A video went viral on social media recently where a mob could be seen barging into the home of a Muslim family and beating the people black and blue with sticks. In the aftermath of the attack, people were quick to give the whole incident a communal colour merely because the victims appeared to be Muslim and the perpetrators, Hindus.
Rahul Gandhi and many others even used the incident to target the BJP and the RSS, despite any evidence to suggest that the incident was motivated by communal hatred, or that ideology of the BJP/RSS inspired the incident.
In reality, however, the attack was motivated not by communal hatred but it was a fight that had broken out over cricket. OpIndia.com talked to Gurugram Police to know the facts of the incident, and Gurugram police spokesperson Subhash Boken confirmed that there was no communal angle in the incident. He said, “The matter started over cricket, a child got hit with a ball. And they had a fight over the matter. So, they called their friends. When they realized they were outnumbered, they ran home. Then, people entered their home and beat them up. It’s not a communal matter. Even the family is saying that it’s not communal, they have been living in the area for a long time.”
[bctt tweet=”Gurugram ‘communal’ incident turns out to be propaganda too. Fake news riot mongers march on inciting communal tensions while claiming to fight it”]
While Gurgaon police have confirmed that the fight started over cricket and it was not a hate crime, some media reports claim that the victims were told to “Go to Pakistan” by the attackers. When asked about this, Gurugram police spokesperson Subhash Boken said that no such thing was said by the attackers. He also informed that the FIR filed in the incident also does not mention that the victims were asked to go to Pakistan, and the victims didn’t include any such claim in their complaint.
The victims also narrated their ordeal in an interview given to ABP news, and in that interview too they never mentioned that the attackers asked them to go to Pakistan. Therefore, it can be concluded that this was added by a section of media to sensationalise the news while actually the attackers didn’t say those words.
This clearly shows that there was no communal angle to the incident and the attack was clearly sparked by a scuffle over cricket. Attempts to portray it as communal comes across only as a desperate ploy to paint Muslims as victims of hate crimes regardless of the nature of the crime itself.
In the past as well, crimes against Muslims were portrayed as a hate crime despite the fact that such crimes had no religious motivations and in fact, had occurred as a consequence of a fight over other matters.
One such crime had taken place over a seat in a train, which was given the colour of religious hate crime by media two years ago. In 2017, one Muslim man named Junaid was murdered in a moving train. Numerous media houses spun a yearn that he was murdered due to a suspicion that he was carrying beef. The Liberal elite had even taken to the streets and initiated the “Not in my name” protests. But later it turned out that the entire narrative was based on a lie. The Punjab and Haryana High Court in its judgment the following year confirmed that the murder was a consequence of a seat dispute and there was no communal angle to it.
The Junaid murder and now the Gurugram incident where efforts were made to give a crime committed against Muslims a communal colour despite the fact that they were motivated by other factors is part of a larger pattern.
IndiaSpend runs a biased ‘hate-tracker’, the entire purpose of which is to paint Muslims as victims of hate crimes regardless of actual motivations. For instance, in September 2018, when one Azhar Khan was beaten up for fishing near a temple, it was considered a hate crime even though the motive were nowhere religious and IndiaSpend was not aware of the identity of the perpetrators as per their own data.
Thus, it appears that the same people who cannot see religious motivations behind terrorism even when the terrorist loudly proclaims that he was killing people for Allah are ever eager to paint Muslims as victims of hate crimes and Hindus as aggressors despite a clear lack of evidence. On many occasions, there exists evidence to the contrary.
Therefore, it is clear that for liberals and ‘secular’ politicians, their main objective is to derive electoral benefits and score brownie points whenever such crimes occur. They might claim that they are trying to ‘heal’ the divide in society, however, with their actions and their fake narratives, they are only succeeding in creating a greater divide.
