Only now there’s a brazen shamelessness about it, a belief that every wrong will be accepted in the name of majoritarianism. We need to fix accountability. So every day you hear of lynchings somewhere or the other, usually Muslims or dalits killed on a whim by Hindu goons. We will beat you to a pulp if you don’t.Overburdened courts at the mercy of a corrupt administration, crooked officers and callous police often fail to deliver justice.This is what we are standing up against.. Circulating fake news and accusations on social media is all you need to drum up mob violence and riots. Meanwhile, the social media engineers social realities. A horde of lawyers sprang up in defence, pointing out that the attackers were actually victims. Amazing how we have been sprouting Hindu goons everywhere — in villages and cities, on highways and trains, in and around the nation’s capital. So Inayatullah Khan, 12, can be lynched by a mob in Jharkhand, and hanged from a tree, along with Mohammad Majloom, a cattle trader. Because this time our "collective conscience" will only be satisfied if we can dislodge the fascism poured into us and return to the India we were born to live in. Whether it is denying Shah Bano the paltry maintenance her husband should have paid her, or concluding that an offender should be sent to the gallows as that is the "only" way that "the collective conscience of society" would be "satisfied", or practically legitimising the demolition of the Babri Masjid by treating the disputed land as the birthplace of Ram, our courts have off and on failed our secular democracy as well. The dreaded serial rapist, extortionist and ruthless goon had been pally with the police, thus escaping the law for decades.

Because we can. But the BJP government can’t take full credit for this Make in India phenomenon — this mushrooming of violence has been incubating for years. Once a free-for-all is established procedure, you don’t need a real reason, or a real criminal to deliver instant justice — you can accuse and kill just about anybody. You can say and do anything at all. There is no accountability. The danger of our much-treasured pluralistic, protective social fabric being ripped apart to make us a hollow society that acts as an easy receptacle for values that go against everything that our democracy is built on. Governments come and go, but a fascist society stays with us, within us. And you, the weak, the minority, the downtrodden, the powerless, will have to bow to our every wish. It’s cool to be able to do what you want, and not pay for it.) Black humour deals with the utterly unacceptable. And no need for truth. But if lynching is the new normal (and I don’t think it is yet), it hasn’t become so overnight.This encourages desperate people to take the law into their own hands.Back in 2004, Akku Yadav was lynched in a Nagpur court by a mob of furious women and men. As Hindus in Hindustan we can do as we please. Its reach is wide and instant, and it can propagate ideas like never before.Besides, years of dumbing down of the media gently robs society of its ability to think clearly. In the hands of unscrupulous people, it swiftly changes perceptions of ourselves and our fellow citizens, and directs  rage and hatred towards the chosen "other" — usually Muslims. Traditionally, our sectarian harmony has been encouraged by cultural constructs like Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai, where the Hindu is the protective big brother to the Muslim younger brother. We smiled in relief. Then there is political expediency. It was not murder, it was social justice. We need to push for justice every time there is an attack. For years, we have prepared the ground for this brazen brutality that thumbs its nose at the law of the land.An increasingly violent society where might is right and justice is a distant dream is numbing our senses.Like the photo of a beaten and bloodied couple in Bangladesh or a still from a Bhojpuri film showing a woman being disrobed by leering gangsters, which are being passed around right now as "proof" that Hindus are being attacked and Hindu women molested in West Bengal.— Gau rakshak saab hain?— Nahin, lynch pe gayen hain!(Is the cow protector in? – No, he is out to lynch.This is the change. We now have our back to the wall. 

A hollow society that you can pour fascism into and wait for it to set and china polyester waterproof bag backpack shape up nicely. An increasingly, the aspirational media that encourages a culture of instant gratification and a me-centric worldview gives us tunnel vision and erases sentiments like empathy, sympathy, generosity or even fairness. Sure enough, 10 years later, all the accused were let off. "Not in My Name" is not just a distancing from the horrendous acts of violence orchestrated by the Hindu right, it is the first step to stopping the rot that has set in over decades. How dreadfully hollow is a society that can kill children in public with impunity?This is the real danger. This fall from the civilised norm of the strong protecting the weak, to the savage approach of the strong flaunting its domination of the weak. We were shocked, but not unhappy. We are all guilty, thundered a crowd of enraged women, challenging the court to punish them. Over time, we have deliberately moved away from that relationship. And Hafiz Junaid, 16, can be lynched in a train as fellow passengers join in. We have grown so used to the violent rape and murder of little children, that we fail to perform the basic duty of an adult — that of protecting the young.It’s the "Because I Can" age. The very concept of India as a pluralistic democracy with equal rights and freedoms for all is under direct attack.