India: Report in Financial Times on Muzaffarnagar Violence and fears of turmoil ahead of India election

Financial Times, September 22, 2013 6:22 pm
Communal violence raises fears of turmoil ahead of India election

By Amy Kazmin in Muzaffarnagar, India

Pro-Telangana state Osmania University students (R) fall back as a policeman takes aim with a tear gas round during a protest against the 'Save Andhra Pradesh' meeting in Hyderabad on September 7, 2013. Andhra Pradesh Non-Gazetted Officers (APNGO) employees organised the public meeting against the proposed bifurcation of the state, while pro-Telangana groups held a 24-hour strike in protest of the gathering©AFP

In the prosperous sugar belt of India’s Uttar Pradesh state, Javeeda Khatoon lies on a cot with her two-day old son in an Islamic school turned makeshift refugee camp, recalling how she fled her village as Hindu mobs killed eight of her Muslim neighbours.

Trouble between the region’s Jats, a powerful Hindu farming caste, and Muslims began on August 27 after three young men – a Muslim and two Jats – were killed in a village brawl over the harassment of a young Jat woman. Ten days later, thousands of Jat villagers attended a fiery gathering organised by a rightwing farmers’ group with the rallying cry “Save our daughters and daughters-in-law”.

Within hours, villages across the sugar belt were convulsed by full-scale communal riots – the worst clashes in the volatile state since the early 1990s. At least 48 people were killed, 100 more were injured and around 42,000 people, mostly Muslims, fled their homes. Hundreds of troops and paramilitary police were called to restore order.

At the height of this month’s riots, Javeeda, heavily pregnant, cowered at home with family members in Kutba village, listening to gunfire and chants of “Death to Muslims” before police evacuated the family. She insists she will never return. “We’ll die but we won’t go back,” she said.

The eruption of the deadly communal conflict in western Uttar Pradesh has dismayed many Indians, who fear it could be an ominous portent as India gears up for parliamentary elections due by May next year. India’s Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata party is seeking to return to power, after nearly 10 years of rule by its rival Congress party. Uttar Pradesh – which sends 80 legislators to parliament, more than any other state – is crucial to its fortunes.

“We need to be on red alert,” said Farah Naqvi, a social activist and member of the National Advisory Council, which advises the government on social policy. “Communal violence always benefits political parties – it does polarise votes. It scares voters, and a vote that was threatening to split three or four ways can be consolidated.”

In the days leading up to UP’s violent eruption, local politicians from several parties made comments intended to inflame passions and polarise the Jat and Muslim communities, said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

A court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of several BJP politicians for inciting violence, including circulating a fake video ostensibly showing the lynching of two Jat boys. The court has also ordered the arrest of several Muslim politicians from Congress and the UP-based Bhahujan Samaj party for incitement.

The parties have countered by accusing Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, from the Congress-allied Samajwadi party, of deliberately allowing simmering tensions to flare into deadly fighting.

In the run-up to the polls there is a heightened risk of activists trying to fan local conflicts into wider conflagrations for electoral gains, Ms Ganguly said, adding: “All political parties have to be very careful that, [in] trying to achieve a narrow end of victory, they should not engage in irresponsible hatemongering and inciting violence.”

But among displaced Muslims sheltering at the Bassi Kalan madrasa, the greatest anxiety is over the likely electoral playbook of the BJP. [. . .]
FULL TEXT AT: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41330ca2-210e-11e3-8aff-00144feab7de.html