Police And Communal Riots: An interview with Vibhuti Narain Rai

(sacw.net, July 24, 2006)

Vibhuti Narain Rai is a senior Indian Police Service
officer. He is the editor of a Hindi literary
magazine, 'Vartaman Sahitya'. He is a novelist, and
his most well-known book is 'Shahr Mai Curfew'
(Hindi), which has been translated and published in
English as 'Curfew in the City'. He is also the author
of 'Combating Communal Conflicts--Perception of Police
Neutrality During Hindu-Muslim Riots in India'. In
this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about the
role of the Indian police in handling communal riots.


Q: How did you decide to write a book on the subject
of the police in handling communal riots?


A: My book is the outcome of a one-year fellowship
that I received from the National Police Academy to
study perception of police neutrality during incidents
of Hindu-Muslim violence. Basically, the study set out
to examine how Hindus and Muslims perceive the role of
the police in different ways in such situations. In
the course of my study I discovered, not surprisingly,
that Hindu and Muslim perceptions of the police during
communal disturbances are diametrically opposed. This
is basically what I tried to show in my book.


Q: How do you account for these different perceptions
of the police by Hindus and Muslims?


A: In the course of my study I found that in a normal
situation an average Hindu does not necessarily see
the police as friendly or helpful but during communal
riots he looks upon the police as a helper and
protector. On the other hand, Muslim riot victims do
not generally feel that they would get any protection
from the police, even when their lives and property
are under threat. I think one basic reason for this is
the police themselves. After all, an average
policeman-and most policemen are Hindus-gets his value
system from his own society or community. And that is
why the average policeman often thinks of Muslims in
very negative terms. Many policemen seem to believe
the standard stereotypical images of Muslims being
'dirty', 'untrustworthy', 'violent' and
'pro-Pakistani'. And this is what leads to them
thinking of Muslims as 'aggressors' who initiate
riots. Now, of course this is not true to say that
most riots are started by Muslims.

But still, when I point out to police officers that
many more Muslims than Hindus lose their lives in the
riots and so it is improbable that they could be said
to have initiated them, they generally refuse to
agree. They claim that Hindus are, by nature, 'pious'
and 'non-violent', and 'law abiding', and would,
therefore, never initiate violence themselves. This
perception seems to be deeply rooted in their psyche.
My argument is that if you analyse the history of
various riots that have taken place in India since
1960 or so, you will find that there has probably been
no single riot in which less than 90% of those killed
have been Muslims, but this point is generally not
accepted by the average policeman, although I am
basing my claim on official records. I am not
surprised that many police officers do not wish to
recognise this fact. They , like an average Hindu ,
would disbelieve these figures .But these are official
figures and no government on this earth would release
false data which may show that minorities are not safe
under its territory. After all, even Hitler did not
openly admit the fact of the persecution of the Jewish
minority in Germany, and, claimed, instead that the
Jews were the cause of all the troubles in the
country. In India, I must say, many of the so-called
Hindu-Muslim riots are nothing of the sort-they are
simply clashes between Muslims and the police.


Q: What do you feel about the sort of training that is
given to the police? Are they taught to deal with
incidents of communal violence in a neutral way?


A: Theoretically, such inputs are given to the
policemen when they undertake their training course.
However, the training period is only for nine months,
and in this short period you cannot completely
disabuse them of the communal stereotypes that they
have imbibed from their family and society. The course
is sufficiently long to train a person only to handle
a weapon. In any case, in the course little attention
is devoted to history, culture, religion and other
social issues. There is also no regular training
component after this initial period.. And then again
there is this factor of the infiltration of the police
by the RSS, but this is difficult to quantify. I think
there must be periodic training sessions after the
initial course, where policemen should be thoroughly
briefed on a range of social issues, including respect
for and knowledge of different religions.


Q: Are there any efforts being made to provide this
sort of training input?


A: As far as I know, there have been few organised or
institutional initiatives undertaken in this regard.
Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer is doing some useful work in
this direction. His institute arranges workshops with
the Mumbai police to sensitise them on a range of
issues related to communalism.


Q: What, then, do you think is the solution to the
problem?


