The outrage in Rajasthan

THE DEMOLITION OF a mosque at Asind in Rajasthan by a lumpen crowd and the construction of a temple at the site soon after is indeed a reminder of the communal frenzy that has been at play across the country for over a decade now. It may be true that the savage act at Asind does not fall in the same bracket as that of the December 6, 1992, demolition at Ayodhya. The incident on July 27 in this Rajasthan village may not have been preceded by a high pitch nationwide campaign by any organised group. The perpetrators did not even make any effort to give the incident any publicity as was done by those who were behind the Babri Masjid demolition campaign. And those in the civil administration in the district seem to have taken pains to ensure that the act went without being noticed.

There may have been valid reasons for this and one may even concede that the motive behind such efforts to conceal it from public glare was only to prevent a communal backlash. But then, the officers on the spot and the political masters of the civil administration in Rajasthan are certainly guilty on another count. Reports that the policemen posted on the spot remained mute spectators when a 300-strong crowd went about demolishing the mosque - a sixteenth century structure - is indeed a matter for concern. And the crowd was even allowed to build a ``temple'' in the same place. Yet, there are no indications of any arrests made by the Rajasthan police. The State Government and the Chief Minister, Mr. Ashok Gehlot, are indeed guilty of letting such lumpen elements, even if they belong only to a marginal lunatic fringe, go scot free after having committed such an outrage. This certainly is a matter for concern.

There is a larger aspect to the Asind incident than just being an act of lumpenism in the name of religion. The sequence of events, as has been reported, was not any spontaneous act by a set of lumpens. Instead, the trouble began when the annual `urs' procession to the Dargah (adjacent to the mosque) was disrupted and the tents erected for the cultural show as part of the festival were burnt down. All these happened a day before the demolition. The fact that the `urs' processionists were ``ordered'' to take a different route on that day (simply because the route they were taking all these years passed through a temple) was indeed a manifestation of the majoritarian agenda. The events thus fall into a definite strategy that the Hindutva proponents have been following and an idea that its storm- troopers have been thrusting on civil society - that the minority community shall ``respect'' the sentiments of the majority - in several parts of the country in the past. The developments in Asind, indeed, fall into this pattern; all those who visited the Dargah in Asind for the annual `urs' festival were forced to take a different route this year on the ground that the ``sentiments'' of the majority community would be ``hurt'' if the processionists walked along the road that they were taking all these years.

It is this kind of intolerance and hate shown by the Hindutva forces over a period of time that had led to communal clashes in several parts of the country in the past. And it is for this reason that the demolition of the mosque in Asind assumes significance. It may be true that the structure had remained unused for several years (since 1956 as has been reported) and the number of Muslims in and around the town is negligible. But then, the message from Asind (as it was from Ayodhya too on December 6, 1992) is certainly not in the interests of the democratic and secular spirit that remains the basis of our Constitution. The signals are ominous and civil society and its institutions can ignore them only at the nation's peril. Meanwhile, the imperative for the State Government in Rajasthan is to take steps and deal sternly with all those who perpetrated the act and also ensure that such acts are not repeated in other places.

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