When Mithun Chakraborty raises alarm about West Bengal and warns of imagined threats, what he carefully avoids is the reality staring India in the face. The problem is not what India might become—the problem is what India already is under selective outrage and political hypocrisy.

India today has witnessed over 120 reported lynching incidents since 2014, according to multiple independent databases and human rights groups. The overwhelming majority of victims have been Muslims and Dalits. These killings did not happen in secrecy. They happened on roads, in villages, on highways—often filmed, shared, and celebrated.

Let us be clear. If mobs elsewhere are labelled Islamist, then honesty demands the same standard here: India has a growing record of violence by Hindu extremist mobs. Cow protection, religious purity, and nationalist slogans have become convenient covers for brutality. Rumor replaces law. Identity replaces justice.

This is where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore. Leaders who issue moral lectures today have, just days ago, garlanded men accused of lynching. That image alone demolishes every claim of concern for human life. You cannot condemn mob violence in speeches while honoring alleged mob killers in public.

The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq was not an aberration; it was a turning point. A man was murdered in his own home on suspicion. Instead of collective shame, the country witnessed justification, political protection, and later attempts to dilute accountability. That pattern has repeated itself—again and again.

What makes this moment dangerous is not only the violence but the silence—or worse, the celebration—that follows it. Lynching has moved from crime to ideology, from shame to spectacle. When perpetrators are defended and victims are questioned, the message is clear: justice depends on religion.

This is why dramatic warnings about external threats ring hollow. The greatest threat to India is internal—the normalization of Hindu extremist violence and the political hypocrisy that shields it. A society cannot claim moral authority while counting bodies selectively.

Until lynching is condemned without qualifiers, until accused killers are treated as criminals and not heroes, and until political leaders stop weaponizing fear while excusing bloodshed, India’s real crisis will not be law and order—it will be conscience.

The question is no longer whether India is different from others. The question is whether India is still willing to look honestly at itself.