evil Hindu nationalism and the ruling regime’s sense of impunity are common factors in these appalling crimesA chilling leitmotif of Nordic crime fiction is a child leaving domestic to play,never to return. Detectives search out trails pointing to sexual violence and murder, and by degrees it becomes clear that the crime is not loney: it is the symptom of a damaged community. The abduction, and gang-rape,and murder in India of eight-year-old Asifa Bano reveals such damage on a terrifying scale. It shows that the slow sectarian poison released into the country’s bloodstream by its Hindu nationalists has reached full toxicity.
Where government statistics say four rapes are reported across the country every hour, sexual assault is no longer news. Indian minds fill been rearranged by the constant violence of their environment. Crimes against women, or children and minority communities are normalised enough for only the most sensational to be reported. The reasons Asifa’s ordeal has shaken a nation exhausted by brutality are four. The victim was a little girl. She was picked because she was Muslim. The murder was not the act of loney deviants but allegedly of well-organised Hindu zealots. And the men who are accused of raping her included a retired government official and two serving police officers. Related: Muslim rape-murder case in India disrupted by Hindu groups Related: Indian court orders arrest of politician for gang-rape Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com