People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 46
November 18, 2012
|
Vol. XXXVI
No. 46 November 18, 2012 |
WHAT OTHERS SAY
The Riot and the Rot Dhirendra K Jha Faizabad
saw a brazen attack on Muslims on October 24. From
what led to this carnage, it
is clear that it was not spontaneous but orchestrated. THE
communal eruption on October 24 in
Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, needs no detectives. The
perpetrators did not care to
maintain their anonymity. In fact, they appeared anxious
that their objective
would be defeated if it was not clear to their intended
audience whom they had
stirred it up. For such violence to have an impact beyond
the district borders,
the rioters seem to think, every stone pelted, every
firebomb hurled and every
act of mob vandalism must bear a signature that is legible
to people across the
Hindu-Muslim divide, even if the state’s law and order
apparatus feigns
ignorance of it. ONE-SIDED ATTACKS The
violence in question broke out
during the course of a Hindu procession carrying idols of
Goddess Durga for
immersion in the river Saryu. The violence was undertaken
by a ‘flash mob’ of
rioters who had mingled with the crowd before they got
into the act. As if
still unsure whether they had left enough imprints, the
rioters broke open the
locks of a mosque in the Chowk, the heart of Faizabad’s
business area, and left
it thoroughly ransacked. Built in 1780 by Nawab Hassan
Raza Khan of Awadh, the
mosque has long been a symbol of communal harmony in the
town — every year,
Hindu women would go up the stairs of the mosque and
shower flower petals on
Durga processions passing by it. “This year, though, no
Hindu woman came to the
mosque to welcome the procession,” says Dr Mirza Shahab
Shah, who looks after
the mosque. “It was unprecedented, and raises the
suspicion whether the attack
was planned in advance..… those who did it also saw to it
that the mosque was
vacant so that it could be vandalised without
interruption.” The
local administration and much of
the media lost little time in calling the outrage yet
another example of mutual
hostility between the Hindus and the Muslims --- a
supposedly regular feature
of life in UP. This, however, is not the truth. What
happened at the Chowk in Faizabad
in the hours between roughly 5.30 and 10.30 p m on October
24 — as the
state machinery looked the other way
while mobs looted, ransacked and burnt the shops owned by
Muslims and then
vandalised the 18th century mosque — was not a
‘Hindu-Muslim riot.’ It was a
calculated and cold-blooded attack on the minorities by
those who have a
political stake in such violence, who see something to
gain in setting the two
communities against each other. Locals
at large seem to have seen
through it. The restraint displayed by most residents of
the town was notable;
the mobs did not swell, and participation was restricted
to the bunch that
began it. This is more than can be said of the
administration and some sections
of the media. The very next day, Subhash Chandra,
Inspector General of Police,
Lucknow Range, had this to tell media persons in the state
capital: “The exact
reason behind the violence is not yet known and efforts
are on to identify
those who incited the mobs on both sides.” This two-side
theory was echoed by
statements of other officials as well, and newspapers went
along for the ride.
Local news channels chose to ignore the event. (Why they
did so, is unclear.) SUPPRESSION OF THE FACTS Suppressed
was the fact of how the
violence began. It had nothing to do with a communal
divide. A few louts in the
procession are said to have molested a girl, who, like
hundreds of other devout
Hindus lining the roadside, was watching it go past. The
policemen on duty
stood aloof, as the incident resulted in angry words being
exchanged by two
groups in apparent confrontation. Soon, the two groups — both
Hindu — were
seen pelting stones at each other. “Then suddenly some
people in the procession
started shouting, asking all vehicles to stop because
[they said] Muslims had
thrown some stones and one of them had fallen on the
idol,” says Nirmal Kumar,
a local who was part of the procession. The
procession came to a halt, people
started running helter-skelter, and in the commotion that
ensued a mob began
torching Muslim shops. It was done with military precision
and went on for
hours. The police did not intervene beyond a token effort
to maintain order; of
the seven left injured that day, by police claims, two
were policemen. No lives
were reported lost, but then, a death toll is no measure
of such an event’s
significance. The
