'Lynching' Has no Territorial-Cultural Connotation, RSS Denying Mob Killings: CPI(M)

New Delhi: The term "lynching" has no territorial-cultural connotation, the CPI(M) said Wednesday, accusing RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat of denying that mob killings were taking place in the country, a day after he said the word was "alien" to the Indian tradition.

In his Dussehra address in Nagpur, Bhagwat had said isolated incidents of social violence should not be labelled with foreign words, like lynching, to defame the country.

Bhagwat's address has revealed "glimpses of the fascistic ideology which permeates the RSS", said Communist Party of India (Marxist) mouthpiece, People's Democracy's, forthcoming editorial.

"The RSS chief took exception to incidents of mob killings being termed as 'lynchings'... This single sentence exposes the doublespeak and rabidly communal outlook of the RSS," it said.

"At one stroke he denies that mob lynchings are taking place. The term lynching has no territorial-cultural connotation; it is a term used for any mob attack leading to killing," it said.

The editorial also said that Bhagwat, in his speech, alleged that any effort to condemn lynching is an attempt to defame the entire Hindu society.

"He does not even acknowledge that minority communities have been targeted for lynchings by cow vigilantes. In his speech, he asserts that such incidents are not one-sided and he does not even recognise minority communities by labelling them as 'so-called'," it said.

The editorial also pointed out that the RSS chief challenged the existence of incidents of mob lynching by terming them an attempt to defame the Hindu society and the country.

According to him, some "incidents have been deliberately fabricated while some others have been published in a distorted manner", it said.

"With such an outlook, it is not surprising that the ruling RSS-BJP combine have ignored the Supreme Court's directions in the matter. The Modi government is not prepared to bring an anti-lynching legislation in Parliament nor are the directions for speedy investigations and trial by special courts of mob lynching cases been taken up earnestly by the state governments concerned," it said.

Voicing displeasure about incidents of mob violence, Bhagwat on Tuesday said, "Lynching is not a word from Indian ethos, its origin is in a story in a separate religious text...

Lynching itself is a western construct and one should not use it in the Indian context to defame the country."