There must be a thorough inquiry into the violence over Ram Navami processions
It has taken a voice of humanity to call out the manufactured nature of the political blame game around the communal clashes over Ram Navami processions in West Bengal and Bihar. In Asansol,
the imam of a mosque who lost his teenage son to the clashes this week
announced that should anyone carry out a retaliatory attack, he would
leave town. At least four persons have died in the Raniganj-Asansol belt
in West Bengal’s Paschim Bardhaman district after a procession turned
violent. The area remains tense, Internet services are limited and
prohibitory orders are in place. It is a shame that a sitting Union
Minister, Babul Supriyo, who represents Asansol in the Lok Sabha, not
just tried to defy the local administration, but also uttered
inflammatory comments. Accounts about what ignited the clashes vary, and
it would be best to await the findings of the official inquiry. But it
is a reason for disquiet that ‘religious’ processions are becoming a
pretext to force communal polarisation in many States. In Rajasthan’s
Jodhpur district, a tableau was taken out on Ram Navami glorifying
Shambhu Lal Raigar, currently in jail for hacking a man to death and
videographing the violence along with an anti-Muslim rant. In Bhagalpur
in Bihar this month, a religious procession organised by Sangh Parivar
groups provoked communal clashes — there is an FIR against Arijit
Shashwat, son of Union Minister Ashwini Choubey, for inciting violence.
After Ram Navami, communal tension has spread to more areas of the
State, including Aurangabad, Samastipur and Nawada.
In all such
situations, the responsibility of isolating areas and causes of violence
and tension is best assigned to the local administration, instead of
State-level and national politicians weighing in. However, the violence
suggests a pattern that is worrying. While the Raniganj-Asansol
industrial belt is surprising territory for such clashes, the number of
incidents of communal violence in West Bengal has
increased sharply over the past three years. The violence in Bihar
comes soon after the setback to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance
in the recent by-elections, with some party leaders giving the result a
sectarian spin. Across swathes of north India, daily interactions
between the majority and minority communities have been rendered fraught
with the probability of violence. The majoritarian persuasion is
carried out at the grassroots level, but the Sangh Parivar cannot plead
plausible deniability. In this context, the increasingly assertive Ram
Navami and other religious processions are drawing new fault lines. As
the air gets politically charged in the lead-up to the 2019 general
elections, the burden on the law and order machinery becomes that much
more heavy — to pursue every incident of violence and incitement in
order to limit its potential to be used for further polarisation.
