Lynching : in Indian Literature, Culture and Society

Lynching : in Indian Literature, Culture and Society 

Abu Siddique 

“What most symbolises the dark times that India is passing through is the epidemic of lynching. This is the subject of Abu Siddik’s brave and necessary book. He combines reportage, narrative, commentary, poetry and literature to weave an affecting portrait of the horror of these crimes, of criminal state complicity, and of the scale of fear and despair that lynching has stirred in the hearts and minds of Indian Muslims. Some of the most compelling sections of the book draw terrifying comparisons with Jim Crow’s America, of celebratory lynching of African American men that continued for six decades.  Siddik’s is a cautionary tale of what India is today and what it can become.” 

......Harsh Mander

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There are several explanations that historians have given for the shift to vegetarianism, with D. N. Jha arguing that the shift was part of the Hindu religion's need to establish itself as the more 'peaceful' and 'non- violent' religion to compete with the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, both of which espoused the philosophy of non-violence as a central tenet. Moreover, as with myths perpetuated in social media today, convincing people to shift to vegetarianism requires its myths.

Doniger points out in a 2017 essay titled "Hinduism and its complicated history with cows (and People Who Eat Them)", published in The Conversation that the transition of Indians from a cow-eating to a non- cow-eating nation is contained in a myth that featured in the Mahabharata. Composed in the era between 300 BC and 300 AD, the epic poem tells the tale of a 'great famine', when "King Prithu took up his bow and arrow and pursued the earth to force her to yield nourishment for his people. The earth assumed the form of a cow and begged him to spare her life; she then allowed him to milk her for all that the people needed."