Was 'PARTITION' cause or Effect of CommunalismViolence in India

[FYI]

Some mostly Pakistanis ,cold heartedly blame the Indian muslims ,as if they control there destiny being minority in a number driven democracy .

The pakistanis comfort themselves to have made the right choce to avoid being run over by majority in undivided India

Or Some deeply entrenched muslims in centre of india far far awy friom the boarders of Pakistan or Bangladesh wonder they have had no choice specially after 71 when Bangladesh became a secular ciounty ,meaning not interested any more in migrationg or fleeing muslims .

It is unfair for Pakistanis to blame Indian muslims ,for they over look or dont know the reality iother than there own.

whjat do you think .was partion was the effect of hindu muslim hostility or the continued quigmire of rascioal tensionn made worse by partition.???Proverbial chicken or the egg came first ?

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http://www.the-week.com/22mar17/cover.htm

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:confused http://www.the-week.com/22mar17/cover.htm

e a backlash unless the cM and the Sangh parivar rein in their goons, warns a senior intelligence officer in Gandhinagar

The homeless say none of the BJP ministers or MLAs has tried to help them. At least 400 people suffered burns, fractures and stab wounds-there is no government doctor ready to treat them. It’s hard to believe. So is the devastation the fanatics have wrought.

The refugees say the culprits have gone scot-free. More than 150 VHP, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini and BJP workers, named in various first information reports, are yet to be traced.

One of them, Babu Bajrangi alias Babu Patel, a notorious criminal, was identified by the police as the leader of the mob that attacked the Naroda-Patia area. But VHP state joint general secretary Jaydeep Patel is quick to defend him. “Babu Bajrangi was not in town when the incidents occurred,” he says. “The police are falsely implicating our workers.”

Ahmed alleges that “the state government is in active connivance with the VHP”. The former chief justice of the Rajasthan High Court. A.P. Ravani, and some prominent citizens, echo similar feelings: “The state machinery has connived with the rampaging mobs, which have systematically targeted the lives and property of the minority community all over Gujarat.”

Chief Minister Narendra Modi, all the same, lauded the administration and the police for their good work. And Union Home Minister L.K. Advani said, “So far 77 deaths due to police firing have been reported in the state. So one cannot say the police played a passive role.” Modi took another major decision last week: he announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to each of the victims of the Godhra massacre, and Rs 1 lakh to those killed in the aftermath of the senseless train attack. He tried explaining the difference, not that it helped clear the doubts.

Some people have no doubts, though. “Ultimately the backlash from Muslims will come unless the chief minister and the Sangh parivar rein in their goons,” warns a senior intelligence officer in Gandhinagar. With the deadline for Ram temple construction drawing closer, the palpable tension in Naroda-Patia and other parts of Gujarat will thicken in the days to come. That is an ominous sign not just for recently ravaged Gujarat, but for dozens of hot spots round the country (see following stories) which the Union home ministry feels could explode following a wrong move in Ayodhya.
]
]Communal inebriety
A 30 year old dispute keeps tensions high
]In Hubli’s Kamaripet locality, Johnnie Walker Black Label is no stranger. Used bottles of the legendary Highland whisky (and every other brand) are refilled with a drink brewed in the backyards of houses located in the lanes of Kamaripet. The political nexus with the illicit business, which robs the state exchequer of crores of rupees, makes the area immune to state authority. The place is known for another heady brew: every communal riot that Hubli has witnessed has been sparked off in Kamaripet.

Deceptive calm: The Idgah in Hubli

Dominated by Kshatriya Pattegars-who are mainly involved in liquor brewing-and Muslims, this area can plunge the entire region into chaos in a matter of hours. What began as business rivalry between the two communities has mutated into bitter communal clashes. The Pattegars resented the Muslims trying to enter the illicit liquor business. The rivalry boiled over during Holi every year with the symbolic torching of ‘evil’ used as an excuse to torch horse-drawn tongas of the Muslims. Holi turned into an orgy of rage and retaliation.

Back then, Hubli had little reason to worry except Holi, but the last three decades have witnessed the addition of Independence Day and Republic Day to the list of “disturbed” days and the growth of ‘Hindutva’ as a political philosophy. The last violent incident occurred on September 14, 2001 when the VHP had its Secretary General Ashok Singhal’s birthday celebrations here. VHP and Bajrang Dal volunteers from neighbouring Belgaum, Gokak and Bagalkot joined the local volunteers and tried to pitch a Bajrang Dal flag on the Idgah at Rani Chennamma Circle, sparking off a bout of violence.

The Idgah grounds have been a bone of contention between the Hindus and the Muslims. The 30-year-old legal dispute between the Jan Sangh and the Anjuman-e-Islam for possession of the grounds surrounding the Idgah is before the Supreme Court. Before pronouncing its judgment, the court called upon the contending parties to come to an understanding. The Seer of Moorsavira Math, Jagadguru Gangadhara Rajayogindra Mahaswami, tried unsuccessfully to broker peace between the parties. However, the Muslims did not believe the Seer could bring about a fair pact. The Karnataka government has now taken the initiative to bring about an accord.

On March 3, following the Godhra incident, the VHP held a Japa Yagna at the Moorsavira Math. Meanwhile, Hubli lives in the shadow of fear. While everyone is surprised that Hubli remained calm after Godhra, no one truly believes that it will remain peaceful. Former BJP legislator Ashok Katve, however, claims the Hindus have never provoked any communal clash. M.A. Pachapur, former general secretary of the Anjuman, makes the same claim. “Whenever there is Holi or any tension,” he says, “we advise our people not to leave their houses.”

The calm, Hubli residents say, is deceptive. While New Hubli is unaffected by curfews and riots, it is Old Hubli, Kamaripet and Mulla Oni that bear the brunt of any attack. Over the years, people have found security in ghettos and Hindus and Muslims live in separate streets. Pachapur, whose neighbours are Hindus, is an exception. However, the iron grill doors to his modest house in Mulla Oni say it all.

Hubli was once the hub of commerce. Says Madan B. Desai, president of the chamber of commerce: “Hubli has lost its premier position in cotton production, jewellery, textiles, pharmaceuticals, rice and jowar. However, what is important now is to maintain peace.” One month’s curfew a year-on an average-has resulted in a Rs 360 crore revenue loss for Hubli annually.

Daily wage earners like Sharada-who sells jowar rotis to labourers and autorickshaw drivers-are the worst-hit in times of violence. “If we don’t earn even for a day, we have to starve,” she says. Her competitor, Bibi Jan, who has a canteen nearby, shares Sharada’s feelings. They are yoked by their suffering.
N. Bhanutej

]Burning memories
Metiabruz may have learnt some lessons from the 1992 carnage
]Kamal Sen lost no time packing his bags and moving out of his ancestral home in Kashyappara, West Bengal, with his wife, son and daughter-in-law when he heard of the attack at Godhra. The memory of the Metiabruz carnage of 1992, close on the heels of the demolition of Babri Masjid, drove the family to Kalighat. “Had not the superintendent of police of South 24 Parganas used his forces in 1992, we would not have survived,” says Kamal. “So this time we shifted to my cousin’s house on the night of the Godhra attack.”

]Old story: Firefighters at Kashyappara in 1992; (right) Narayan Ghosh

Metiabruz, a predominantly non-Bengali Muslim area is one of the most communally sensitive zones in the country according to the Union home ministry. The Muslims here trace their lineage to the last Nawab of Lucknow, Wazed Ali Shah, who was held captive here by the British. The 7.5 sq. km area of Metiabruz today brims with seven lakh people, most of them tailors, shop-keepers and labourers. Kashyappara in Metiabruz houses a few hundred Hindu families.

When Babri Masjid fell on December 6, Narayan Chandra Ghosh, then superintendent of police anticipated trouble in the district. “Experience told me that Metiabruz, Tiljala, and parts of Maheshtala and Jadavpur would need attention,” says Narayan, now a deputy inspector-general. “And while policemen told me that no untoward incident had happened that day, I knew that the crucial time would be next morning when people congregated at local mosques and when Urdu dailies hit the stands.”

Experience and intuition did not prove wrong. Rioting broke out the following morning. Narayan moved towards Metiabruz with two platoons of Eastern Frontier Rifles but found the roads blocked. Mobs had dug up roads and placed huge concrete pipes across them. At the insistence of then chief minister Jyoti Basu, the Centre dispatched the Army.

By 11 a.m., 200 soldiers led by a colonel, two majors and four captains, moved into the sensitive area along with Narayan . “When we reached Metiabruz, we heard Kashyappara was burning and rushed there,” says Narayan. “The house where the police picket was supposed to be stationed was locked from the outside. I asked my security guard to break open the door and found five people in there.” Nearly 20 houses were burning and the police picket could have been one of them.

The Army and police rescued 125 people and sent them to a refugee camp. “I still remember the women pleading with me to open fire on the mob who allegedly set fire to their houses,” says Narayan. “Arun Babu, a Forward Bloc Leader, however, pacified the crowd and saved me from embarrassment.”

Nevertheless, rioting took its toll. The Army and the police recovered five charred bodies and four people lost their lives when the police opened fire to disperse a mob. “The toll could have been 900, not just 9, had the state not sought the help of the Army,” says Narayan. He arrested Jhunu Ansari, a local gambler, who was responsible for the five deaths.
Kamal, meanwhile, has shed his apprehensions and returned to his ancestral home. Metiabruz this time has not been provoked by the Godhra attack and is the picture of calm.
Tapash Ganguly

]Making firewalls
Rapport-building exercises prevent flare-up
Meera Kapoor heaves a sigh of relief that the flames of Godhra have not touched the embers of communal hatred in Kanpur. “It is surprising that this time the city did not have any reaction. Otherwise, communal clashes would break out at the slightest provocation,” says the homemaker, coming back from the market in Becongunj.

Kanpur residents have witnessed eight riots since 1989; the latest was in March last year. But unusually, even sensitive pockets like Becongunj, Chamangunj and Anawargunj are calm this time.

