Time for India to acknowledge, punish hate crimes

 

Recently, the US judiciary created history by awarding the death sentence to Dylann Roof for a hate crime. This is the first time that the capital punishment has been awarded for such a crime. 

 

This is an important decision as it sets a precedence that the country will not tolerate hate crimes anymore. 

 

In India, hate crimes are not an unfamiliar concept, especially in recent times. However, here the term 'hate crime' is not used to address this issue. 

 

Rather, the authorities consider hate-inspired crimes as stand-alone cases to perhaps lessen the gravity of the situation. 

 

But, the shocking rise in hate-instigated violence has made it near impossible to sugarcoat such crimes anymore.

 

What hate crimes?

 

In India, we do not have it per se. What we have is gender-based violence, caste-based violence, honour killings, communal riots, violence and differential treatment against Dalits, xenophobia, witch-hunting, violence towards LGBTQ community, ragging and bullying in school and colleges, and such other instances for which we often do candle marches. 

 

No one can deny that any of these incidences are rare in our country. To prove the point, pick a newspaper of any day in the recent past, and you will come across at least one news item that falls into one of the above categories. 

 

 

Examples will include molestation cases, violence against someone who is a native of some other state or communal issues. 

 

These are nothing but patterned hate crimes. However, they are usually passed off as routine incidents.  

 

Authorities like to pretend that they are not a matter of concern, apparently in the hope of building an immunity within the conscience of the masses, who will then accept these hate crimes. 

 

Only when something as grave as Nirbhaya or a mass molestation or an extreme case of violence happens do we decide to address the matter and show signs of discontent towards the government and question our laws and its inadequacies.  

 

The National Crime Records Bureau also presents its data in segregation. For instance, data of crime against women, crime against children, crimes against SCs by non-SCs and crimes against STs by non-STs and human trafficking - all these data are given separately.

 

Media also presents these data separately to build more content, or to simply highlight one particular offence, leaving out the bigger issue of our society's growing number of hate crimes. 

 

When do we recognise hate crime? When against us and when abroad:

 

We Indians have strong opinions about the incidences of hate crimes that are reported abroad, where the victims are Indians. 

 

 

But, with the hate crimes that are committed in India, we dissect each and every case and categorise them as per the identity of the victim. For example, witch-hunting is different than the assault of women. And we are still confused about the difference between marital rape and rape. 

 

In short, we have dual standards when it comes to understanding the meaning of hate crimes. 

 

In India, it is acceptable to a good extent but post visa approval - we strongly condemn such incidents. 

 

What now?

 

It is high time to add 'hate crime' to the list of allegations if it is evident the crime was motivated in part or wholly simply because of the victim's difference from his/her attacker. Whether that difference is caste, gender or class. 

 

The identity of the victims may be varied, but what unites them is the hatred of their attackers. A law should unitedly punish such attacks as well.