A: I think one major solution is to institute
reservation for the different minorities in the police
services, where they are now very poorly represented.
And by minorities I do not mean just Muslims but other
religious minorities and even minority ethnic groups
in every state as well. Reservation for minorities
should, ideally, be in accordance with their share in
the total population. Now, some people, including
police officers, will argue that reservations in the
police service for minorities would divide the police
on communal lines. They might argue that instead of
reserving jobs for minorities in the police services
we should encourage the minorities to apply for police
jobs. But my reply to them is that ever since the
independence of India the government has sent out
dozens of circulars, orders and guidelines to
recruitment boards asking for a fair recruitment of
the minorities in the police service, but this has not
worked because it has not been made mandatory but has!
been left entirely to the discretion of the boards. At
times one notices a bias in the boards against
recruiting Muslims into the police. I've heard some
police officers even arguing that if Muslims are
recruited they will run off with their weapons to
Pakistan or else use them to promote 'anti-national'
activities. When I was serving in Kashmir in BSF I
used to hear this argument very often. However,
despite this I took the initiative of recruiting local
Kashmiri Muslims into the Force, and although there
were a few stray cases of desertions I think the
decision was well worth taking.

But when I talk of representation for minorities in
the police service I also want to stress that this
should only be for the backward sections among them.
Now, in the case of Muslim , the Muslim elites or
Ashraf do not want to recognise the fact of caste
differences in the Muslim community. They talk of
Muslims as a monolith, which is not the case. I think
reservations for the Muslims must be restricted to the
backward sections or biraderis among them, the
so-called Ajlaf Muslims. The Ashraf are, on the whole,
capable of taking care of their own interests, while
the Ajlaf are poverty-stricken and they also suffer
the most during communal riots. I am opposed to the
idea of reservations for Muslims as an entire
community. If that is done then the Ashraf are bound
to occupy all the positions as they are more educated
and better-off than the other Muslims.


Q: Perhaps encouraging Muslims to join the police
services would be a less controversial way of
promoting Muslim representation in the services. What
are your opinions on this?


A: No, I don't quite agree, because I think that many
recruiting officers themselves have a bias against
Muslims and would not be happy to see Muslims join the
police. They will put up all sorts of flimsy excuses
to see that this does not happen. They will claim that
Muslims simply do not apply, and if they do apply they
might dismiss their applications by claiming that they
are not physically fit, which might be totally wrong.
I think that, in fact, very little effort is needed to
encourage Muslims to apply, and if one is serious
about it one can get numerous such applications. After
all, unemployment, even among the educated, is rampant
among Muslims. And then there is this feeling that
wearing a police uniform is a matter of prestige.

Q: How do you think that increasing representation of
minorities in the police services through reservations
will actually change things?


A: I think it will make a tremendous impact, and will
help increase the confidence of the minorities in the
police. It will also help undermine the communal
stereotypes which, as I mentioned, are quite deeply
ingrained among many policemen and police officers. If
Muslim and Hindu policemen live and work together it
is bound to lead to a change in mutual perceptions and
promote a sense of understanding. In turn this will
also lead to more responsible handling of riot
situations by the police.


Q: What do you feel about the performance of Muslim
police officers in handling riot situations?


A: Normally, Muslim police officers are as good or as
bad, as competent or incompetent, as other officers.
However, in situations of communal riots many Muslim
officers do not have the courage to get out of the
police stations for fear of being killed. Muslim
officers might be reluctant to deal with Hindu mobs
for fear of being accused of being 'anti-Hindu'. They
might feel that they do not have the confidence of the
police force, which is largely Hindu. Just to cite an
instance, in the recent violence in Gujarat a Muslim
police officer was mobbed by a group of Hindus and
narrowly managed to escape with his life.


Q: How do you look at the phenomenon of communalism?
How does it influence your writing?


A: I must confess that as a youth I was associated
with the RSS and even attended the local shakha.
Later, I came under the influence of Marxism, which is
how I changed my way of looking at the world. I
believe that all forms of communalism are dangerous.
The communalism of the majority is more dangerous
because it is capable of capturing state power. At the
same time minority communalism must also be fought
against, including by the minorities themselves, for
whom it poses a grave danger while deceptively
appearing to champion their interests.


Q: How has your book on the police and communalism
been received by police and other government
officials?


A: I must say that not many people in the police or in
government actually read my book, but from those who
did I got mixed responses. Some praised it, but many
others condemned it. They claimed that I was creating
dissensions among the police! They even alleged that
findings and my conclusions were biased because they
could not believe that some Hindus, too, can be
aggressive, intolerant and violent. This, of course,
itself suggests that prejudices about other
communities are very deeply rooted in our society,
including among government and police officials, who
ought to know better.