The police say it is because of preventive arrests made before the Assembly elections in February: 24 people were held in Kanpur under the National Security Act and 60 under the Gangster Act. “These were the elements who had a history of disturbing communal harmony. Had they been at large there might have been a problem,” says Superintendent of Police Bhavesh Kumar.

In March last year miscreants pasted a photograph of the Quran being burnt in Muslim-dominated localities. In the riots that followed 16 people perished. One of them was an additional district magistrate, C.P. Pathak. The Students’ Islamic Movement of India, now banned, was then accused of stirring up trouble.

But the worst riot in the city was on December 6, 1992, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. It started from Becongunj, spread to other parts and lasted a week, claiming 300 lives.

Guided by experience, the police have formed ‘poster squads’ to ensure that no provocative posters or writings are seen anywhere.ÊThe administration has also undertaken a rapport-building exercise with influential Hindus and Muslims. Junior officers regularly meet them to detect any buildup of tension and ease it. The finest example of the rapport was when senior members of both communities decided to close shops as the news of Godhra trickled in.
Ajay Uprety
]Surviving a scare
Long-term measures to build bridges between communities are paying off
]People of Bhagalpur kept their fingers crossed as the days after the Godhra massacre passed off peacefully. Bhagalpur, notorious for the blinding of undertrials by the police in 1980, had turned into a communal inferno nine years later when more than 1,000 lives were lost.

]Trouble-free phase: Parvatti area of Bhagalpur; SP R.K. Mishra (left)

Then, a mischievous rumour that students residing in a lodge were killed had been floated from the Parvatti locality, recalls Mohammed Manahar Ahmed, who heads the political science department in a local college. “When a Hindi daily highlighted the rumour, it acted like oil on fire,” he says.

Sarfraz Alam of Parvatti says many people feared a repeat of 1989 this March. Sudha Srivastava, Samata Party MLA from Nathnagar, says there are vested interests waiting for the spark that would start a communal conflagration. “But they will not succeed as the district is yet to recover from the 1989 riots,” she says. Many cases relating to the riots are still pending before the High Court or the special courts that had been constituted for their ‘speedy’ disposal. Sudha points out that communal forces got active again after a Shahabuddin was killed two months ago but the police handled the situation well.

Mohammed Kamar Tauhid, former vice-chancellor of Bhagalpur University, admits that he was apprehensive of untoward incidents on March 1, the day of the VHP-sponsored bandh. “Thanks to Allah, it passed off peacefully,” he says. Tauhid had presided over a public meeting organised by the district administration during Kali Puja two months ago. “All who attended the meeting had vowed to shun violence,” he says.

It was such long-term measures that helped this sensitive district survive the post-Godhra phase unscathed. Police superintendent R.K. Mishra put all the police stations in the district on alert as soon as he heard about Godhra on the radio and sent additional forces to highly sensitive localities.

Communal harmony has been a priority for Mishra, who has been encouraging 16 social organisations like the Nagar Vikas Parishad (NVP) to work towards this objective. He formed peace committees in 30 localities of Bhagalpur.

Nobody realises the futility of violent acts more than those who lost their near ones in the 1989 riots. Says Mohammed Abdul Sattar, who saw his elder brother being cut to pieces: “Those responsible for the Godhra incident should be identified at the earliest and hanged.”
Kanhaiah Bhelari

]Tanking tension
The district remained calm this time
]Tonk was being readied for Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s visit when CID officers realised that they did not have a dog squad. “The dogs must have gone to Gujarat,” joked an officer, in an attempt to break the tension. Gehlot’s March 6 visit came after the Union home ministry identified Tonk district as one of six potential trouble zones in Rajasthan.

Tenuous peace : Tonk market, considered one of the high
risk zones, was relatively calm

Communal riots in Tonk in 1994 consumed 26 lives in two days. “Rai Bahadur Toda, Maalpura and Tonk city are very sensitive,” said Superintendent of Police Rajesh Nirvan. “Any small issue can smoulder for weeks and become a communal problem.”

Nirvan has been in Tonk for two years and knows how bad it can get. In 2000, Hindu and Muslim youths threw stones at each other and a maulvi was killed. “They were fighting over a piece of land near a masjid in Tonk,” said Nirvan. “When the cleric died, we declared a curfew.”

The situation worsened a few weeks later, when Hindu boys hit Muslim children. A tractor driver who saw it spread the news that Muslims were being killed. As a result, six Hindus were hacked to death in Maalpura, 50 km away, and as many Muslims were killed in retaliation.

The fear of a riot looms large over Tonk. “Mercifully, each ward in the city has a community liaison cell to maintain communal harmony,” said Salimuddin, former vice-chairman of the municipal corporation of Tonk. “And each police station has a peace committee.”

Tonk remained relatively calm when the Sabarmati Express was attacked in Gujarat. “People were afraid because a large contingent of Rajasthan Armed Constabulary had been deployed in the city,” said Rabindra Nath Dubey, a teacher.

Dubey, who hails from Bhilwara, has been teaching in Tonk for the last 22 years. “The people here are illiterate,” he said. “Muslims do not go to government schools and Hindus don’t go beyond class ten.” Tonk has 65 madrasas. “Tonk does not suffer from terror across the border,” said an intelligence officer. “It suffers from the ignorance within.”

According to Congress leader Riyaz Sheikh, contentious issues in Tonk are petty. “But the tragedy is that such issues acquire religious dimensions,” he said. “The authorities often have to declare curfews to prevent blood bath.”

Businesses move out every time riots take place. “The violence of 2000 deprived Maalpura of a lot of business,” said Rajesh Bansal, former Seva Dal president in Tonk.

The district apparently has no ultra-militant organisations. Tabliq-e-Jamaat and Jamait-e-Ulema Hind are the only Muslim organisations active in Tonk. “The town has not expanded much,” said a CID officer. “But its demography has changed. Mixed dwellings have given way to purely Hindu and Muslim areas.”

While Rajbal, Kalipattan, Nazarbagh, Talkatora, Gulzarbagh and Deswalan are considered Muslim strongholds, Joshi Mohalla, Purana Tonk, Shastri Nagar, Adarsh Nagar and Takhta are Hindu-dominated. “Hindus don’t buy land in Muslim areas and Muslims refuse to shift from overcrowded colonies to newer ones as they are dominated by Hindus,” said Nirvan.

Maalpura has a 98 per cent Muslim population. “People do not trust each other,” said Riyaz. “They used to.”

Nevertheless, the people seem to be in a mood for peace. Said Moid Khan, director of the Arabic Persian Institute which has Abu Fazal’s translations of the Ramayana, the Gita, the Mahabharata, Nal Damyanti and the Samhitas: “We can only hope that the VHP does not disturb the situation by mobilising people for karseva in Ayodhya. It will kill the sense of calm preserved after the 2000 riots.”
Kartikeya Sharma

]Fallouts on Friday
Still waters run deep in the old city
Hyderabad is like the sea, where there is always calm before a storm. The city, known for communal trouble, has grown sensitive to political nuances and the bridge between communities is growing wider. Yet, minor incidents can flare up into mass violence here especially when the rest of the nation has a communally surcharged atmosphere. And no one can deny the mental rifts. “At first, I never felt this divide,” says Sultan Moinuddin Malik, member of the Central Advisory Council of Jamat-e-Islam and editor of Geeturai (touchstone), a socio-religious magazine in Telugu. “We have lived together for long, each feeling the need for the other. In fact, my neighbours are non-Muslim. But I cannot predict what will happen when there is a riot.”

What happened after Friday prayers at Macca Masjid on March 1 was predictable. As the crowd was dispersing, word got around that there was trouble near the Charminar, 90 metres away. The crowd in its frenzy beat up innocent bystanders, some of them Hindus, and began stoning the police. At Darul Shifa, it was Mahboob Ali of Darsgah Jahad O Shahad (DJS) who sparked trouble by holding a 200-strong public meeting, defying the police. The police asked the crowd to disperse, and when it did not heed the order it was warned of a lathi-charge. All hell broke loose. Mahboob Ali was arrested and the crowd destroyed everything in its path.

The old city of Hyderabad has always been prone to communal trouble. Riots after the Babri Masjid demolition claimed 30 lives in Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad was among 57 places that had curfew for several days. In 1998, there were 224 incidents of a communal nature in Hyderabad city and Ranga Reddy district.

Since then the city has witnessed only sporadic unrest, which manifests near Macca Masjid on Fridays. History has a way of repeating itself and tense situations can tip the scales on Friday, March 15.
Lalita Iyer
]Walking the peace tightrope
Memories of the 1984 riots are still fresh
]The last time Bhiwandi was engulfed by communal flames, in 1984, only a visit by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could douse the raging passions. “With 104 mosques and 167 temples, Bhiwandi is a communal bomb just waiting to go off,” comments a senior police officer. No wonder then that the Maharashtra home department felt that Godhra and its aftermath could spell serious trouble in Bhiwandi.

Strict vigil: Police at a market in Bhiwandi

Situated 20 km off Thane, on the Mumbai-Agra national highway, Bhiwandi has six lakh people. Sixty per cent of them are Muslim and the others mostly Hindu and Jain. Memories of the riots in 1970 and 1984 are still fresh in people’s memories. “People were burnt alive in Ansari Baug in the 1984 riots, which started from Ghungat Nagar near Kalyan Naka,” recalled Surendra Mule, a Nationalist Congress Party activist from Bhiwandi.

Thankfully, however, sense has prevailed over nonsense ever since. A repeat of Ghungat Nagar was forestalled by a hair’s breadth on March 1, when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena gave the call for a Maharashtra bandh. Ignoring police warnings, activists went into Muslim localities to enforce the bandh, and 500 of them gathered at Ghungat Nagar, where Bajrang Dal has an office. “The moment we realised that trouble was in the offing, we tactfully dispersed the mob,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police Shashikant Shinde. Still, there were minor incidents like tyre-burning.

