Let’s not board the train to Pakistan

Chetan Singh’s crimes on the train tell us we are heading in the wrong direction.

Comparisons with Pakistan would be odious for India which has not, for the best part of its life as a republic, allowed social and religious hatred to be weaponised to take lives. But RPF constable Chetan Singh, who opened fire on-board the Jaipur-Mumbai train near Palghar on Monday, appears to have acted very much like a radical in Pakistan who would open fire in a school, bus station or any public place to kill to make his sordid point. The murders on the Indian train do not seem very different from them in style and intent. We have blamed the environment of religious extremism and intolerance in Pakistan, the policies of its governments that encouraged radicalisation of society, and the impunity enjoyed by those who commit hate crimes and acts of terrorism, as the causes and enablers for such murders and attacks.

India is still a long way away from where Pakistan is on this count, but the Palghar incident should be a warning to us not to board the terrible train to Pakistan. Chetan Singh’s action cannot be considered as anything other than hate crime because he picked out his victims, three of whom were Muslims, moving from compartment to compartment to find them, reportedly after “an argument over communities” with his senior, whom he shot first before going in search of his other victims.

What he did was different from the frustrated act of a uniformed person. It was also not a train security issue. It has the elements of a terrorist act. A purported video, which was initially reported to have been made by co-passengers at the behest of the killer himself, who is said to have instructed them to send it to the media, also suggests this. Railway authorities and police have, on the other hand, sought to portray Chetan Singh as mentally deranged or having acted out of frustration, rather than hate, and they have not confirmed the veracity of the video, although they have not denied it either. The government has, meanwhile, asked social media companies to remove the video from their platforms. But it would be no use trying to suppress the video of one Chetan Singh making hateful comments and justifying targeted murders, for the sentiments expressed in the video, wherever it came from, have been heard, and continue to be heard, from many communal pulpits and platforms of hatred, especially in his home state, Uttar Pradesh. The authorities may well like the country to believe that Chetan Singh was mentally unstable. Truth is, he is more a representative of a society which is losing its stability and balance and has evolved from rioters and lynchers to a new breed.