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A Minister Feting a Lynch Mob? India Recoils in Disgust
Image
A political poster in Hazaribagh, India, featuring an image of Jayant Sinha, a government minister who draped garlands on eight men convicted of beating a Muslim man to death.CreditSaurabh Das for The New York Times
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar
Born and raised in India but minted in the United States, he found wealth and success in the Boston area. His American friends say his politics were moderate, maybe even progressive.
Then he returned to India.
He ditched the suits he had worn as a partner at McKinsey & Company, an elite management consulting firm, in favor of traditional Indian kurtas. He joined the governing Hindu right political party and became a member of Parliament and then a minister, leading Hindu parades and showering worshipers with flower petals from a helicopter.
This month, he also feted and garlanded eight murderers who were part of a Hindu lynch mob that the authorities said beat an unarmed and terrified Muslim man to death. His embrace of the convicted killers has become the political stunt that Indians can’t stop talking about.
Across the country, the images of Mr. Sinha draping wreaths of marigolds around the men’s necks have started a conversation about whether the state of Indian politics has become so poisoned by sectarian hatred and extremism that even an ostensibly worldly and successful politician can’t resist its pull.
Dozens of people have been beaten to death, often in cold blood, by crowds of bored young men who alternate between booting someone in the head and taking a selfie. Suggestions of whom to kill rip so fast through villages via social media, especially WhatsApp, that no one seems able to stop them.
In this atmosphere, some conclude that Mr. Sinha might actually win votes for his maneuver.
“He’ll get some benefit,” said Rajiv Kumar, a homeopathic medicine salesman and one of Mr. Sinha’s constituents. “I don’t agree with what he did; it’s only going to encourage more lynching. But Jayant was concerned his party would dump him, and this will help.”
Narendra Modi, became prime minister. Mr. Modi promised to stoke India’s go-go economy, and he recruited Mr. Sinha, who had built a small fortune in the United States as a consultant and hedge fund manager, to help him.
It didn’t hurt that Mr. Sinha’s father was a senior member of the Indian Parliament and the Bharatiya Janata Party. With Mr. Modi’s backing, Mr. Sinha easily won the election to take over his father’s seat. He was made a finance minister and then a minister for civil aviation, a post he still holds.
The territory his life spans is dramatic. Mr. Sinha, 55, owns a beautiful home in Chestnut Hill, a posh enclave outside Boston, where his wife still lives. He has degrees from some of the world’s best universities, including the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India’s capital, and Harvard Business School.
But the area he represents, centered in the bushy town of Hazaribagh (which means “a thousand gardens”), is poor, troubled and socially conservative. Lying more than 500 miles east of New Delhi in the state of Jharkhand, it is home to coal mines, Maoist rebels and land-grabbing gangs.
Like so much of India today, Hazaribagh is more polarized between majority Hindus and minority Muslims than it has been in a long time. Many people here support Hindu vigilante groups, especially the so-called cow protectors who hunt down those who break Hinduism’s taboo against killing cows.
Image
A woman tending to a cow near Hazaribagh, a poor and socially conservative part of Mr. Sinha’s constituency.CreditSaurabh Das for The New York Times
It was one such vigilante group that swarmed Alimuddin Ansari, a Muslim trader, in Mr. Sinha’s constituency last year. A rumor spread that Mr. Ansari was transporting beef, and a mob dragged him out of his van and beat him. Police officers eventually pulled him away, but he died a few hours later from internal injuries, officials said.
But a higher court recently granted an appeal, saying the evidence was flimsy. And where did eight of the men go the moment they were granted bail? Mr. Sinha’s house, where he was waiting with plates of sweets and wreaths of marigolds.
There is still a mystery about how Mr. Ansari died. A lawyer representing some of the convicted lynchers said that, yes, the mob had roughed up Mr. Ansari but that it was actually police officers who beat him to death, in custody. The lawyer pointed to photos that have been circulating on social media that show Mr. Ansari looking alert and apparently not badly injured as officers led him away from the mob. The trial court had heard many of these arguments and rejected them.
Mr. Sinha said he was helping the convicts because there was “no evidence” that they killed Mr. Ansari. He has actively supported their legal defense, paying several hundred dollars to one of the defense lawyers and connecting this lawyer to an experienced attorney friend to craft a persuasive appeal.
He celebrated their release from jail with sweets and flowers, he said, to show how happy he was that they “got a fresh lease on life.”
“a license to kill minorities.”