Muslim leaders also helped stave off riots. Messages urging peace were issued constantly from Kotergate Mosque, the most prominent Muslim shrine in Bhiwandi, and the media was roped in to ensure communal peace. “In Bhiwandi we have local audio cable and we sent messages of peace over it,” said Shakeel Raza, a social activist.

Each of Bhiwandi’s five police stations has a peace committee. “Before Godhra, we met every month and before religious festivals, but now I meet them almost daily,” said Shinde. Besides, his subordinates get feedback on the work of peace committees so that they know the needs of the communities. Police vigil yielded results when three Bangladeshis-Sharifuddin Ansari, Moiuddin Ansari and Muhammad Dilwar Ansari-were arrested on the eve of the bandh with five crude bombs in their possession.

Both communities suffered a lot in 1970 and 1984 riots. “People have learnt a lesson. This time, leaders of both communities have taken pains to ensure that there is no trouble in their localities,” said Appa Padyal, chief of Shiv Sena’s Bhiwandi unit. “I don’t think Bhiwandi will see a communal clash this time.”
Dnyanesh Jathar

]All quiet in Malegaon
In a town where there is a major riot every five years, this time there’s sympathy
]Friday is the day of festivities in Malegaon. A day when the dusty and sleepy powerloom town comes alive as thousands of Muslims clad in their Friday finery offer namaaz in the 350 mosques. Post-prayers, it is time for the weekly social ritual: the latest “picture” in one of the 14 cinemas in the town.

Business as usual: In Malegaon

It is business as usual for Malegaon, which has had a history of communal rioting since Independence. On an average there has been one major communal flare-up every five years. The last riot, in October 2001, cost 15 lives and property loss worth Rs 200 crore. Earlier, in 1992, there were six deaths.

The Godhra attacks, however, have not spelt trouble in Malegaon, where 75 per cent of the six lakh people are Muslims. Instead, the reaction was one of sympathy for the victims. “Nobody even thought in terms of protest marches, morchas or bandhs,” said Shaikh Rashid Shaikh Shafi, Congress MLA. Another Congress legislature Baliram Hire said, “People here are weary of the communal disturbances.”

Barring one lakh powerlooms, there is little in Malegaon for the people to earn a livelihood. Nearly 70 per cent of the looms are owned by Muslims while most of the workers and traders are Hindus.

Malegaon has a hundred Urdu medium schools and a few colleges but the dropout rate is high-nearly 60 per cent in high school and 80 per cent before college. “The students who manage to reach college are generally from the relatively affluent class,” said Malegaon Youth Congress chief Sahabir Gavar. “The rest just cannot afford the high fees and the hefty donations.” But the silver lining is that Malegaon is making great efforts to keep peace. But will it last? “All we have to do,” said autorickshaw driver Dada Fakira Ghule, “is to watch out that one spark.”
Quaied Najmi

]First off the block
Tensions take a toll in the university town
]Aligarh town wore a blanket of silence on the afternoon of March 4. Streets in the Upper Court area were strewn with bricks, slippers and glass shards and shops were stained with blood. The town famous for Aligarh Muslim University lay paralysed by one of its worst communal riots since 1991.

Riot of rumours: Aligarh town is tense

The first wave broke on March 1, after two Muslims were killed in the wee hours of the morning. No one knew the reason for the killing but that did not stop Hindus and Muslims from going for each other’s jugulars. Though the riot was short-lived, a deadlier wave of rioting broke on March 3 when the restive residents heard about the recovery of the body of Zainuddin, a peanut-seller, who had gone missing since March 1.

The toll until March 5 stood at three, and 100 people lay wounded in hospitals. After the first spate of rioting, the administration had called a peace meeting of eminent citizens at the Kotwali police station. Deepak Kishore Raizada, a social activist and special police officer, was to be one of the participants. Just as the meeting was to start, a mob rushed into the police station, inflamed by the rumours over the death of the peanut-seller. The police fired in the air to disperse the crowd, but the rioters retaliated with bricks and stones. Raizada had the misfortune of reaching the area amid the trouble and he tried to escape when his scooter broke down and the mob turned on him. The police later found his charred body.

His son Akash Raizada did not exude hatred as he spoke about the tragedy of his hometown. “A big problem in Aligarh is that Hindus and Muslims live in segregated colonies,” he said. “If a person from one community ventures into the other’s territory when the situation is tense, there is no chance of survival.”
Sandeep Phukan

Ayodhya Talks
The seer’s solution
Jayendra Saraswati’s initiative indirectly made the VHP scale down its rhetoric
By Debashish Mukerji

]From Sushil Muni to Chandraswami, numerous sants and pseudo-sants tried to solve the Ayodhya problem during the first phase of the agitation. Not one of them got anywhere, and the first phase ended with the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. In the second phase, the first to try his luck has been Shri Jayendra Saraswati, Sankaracharya of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam. Did he really succeed where the others had failed?

Peace-maker: Jayendra Saraswati with Babri Masjid Committee members Abdul Nizadi (left) and Nizamuddin Wahmji in Delhi

In a manner, yes. Jayendra Saraswati left the capital a disappointed man, since neither the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) nor the Prime Minister was prepared to listen to him. The compromise he suggested was simple and succinct. The VHP had always maintained that the question of a Ram temple at Ayodhya was beyond the jurisdiction of courts. Even recently, VHP senior vice-president Giriraj Kishore had said that no matter what the court verdict regarding the title suit over the disputed shrine at Ayodhya, no mosque would be allowed there.

In two meetings with the VHP leaders, Jayendra Saraswati suggested they agree to abide by the court verdict. In return he promised them he would try to persuade the Prime Minister to allot them the land they wanted next to the disputed site, so that they could go ahead with the puja they had announced for March 15. The sants bickered and argued, and the Sankaracharya took away the impression they had agreed.

He announced as much to the press and the Prime Minister. He expected the Prime Minister to reciprocate by agreeing to allot the land. A.B. Vajpayee wouldn’t hear of it, claiming that his government would fall if he did so. As soon as the VHP got wind of the PM’s stand, it backtracked. “We have never given any assurance to anyone,” said Giriraj Kishore. “Under no circumstances can a mosque be allowed on the disputed site.”

The Sankaracharya had opened a dialogue with the All-India Muslim Personal Board to obtain its consent to the puja at an undisputed spot. But he was promptly

[This message has been edited by FYI (edited March 11, 2002).]

[Azad_Munna]

We have no control over where we are born.For every fortunate pakistani to be born among majority of muslims ,he or sghe would not have to look over his shoulder all his life .

http://www.ercwilcom.net/~indowindow/sad/godown/secular/FOTSP.htm

The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/devil.gif

Sumit Sarkar

(This article was written in early 1993, in the aftermath of the Demolition of Babri Masjid at ayodhya on December 6, 1992. Today, as we near the turn of the century and the millenium, its observations and conclusions remain as fresh and relevant, and have acquired more urgency than ever. We are grateful to the aurthor for permitting us to put it here.)
Fascism in contemporary Indian as distinct from the European historical context had appeared till the other day a mere epithet, worn out by overmuch, indiscriminate use, signifying little more than particular blatant acts of authoritarian repression or reactionary violence. With the 6th of December and its aftermath, elements frighteningly evocative of its totality of horror stalk our streets, obtain connivance and implicit sustenance from within the highest corridors of power, emerge from everyday conversations with relatives, colleagues, friends of yesterday. Not that exact parallels can be found, in most part India 1992-93 remains very different from the Germany of 60 years back. Yet a closer look at the pattern of affinities and differences may help to highlight certain crucial features - most notably, the ways in which the implications of the current all-out offensive of the Sangh Parivar go far beyond even the obvious and terrifying fact that the subcontinent has just witnessed the most widespread round of communal violence since the Partition years. The drive for Hindu Rashtra has put in jeopardy the entire secular and democratic foundations of our republic. An old warning of Nehru sounds particularly appropriate today. Muslim communalism is in its nature as bad as Hindu communalism, and may even be stronger among Muslims than its counterpart within the majority community. “But Muslim communalism cannot dominate Indian society and introduce fascism. That only Hindu communalism can” (quoted in Frontline, January 1, 1993). Probing the fascist analogy, then, many contribute towards a greater understanding of the dangers that confront us today. Just occasionally, it may provide us also with what is most needed, and is in woefully short supply: resources of hope.
Fascism had come to power in Italy and Germany through a combination of street violence (carefully orchestrated from above but still undeniable with great mass support), deep infiltration into the police, bureaucracy and army, and the connivance of ‘centrist’ political leaders. Crude violations of laws and constitutional norms and consequently had alternated in Fascist and Nazi behaviours with loud protestations of respect for legality. It is not always remembered, for instance, that Hitler had become chancellor on January 30, 1933 in an entirely constitutional manner, as leader of the largest party in the Reichstag, at the invitation of President Hindenburg. He repeatedly asserted his party’s respect for legality throughout the next month - but meanwhile Goering Nazified the Berlin police, organised street encounters in which more than 50 anti-fascists were murdered, and set the scene for the notorious Reichstag fire, after which first the communists, and then all opposition political panics and trade unions were quickly destroyed.
There is much, surely that is ominously reminiscent here. A mosque is systematically reduced to rubble over five long hours, in total violation of a direct Supreme Court order and repeated assurances given by the leading opposition party and its allies, and the central government does not lift its little finger. Countrywide riots follow; marked by blatant police partiality, with the guardians of the law not unoften turning rioters themselves. And then come strange political and judicial manoeuvres that in effect have allowed the land-grabbing vandals to build a temporary ‘temple’ complete with darshan, where curfew exists for Muslim and not for Hindus, and which suddenly is not a ‘disputed structure’ unlike the 462-year-old monument it has displaced, but something worthy of protection. Meanwhile the BJP alternates between an occasional apology and much more frequent aggressive justification, and VHP leaders add the Delhi Jumma Masjid to Varanasi and Mathura, and openly denounce the Indian Constitution as anti-Hindu.

