Editorial: Playing with fire
Uttar Pradesh has always been vulnerable to communal and caste tensions because of the sizeable presence in the State of three critical demographic segments — Muslims, Dalits and caste Hindus. It takes but a small incident to start a skirmish, which, depending on the extent of political support, either sputters to a swift end or turns into a full-blown conflagration. Prima facie, the mob frenzy in Muzaffarnagar, which has already claimed over two dozen lives and left hundreds homeless, appears to be a textbook case of engineered violence. The pattern is familiar. Ground reports suggest that the current disturbance has its roots in an August 27 Jat-Muslim clash in Kawal village over a spate of killings involving both communities. This spark developed into a fire, thanks to police inaction, political manipulation and a poisonous video calculatedly pressed into circulation by suspected Hindutva elements. Predictably enough, large-scale violence erupted. And equally predictably, the video turned out to be fake: what was circulated as the actual clip of the August 27 killings was most probably footage shot in Pakistan.
But this is exactly how vested interests, and sometimes even mainstream parties, operate. A hate-filled VCD had formed part of the BJP’s official campaign material ahead of the 2007 Assembly election. The disc, which portrayed Muslims as nation-breakers, and implored Hindus to vote the BJP or find themselves sporting beards and wearing burqas, was withdrawn following an FIR registered by the Election Commission. That election was saved by the ECI’s hawk-like watch over communal and caste miscreants, leading to the formation of the first majority government in 16 years by the Bahujan Samaj Party. It is not without significance that peace prevailed until the next election five years later. For all of Mayawati’s faults she ran an efficient administration that acted at the first sign of communal trouble. In the February 2012 Assembly election, fresh hope came in the form of Akhilesh Yadav who seemed sincere enough with his promise to practise principled politics. The promise stands betrayed as can be seen from the Samajwadi Party government’s admission to at least 27 communal incidents since March 2012. The SP is the mirror opposite of the BJP and its larger parivar. For every cynical action of one, there tends to be an equal and opposite reaction from the other, with the competition getting fiercer closer to an election, as is obviously the case now. As 2014 nears, rival political efforts to fuel and play on the insecurity and fears of Muslims and Hindus are likely to be intensified. The good sense of Uttar Pradesh’s people will be severely tested in the months ahead.
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The Indian Express
Editorial: Dangerous experiments
Mon Sep 09 2013, 09:08 hrs
Muzaffarnagar has become the site of communal tensions of a kind rarely seen in recent years. 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. For over a decade now, the BJP itself has seemed to leave the angry movement behind as it became a party of government, at the Centre and in several high-performing states. A common politics of aspiration has tempered the tensions over religion and identity that previously exploded in violence. With growing urgency and impatience, citizens demand better education, jobs, benefits and stakes in economic growth, and political parties that aim to form governments offer competing visions and programmes of development. The nature of communal antagonism has, by and large, shifted from destruction of life and property to more subtle expressions of discrimination and denial of opportunity.
In other words, there is no wider frame, no larger context for the new outbreaks of communal violence, as in Muzaffarnagar. In all probability, then, they point to active troublemaking in anticipation of the 2014 general election. As Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Saturday, there have already been many more such incidents in this year than in 2012. Uttar Pradesh remains a prominent trouble spot, but Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Jammu and Kashmir also have uncomfortable communal dynamics.
For the BJP, this gathering trend should force some introspection. Its presumptive prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, is ostentatiously trying to divert attention from his polarising record, by refusing all mention of the communal violence that occurred under his watch in 2002 and attempting to steer the public gaze to his development record in Gujarat instead. At the same time, however, other Sangh Parivar organisations have been openly trying to stoke the fires in UP, without much resistance from the Samajwadi Party government. While this may or may not be a mutually convenient strategy, both the BJP and SP are evidently struggling to define their core appeal for 2014. Apparently, the BJP does not know whether to foreground Hindutva or keep it simmering under the surface, speaking in one voice in the streets of UP and another in the corridors of government. The SP has failed to present a convincing case for itself in the year it has been in power, it has no governance successes to speak of, and nothing to show for the hopes placed in its young chief minister. At a time when economic prospects are dimming, it may be easier to exploit the disaffections among people. But given how incendiary the politics of religion has proven to be, even playing with the cinders is deeply unwise.
