In India, lynching as a form of ‘spectacle’ violence emerged with the advent of social media and the coming-in of a right-wing government at the centre. However, this form of violence has a history that goes back to almost two and a half-centuries. It is a part of what is known as one of the most ”progressive and revolutionary” events in the Human history of the modern era. Before certain groups in India adopted lynching as a form of spectacle-violence, their historical counterparts in the United States mastered this “art.”
The lynching of Blacks by White mobs became a regular phenomenon in the United States in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Historians debated the origin of the concept and located it in the events of the American War for Independence. The American sociologist James Elbert Cutler, in his book Lynch-Law: An Investigation into the History of Lynching in the United States, showed that the word ‘Lynch’ entered the English lexicon in the year 1848. He cited one Charles Lynch of Bedford County, Virginia, as the eponymous source for the phrase ‘Lynch Law,’ from which derived the verb ‘to lynch’ and the gerund ‘lynching.’
Charles Lynch was born in 1736 in Virginia to Charles Lynch Senior, a wealthy landowner and businessman, and Sarah Lynch. Through his mother, young Charles and his siblings got associated with the local Quaker chapter and served in various capacities for almost thirteen years. After his break with the Quakers in 1767, Lynch got involved in business and politics. He was appointed as the Justice of the peace of Bedford County, Virginia. Later, he started trading in gunpowder and lead, amassing huge wealth as demand for these materials increased with the onset of the war of independence.
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