mosque at the Chowk was not the
only symbol of age-old Hindu-Muslim amity to be
victimised. Another such target
was a local weekly called Aap Ki Taaqat, perhaps
the only one in India
published in both Hindi and Urdu scripts (the latter
opening on its obverse
side). The weekly’s office, located in this mosque, was
first looted and then
wrecked. “On the masthead of the publication, we carry a
slogan: ‘Hindu-Muslim doh
bhai, Urdu-Hindi doh behen’ (Hindus and
Muslims are two brothers;
Urdu and Hindi, two sisters),” says its editor Manzar
Mehdi. PROCESS OF SAFFRONISATION Faizabad,
the headquarters of the
district in which Ayodhya is located, has long been
admired for its resistance
to communalism. Even in 1992, as riots broke out in many
parts of the country
after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in adjoining
Ayodhya on December 6,
Faizabad had remained calm. But things have changed in the
town. This year, the
entire ten-day period of Durga Puja was marked by
loudspeakers blaring ditties
of dubious religious intent, and the final day’s idol
immersion trail had such
slogans as ‘UP bhi Gujarat banega, Faizabad shuruaat
karega!’ to go with
it. It
was a process of saffronisation,
and by that evening, the air was surcharged with a noxious
mix of religiosity
and politics. For the administration, it seems, nothing
unusual was afoot. No
preventive security forces were deployed, nor any attempt
made to clamp down on
the slogan-shouters. And when the riot began, all the
police did by and large
was watch. This
development is significant not
only because it happened just weeks before the 20th
anniversary of the Babri
Masjid demolition, but also because it marks an uncanny
coincidence. For,
Faizabad was in flames merely hours after RSS
Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat
declared in L K
Advani, the BJP leader most
closely associated with the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, did not
take much time to
fall in line. On October 28, four days after the violence
in Faizabad, he
thundered at a poll meeting in Himachal Pradesh that the
BJP would help construct
an elaborate and beautiful temple at Ayodhya after a final
Supreme Court
verdict. Legally,
the statements of both
Bhagwat and Advani constitute a contempt of court, since
the apex court is yet
to rule whether the disputed land belongs to the Muslim or
the Hindu claimants.
Politically, these statements seem to be in sync with the
apparent attempt of
Faizabad’s rioters to revive the dispute. If the timing of
these are too
striking to be ignored, so also is the pattern of communal
rabble rousing that
led up to October 24. It is easy to join the dots. Altogether,
42 shops were gutted that
evening in the Chowk area of Faizabad, and all but five
belonged to Muslims.
“All Hindu-owned shops were burnt accidentally. These
could not have escaped
because they were adjacent to the Muslims’ shops set on
fire,” says 20-year-old
Deepak Kumar, who was part of the procession. POLICE CALLOUSNESS Deepak
and his friend Ashish did
their utmost to put out the flames. “But we could not do
much because it was so
difficult to get water to douse the fire,” Deepak says,
“We were aware of the
danger, but we could not run away like the others. Around
10 o’clock, some
constables noticed us, and they chased us away.” Meanwhile
the arsonists were
allowed to carry on, he adds. That
was it, then. The police found
reason to chase away the two boys who had staked their
lives in their quest to
save the town’s secular ethos, a culture they valued and
upheld while working
with their friends Afaqullah and Guffran under the banner
of an NGO, the Awadh
Peoples’ Forum, which seeks to promote communal harmony in
the district. The
same police, however, saw no reason to stop the
perpetrators of the crime. This
was apparently the demand of their duty as well; the next
day, Faizabad’s
District Magistrate Deepak Agrawal, in his order clamping
Section 144, sought
to justify police inaction by saying that “the rioters
could not be checked
because the police force was not adequately present” at
Faizabad’s Chowk. Among
the outlets targeted that
evening was Star Bakery, which had come up in place of
Star Hotel, the town’s
first victim of Hindu communalism after independence. The
eatery’s owner,
Mohammad Bashir, was dispossessed of the property in late
1949 by the then district
magistrate of Faizabad, K K K Nair, who had a reputation
of using state tools
to hound Muslims. This was around the same time that an
idol of Lord Rama
appeared overnight in the Babri Masjid, the stealthy
handiwork of Hindu