And a recent letter to the newspaper The Indian Express was headlined: “Despicable Act.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/world/asia/india-jayant-sinha-lynch-mob.html
Image
A political poster in Hazaribagh, India, featuring an image of Jayant Sinha, a government minister who draped garlands on eight men convicted of beating a Muslim man to death.CreditSaurabh Das for The New York Times
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar
- July 20, 2018
Born and raised in India but minted in the United States, he found wealth and success in the Boston area. His American friends say his politics were moderate, maybe even progressive.
Then he returned to India.
He ditched the suits he had worn as a partner at McKinsey & Company, an elite management consulting firm, in favor of traditional Indian kurtas. He joined the governing Hindu right political party and became a member of Parliament and then a minister, leading Hindu parades and showering worshipers with flower petals from a helicopter.
This month, he also feted and garlanded eight murderers who were part of a Hindu lynch mob that the authorities said beat an unarmed and terrified Muslim man to death. His embrace of the convicted killers has become the political stunt that Indians can’t stop talking about.
Across the country, the images of Mr. Sinha draping wreaths of marigolds around the men’s necks have started a conversation about whether the state of Indian politics has become so poisoned by sectarian hatred and extremism that even an ostensibly worldly and successful politician can’t resist its pull.
Dozens of people have been beaten to death, often in cold blood, by crowds of bored young men who alternate between booting someone in the head and taking a selfie. Suggestions of whom to kill rip so fast through villages via social media, especially WhatsApp, that no one seems able to stop them.
In this atmosphere, some conclude that Mr. Sinha might actually win votes for his maneuver.
“He’ll get some benefit,” said Rajiv Kumar, a homeopathic medicine salesman and one of Mr. Sinha’s constituents. “I don’t agree with what he did; it’s only going to encourage more lynching. But Jayant was concerned his party would dump him, and this will help.”
Narendra Modi, became prime minister. Mr. Modi promised to stoke India’s go-go economy, and he recruited Mr. Sinha, who had built a small fortune in the United States as a consultant and hedge fund manager, to help him.
It didn’t hurt that Mr. Sinha’s father was a senior member of the Indian Parliament and the Bharatiya Janata Party. With Mr. Modi’s backing, Mr. Sinha easily won the election to take over his father’s seat. He was made a finance minister and then a minister for civil aviation, a post he still holds.
The territory his life spans is dramatic. Mr. Sinha, 55, owns a beautiful home in Chestnut Hill, a posh enclave outside Boston, where his wife still lives. He has degrees from some of the world’s best universities, including the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India’s capital, and Harvard Business School.
But the area he represents, centered in the bushy town of Hazaribagh (which means “a thousand gardens”), is poor, troubled and socially conservative. Lying more than 500 miles east of New Delhi in the state of Jharkhand, it is home to coal mines, Maoist rebels and land-grabbing gangs.
Like so much of India today, Hazaribagh is more polarized between majority Hindus and minority Muslims than it has been in a long time. Many people here support Hindu vigilante groups, especially the so-called cow protectors who hunt down those who break Hinduism’s taboo against killing cows.
Image
A woman tending to a cow near Hazaribagh, a poor and socially conservative part of Mr. Sinha’s constituency.CreditSaurabh Das for The New York Times
It was one such vigilante group that swarmed Alimuddin Ansari, a Muslim trader, in Mr. Sinha’s constituency last year. A rumor spread that Mr. Ansari was transporting beef, and a mob dragged him out of his van and beat him. Police officers eventually pulled him away, but he died a few hours later from internal injuries, officials said.
But a higher court recently granted an appeal, saying the evidence was flimsy. And where did eight of the men go the moment they were granted bail? Mr. Sinha’s house, where he was waiting with plates of sweets and wreaths of marigolds.
There is still a mystery about how Mr. Ansari died. A lawyer representing some of the convicted lynchers said that, yes, the mob had roughed up Mr. Ansari but that it was actually police officers who beat him to death, in custody. The lawyer pointed to photos that have been circulating on social media that show Mr. Ansari looking alert and apparently not badly injured as officers led him away from the mob. The trial court had heard many of these arguments and rejected them.
Mr. Sinha said he was helping the convicts because there was “no evidence” that they killed Mr. Ansari. He has actively supported their legal defense, paying several hundred dollars to one of the defense lawyers and connecting this lawyer to an experienced attorney friend to craft a persuasive appeal.
He celebrated their release from jail with sweets and flowers, he said, to show how happy he was that they “got a fresh lease on life.”
“a license to kill minorities.”
And a recent letter to the newspaper The Indian Express was headlined: “Despicable Act.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/world/asia/india-jayant-sinha-lynch-mob.html
