hindus to be offended at her criticism of Islam.
Religious Pluralism essentially says that firstly, all religions must acknowledge that certain truths exist in other religions as well, thereby declaring that it is not only their own religion that is the ‘only truth’. Further, it says that all religions must acknowledge that every religion teaches basic universal truths that have been taught since before the advent of religion itself.
When one delves into the principles of religious pluralism as a construct that can enable religions to co-exist without sectarian violence, it becomes important to ensure that all religions are brought down to the same surface level and hence, the claim that all religions are the same takes a beastly proportion where cultural context is often lost. When one tries to do that, it becomes remarkably clear that Islam and Hinduism are not the same. While Islam wants to annihilate Hinduism, Hinduism prescribes no such thing. Islam wants to convert or murder the Kafir, subjugate heathens and establish their Dar-ul-Islam because the Dar-ul-Harb is haraam. When dealing with a traditionally hostile faith, one cannot say that the faith that they are hostile and violent towards is the same as the said faith. Islam, if allowed, sanctions taking offence to the very existence of Kafirs and submits to no law of the land other than that of the God they believe in. It is true that Islam has a strict legal and political foundation to it. Hence, to essentially say that all religions are equal and aspire toward the same universal truths is a fallacious statement that is made by people who either harbour malice, or ignorance.
It is also pertinent to mention here that the higher the intolerance of a community, the more important it is for that community to be mocked, so the intolerance threshold is breached and that offence is normalised. Islamists have to be desensitised to criticism of their faith to a large extent because no other community is today taking to the streets demanding ‘Sar Tan Se Juda’ at the slightest ‘provocation’. Hindus, on the other hand, would have traditionally been more than happy to not utter a word about Islam had they not been beaten, mocked, insulted and humiliated by the very Islamists who are crying victims today.
When the two religions are not the same (one being hostile and the other being the victim of that hostility), they don’t aspire towards the same universal truths, and when one religion is theologically opposed to the other’s very existence, to say that Hindus must be equally offended when Islam is mocked is an expectation that far divorced from reality. One has to acknowledge that Hindus are powerless globally. While Islam has the support of the Ummah, Hindus are usually the recipient of hostility.
The court by branding criticism of Islam as “hate speech” is essentially telling the Hindu community that they either suffer through humiliation, death, rape and brutality or they become as intolerant as the Islamists, because every time a Hindu is threatened and brutalised in the name of Blasphemy, he, the victim, will be branded as the aggressor because he dared to offend an intolerant minority. The court thus emboldens the Islamists who don’t particularly need egregious provocation to go on a murderous rampage.
The court, by placating an intolerant minority and justifying the violence and branding their victims as purveyors of hate, is setting a precedent where the truth is hidden with the crimson colour of the blood that is shed by the Islamists. The truth about Islamic terrorism will need to be acknowledged by the Court sooner or later – the only question is how many dead bodies would have piled up by then.