communalists (refer to “It Happened One Night,” Open,
December 13, 2010). Nair
had Bashir’s property turned
over to someone who started an eatery there, called Gomati
Hotel. But Bashir,
who opened a bakery at home to sustain himself, did not
give up. He went to
court and won his original site back. Today, it houses
that bakery business,
run by his grandsons under the supervision of Bashir’s
son, Mohammad Ahmad. The
business has done well, but Star Bakery has been an
eyesore to the Hindu
communalists. “Never before had Star Bakery been attacked
so badly by communal
forces,” says Ahmad, “but it is a temporary victory of
theirs, just as it was
when they illegally took Star Hotel away from my father in
1949.” Apart
from Faizabad town, two other
locations in the district — Bhadarsa and Rudauli
subdivisions — saw similar attacks
that evening. Though Rudauli escaped with only minor
damage, as many as 55
shops were torched by a mob at Bhadarsa. “All shops burnt
at Bhadarsa belong to
Muslims,” says Star Bakery’s Ahmad, who also happens to be
chairman of the
Municipal Board of Bhadarsa. “Yet it is mostly Muslims who
are being arrested
by the administration here.” POLITICAL PLAY IN THE REGION Indications
that the violence was
orchestrated are also borne by the state of political play
in the region. For a
couple of months before October 24 — ever since the BJP
lost the assembly seat
of Faizabad-Ayodhya — the district had been seeing
desperate attempts by some
fanatics of the Sangh Parivar to arouse ill-will. During
this phase, visits by
Gorakhpur MP and Sangh hardliner Adityanath to Faizabad
and Ayodhya had
multiplied. This was accompanied by a sudden expansion of
Adityanath’s Hindu
Yuva Vahini in the district. Before
the assembly polls, neither
Adityanath nor his Hindu Yuva Vahini had much to do with
Faizabad. The latter’s
presence was minimal. After the polls, however, the
Gorakhpur MP was to be seen
addressing rallies in the region on an almost weekly
basis. Yet,
Faizabad had refused to yield.
Despite all their efforts, saffron hardliners could not
win over too many of
the town’s residents. Harmony was a way of life here, and
disruptions were
unwelcome. But then, on September 21, a dramatic event
took place in the
district — three old statues vanished from Devakaali
temple. “No Hindu can
steal an idol of any god or goddess,” declared Adityanath
promptly, implying
thereby that the culprits must have been non-Hindus (read
Muslims). Two days
later, the Hindu Yuva Vahini joined hands with the RSS,
BJP, Vishwa Hindu
Parishad and Bajrang Dal to organise a bandh in the
district. Several Muslim
shopkeepers and hawkers were roughed up and harassed in
other ways. “During the
bandh, the administration allowed these people to vitiate
the atmosphere,” says
Mohammad Ismail, a local resident, “That day it became
clear that communalists
could now use force with impunity.” On
October 12, two days before the
Durga Puja festival began, Adityanath reached Ayodhya. He
issued an ultimatum
the next day to the administration; if the stolen idols
were not recovered
within 48 hours, he said, he would march with his
followers to Faizabad. With
the Kendriya Durgapuja and Ramleela Coordination Committee
of Faizabad working
with his Hindu Yuva Vahini, he knew he could gather a
crowd. Adityanath
later withdrew his threat
(acting on which could have had him arrested), and led a
symbolic yatra
in Ayodhya itself. But his
statements had already got some Hindus worked up. The
missing idols were
recovered on October 22, with four people arrested for the
theft, all of them
Hindus: Karamjit Maurya of Ambedkar Nagar, Vijay Narain
Pande of Azamgarh,
Subhash Kumar Yadav of Jaunpur and Jaipujan Sharma of
Jaunpur. However, this
news did not help relieve the tension in the air. By
the time the Durga procession
began in the afternoon of October 24, the attack plan was
in place. And so it
began — in the chaos of an altercation. The rampant use of
kerosene and petrol
bombs to set shops aflame, as Additional Director General
of Police (Law and
Order) Jagmohan Yadav admitted to the media four days
later, could only have
been part of an arsonist plan. Such a large number of
fuel-bombs could not have
materialised on their own, and the immersion of an idol
does not take any
kerosene……. Faizabad is still not calm. Communal
rumours are still winding through
the district, swirling around and kicking up puffs of
distrust. If this is not
contained soon enough, it could rage in much the same
manner that it had once
before, 20 years ago, when it threatened the very
foundation of secularism in --- Excerpted from Open, November 12, 2012
