Indian Express - 29 October 2014
[editorial] Who failed Trilokpuri?
Express News Service
Who lit the communal fire in Trilokpuri, a Delhi neighbourhood, which can be reached in half an hour by road from Parliament? The fire raged for three days. Three teenagers were critically injured when mobs shot at each other over the Diwali weekend, straining communal relations in this working-class locality precariously. A few miscreants have been arrested but the Centre — Delhi police is under the Union home ministry — owes the people an explanation. How is it that the officials failed to prevent the violence when there were signs of communal unrest visible in the area for over a month?
Trilokpuri has been here before. Mobs killed over 300 people in the locality during the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. Then, too, the police didn’t act and three decades later, the scars of that shameful state failure have still to fade. Riots are not entirely spontaneous or autonomous events. Often, what seem to be isolated conflagrations draw upon building tensions and insecurities that a disconnected politics may have turned a blind eye to, or worse, that a motivated political agenda may have stoked and instigated. The mob takes control of the street when all political and institutional checks fail. By all accounts, the rioters in Trilokpuri were mostly local residents driven by rumours and fear. An alert and independent police force could have ensured that trouble-makers did not get to control the information flow.
In his Independence Day address from the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called for a 10-year moratorium on caste and communal violence. But that exhortation calls, first, for a more sensitive and responsive politics and then a firm and vigilant state. The plotters and executors of the violence in Trilokpuri must be brought to justice but officials should also ensure that community elders talk and allay insecurities between religious groups. Mohalla committees could be set up to ensure that petty fights do not flare into communal conflict in the future. At stake is the people’s faith and trust in the Modi government’s promise of a more forward looking and development-centric politics.
See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/who-failed-trilokpuri/
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