Expanding Target Area

It is this wider dimension, in which the obvious, classically communal Muslim target area steadily expands, and efforts intensify to terrorise wider and wider circles of potential dissent that perhaps requires a little additional emphasis. The Hitler analogy is once again, appropriate: Jew and communist had quickly expanded to cover social-democrats, liberals, Catholics, everyone who dared to think with any independence - even, by June 1934, a number of Nazis, massacred in the ‘night of the long knives’. The BJP turn towards open terror had begun with two incidents in Madhya Pradesh unconnected with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement -the murder of Shankar Guha Niyogi, labour leader of unusual initiative and originality, in autumn 1991, and the public humiliation recently of B D Sharma, distinguished progressive retired civil servant. (The Shiv Sena of Maharashtra had shown the way even earlier, of course, smashing through street terror the once formidable Red Flat Unions of Bombay in the 1970s). The beating-up of journalists on December 6 is thus not an aberration, but part of a broader emerging pattern. The forces of Hindutva have assiduously cultivated the press, with great success till recently, but fascists always like to combine persuasion with the occasional big stick.
Certain like-reported developments in Delhi acquire relevance here, indicating once again the typical combination of street violence with administrative collusion even in a city where the December riots were relatively localised and minor(1), right next to a central government which is said to have banned the RSS, the VHP, and the Bajrang Dal. Peace activists trying to do things as innocuous as singing songs, distributing leaflets calling for harmony: and staging street plays have been repeatedly attacked: the police come a little later, ignore the RSS-Bajrang Dal elements supposedly under a ban, but arrest and harass anti-communal groups. Even a peace march led by men as distinguished as P N Haksar and Habib Tanvir was obstructed by the police, while a Delhi University student in an anti-communal group whose name begins with Ram was slapped by a Policeman who had arrested him: a man with such a name, he was told, should not be doing such things.
The Bajrang Dal thugs often openly declare that anyone who criticises the destruction of Babri Masjid will have to go to Pakistan, while in the selectively curfew-bound Muslim Pockets of Seelampur in east Delhi, the police had rounded up all Muslim men in some areas, beaten them up unless they agreed to say Jai Shri Ram, and even pulled out the beard of a Muslim gentleman.

Myths As Common Sense
What is making all this possible is evidently a wide, though very far from universal, degree of consent, where large numbers may keep away from communal riots, maybe, even sincerely condemn them, and yet be participants in a kind of communal consensus in which a whole series of assumptions and myths have turned into common sense. Far from being a spontaneous or ’ natural’ product of popular will expressing a legitimate ‘Hindu hurt’, however, as the organised forces of Hindutva sedulously propagate, this consent is something constructed and carefully nurtured, a product of more than 60 years of strenuous and patient effort. The RSS, founded way back in 1925, and spawning from 1950s a whole series of affiliates manned at crucial levels by its cadres (among which the Jan Sangh/BJP and the VHP have been the most important), concentrated for many years on unostentatious, slow, ‘cultural’ work. Shakhas combined physical training of young men with indoctrination through bauddhik sessions, a chain of schools was built up, ideas were disseminated through personal contact and conversation, and even a very popular Hindu comic series was brought out (the Amar Chitra Katha extolling Hindu mythical or historical figures). It was for long, almost, a Gramscian process of building up hegemony through molecular permeation. Then, in the early and middle 1980s, came the efforts of Indira and Rajiv to play the ’ Hindu card’, communalising the state apparatus on an unprecedented scale through the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 and the subsequent cover-up of the guilty, and further eroding the rule of law through rampant corruption. All this directly prepared the ground for the Ram Janmabhoomi blitzkrieg of the Sangh Parivar, now spearheaded by the VHP. It must not be forgotten that it was the Congress government that updated the Ramayana epic into a pseudo-nationalist TV serial, and allowed access in 1986 to the idols installed inside the Babri Masjid by stealth and administrative collusion in December 1949, under an earlier Congress regime. The Sangh Parivar’s war of position now gave place to a spectacular war of movement, pressing into service the latest in advertising and audio-visual techniques on a scale and with resources never before seen on the subcontinent. Hitler, by the way, had also been a bit of a pioneer in these matters, fully realising the importance of spoken propaganda through the then relatively new techniques of the loudspeaker and the radio.(2)
Unlike Fascism, then, which came to power in Italy and Germany within a decade or less of its emergence as a political movement, Hindutva has had a long gestation period. This, no doubt, has given it added strength and stability, time to get internalised into common sense. But there is an element of hope here, too, for despite the tremendous effort spread across decades the conquest of hearts and minds remains far from complete. It needs to be recalled that around four out of five Indians voted against the BJP even in 1991 (its all-India percentage was 21.9) - and if that had been a vote about Ram, the UP victory was at best some kind of a mandate for a Ram temple, not for the destruction of the Masjid. The real base of the Sangh Parivar remains the predominantly upper-caste trader-professional petite bourgeoisie of the cities and small towns in the Hindi heartland, with developing connections perhaps with upwardly-mobile landholding groups in the countryside. Extensions beyond this remain unstable, as the panic evoked by Mandal and the Bihar example seem to indicate - and the whole bloated structure of today’s Hindutva requires for sustenance constant excitement, a high pitch of hysteria, the stimulus of communal violence. Hence perhaps the gamble of sacrificing the BJP ministries, which could have got discredited and shown up as little different, if not worse, from Congress regimes by any long period of normal governance.
An early perceptive analysis of Fascism had defined it as “not only an instrument at the service of big business, but at the same time a mystical upheaval of the …petite bourgeoisie”(3). That a ‘mystical upheaval’ has happened around the slogan of Ram is undeniable, and its lavish orchestration indicates an evident abundance of funds. But the specific linkages of Fascism with capitalist interests have remained a controversial issue even for Europe, and most historians have found it necessary to make distinctions between various kinds of capital as well as across countries. Relatively underdeveloped Italy, for instance, differed quite fundamentally from highly industrialised Germany. Controversies exist also as to whether capitalist interests were linked to Fascism by positive intention, as the term ‘instrument’ suggests, or more through accommodation to circumstances."(4) The Indian situation is significantly different above all because of the absence of any major threat to propertied interests from organised labour or apparently impending socialist revolution. The scale and nature of the economic crisis is also not quite comparable. In post-Depression Germany, Nazism arguably could have appeared to many business groups “as the last available means of preserving the capitalist system” (5), while Fascism in Italy had had a developmental, if anti-popular, ‘passive revolution’ aspect that Gramsci realistically recognised even from within a Fascist prison. Neither feature is particularly noticeable so far in India, where Narasimha Rao has been carrying through wide-ranging changes in economic policy with a degree of determination and skill conspicuously absent in his handling of Ayodhya. The Jan Sangh and the BJP have been advocating such a repudiation of the Nehruvian legacy of self-reliance and planning for many years, but the forces of Hindutva, in whose propaganda and activity matters economic so far have occupied only a minor place, can claim little ‘credit’ for actually bringing about the shift. The Indian business groups that support Manmohan Singh’s New Economic Policy (not necessarily the entire class) might still prefer a tougher anti-labour line under a Hindu Right regime no longer dependent even marginally on Left votes in parliament. Conversely, however, if the fascistic thrust of Hindutva, even now, encounters determined resistance, the traditional centrist option might appear more reliable and attractive for bourgeoisie groups, precisely because there is much less ‘need’ for Fascism in the interests of capitalist survival and profit than in inter-War Italy and Germany.

Suicidal Wobbling
It is in this context that the wobbling - and worse - of the Congress, and particularly of the Prime Minister, before and after December 6 appears so disastrous, indeed suicidal, even from the point of view of narrow party interests. There did exist a possibility of retrieval just after the sixth. The much-quoted Vajpayee interview was an indication that the BJP for a few days had been forced into the defensive. But Narasimha Rao, to quote a rather apt comment by a journalist, then proceeded “to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”. Sporadic, largely unimplemented, obviously halfhearted measurers of repression, not backed up by any political campaign by the Congress, have by now been succeeded by what appears to be yet another attempt to compete with the BJP for the ‘Hindu card’. Principles apart, elementary real politick suggests that the more determined and consistent always win that kind of game. The shift in the attitude of the major Delhi-based dailies from virtually total condemnation of the BJP just after December 6 to much more ambiguous alignments in recent days might in this context be a straw in the wind of a most dangerous kind.
That leaders who subjectively no doubt demarcate themselves from the BJP, their principle political rival, can still stoop to such levels of opportunism indicates the degree of spread of what I have tried to argue lies at the heart of our present tragedy: a communalised common sense produced through sustained effort. Analysis-cum-critique of the varied components of this common sense is clearly vital for any effective resistance to what, with many qualifications, may still be called the Indian variety of fascism.
Fascist ideology in Europe had combined already quite widespread crudely nationalist, racist, and in Germany anti-Semitic, prejudices with fragments from much more sophisticated philosophies. That it had owed something to a general tun-of-the century move away from what were to be the sterile rigidities of Enlightenment rationalism is not a fact without some relevance today, for not similar ideas have become current intellectual coin in the west, and by extension they have started to influence Indian academic life. The ideologists of the Sangh Parivar (a Girilal Jain or a Swapan Dasgupta apart) may themselves be still largely unaware of the varied possibilities of post-modernism: that certain current academic fashions can reduce the resistance of intellectuals to the ideas of Hindutva has already become evident. The “critique of colonial discourse” inspired by Said’s Orientalism, for instance, has stimulated forms of indigenism not too easy to distinguish from the standard Sangh Parivar argument, going back to Savarkar, that Hindutva is superior to Islam and Christianity (and, by extension, to creations of the modern west like science, democracy or Marxism) because of its allegedly unique indigenous roots. An uncritical cult of the ‘popular’ or ‘subaltern’, particularly when combined with the rejection of Enlightenment rationalism as irremediably tainted in all its forms by colonial power-knowledge, can lead even radical historians down strange paths (6). It is not unimportant, therefore, to recall that Giovanni Gentile had defined Fascism as a “revolt against positivism”, or that Mussolini in 1933 had condemned the “movement of the 18th century visionaries and Encyclopaedists” along with “technological” conceptions of progress. Ominously relevant, too, is another peroration of the Italian dictator, in July 1934, where he called for an end to “intellectualising and of those sterile intellectuals who are a threat to the nation”. Hitler at the Nuremberg Nazi Congress next year similarly exalted the “heart”, the “faith” the “inner voice” of the German volk over “hair-splitting intelligence.” (7)

