Right wing elements are out to promote divisive agenda to prepare favourable ground for the BJP to reap an electoral harvest in 2019.
New Delhi: A video showing a 15-year old boy tearing the national tricolor and claiming himself to be a pucca (staunch) Muslim went viral across the country on the whatsapp and other social media. It predictably provoked outrage among sections of people. But investigation by the Gujarat Police has revealed that the boy belonged to the Hindu community and even the video-recorder hailed from the same community.
A report in Urdu daily Qaumi Awaz from New Delhi says, investigation traced the video to the village of Amrauli in Surat district of Gujarat. The boy in the video and the video-maker were summoned by the inspector of the Amrauli Police Station and were let off after admonition.
The video was clearly a handiwork of elements who are out to spread hate against Muslims portraying them as anti-national and ones who do not feel any qualm in causing sacrilege to the national flag and hurling balls of the torn paper. That a member from the Muslim community would do this, more so in a communally ultra-sensitive state like Gujarat, is beyond imagination. Following the nefarious act, the boy is shown being assaulted by a group of youth and asked to apologise which he does. The stage-managed show was recorded on August 15. The investigation by police was conducted the very next day and the boy and the video-maker were identified as members of the Hindu community.
Evidently, the right wing outfits are desperate to stage acts that lead to provoking hate against Muslims and use the resulting outrage to polarize the people on communal lines. The incident is a replica and reminiscent of what happened in Sindgi when a Hindutva supporter hoisted a Pakistani flag on the Tehsil office in Sindgi, a taluka headquarter under Raichur district of Karnataka five years ago. The incident triggered tension and conflict and fingers were pointed at Muslims. But it did not take much time for the Police”it happened during BJP rule in the State”to discover that it was the handiwork of an activist of an ultra right group who is currently an accused in the murder of writer Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru on September 5, 2018.
Coming as it does from Gujarat, the video is symptomatic of what is being experimented in the BJP’s hindutva laboratory in the state, which the party never tires of projecting as ‘Role Model State’. What is more surprising is that how could a 15-year boy indulge in such a nefarious act. A more important question that needs to be asked: Should the Police let off the adolescent without tracing the trail which must have involved more systematic effort to create hate between communities and a divisive agenda.
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