The events taking place in different parts of the country in October-November 2012 have been very disturbing, to say the least. It is the continuance and recurrence of communal events, communal violence in UP, Assam and Hyderabad in particular. Since the Akhilesh Yadav Government has come to power, there has taken place a series of acts of violence in UP. Since Samajwadi Party took over the reins of the state in March 2012, in the past few months communal violence took place in Mathura, Pratapgarh, Bareilly, Meerut, Allahabad and Lucknow. The latest in the series has been the tragic events of Faizabad, where on October 24, 2012, when an immersion procession of Durga was going on, a girl was molested by few miscreants. Making this as a pretext, few people started throwing stones in the nearby areas. A rumour was spread in Faizabad that Muslims are doing the stone throwing. The mob went on to burn nearly 25 shops of Muslim traders, and vandalised a mosque. They also rampaged the office of a bilingual (Urdu and Hindi) paper Aap Ki Takat. This paper is continuously giving the message of Peace and calling for Hindu-Muslim unity.
According to activist Yugal Kishore Sharan Shastri, this was a pre-planned attack. The editor of the paper Manzar Mehdi feels, this is an attempt to silence the voice of peace. The police took a long time to reach the spot and did not intervene effectively. Similarly, the fire brigade also took four hours to reach, by which time the shops were totally destroyed.
In the far off Assam, the recurrence of violence resulted in the death of six people, and it seemed whether there is going to be recurrence of the tragic incidents of July 2012, when nearly four lakh, mainly Muslims, were displaced and sixty people died. Assam violence was a bit different from others as here the number of the displaced was much more and it seemed that there is a plan to get the Bodo areas cleared from the presence of Muslims. Here one also saw that in the process of rehabilitation the Government is having a lopsided approach and Muslims are not being rehabilitated as many of them do not fulfil the criterion of proper records due to various reasons. This was one case of violence where apart from police playing its role of a mere onlooker, the propaganda based on misconceptions was made the base of violence.
It has been propagated that Muslims are infiltrators, Bangladeshis and have been encroaching the lands of Bodos. A lot has been written to dispel this myth. Muslims have mainly been coming from Bengal from the 18th century due to the British policy of reducing the pressure on overpopulated Bengal and to ensure that the stretches of Assam, having low population density, are populated. Since the perceptions have made deep roots in social common sense, the violence against Muslims, the citizens of Assam, has gone on and communal forces have taken full advantage of that.
The third incidence is from the Southern state of Andhra, where the historic monument of Charminar is being vandalised by putting up renovation of Bhagyalaxmi temple, which is abutting the Charminar. This violates the norms of Archaeological Survey of India. The plea of ASI that the changes in temple may damage the Minar and that this is an illegal act is falling on the deaf years and the government has been letting the act of desecration of Charminar going on, much to the annoyance of the people of old city of Hyderabad and historic Charminar area. There have been minor skirmishes due to which many people have been injured and the area went under curfew for some time.
These three incidents are very typical of what goes on to make a communal violence. There is preplanning in these acts, as is clear in all these cases. The pretext and rumours about violation of the modesty of women, is very much visible in the case of Faizabad. In case of Faizabad, apart from intimidating the minorities, burning their shops, the ransacking of the office of a bilingual paper is very symbolic. The belief of the paper is that Hindus and Muslims are brothers and Hindi and Urdu are sisters. It has been talking of peace in Ayodhay and is opposed to communal politics which led to Babri Masjid demolition. In UP while the Samajwadi Party (SP) is very much in the total control of situation, how come violence is taking place? SP has been always claiming to be secular and in past many times it has come forward to protect the values of secularism. There seem to be deeper forces which are beyond the control of SP, or whether SP sees a political benefit in letting violence happen remains to be seen.
It is painfully obvious in case of Faizabad also that police machinery is not interested in controlling the violence, even when it can. It either helps the rioters or looks the other way round when the violence is taking place. In Hyderabad one sees the use of historical places to incite communal tension. How systematically communal forces built up the Ram Temple campaign leading to demolition of Babri Masjid is a sad reminder to what can happen in Hyderabad. In Ayodhya also Babri Masjid was a monument under control of ASI, but with political hysteria built around it, it was demolished in the broad daylight with state and police very much in the know of things.
The multiple factors which lead to communal violence remain unaddressed so the recurrence of these acts of violence goes on in such a painful way. Social activists and scholars have pointed out the role of communal forces, state machinery, irrespective of who is in power; the role of rumours, the ‘social common sense’ targeted against minorities persists. It is very sure that unless the problem is dealt with in its totality, the country will keep suffering the pain of this violence and minorities in particular will keep suffering.
It also reminds us as to what is the state of our democracy and the need for an effective and balanced Communal Violence Bill. No democracy can be satisfactory unless the minorities are safe and secure and are having equity in economic matters. These incidents are reminders to all those having faith and longing for a peaceful, secular, democratic society that we need to work against those who operate on communal ground, we need to ensure that social misconceptions are removed and an atmosphere of amity is created and pressures have to be built to bring in Communal Violence Prevention Bill to punish the acts of commission or omission by political authorities and the police forces.