Thiruvananthapuram: Around a hundred people stood in front of the Secretariat in silence with placards that read: “Today it is Junaid; tomorrow you and me,” “Not in my name,” and “Break the silence”. The #notinmyname campaigners in 15 cities had chosen a silent protest to question the silence over the lynching of Hafiz Junaid. The Muslim youth was lynched on board a Mathura-bound train last week following a quarrel with other passengers.

Journalist Geetha Nazeer read out the ‘Mann ki Baat of a Father,’ in which the 15-year-old’s father Jalal-uddin Khan had asked “When will the Prime Minister break his silence on the lynching of Muslims?” Prime Mini-ster Narendra Modi’s ‘Mann ki Baat’ on Sunday had not mentioned a word about communal violence. But it was not just the silence of the ruling front that the campaigners were hoping to break. S. Krishnaja, a student who is in the city for civil services exam coaching classes, said, “When Aqlaq was lynched, we were shocked. Now we are no longer shocked, because this is the new normal. This is an appeal to fellow Indians not to be silent.”

There is a pressing need to talk to people with different perspectives, accor-ding to Praveena Kodoth, a faculty at Centre for Development Studies. “There was a BBC discussion after Trump’s win, on how not too many people revealed that they would vote for Trump. When extreme characters like Trump or Modi are involved, people may not volunteer that info, but there may be underlying sentiments, perhaps of anger. It is important to keep the conversation going and understand the other side,” she said.