United
SENIOR MEMBER
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- Apr 28, 2012
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Politicians from all parties in India have benefitted from playing on identities. As a strategy it consolidates voters along cultural lines, affirms loyalties and forces floating voters to pick a side.
The BJP, along with a host of young caste-based parties, has reaped huge rewards at the ballot box with communalist campaigns. Accusations that Narendra Modi stood by and watched as Muslims were being slaughtered did not diminish his electoral successes: after the 2002 massacres he was re-elected as Chief Minister of Gujarat three times. Nor has the charge of having Muslim blood on his hands hampered his prime-ministerial ambitions, with polls naming him the likely victor in next year’s general election. In UP the BJP reached the zenith of its popularity after the Babri Masjid was razed in the 1990s, and since then party’s electoral fortunes have waned. In the 1998 general election the party returned 57 MPs from the state; in 2009 it returned a mere ten. In a clear signal of its designs in UP the BJP have installed Amit Shah, an apparatchik implicated in the 2002 genocide, in the state to turn the party’s electoral prospects around.
For many the Muzaffarnagar riots forewarn a return of the politics of polarization. For Zoya Hasan, one of India’s foremost political scientists, the riots were a case of “communal mobilisation for political gain,” and she, along with many others, has placed the blame on the Sangh Parivar – a bloc of ultra-nationalist organizations allied to the BJP. Militant Hindu outfits like the Bajrang Dal and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have a history of instigating attacks against Muslims and were present in UP when the riots broke out.
Riot Mechanics and Policy Responses
Between the triple murder on August 27 and the outbreak of violence on September 7, the police in Muzaffarnagar failed to prevent the situation from deteriorating. The mahapanchayat went ahead despite the police imposing a ban on assemblies under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, and footage of local officials encouraging attacks on Muslims – a crime under laws prohibiting incitement – show listless police standing idle in the audience.
Many facts about the riots suggest either gross state negligence or collusion. At the behest of administrators several senior police officials, tasked with diffusing tensions, were transferred in and out of the area in quick succession. According to eyewitnesses police stood by as attacks against Muslims raged. At first the police insisted they were overwhelmed, but after it emerged that the troop deployment was hugely insufficient – numbering in the mere hundreds – Devraj Nagar, the Director General of Police in UP, admitted to operational “lapses”.
The glaring hole in India’s anti-communal policy according to Ashutosh Varshney, a Professor at Brown University, is the failure to build durable inter-communal bonds. Muzaffarnagar witnessed the complete breakdown of community ties: attackers turned on their neighbors and locals helped armed militias identify Muslim homes.
Communal violence must be understood on two levels: horizontal and vertical. Solving the former – violence between individuals – requires the state to engage in the long-term process of building inter-community ties. The vertical dimension however, between the state and individuals, however, can and must be addressed immediately. Remedying the loss of property, rebuilding homes, providing relief, investigating cases, police reform, intelligence training and reconciliatory mechanisms (fast-track courts or truth commissions), are all easy and obvious measures that can restore faith in the state and rebuild communities devastated by violence.
Sunil Shinde, India’s Home Minister, told journalists in September there had been 451 recorded communal incidents in 2013, more than 2012’s total of 410. These figures confirm the findings of Steven Wilkinson, a Professor of South Asia at Yale, that upturns in inter-ethnic violence are directly linked to electoral competition. Many are resigned to the fear that things will get worse before they get better..........
The BJP, along with a host of young caste-based parties, has reaped huge rewards at the ballot box with communalist campaigns. Accusations that Narendra Modi stood by and watched as Muslims were being slaughtered did not diminish his electoral successes: after the 2002 massacres he was re-elected as Chief Minister of Gujarat three times. Nor has the charge of having Muslim blood on his hands hampered his prime-ministerial ambitions, with polls naming him the likely victor in next year’s general election. In UP the BJP reached the zenith of its popularity after the Babri Masjid was razed in the 1990s, and since then party’s electoral fortunes have waned. In the 1998 general election the party returned 57 MPs from the state; in 2009 it returned a mere ten. In a clear signal of its designs in UP the BJP have installed Amit Shah, an apparatchik implicated in the 2002 genocide, in the state to turn the party’s electoral prospects around.
For many the Muzaffarnagar riots forewarn a return of the politics of polarization. For Zoya Hasan, one of India’s foremost political scientists, the riots were a case of “communal mobilisation for political gain,” and she, along with many others, has placed the blame on the Sangh Parivar – a bloc of ultra-nationalist organizations allied to the BJP. Militant Hindu outfits like the Bajrang Dal and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have a history of instigating attacks against Muslims and were present in UP when the riots broke out.
Riot Mechanics and Policy Responses
Between the triple murder on August 27 and the outbreak of violence on September 7, the police in Muzaffarnagar failed to prevent the situation from deteriorating. The mahapanchayat went ahead despite the police imposing a ban on assemblies under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, and footage of local officials encouraging attacks on Muslims – a crime under laws prohibiting incitement – show listless police standing idle in the audience.
Many facts about the riots suggest either gross state negligence or collusion. At the behest of administrators several senior police officials, tasked with diffusing tensions, were transferred in and out of the area in quick succession. According to eyewitnesses police stood by as attacks against Muslims raged. At first the police insisted they were overwhelmed, but after it emerged that the troop deployment was hugely insufficient – numbering in the mere hundreds – Devraj Nagar, the Director General of Police in UP, admitted to operational “lapses”.
The glaring hole in India’s anti-communal policy according to Ashutosh Varshney, a Professor at Brown University, is the failure to build durable inter-communal bonds. Muzaffarnagar witnessed the complete breakdown of community ties: attackers turned on their neighbors and locals helped armed militias identify Muslim homes.
Communal violence must be understood on two levels: horizontal and vertical. Solving the former – violence between individuals – requires the state to engage in the long-term process of building inter-community ties. The vertical dimension however, between the state and individuals, however, can and must be addressed immediately. Remedying the loss of property, rebuilding homes, providing relief, investigating cases, police reform, intelligence training and reconciliatory mechanisms (fast-track courts or truth commissions), are all easy and obvious measures that can restore faith in the state and rebuild communities devastated by violence.
Sunil Shinde, India’s Home Minister, told journalists in September there had been 451 recorded communal incidents in 2013, more than 2012’s total of 410. These figures confirm the findings of Steven Wilkinson, a Professor of South Asia at Yale, that upturns in inter-ethnic violence are directly linked to electoral competition. Many are resigned to the fear that things will get worse before they get better..........
