Communal violence

COMMUNALISM is not a medieval phenomenon but a modern one. It began with the British colonisation of the subcontinent. Hindu- Muslim riots in the medieval period were rare. Records show only two such riots, both in the 18th Century. Communal violence started later that century in North India. It ignited in Bombay state in 1893, and fanned out to Junagadh in what is Gujarat today.

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The politics of fundamentalism

Fundamentalism has its roots in Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's mechanics of education and science being less effective than he wanted them to be. First, the Partition deeply wounded the Hindu psyche. Second, the resurgence of Hindu-Muslim economic competition fuelled a communal ideology. Third, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), formed by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925, temporarily banned after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, began to flourish. According to its sarsanghchalak, Guru Golwalkar, Muslims and Christians were "guests in this country." Muslims were, he said, invaders from Arabia and Central Asia and had no permanent place in Indian society.

Since then, a systematic process of historical distortion has sought to perpetuate a demonised Hindu-Muslim history through school textbooks and academic treatises. There is yet no mandate to weed it out, or to even initiate a substantive counter to re- historification that is warping the perceptions of entire generations of Indians.

Word of mouth

Rumours, abetted by the media, play a role in almost every major communal riot. By virtue of their proximity to the source, many vernacular newspapers disseminate rumours as "news".

In fact, the system of communal information dissemination and perpetuation is far more sophisticated than that of mere words. Design and layout are impregnated with communal bias. During the 1969 Ahmedabad riots, newspapers headlined rumoured reports of attacks on Hindu temples.

Descent to barbarism

The riots on the eve of Partition are today the stuff of mythification. The atrocities committed and suffered by the generation that went through the vivisection of the country were impassioned through repetition, amplification, and glorification into the barbarism of the next.

In Calcutta in 1948, the Muslim League called for "direct action", leading to large-scale slaughter. The Hindus retaliated and the riots intensified. Noakhali in Bengal and several villages in Bihar exploded. In reprisal, refugees from West Punjab (Pakistan) in Delhi butchered uncodified thousands. The scale of this frenzy remains unprecedented.

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Behind appeasement

"Political appeasement", the bugbear of Hindu fundamentalists, actually works to their advantage. Muslims reacted aggressively against the Supreme Court judgment which granted a Muslim divorcee, Shah Bano, maintenance in excess and in protraction of the Shari'ah, which permits maintenance only for the iddah (three months post-divorce) period.

The Rajiv Gandhi government overturned the judgment by passing the Muslim Women's Act in early 1986, which some secular forces called an "epochal error". The government also traded off with the Hindu fundamentalists by unlocking the Babri Masjid.

The next incumbent, V. P. Singh made seat adjustments with the BJP, enabling it to increase its seats in the Lok Sabha from two in 1984 to 89.

The Nineties: decisive phase

On August 8, 1990, the V. P. Singh government announced its implementation of the Mandal Commission Report on concerning the education of and jobs given to the SC/ST/OBC groups. Apprehending a split in the BJP's Hindu votebank, its president, L. K. Advani, announced a "Rath Yatra" on August 23. His communal odyssey meandered from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya in UP, leaving a rash of riots in its wake.

This "holy campaign" led directly to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. In Bombay alone, more than 800 people were killed in the subsequent December 1992 and January 1993 riots. The death toll in Surat was over 300. In Bombay, the police was brazenly partisan.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid has become a benchmark study of the long historical arm of communalism, and of the future agenda of the Hindu Right wing. Govind Ballabh Pant had ignored Jawaharlal Nehru's admonition to remove the Ram Lalla idols installed in the Masjid in 1948. If he had not, the demolition, more than four decades later, would perhaps never have happened.

Disaster management and communal violence.

Communal riots are transparently causative. Major communal disturbance necessitate a communalised context and intervention by a political party. A communally surcharged ambience is often the result of a political tug-of-war between secular and communal parties for the votes of majority and minority communities. A partisan police aggravates the breakdown of law and order, through incitement, active participation, and letting rumours fester and fly. The slightest indication of minority communalism fans a multifold release of majority communalism. True history takes a beating, as does the incumbent administration. Finally, secular forces become victims no less than the communities in question.

Short-term measures

The police should be held fully responsible for the control of communal violence. If it fails to check violence within 24 hours, the concerned officer should be transferred or suspended.

The police should be properly trained in riot control and self- restraint. In some recent riots, more people were killed in police firing than in rioting.

Non-lethal rubber bullets and water hoses must be made available to the police.

In order to spare innocent lives, policemen with guns must be trained as marksmen.

Preventive arrests and externment of history sheeters must be made mandatory.

Rumours must be checked.

The intelligence machinery must be spruced up, and competent and secular officers must be trained in intelligence gathering.

The absence of codified guidelines paralyses the administration. Among all states, the West Bengal government has succeeded in damping major communal disgruntlement (except after the Babri Masjid demolition, which was soon controlled). It helped that Chief Minister Jyoti Basu assumed personal charge.

Long-term measures

There must be comprehensive and refresher training of the entire police hierarchy. The Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, has conducted more than 50 workshops for the Bombay police and for the police officials in Thane, Nashik, Aurangabad, Bangalore, Mysore, etc.

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Such workshops are all the more necessary for the field constabulary and lower-level officials. Unfortunately, these re- orientation courses are few and far between.

The police force should be representative of minority communities and Dalits. Riot prevention calls for the screening of recruits for their secular outlook.

ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER

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