The Politics of Rioting for Votes

Until a few weeks ago, communal violence was nearly unheard of in Muzaffarnagar, a 4,000 sq km district with Uttar pradesh’s highest agricultural GDP. Many Muslims here are converts and have identical language and culture to their Jat neighbours. Even Jat leaders like Ajit Singh, who’s Rashtriya Lok Dal has 5 MPs and 11 MLAs, counted this Muslim-Jat unity as their political power base. However on September 10, the town’s bustling dtreets, which otherwise smelt of ripe sugarcane being transported now wears a deserted look. The only people on the road were the Uttar Pradesh Police, the state’s Provincial Armed Constabulary, CRPF and the Indian Army. Three days from then, these streets were filled with screaming mobs brandishing every kind of weapon. The unity has cracked, police and administrative officials say and they believe that the state is in grave danger because of the politics of polarisation being played out by both the SP and primarily by the BJP. The Samajwadi Party is hypersensitive about the minority votes and the BJP and its so-called Sangh Parivar believes that it can make a comeback by riding on Hindu votes by having a riot or two in the politically significant state of Uttar Pradesh.

Not too dissimilar from other cases of religious violence reported since March from different corners of the country. In Indore, Madhya Pradesh, 35 people were injured on August 20 after the carcass of a cow was found near a water channel. Similarly thirty people were injured after violence in Silchar, Assam, on august 25 after a rumour spread that beef had been planted in a Hindu Temple. In Nawada, Bihar too, on August 10, two people were killed after an altercation between two groups at a roadside dhaba. Curfew was then imposed and preventive detention was ordered. It was reportedly the sixth instance of rioting in Bihar in past six weeks. What is suspiciously peculiar is the fact that communal clashes suddenly occurred only after the JD (U) dumped its coalition partner BJP on June 16. This has indeed raised many eyebrows.

The caste politics of the BJP and Ajit Singh's RLD also played out in a bid to break the winning but weakening Muslim-Jat combination in Western UP in the hope of electoral gain. It allowed a Muslim panchayat and then a far more provocative Maha Panchayat organised by the Bharatiya Kisan Union at which incendiary speeches were made by BJP, BSP and other party leaders. Hindus were instigated to violent retaliation for an incident that was videographed in Sialkot, Pakistan two years ago but now morphed to transplant a scene of 'Muslim terror' in Muzaffarnagar. The fake video went viral on Facebook and was reproduced in some Hindi dailies even as the State tried to block its circulation. There is dangerous mischief afoot and the origin and trajectory of the fake video need to be traced.


The VHP has a take on this, too. The joint general secretary of its Meerut branch, Chandra Mohan Sharma, told "The Hindu" that on August 27 a Muslim boy teased a Hindu girl, triggering tension. A fake video of this "incident" was screened at the Maha Panchayat at which the need for Hindus to protect their young women was stressed, fuelling passions. This is the Sangh Parivar's credo which was repeated in slightly different terms at the RSS-BJP meeting in Delhi on September 11, also attended by Praveen Togadia, the VHP chief, to discuss their 'core agenda' of Hindutva. According to Manmohan Vaidya of the RRS, Nitin Gadkari "spoke of the Ramjanambhoomi movement and temple construction, Article 370, cow protection, saving the Ganga and a common civil code".

Enter Narenrda Modi, crowned the BJP's prime ministerial face on September 13, and exemplar of the Gujarat 2002 "action-reaction" theory in which the "action" is contrived - in executing which pogrom he was ably backstopped by Advani as Union Home Minister. Advani once again expressed his protest at this premature elevation of the man before the autumn elections in four states by boycotting the BJP parliamentary board meeting. But he was ignominiously ignored though damned with faint praise. The very reason of appointing Modi loyalist Amit Shah as the party’s in which in-charge of UP which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha and Varun Gandhi in helm of West Bengal which elects 40 members bears testimony to their plans to polarize as many votes as possible by inciting anti-minority sentiments.

The BJP has entered a new phase with the RSS actively in command and Hindutva as its masthead. This ploy has backfired in the past as it divides the nation even though it might consolidate a section of Hindus. Others, including many in the corporate world, realise this but believe Modi's "development card" will triumph. Their calculus is problematic as development and investment must be postulated on long term social stability which is what Hindutva undermines, apart from being regressive in itself. The charlatan godman, Asaram Bapu's arrest for alleged rape has been attacked by the VHP as "a conspiracy to erode faith or shraddha of Hindu followers". The BJP "demands" a UCC only as a stick with which to beat the Muslims who have not had the wit or gumption to call their bluff.

This is for me a big warning signal for all the Indian voters that the politics of division which the BJP and the Sangh Parivar propagates is corroding our country to the core and for them body counts is immaterial in the hunger for power. The real danger is that this tragedy may be the harbinger of an even darker gloom which might not be very evident to our naked eyes. But the fact remains that amidst all this, it is the poor and the marginalized which suffers and the majority of the Hindu-Muslims are not happy about it. It is time for us to now to identify the real culprits behind it who want to incite violence and do politics over dead bodies which sadly many parties have succumbed to.

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