'Enemy’ Image

This, however, has been a bit of an aside: far more central to Hindutva as a mass phenomenon (or for that matter to Fascism) is the development of a powerful and extendable enemy image through appropriating stray elements from past prejudices, combining them with new ones skillfully dressed up as old verities, and broadcasting the resultant compound through the most up-to-date media techniques. The Muslim here becomes the near-exact equivalent of the Jew - or the Black (more generally, immigrants felt to be inferior for one or another reason) in contemporary White racism. The Muslim in India, like the Jew in Nazi propaganda, is unduly privileged - a charge even more absurd here than it was in Germany, where the Jews had been fairly prominent in intellectual, professional and business circles. In post-Independence India, Muslims in contrast are grossly underrepresented at elite levels, however defined. The alleged privileges, in the second place, are the product of ’ appeasement’ of Muslims by ‘pseudo-secularist’, and so very quickly the communal target starts broadening itself, and Mulayam Singh Yadav, to take one example among many, becomes a ’ mulla’. The stock examples of ’ appeasement’ in recent days have been the destruction of temples in Kashmir, allegedly never condemned by the ‘pseudo-secularists’, and Muslim personal law permitting polygamy. Desecration must be condemned, whether by Muslims or by Hindus, but it is a strange condemnation that sues it to justify or condone the wanton desecration of December 6. The destruction of numerous Muslim religious places in riots (at Bhagalpur, for instance) is of course never mentioned. The Kashmir temples issue, incidentally, became very prominent in conversation just after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, indicating a concerted whisper campaign as well as, possibly, an element of guilt suppressed through verbal excess. The oft-repeated argument that Muslims must repent or atone for their acts of past or present aggression has meanwhile acquired a strange flavour in the context of some current reports from Bombay. Muslims offering to rebuild destroyed temples have been spurned by Shiv Sena, and in Dharavi a group of them who were actually rebuilding one have just been stabbed (Pioneer, January 9).
On the Muslim Personal Law issue, the Sangh Parivar once again takes full advantage of Rajiv Gandhi’s misdeeds, when he tried to counterbalance the opening of the locks of Ayodhya by the Muslim Women’s Bill. The Muslim fundamentalist side of the appeasement (from which the only real and direct sufferers were Muslim women) is always mentioned, never the simultaneous appeasement of Hindu communalism. The real importance of the question, however, is in the light it can throw on the presuppositions, reminiscent of racism, of the Hindutva ideology. The continuation of the legal right of polygamy among Muslims is constantly linked up to assertions that Muslims consequently breed faster: “hum panch hamare pachis”, as the Delhi VHP leader (currently BJP MP) B L Sharma elegantly described it in an interview he gave to a group of us in April 1991. The Report on the Status of Women in India (1975), however, had found the rate of polygamy actually higher among Hindus than Muslims (5.06 per cent as against 4.31 per cent). The Muslims, then, become dangerous simply by going through the basic biological processes of birth, procreation - and even death, for we were told during an investigation of the 1991 Nizamuddin riots in New Delhi that a dead Muslim always grabs a bit of land by burial, unlike the self-effacing cremated Hindu. Racist attitudes, finally, are neatly encapsulated in the very recent coinage of the formula ’ Babar Ki Aulad’. Alleged descent from Babar is sufficient to damn, no overt misdeed is really required…just as once in fanatical Christian circles all Jews stood condemned because of what their ancestors had supposedly done at the time of the crucification of Christ.
Such is Hindutva ideology at its crudest, engaged in the direct justification of communal violence. The slightly ‘softer’ or more insidious levels should also be considered, for these can indicate almost as clearly the fascistic implications of Hindu Rashtra. Fascism has often tried to appropriate elements, or at least terms, from ideals considered laudable and progressive in the society it sought to conquer: thus the Nazis claimed to be not only nationalist- in post-Versailles Germany, but also, keeping in mind the very strong working class political presence in the Weimar Republic, ‘socialist’ and representative of ‘labour’. The Sangh Parivar, similarly, tries to establish its claim to be truly and uniquely ‘national’ by a ‘democratic’ argument: Hindu interests should prevail always in India, and maybe, it should at some stage be declared a Hindu Rashtra, for Hindus after all are the majority, by Census reckoning 85 per cent of the population. But democracy logically must connote two other features in addition to rule of majority: protection of rights of minority ways of life and opinions, and, even more crucially, the legal possibility that the political minority of today can win electoral majority in the future and thus peacefully change the government. Otherwise it becomes difficult to deny the status of democracy to the one-party regimes of Hitler, Mussolini (or Stalin), for all of them did go in for occasional elections of a single-list, plebiscitary type, and won majorities which may not have been entirely rigged. Democratic theory, in other words, stands in total contradiction of any notion of permanent majorities-but such, by Sangh Parivar definition, would be the position of the party that claims to speak uniquely for all Hindus; the BJP. Inherent in that claim is a second assertion, equally reminiscent of Fascism: only s/he is a true Hindu who accepts the leadership of RSS-BJP-VHP combine. Any dissent runs the risk of being branded as pseudo-secular appeasement. So had Hitler and the Nazis arrogated to themselves the right to speak for all ’ pure’ Germans, along with the power to decide who are racially pure.
What the triumph of Hindutva, ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, implies for Muslims and other minority groups is already obvious enough: a second-class citizenship at best, constant fear of riots amounting to genocide, a consequent strengthening of the most conservative and fundamentalist groups within such communities. The near-coincidence in time between the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the barbarous assault of Professor Mushirul Hasan does not appear accidental-and the police, interestingly, were strangely absent or inactive in both cases. The fallout of December 6 has already strengthened Muslim fundamentalist forces in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Muslims in India, it needs to be added, are not an insignificant minority, but 120 million-the biggest in the world next to Indonesia. The sheer size and diversity of the Indian people make secularism, democracy and the preservation of national unity more closely inter-dependent than perhaps anywhere else in the world. The permanent and total alienation the BJP seems working for can lead to a Lebanon or Yugoslavia on vastly enhanced scale. The Sangh Parivar certainly has peculiar ways of living up to its much-touted claim to be more ’ national;’ than anyone else.

Scope For Common Action
One major distinction between the Hindutva of today and European Fascism, particularly the Nazi variety lies in a very different relationship with established religious traditions. Nazis sought to ground identity on race, not religion, and called on youth to build a new civilisation, which could at times sound openly anti-Christian. The Sangh Parivar, by very definition, has to preach total adherence and deference towards Hindu traditions even while fundamentally transforming them. That this has been a source of tremendous strength hardly needs to be stated; just possibly, it could also be transformed into a weakness given effective counter-strategies. For Hindutva is really homogenising and changing Hindu beliefs and practices on a truly colossal scale. The statement of a VHP leader, exulting over the destruction of Muslim houses near what had been the Babri Masjid, epitomises this transformation: this was necessary, he said, to make of that area a Vatican. But the vast and enormously variegated Hindu world has never had what the VHP is trying to make out of Ram and Ayodhya - a single supreme deity and pilgrimage centre, steam-rolling out of existence differences of region, sect, caste, gender, class. Even more basic is the effort to transform what millions of Hindus sincerely believe - with what degree of historical accuracy does not matter very much in this context - to be a supremely tolerant and Catholic religion into a terrifying instrument of vandalism, murder, and usurpation of political power. The traditions of catholicity in our country are deep and themselves extremely diverse. They range from syncretic, at time radically iconoclastic Bhakti-Sufi ‘sants’ and ‘pirs’, for some of whom, in the words of a Baul song, the path seemed blocked by mandir and masjid, purohit and mulla - to the conservative, yet profoundly Catholic, Ramakrishna, in whose vision Hindu, Muslim and Christian differed as little as jal from pani and water. And our thoughts today inevitably go back, time and again, to another dark January 45 years ago, when a man died, a devout Hindu whose last words had also evoked Ram, murdered by a youth reared in the culture of the Sangh Parivar. An ocean separates the Ram of Mahatma Gandhi, conceived of as both Iswara and Allah, from the Ram in whose name the Babri Masjid has been destroyed.

