Violence in Kanpur

THE SHARP ESCALATION of violence in Kanpur, that has already left about a dozen people including an Additional District Magistrate dead, is a pointer to the extent to which the polity in the town is divided on communal lines. And it will not be improper to conclude that the events in Kanpur in the past few days are only a fallout of the insidious campaign carried out across the country by sectarian outfits on either side of the Hindu-Muslim divide. That mere rumours about the holy text of the Muslims being burnt in the capital are enough to provoke a violent outburst in Kanpur highlights the extent to which men who belong to the lunatic fringes of both the communities can go. But then, violence on the scale witnessed in Kanpur since Friday last could not have taken place if only the civil administration in the district and the political leadership of Uttar Pradesh had agreed to act in time. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr. Rajnath Singh, cannot be absolved of his responsibility in letting things slide to the extent that it has.

The fact that a section belonging to the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which had orchestrated the protest on March 16 (ostensibly to protest against the ``burning'' of the Quran), was carrying sophisticated firearms that Friday afternoon underlines the failure of the civil administration in the city. After all, it is not all that simple for members of such outfits to procure such sophisticated firearms (for it is now evident that the Additional District Magistrate succumbed to bullets from an assault rifle) without the law enforcing agencies coming to know of it. Add to this the reports that large number of crude bombs, country-made guns and other weapons have been found from the city's localities during the raids in the past couple of days, and it is clear that the communal violence in Kanpur was in the making for some time. Yet the Government did nothing.

Indeed, the incidents in Kanpur cannot be seen as mere problems of law and order. In the same way, there is no way one can concur with the claims by the Chief Minister that the violence is the fallout of a conspiracy. Instead, the turn of events in Kanpur during the past few days cannot but bring to mind the situation across Uttar Pradesh when the BJP and the other arms of the Sangh Parivar were engaged in whipping up passions around the Ayodhya controversy. It is a fact that throughout that phase - from the time of Mr. L. K. Advani's rath yatra to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 - most towns in Uttar Pradesh were caught up in communal violence, arson and looting of property. The civil administration had, even at that time, failed in its duty. The incidents in Kanpur are a cause for concern in this context rather than being mere issues pertaining to law and order.

It is for this very reason that the situation in Kanpur needs to be contained from a larger standpoint. And the imperative for the personnel in the civil administration and the political leaders - cutting across the parties - is to put in place a machinery that can intervene as and when forces wedded to religious sectarianism raise their heads to foment trouble in the State rather than let them procure such large quantities of firearms and bombs as they did in Kanpur. At another level, the men in the law enforcing agencies in the State - the PAC in particular - will need to be sensitised about the need for them to gain the confidence of the members of the minority community (it is a fact that the memory of the Meerut riots is still fresh). Meanwhile, it is also important for Mr. Rajnath Singh, as long as he is the Chief Minister of the State, to realise that attributing the violence to any conspiracy will not do. And even if it is a conspiracy, it is his duty as head of the State Government to bring out the truth and prevent such violence.

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Section  : Opinion
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