The Lynched Body: Gendered Realities of the Muslim Man through Salam’s ‘Lynch Files’

Abstract

Beef Lynchings have been often called the new communal riots. This essay tries to understand beef lynchings and contextualize them in the contemporary Indian scenario. In doing so it extends upon the lived realities that a Muslim man faces at the behest of mob violence. It also looks at the body of the Muslim man to understand how it is gendered in case of beef lynchings. It takes into account three cases of beef lynchings to posit the same. Thus it doubles up as a discourse on beef lynching and at the same time begs into questions of body politics of the Muslim man.