Awake

Mob violence hits rural village in northern India

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | India Hindus Kill 3 Muslims Over Cow Rumor

Most, if not all of the coverage on this story is identical; I've asked a friend in the area for their perspective. If I get anything more, I'll pass it along.

I think I've mentioned this before, but on one visit to India, I traveled to a rural village in southern Gujarat. During my stay, we drove up to the top of the hill of the village in which there was a spectacular view of the surrounding area. Indeed, there was a huge Lake-Shasta-esque body of water below and rolling hills everywhere, but hardly a person or sign of civilization to be observed...unless you looked very closely in one particular direction. With a deep valley between, on the next hill over there was another tiny village some several miles in the distance. As we were looking at the neighboring village, one in our group remarked that if that (or this) village were torched or terrorized in some way, it could potentially be days before anyone noticed. Because these rural villages tend to be so isolated from each other, incidents of mob violence, such as the one in the news story above, can be somewhat easily carried out.

Update: my friend in the area hadn't seen the international news coverage on the incident, he'd only read about it in the local paper and the local coverage mentioned neither the 3 deaths nor that it was instigated by Hindus over the pretext of a cow slaughter. He also said that the violence in this instance wasn't limited to one village, as the international coverage seems to imply, or is vague about, but that it is spread over a number of villages in a wide area. Also, he informs me that this region of Uttar Pradesh has a history of violence, some of which is religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. A couple of weeks ago there was a riot in a town in this area and around a dozen people were killed. In this instance as well it was a Hindu-Muslim conflict.