Someone remarked today that crimes by the dalits and muslims are not highlighted in the media. But cow crimes are reported everywhere. It’s just media bias. I tried to explain cow related mob lynchings are hate crimes. I don’t think I got across. So here is a short explanation.
It’s a hate crime is one in which the victim is identified and targeted because of his/her identity. Normally, the victim has physical and obvious markers of belonging to a community. Beard or skullcap, skin color, slant of eyes, accented speech etc.
The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”
So while all instances of physical assault are criminal, when people of north east are specifically targeted in Delhi, it becomes a hate crime. When mobs look for a bearded man or one with skullcap and kill him on video as a lesson to his community, it is a hate crime.
During the time of partition, when most men tried to blend in and cross over, they were stripped and checked if they were circumcised. These were not random killings. They were targeted to a specific group, thus qualifying as hate crimes.
So, when a dalit man is killed because he is a dalit, it is a hate crime. For example, in this instance, a man was trying to eat at a wedding. He was killed. Eating is not a crime. Being dalit, apparently, is. Thus, a hate crime. When you are victimised not because of what you did but because of who you are, it is a hate crime. In this instance, a person is shot because of his name that showed he belonged to a minority community.
To answer my most erudite friend, a have not heard of a case where brahmins and dalits are killed because they are upper caste. Just as black police officers randomly killing white men in USA is unheard of. Hate crimes are about power, control and enforce status quo.
Most educated, english speaking, well employed Indians today either don’t understand or refuse to accept these truths. It is shocking to hear normally respectable people come up and say cow lynchings are no different from regular crimes! But it is our job as liberals to explain.