Secularism Has Many Meanings
What is necessary today is the recognition that secularism can and indeed does have many meanings, that its wide and varied spectrum can extend from the devoutly religious to the freethinker-atheist, on a common minimum ground of total rejection of communal hatred and a theocratic state. This does not mean that non-religious secularists should engage in a breast-beating exercise for having been ’ alienated’ from the ‘ mainstream’ and suddenly claim to be more ‘truly’ Hindu or Muslim than the VHP or the Muslim fundamentalist (8). It involves, rather, an awareness that even profound differences need not rule out common action in defense of basic human values, that, as Trotsky had once said while pleading for a united front against Fascism, it is possible to “march separately, but strike together”. (9)
That the Hindutva forces are afraid of such unity is indicated by their persistent efforts to brand secularism and indeed all anti-communal attitudes as necessarily somehow anti-Hindu. Simultaneously they try to conflate secularism uniquely with the policies of the ‘Nehruvian’ state, thus making it bear the burden of the many sins of opportunism, excessive and bureaucratic centralisation and repression of which that state has been often guilty. Here, once again, current intellectual tendencies have provided respectability to such critiques, for it is often assumed nowadays that secularism was a creation of the now much-abused Enlightenment rationalism and scepticism, brought into India in the baggage of colonial discourse, and subsequently embodied in the repressive nation-states that have emerged on the western pattern. Actually, even in Europe, the roots of secularism go back at least another 200 years, to the times of the religious wars (‘communal riots’, we might legitimately call them) sparked off by the Reformation. The first advocates of toleration based on separation of church from state were not rationalist freethinkers, but Anabaptists passionately devoted to their own brand of Christianity, who still believed that coercion, persecution and any kind of compulsory state religion was contrary to true faith.
In India, as in other countries with multiple religious traditions, the need and therefore the bases of co-existence are broader and deeper than the teachings of the vast majority of holy men of all creeds or the policies of many kings, among whom Akbar is only the best remembered. They have been grounded in the necessities of daily existence itself, which might occasionally produce conflict, but also tend towards the restoration of interdependence - if allowed to do so by organised communal forces, which means less and less often nowadays (10). And if communalism shatters everyday existence, it simultaneously halts and turns back all efforts to improve the condition of living through striving to reduce exploitation and want. It does so in two fundamental ways: by shattering the unity and struggle of toilers and all the subordinate groups, and fostering, within the rigid community boundaries it erects, tendencies towards ruthless homogenisation. Such homogenisation invariably helps the groups and interests occupying positions of power - in the context of Hindu communalism, most obviously, the high caste elite. It is noteworthy how every move towards implementing even the fairly limited measures towards social justice promised by the Mandal recommendations are being, met by a Hindutva offensive. The noticeable silences so far about specific socio-economic issues in the programmes and activities of Hindutva (no effort has been made to spell out the ’ roti’ concomitant of Ram, and that slogan itself seems forgotten) can be made into a space for effective secular intervention - provided, however, the habit of segregating the ‘economic’ and ‘political’ from the ‘cultural’ or ‘ideological’, fairly deep-rooted in Indian Left traditions, is abandoned. Anti-communal campaigns cannot be left to seminars or middle-class cultural programmes alone, important though these are, nor can everyday economic struggles afford to skirt questions of religion, communalism and ideology in the facile hope that material issues and ‘real’ class identities will automatically assert themselves.
Thinking back about the Fascist era in Europe may seem a grim and depressing exercise, now that chauvinist forces are rearing their heads virtually everywhere. But the memories of the 1930s and early 40s are not just of Storm Troopers, Holocaust, concentration camps, and the nor unrelated deformations that have culminated today in the shattering of the world’s first socialist experiment. They include the experiences of united, and in their time victorious, anti-fascist struggle, popular fronts, a Barcelona very different from the one seen on TV last year, the heroism of Sta

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barque(bijli) yoon akadti hai apne karname pe ke
jaise phir naya hum aashiyaan bana nahi sakte

[cool_down]

there are many factors behind violence.

1. the atmosphere of country. there is always propaganda against muslims, in movies, in newspapers, on television.

2..hindus are thinking they are the supreme power in India and have right to do every thing.

3..the govt. that wants the hindu raj and also have support.

there are many other factors. I remember asking hindus in this forum that it was right to destroy the babri masjid, and also calling themselves educated.

when a country contains this kinda atmosphere, violance against minorities is natural.

[ZZ]

[quote]
Originally posted by cool down:
**
there are many factors behind violence.

1. the atmosphere of country. there is always propaganda against muslims, in movies, in newspapers, on television.

2..hindus are thinking they are the supreme power in India and have right to do every thing.

3..the govt. that wants the hindu raj and also have support.

there are many other factors. I remember asking hindus in this forum that it was right to destroy the babri masjid, and also calling themselves educated.

when a country contains this kinda atmosphere, violance against minorities is natural.

**
[/quote]

and of course, u missed major factor. if u go and burn train along with people in it, it is difficult to maintain peace.

[kabir]

[quote]
Originally posted by ZZ:
**
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by cool down:
**
**
[/quote]

and of course, u missed major factor. if u go and burn train along with people in it, it is difficult to maintain peace.**
[/QUOTE]

so bombay bomb blast were prefectly justified

[This message has been edited by kabir (edited March 13, 2002).]

[Andhra]

so bombay bomb blast were prefectly justified<<

Still no, the no Muslims were burned alive in Ayodhya.
What happened there in 1992 was vandalism.

[cool_down]

I heard a statue was found in babri masjid????

when was it found? who put it there?

[Yusuf_Khan]

[quote]
Originally posted by cool down:
**I heard a statue was found in babri masjid????

when was it found? who put it there?

**
[/quote]

Chronology

DATELINE
Babri Masjid / Ram-Janam-Bhoomi Dispute

5,000 to 800,000
According to Hindu belief, sometime in ancient antiquity, their god/king Sri Rama, an Aryan prince and main character of the epic poem Ramayana, is born. No ancient accounts associate Sri Rama's birth to modem Ayodhya, India.

2500 B.C.
Indus Valley civilization (pre-Aryan) flourishes in Indus basin.

1500 B.C.
Aryans invade India, Dravidian civilization of Indus valley destroyed.

800-600 B.C.
Aryan culture takes shape in Gangetic plains of North India. Rise of caste system, Vedic literature flourishes, no mention of Rama.

400-500 B.C.
Valmiki writes Sanskrit Ramayana with Rama as an ideal human hero, embodiment of chivalry, loyalty, patience and justice.

1517 C.E.
Babar invades India, no historical evidence of him ever being in Ayodhya.

1528-29 C.E.
Mir Baqi, a Mughal governor, builds the Mosque in honor of Babar. No account of destruction of any Hindu temple or association of Rama with the site in all Medieval literature.

1534-1623 C.E.
Tulsi Das writes popular Hindi version of Ramayana, Ram Charit Manas. Sri Ram is raised to the status of full deity, an Avatar (incarnation) of Hindu God Vishnu. Tulsi Das never mentions association of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya with Ram-Janambhoomi.

1759-60 C.E.
Raj Chaturman in his Chahar Gulshan (Four Gardens) first mentions of modern Ayodhya as a possible place of Sri Rama's birth, but no association of Babri Masjid with it.

1788 C.E.
Jesuit priest Joseph Tieffenthaler suggests the birth of Rama is believed to be in the vicinity of the Masjid. First mention of Masjid as possible place of birth, offers no reference or evidence. Several places in Ayodhya claimed to be Rama's place of birth.

Dec. 22, 1949
A statute of Sri Rama appears in the Mosque at night. Hindus call it a miracle. Report to police by the Mu'adhadhin. The Masjid is declared by the District Magistrate as a disputed property and is closed to Muslims.

Jan. 5, 1950
According to 145 Criminal Procedure code, the Magistrate K.K. Nair 'attaches' the Masjid, locking the doors and appointing Ayodhya Municipal Corporation as a 'Receiver.' Nair (a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sympathizer and later MP on the Jan Sangh ticket) gives Hindus permission to worship and take care of their deity. Muslims forbidden to get closer than 300 yards to their own Masjid.

Feb. 1, 1986
Acting on the petition of U.C. Pandey, on behalf of Hindus to be able to perform public worship, Mr. K.M. Pandey the district judge, on recommendation of Mr. T. K. Pandey, the District Magistrate, grants Hindus the permission for general worship (without regard to the Muslims opinion). In full glare of media and publicity the Masjid is handed over to Hindus. Proceedings televised to mobilize Hindu public opinion in favor of Congress government. It is rumored that Rajiv Gandhi backed the action to win back Hindu support for Congress. Conflicts flare between Muslims and Hindus. Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) formed to claim Masjid back through legal process. Long arduous legal and political battles ensue.

Nov. 11, 1986
The Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) - Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) coalition lays foundation stone (Shilanyas) for temple on adjoining land claimed by Muslims as part of Waqf (Islamic trust). Bloody 'Rath Yatra' fuels hatred, incites anti-Muslim sentiments and provokes wide spread riots claiming 2000 lives. Dispute is pending before the High Court and the Supreme Court, both want status quo. Muslims declare their willingness to accept the decision of the highest court of India.

Oct. 7 1991
BJP government of Uttar Pradesh (UP) expropriates 2.77 acres of Muslim waqf land adjoining the Masjid and starts construction. Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, ignores many directives of the Supreme Court to stop the work.

July 23, 1992
Prime Minister comes to agreement with Sadhus (Hindu holy men) to stop construction to enable him to find a solution. Chief Minister of UP assures status quo and protection of Masjid.

Nov. 28, 1992
L. K. Advani, the BJP leader, asserts that work on construction of temple would continue irrespective of Supreme Court decision.

Dec. 6, 1992
BJP, VHP, and RSS decide for Kar Seva, 300,000 holy men and volunteers gather for Kar Seva. Police do not intervene. Babri Masjid, a place of Muslim Worship and a monument of history destroyed brick by brick.

Would it be the last of the acts of Hindu extremist fanaticism or the beginning of a long design of death and destruction of minorities in India?

Courtesy: Indo-Islamic Foundation of America. "The Babri Masjid / Ram-Janam-Bhoomi Dispute: History, Religion and Politics," December 18, 1992.

Chronology

1990

May: The President of the Ram Janambhoomi Samiti (Ram's birth place committee) M. Avaidhyanath has warned the country that construction work on a Ram temple at Ayodhya, the site of Lord Ram's birth place, in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, will start after June 8. This is when the 4-month period sought by the government to settle the dispute expires (Xinhua News Service, 05/21/90). In November last year, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council) held the foundation laying ceremony and indicated that construction of the temple would start on February 14, 1990. The VHP submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister to this effect (see the December 1992 entry for a brief background on the Ayodhya dispute).

September: Police opened fire on Hindus during an attempt to demolish the Babri mosque. As a result, dozens of Hindu devotees were killed. The assault was led by the Hindu fundamentalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian Peoples Party) which has become a major party in recent years.

October: The government of V.P. Singh was toppled by a no-confidence vote in Parliament, in which Ayodhya was a major issue. Chandra Shekhar of the Janata Dal (Peoples Party, with 54 of the 495 seats) has become the new Prime Minister. Several hundred people have died since he took office, many of them in continuing clashes over Ayodhya.

