A few months ago Ravish Kumar ran a report where he said something terrifying and true; in India right now, a mob is being prepared. Slowly, carefully, on every street corner, a mob is being assembled, a pot is being stirred, an angry crowd is constantly being kept on the boil.
The only thing these mobs need or are waiting for now is a gesture. Or a trigger. Or anything. And they’ll slip right off their leashes. The current spate of lynchings is a perfect sign of that. Mobs just ready and waiting for blood to bay for.
It didn’t even matter to that lynch mob in Dhule that the news was false. It didn’t matter to that mob in UP whether that man had actually eaten beef or not. This is not a coincidence. Leaders have spent the last four years on TV stirring this pot.
Today there is a reason that even when Sushma Swaraj is abused by trolls, her own party keeps quiet. She would be acceptable collateral damage.
What matters is that the flame of the mob is kept at 100 percent, so they can execute the fuhrer’s final solution whenever he deems fit, closer to the election. This does not come from a place of bias. It comes from a place of fear. I truly believe no person is currently truly safe on the streets of India.
There are days I truly fear that tomorrow I could be walking home and some dude in a crowd will point and say “this guy speaks against Modiji” and that’ll be the end of that.
I will not expect to see any of my neighbours help me. I will also not be surprised to see them in the mob. I am officially genuinely afraid of my own countrymen.
(A version of this post first appeared on Rohan Joshi‘s page.)