By Sumitra Nandan / Lucknow
By various accounts, anywhere between 39 and 100 riots have taken place in Uttar Pradesh since the suave, iPad-carrying Akhilesh Yadav became chief minister of arguably India’s most communally sensitive state. During ten days preceding the violence in Muzaffarnagar and its surrounding areas in the powder keg known as Western UP, there were incidents of violence, counter-attacks, various groups calling for bandhs and protests and finally a Mahapanchayat on Saturday where over 1 lakh Jats were in attendance. Emotions were running high since 27 August with the killing of a young man accused of molesting a girl, followed by the revenge killing of the two men who had killed apparently to protect their sister’s honour.
The glaring fact is that there was simply no overarching issue or context that can explain how the violence not only escalated rapidly, claiming the lives of nearly 30 people including a journalist, but also spread to neighbouring districts. A separate, unrelated incident appears to have triggered the mob violence in Shamli, the neighbouring district that has also suffered major damage to life and property over the past week – that incident reportedly involved a sweeper being assaulted, followed by a large group from the sweeper’s community raging on the streets. It is obvious to anyone who considers the Muzaffarnagar riots with more than a casual glance that there is wilful political incendiarism.
The Akhilesh government has now promised to arrest BJP leaders, including one for allegedly stoking communal tensions with a video that was actually made in Pakistan nearly two years ago. There is no doubt that that arresting senior BJP leaders will only further politicise a sharply polarised region. Needless to add, amid all the action, there have been no arrests for the three murders that started it all on 27 August. Which begs the question then, just who is playing with fire in the run-up to 2014 in a state where a young new government has been an abysmal failure on all fronts? And not so long ago, Akhilesh’s government was bringing its might down upon an upright woman IAS officer for supposedly endangering communal harmony.
Not only has the Samajwadi Party government come in for criticism for its brazen inaction leading to the current violence, but it has also watched mutely as Hindutva forces have attempted to communalise the state in preparation for electoral skirmishes. A report in the Economic Times says there were 39 incidents of communal riots in the state according to police records between March 2012, when Akhilesh took over as CM, and August 2013 – a score of over two riots a month. Opposition parties peg that number as nearly 100 incidents.
“Muzaffarnagar itself has seen three cases of communal riots in 2013 including the latest one. In June last year too, Muzaffarnagar had seen clashes which left 20 people injured,” says the report, pointing to the Samajwadi Party’s pro-minority policies and the introduction of Amit Shah, close aide of Narendra Modi, as BJP’s campaign in charge in the state, as further causes for the deep political rifts among communities in Uttar Pradesh. In fact, without political compulsions, large-scale communal conflict is no longer perceived as a clear and present danger in India, not like in the 1980s and 1990s anyway. “While there have been intermittent episodes across north India in the last few years, the fear of large-scale communal conflict has mostly ebbed in the national consciousness.
Unlike the turbulent 1980s and ’90s, when the Hindutva mobilisation was being shaped and sharpened, there is no framing context for its eruption now,” says an editorial in The Indian Express, going on to argue that a new politics of aspiration has overtaken religious issues with the BJP itself attempting to paint itself as a “party of government”. Amid the massive failures of governance in Uttar Pradesh, exploiting old communal tensions appears to be the ringing of the bell for the start of election games, 2014.
Mulayam is playing a dangerous game
Mulayam Singh Yadav wears secularism on his sleeve. So how does he square that with the communal murder and mayhem in Muzaffarnagar that has already cost 30 lives? Or indeed in several other pockets of Uttar Pradesh over the last one year even as his son and sundry relatives preside over the administration in Lucknow? It’s simple. For Mulayam, and for his fellow travellers across the political spectrum, secularism is not as much a constitutional principle as an instrument of political power.
In principle, all that secularism requires is a complete detachment of the state and religion, even as the state protects every individual’s right to worship their own faith. In India, the state has always dabbled in religion, whether by subsidising Haj pilgrims, passing legislation on religion-based civil law or by managing temple trusts. Secularism in India is practised quite differently, as the matter of protecting the life and property of minority communities against alleged majoritarian excess.
Now, the protection of the life and property of every individual (including minorities) irrespective of religion and other such identities is a different principle from secularism. Syria’s Bashar-al-Assad is staunchly secular but doesn’t hesitate to brutalise a section of his citizens. Saddam Hussein was secular too, but cared little for his citizens’ life and limb. And then there are countries, like the United Kingdom, which are not secular (The Queen is the Head of the Church of England) but where individual and religious freedom is a reality.
For secularism to serve its political purpose in India there needs to be a perpetual fear in the minds of minorities about a potential threat to their lives and property from the majority. It suits politicians of all colour to allow this fear to simmer because they can then fashion themselves as saviours. That is why the Samajwadi Party has been pussyfooting about the communal violence in its backyard for several months. Needless to say, this is a dangerous game.
Politicians assume that they can close the lid when the simmer comes to boil. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s recent admonishing of Akhilesh Yadav is a case in point as things began to get out of hand in Muzaffarnagar. But at some point, like in Muzaffarnagar, the toll (in terms of human lives) begins to rise sharply as violence cascades. Associated Press Politics is the art of the possible. The Samajwadi Party is desperate. It has singularly failed to provide governance in UP. Its political trajectory is heading south. But it wants to see itself as a King-maker after the next General Election. It is, therefore, trying to shore up its core vote among the state’s Muslims.
The Durga Shakti Nagpal episode last month was a perfect example of such cynical politics, where an honest IAS office was painted by politicians as a communal fanatic who destroyed the wall of a mosque. Unfortunately, the run up to the General Election will witness more of this dangerous game. Beyond Mulayam and the SP, the Congress, also desperate after a second term spent in corruption and misgovernance, will build up a fear factor around the BJP and their Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and then claim to be the sole guardian of ‘secularism’.
This, they hope, will consolidate minority votes for Congress. Of course, Modi and the BJP carry the baggage of majoritarianism and they haven’t ever dumped it convincingly enough, giving the SP and Congress a window to exploit. Still, let’s face it. The SP and Congress don’t practise true secularism. They just use it as an instrument of political power. In the end it is just communalism by a different name.