December: At least 23 people died in some of the worst violence between Hindus and Muslims during the month.

1991

January: Iran's President Rafsanzani told visiting Indian Deputy Foreign Secretary M. Dubey that recent violence between Hindu extremists and Muslims was against Delhi's interests in its ties with Muslim states. "Once Indian Muslims feel safer, the Islamic world's co-operation with India will increase more than even before and this is useful to all" (BBC, 11/10/91).

The Persian Gulf crisis has deepened religious and political divisions in India between Hindus, the overwhelming majority, and the Muslim minority. A riot broke out near New Delhi when Muslims held a pro-Iraq rally. At least 10 people were killed.

February: The government has banned US military aircraft from re-fuelling in Bombay and Madras on their way from the Philippines to the Persian Gulf. The ban was apparently imposed after reports that Mr. Gandhi, who has opposed the re-fuelling on the grounds that it violates India's non-alignment, would withdraw his Congress (I) party's support for the government unless it was stopped. His move is actually aimed at pleasing 110 million Muslims who had abandoned their support for his party in recent elections. His party's traditional vote-bank of Brahmins (highest caste), Muslims and Harijans (Untouchables) is under siege from several quarters. The BJP has won over many Brahmins, who influence voting trends among many high-caste voters. Other parties are also wooing Muslims and Harijans.

June: Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, expressed fear and concern over the new BJP state government. Uttar Pradesh has been a bellwether for the nation and has provided 7 of 9 Prime Ministers since independence. Muslims fear that in the event of new riots, the government and Hindu-dominated police forces would be partial to Hindus, who account for 83% of the state's 139 million people. As an example, the Muslims point to the Provincial Armed Constabulary, a special state police unit often accused of selectively killing Muslims and burning their homes when riots have occurred (The Associated Press, 06/30/91).

August: A meeting of Muslim leaders, which might have been a show of unity against the BJP state government, ended with them outshouting each other and exposing rank disunity. The host was the Imam of Jama Masjid, Delhi's biggest mosque. But many from the Babri Mosque Action Committee saw the Imam's show as an exercise aimed at projecting himself as the sole leader of the Muslims -- a move that ran counter to a recent agreement among various Muslim leaders to put up a united front over issues like Ayodhya. It had also been resolved that differences should not be publicly aired and that any consultations with the government should be proceeded by talks among the community leadership (Saudi Gazette, 08/07/91).

November: During his visit to Tehran, the Indian Foreign Minister M. Solanki explained that the Indian administration has adopted new policies to safeguard the rights of minorities within the framework of "secularism". His Iranian counterpart Akbar Velayati noted that Muslims constitute a big minority in India and that the Islamic Republic is interested in the fate of Muslims, no matter where they are in the world (BBC, 11/12/91).

1992

September: As part of a $30 million program of the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank for the assistance of Muslims in India, the Board of Executive Directors agreed to provide a grant of $130,000 for the building of a vocational training center that will benefit male and female students in the state of Haryana. The state lacks any technical school that works under the supervision of the Islamic society.

December: A mob of thousands of Hindu militants stormed the Babri Mosque on 12/06/92 and demolished it with sledgehammers and their bare hands. Four Hindus were killed and at least 100 were injured by falling debris. Addressing the country, Prime Minister N. Rao spoke of "the grave threat that has been posed to the institutions, principles and ideals on which the constitutional structure of our republic has been built...is a matter of great shame and concern for all Indians" (The New York Times,12/7/92). "This is similar to what happened in Germany in the 30's", said V.P. Singh, former Prime Minister. Singh asserted that "First they created an enemy and then they kept working on them and working on them". He was arrested near Ayodhya while trying to lead a protest march against the Hindus.

Some 1,200 people were killed, according to official figures, in riots between Hindus and Muslims in a few days following the destruction of the mosque.

Just the week before the demolition, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that a Hindu temple should not be constructed on the land occupied in part by the mosque, and that the mosque itself should remain undamaged. Several Hindu leaders and the state government of Uttar Pradesh run by the BJP said they would obey the court's injunction. The leader of the BJP, L.K. Advani, resigned after taking moral responsibility for the attack.

In several cities in Bangladesh, thousands of protesters demonstrated against the destruction of the mosque. One person was killed by police fire, temples were attacked and Hindu businesses ransacked.

Pakistan reacted strongly and called for a countrywide strike today. The Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed deep anguish over the attack and called on all Pakistanis to register their protest by closing all businesses and holding rallies (Times, 12/08/92). Some 40 people including 10 Hindus were killed in Pakistan during the protest. Sharif said Pakistan would seek assurances in the UN for the security of Muslims in India (UPI, 12/12/92). The Pakistani leader was in Dhaka where he met his Bangladeshi counterpart and Sri Lankan President R. Premadasa. The impromptu meeting was arranged after a summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) had to be postponed last week because India's Prime Minister could not attend. Premadasa is reported to have kept out of the controversy, but Bangladeshi leader Khaleda Zia is backing Sharif's plan to raise the issue in international meetings.

The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) accused the Indian government of allowing Hindu extremists to demolish the Babri Mosque and demanded that it punish the culprits. "The entire Islamic World was shocked by the heinous and premeditated crime against an Islamic symbol of value, not to Muslims in India alone, but to Muslims everywhere", said Hamid al-Gabid, Secretary General of the OIC, which represents 50 nations with approximately a billion Muslims (The New York Times, 12/07/92).

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah A. Khomenei warned that Muslims should not tolerate such desecration. "The Muslims in Iran and elsewhere stand behind the Muslims in India and would never allow them to be subjected to such blatant oppression and insult", he said in a message read on Tehran radio (The Ethnic Newswatch, 12/11/92). Other Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Afghanistan sent protest notes to New Delhi.

Japan expressed deep concern over the recent bloodshed in India stemming from animosity between Hindus and Muslims, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a news conference. The Japanese reaction coincided with reports that the number of people killed in 5 days of rioting across India exceeded 1,000 (Japan Economic Newswire, 12/11/91).

Brief Background on the Babri Mosque Issue

Hindus and the Muslims have been confronting each other over the issue of the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid (mosque) for many years. However, due to the government's mediation efforts, the dispute remained peaceful until December 1992.

At the very site selected for construction of the Ram temple stands the Babri mosque, believed by Hindus to have been built after the demolition of a Hindu temple by Babar who came from Central Asia and founded the Muslim Mughal dynasty in India in the early 16th century. Muslims say the claim is spurious and lacks historical evidence. Historians are divided: some point to the stone used in building the mosque -- it has carvings of Hindu deities, suggesting the mosque was built from the remains of a temple. But there is no evidence that the spot is the exact birthplace of Ram, the Hindu god incarnation.

A court threw out a lawsuit brought by a Hindu priest in 1885. In 1949, a statue of Ram was spirited into the mosque. A court ordered the mosque locked, thus preventing peoples of both religions from squabbling over it. In 1986 riots followed a court ruling that allowed Hindus to have access to the site for worship.

1993

July: The Saudi government recently issued instructions banning the employment of Hindus in the Kingdom. The move follows appeals by the Muslim community to prohibit the employment of Hindus in the wake of the destruction of the historical Babri Mosque and the massacre of Muslims in India. Henceforth, only Muslims and Christians from India would be employed. Big construction companies in Saudi Arabia have already started implementing the new instructions, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Nour reported. (07/17/93). An estimated 2 million Hindus are working in the Persian Gulf Arab states.

September: Muslims in India are split over their divorce law. Reformers and women groups oppose traditional Islamic practice. The reformers' attempt to make it more difficult for a husband to divorce his wife suffered a blow early this month when the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board of prominent theologians upheld the old traditions. The practice of instant divorce among Muslims was enshrined in the judicial code by the British Privy Council in 1939. Now it can only be changed by the Supreme Court or the Parliament.

October: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei told visiting Indian leader N. Rao to curb Hindu fanaticism and find a solution to the conflict in Kashmir. The Iranian leader also urged that the government of India rebuild the Babri Mosque (The Ethnic Newswatch, 10/01/93).

November: Muslims and lower caste Hindus set aside their religious differences in Uttar Pradesh to forge a political alliance to fight for their common advancement. They stunned the political establishment by winning the state elections this month, over the Hindu fundamentalist BJP.

1994

June: A circular issued by the Indian Army Headquarters barring defense personnel from offering regular Friday prayers during work has stirred a controversy, according to a report from the Press Trust of India (PTI). The All-India Muslim Forum has condemned the circular. The national convener of the Forum said that such a restriction is perhaps the first of its kind in any country and that it will badly shatter the faith of the Muslim community in the concept of secularism. He said the Friday prayers are one of the most essential Islamic practices and can be offered only in collective form. The Forum has already faxed a copy of the circular to the Prime Minister and parliamentary members (Xinhua News Agency, 06/14/94).

August: On India's independence day (August 15), eight Hindu activists were killed by police in Karnataka as they sought to hoist the Indian national flag on the grounds of a Muslim mosque (UPI, 10/25/94).

October: A dispute between Hindus and Muslims over language has led to riots, arson and the deaths of 17 people in Bangalore, the country's fast-growing capital of high technology in the south. The spark for two days of turmoil in Bangalore, India's version of the Silicon Valley and home to branch offices of many US computer and software companies, was a new 10-minute daily TV broadcast in Urdu, the idiom of the Mughal empire, which today is spoken by over 130 million Muslims in India and Pakistan.

The BJP in the south-central Karnataka state accused the ruling Congress of launching the Urdu newscast to pander Muslim voters before the state election next month. Ten minutes a day might not seem objectionable, since 9% of Karnataka's 45 million people classify themselves as Urdu-speakers, but language has often been a source of divisive, violent politics in India. In fact, it was the reason Karnataka, known then as Mysore, was created in 1956 from the Kannada-speaking areas of five southern states. For years, activists in the state have forced the government to cut back on the use of English, the language of India's old colonial master, Britain. They also remain militantly opposed to the penetration of Hindi, the Indo-European language the Constitution enshrines as India's official lingua franca (Los Angeles Times, 10/09/94).

