"I do not want to stay here. I don't want to live here." She was holding my hands. She was crying. It was a very small room. We were surrounded by TV cameras and press reporters. There was a lot of commotion and I could barely hear her. Poverty was writ large on the walls and furniture over there. She was sitting on a cot and I was trying to console her. Her younger son was talking to Arvind Kejriwal who was sitting next to me. I was looking at her face. Her right eye was swollen and black. She is 82.
Monday night changed her life forever. On that night, a mob instigated by some boys attacked her home, identified her 50-year-old son and a grandson, and started beating them up. When she tried to save them, she was also brutally attacked. She hid herself in the bathroom. The door was broken and she was badly thrashed. She told me she saw her son being beaten with a sewing machine. His head was smashed with bricks. When he became unconscious, his body was dragged out of the house and taken to a corner of the village. By the time the police reached, both father and son were in critical condition. The father, Akhlaq, was declared dead at the hospital and the son is still fighting for life in the hospital.
She could hardly open her right eye. I wanted to know if she could see through that eye. She nodded in affirmation. She told me her whole body was aching; she couldn't show me where she had got injuries. She was willing to forget every pain if she could get back her son but that was not to happen. She swore by the Almighty - they did not eat beef as was rumoured. In fact, her younger son told us, they prefer vegetarian food. I could feel her body shivering and she was starting to get delirious. She was again repeating "I don't want to live here. Take me away." I had no answer.
Her other three sons and daughter had also come. They were talking to Arvind one by one. The younger son was saying that at this moment they do not want to leave this place, but they would certainly decide after some time. I could see pain on their faces. They were trying to be brave. The oldest son and eldest brother of Akhlaq told us that their family had been living there for the last 200 years. He had heard that his great grandfather had also been born in that very same village. They were only two Muslim families amongst hundreds of Hindu families, yet they had never felt threatened. In fact, when they had to go out to earn a living, they would leave the womenfolk there without any worries. We were told that there was a lot of respect for the Akhlaq family. One of the brothers used to work as a plumber and due to the nature of the job, he had been to almost every house in the village and he recognised everybody in that area. He could not understand why his family was targeted. They all were looking for an answer.
I wish I could tell them that it was not their fault. Akhlaq had not committed any crime. Cow meat is banned in Uttar Pradesh. And even if he had eaten beef, the law should have taken its course. Citizens had no right to form a mob and kill somebody just because his eating habits were not liked by a few. This is the most dangerous thing that has happened in the recent past. It was like the killing of Kalburgi in Karnataka and the murder of Govind Pansare in Maharashtra. The crime of both these gentlemen was that their views were not liked by a few fringe Hindu organisations. They had no argument to counter them. So they decided to shoot them. More dangerous was the attempt by a few to justify the killings and to threaten a few more.
I had grown up in a democratic society and was always told that per our constitution, as citizens, we are free to choose any religion, can express our views without any fear or favour, and can eat whatever we feel like. If people are killed just because one does not like some one's views or does not like one's eating habit, then there is no future for this country. These are fundamental rights ordained by our constitution; secularism is central to our democratic set up and when such incidents take place, every right-thinking person is outraged and our basic belief is shaken.
But unfortunately, I must confess that I believe that a new environment has been deliberately created for the last so many years (to provoke or allow these sorts of attacks). In fact, such incidents are actually justified. Two Cabinet Ministers - Mahesh Sharma who said that the "incident was the result of some misunderstanding" and Sanjiv Balyan, an accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots - had no remorse. Mr. Balyan said the "UP government should be sacked for cow slaughter". Social media platforms are full of people who rejoiced over the killing.
During our visit to the village, we were confronted by a few whose tone and tenor can't be appreciated. A young woman had such bad words that I am afraid I can't repeat here. She was more concerned about a "rumoured" cow slaughter than the murder of a fellow village man. She even questioned the place of the burial of Akhlaq. Her tone was threatening. These were the women who attacked the media, specially TV crews, before we reached there. I saw a few men roaming around with a threatening swagger. I found out that not all of them belonged to the village. They were highly political. They jeered Arvind. We decided to ignore them.
But what I can't ignore is the fact that since that incident, no one from the village had visited the Akhlaq home and no one bothered to know if they are ok. What I can't ignore are the cries of that 82-year-old woman and the words uttered by her younger son that "it was not the killing of his brother but the killing of a centuries'-old trust".
It was this trust which had made India what India is today, a secular-democratic-liberal country and for that it is looked at with awe by the world community. It was because of this trust that Akhlaq and his family and crores of Muslims decided to stay back in India when they had an option in 1947 to migrate to Pakistan. But today there are forces that are hell bent on breaking that trust. Because there are forces that are not willing to learn lessons from history and want to convert India into another Pakistan. I wish I could say to that mother "Don't worry, this too shall pass, you stay back..." But those threatening eyes are still following me and I am not sure such an incident will not happen again.
(Ashutosh joined the Aam Aadmi Party in January 2014.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.