Pause, reflect if you want to save India's beliefs: President on lynchings

New Delhi: Condemning the recent string of brutal lynching incidents across the nation, President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday called on the country to introspect if we are doing enough to protect our ideals.

"With change of history we can see colonialism now as dominance -- exploitation by one power to another power. When we see on TV or read the newspapers to find out that an individual has been lynched -- when the mob frenzy becomes so high and uncontrollable -- we have to pause and reflect," the President said at the re-launch of the National Herald website.

"I am not talking of vigilantism, I am asking if we are vigilant enough proactively to save the basic tenets of our country?" he questioned.

The President's assertion comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday strongly voiced out against the lynching, saying that these are atrocities against innocent people in the guise of cow protection.

"Killing people in the name of Gau Bhakti is not acceptable. This is not something that Mahatma Gandhi would have approved. There is no place for violence in the society," Prime Minister Modi said at Sabarmati Ashram centenary celebrations in Ahmedabad.

The Prime Minister asserted that violence is not a solution of any problem and no one has the right to take the law in his or her own hands in this nation.

However, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's condemnation of violent cow vigilantism is "too little, too late".

Just hours after Prime Minster Modi condemned lynching in the name of cow protection, a Jharkhand man was attacked by a mob on the suspicion carrying beef in his car on Thursday.