Dilip D'Souza on hate crimes:

But now there's one more twist to this shameful tragedy [Jhajjar]. The head of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Bizay Sonkar Shastri, has issued a report on what happened in Jhajjar that day. In it, he claims that the 'killing took place out of mistaken identity.' (Times of India, November 28 2002). And what was this mistaken identity? The mob, says Shastri, was told (by whom?) that the people skinning the cow were Muslim.

The implication? It was a case -- a mistaken case, of course -- of killing Muslims. You see, lynching Dalits is a truly awful thing, yes. But this was not such an event; in fact, it must not be seen as a caste thing at all. Because here, the mob thought they were lynching Muslims.