Update 03/15/96

October 9: The Karnataka government has decided to withdraw the Urdu news bulletin from state television following the violence that has occurred in Banglore (see above) (Xinhua News Agency, 10/09/94).

October 24: India's Supreme Court has refused to advise the central government on a bitter religious dispute between Hindus and Muslims. The government had sought the court's advice on whether a Hindu temple had once existed at Ayodhya. However, the Supreme Court did uphold the government's takeover of the 67-acre site. In another ruling, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, a prominent BJP leader, was sentenced to one day in jail for building a platform at the disputed site in 1991 (Reuters, 10/24/94).

1995

February: The outlawed Vishwa Hindu Parishad has vowed to "liberate" three disputed religious sites including Ayodhya. The other two sites, at Varanasi and Mathura, also contain mosques that radical Hindus have threatened to destroy. The areas are currently under central government control (UPI, 02/25/95).

March: The ruling Congress Party lost state elections in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat while winning in the eastern state of Orissa. In Maharashtra, India's third largest state, a partnership of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena will form the government. The Shiv Sena is reported to have targeted Muslims during the rioting after the Ayodhya mosque demolition; its leader, Bal Thackeray openly admires Adolf Hitler. Analysts indicate that the Congress losses confirm rising disenchantment among its traditional support base, (e.g. the Muslims). Polls reveal that many Muslims are angry at the Congress' limited response to rising Hindu-Muslim tensions (Washington Post, 03/14/95).

March 21: Two people were killed and dozens wounded as violence broke out between Hindus and Muslims in the southern Indian city of Hubli, in Karnataka state. The clash arose as Hindus celebrating the end of the festival of Holi stopped their musical procession in front of a mosque (UPI, 03/21/95).

March 31: The Indian government has indicated that it will take action against Bal Thackeray, the leader of Maharashtra's ruling Shiv Sena. Thackeray has made a series of comments directed against the state's minority Muslim population. He has stated that illegal Bangladeshi Muslims were plotting to assassinate him and thus he ordered his party workers to "wipe out" the immigrant Muslim community. Thackeray does not hold any official position in the Maharashtra government although he publicly flaunts his position as a "remote control chief minister" (UPI, 03/31/95).

April: The screening of a controversial film about the Hindu-Muslim riots in India during December 1992 and January 1993 has been banned for a week in Bombay. The film, titled "Bombay" revolves around a Muslim woman and a Hindu man who fall in love and get married. The leader of the Indian Union Muslim League, G.M. Banatwalla, says that the film is anti-Muslim, as it shows Muslims as aggressive and hostile and the initiators of the riots. The film was withdrawn in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka following Muslim protests (Reuters, 04/07/95).

April 15: Leaders of the Muslim community urged fellow Muslims to boycott the film "Bombay" after a ban on the film's screening was lifted in Bombay. Police have deployed reserve units to prevent any communal violence (Reuters, 04/15/95).

April 15: Clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the southern state of Tamil Nadu have resulted in the deaths of two people. Eight others were injured while more than 60 people were arrested. The clashes were sparked by the bombing of a radical Hindu party's headquarters (UPI, 04/15/95).

June: Members of the All India Muslim Unity Forum met with Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma and urged him to unconditionally release all "innocent people" detained under the country's Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. They also wanted cases against Muslims registered during the Ayodhya riots to be withdrawn (BBC, 06/26/95).

July: The chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a fundamentalist Hindu group with close ties with the BJP, says that Muslims will not be subject to discrimination under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Professor Rajendra Singh also stated that the RSS did not support any special treatment for minorities. The BJP's election planks include the issues of a uniform civil code and polygamy -- matters that are of vital concern to the Muslim community (BBC, 07/19/95).

July 28: Tens of thousands of Muslims protested in New Delhi against the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia. They also burned an effigy of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Diplomats indicate that Delhi's long-time ties with Moscow, a traditional ally of the Serbs, could have prevented it from taking a high-profile position in Bosnia (Reuters, 07/28/95).

July 28: Over 2000 demonstrators gathered in Bombay to protest the Maharashtra state government's proposal to ban the slaughter of bulls and buffaloes. All but two of India's states already have laws protecting cows which are sacred to the country's Hindu majority. The prohibition would severely affect Christians, Muslims, and some segments of the Dalits (untouchables) who consume beef (UPI, 07/28/95).

August: Four Hindu women have won their Supreme Court case against their husbands who converted to Islam and then remarried. The court ruled that the husbands had converted "only for the purpose of escaping the consequences of bigamy". It also directed the federal government to establish a uniform civil code by August 1996. Currently, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and tribal groups are allowed to have their own laws to govern religion, marriage, and family life. Previous Indian leaders have backed down from establishing a uniform code in the face of protests from minority communities (Asiaweek, 08/18/95).

August 29: The city of Bombay has held back the release of Salman Rushdie's new novel, The Last Moor's Sigh, fearing that it could spark violence. A character in the book appears to be a thinly veiled parody of Bombay's right-wing Shiv Sena leader, Bal Thackeray. However, the book has been released in every other major Indian city (UPI, 08/29/95).

December: On December 6, the third anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque, thousands of armed troops

patrolled the city of Ayodhya. More than 400 Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists were rounded up as they headed to the ruins of the mosque to offer prayers. The government also imposed a ban on the assembly of more than five people in Ayodhya in order to avert a renewal of Hindu-Muslim violence. Over 1200 people were killed during riots in India after Hindus destroyed the mosque in 1992 (UPI, 12/06/95).

In the southern city of Madurai, Muslim mobs set fire to a bus and threw stones at several shops owned by Hindus. Many opposition members of Parliament also staged a walkout to protest what they believe is the government's inability to resolve the Ayodhya dispute (UPI, 12/06/95).

December 7: More than 17 people were injured during clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh state (UPI, 12/07/95).

Risk Assessment

Despite a constitution that guarantees equality for all citizens, discrimination is widespread against Muslims, partly because the government has traditionally been dominated by upper caste Hindus. Muslims constitute around 14% of the country's population, yet they occupy only about 3% of government and public sector jobs (Moneyclips, 04/09/94). Further, in 1994, Muslims were reported as receiving only 2% of industrial licenses and 3.7% of available financial assistance (Washington Post, 03/12/94).

The difficulties Muslims face in improving their economic and social status have been exacerbated by the rise of Hindu fundamentalism during the past decade. According to Ashish Nandy of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, support for the right-wing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is, like Hindu nationalism itself, a phenomenon found chiefly within the urban middle class, not among rural masses, who make up more than 70% of India's voters. Nandy says Hindu nationalists fear not only Muslims but all minorities in their midst, and consequently feel they must achieve a control similar to that once exercised by India's colonial master, the British, in order to feel secure in their own country. He states that "They [Hindu nationalists] are a part of the majority that has developed a minority complex. They think like a minority, and they behave like minority" (The Toronto Star, 11/06/90).

The rise of Hindu fundamentalism is also viewed by some analysts as a reaction to the growth in Muslim fundamentalism. The growing wealth of Muslim nations in the Middle East and the spread of the Islamic faith have combined with the perceived pandering of Indian politicians to Muslim voters, and even the Sikh independence movement in Punjab, to add fuel to Hindu nationalist fires.

Until recently, the Muslims were not politically organized. They were a traditional vote-bank of the Congress (I) party. Of the 528 members of the Lok Sabha, the more powerful house of India's bicameral parliament, 23 members - or 4.4% - are Muslims.

However, after the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, Muslims seemed to realign themselves in a new political equation with lower caste Hindus, who form the majority of Indian population. Growing Muslim disenchantment has already contributed to losses by the Congress Party in states such as Maharashtra and Gujarat. The inability of the federal government to follow a decisive policy on the Ayodhya issue has not only contributed to Muslim discontent but it has also ensured that the issue remains as a constant source of Hindu-Muslim tensions. The right-wing Hindu nationalist movement was partly discredited following the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque but Hindu parties have begun to reassert themselves through electoral victories at the state level. The future of Hindu-Muslims relations is dependent on a number of factors including the ability of centrist parties such as the Congress to reassert themselves and the mobilization potential of coalitions between Muslims, other minority groups, and low caste Hindus.

References

1. Girdner, Eddie J., "India: Burning Fundamentalism and the Politics of Caste", Asian Profile, June 1992.

2. Gold, Daniel, "Organized Hinduisms: From Vedic Truth to Hindu Nation", Asian Profile, June 1992.

3. Keesings Record of World Events, 1990-94.

4. Malik, I.H., "Beyond Ayodhya: Implications for Regional Security in South Asia," Asian Affairs, Vol.XXIV, Oct' 93.

5. Mumtaz Ahmed, "Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat", in Marty, M.E. & R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).

6. Nexis Library Information, 1990-95.

7. Puri, Balraj, "Indian Muslims since Partition", Economic and Political Weekly, October 02, 1993.

8. World Directory of Minorities

-Minorities at Risk
Chronology
History
Archeology
Where RAM Born
Myth of Ayodhya
Who abides Law
Babar Ram
VHP Claims
RSS & congress
The Game
After Destruction

HINDU ,Dalit, Muslims, INDIA ,
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Indian fascism :Intro,Myths, Organizations, Cultural Fascism,Babri Masjid, Bombay Riots , Role of Govt.

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[quote]
Originally posted by kabir:
** so bombay bomb blast were prefectly justified

**
[/quote]

even bombay riots were started by muslims. read ur favourite sri krishna commission report. violence was started by muslims. same in gujrat. muslims started violence. they suffered disproportionately. but that does not deny the fact that they started it.

[AAmir43]

EVERY MINORITY IN PAKISTAN WAS KILLED BY PROVOCATION BY THE MINORITY & EVERY MUSLIM IN INDIA WAS KILLED BY THE PROVOCATION BY MUSLIMS …

Andhra agreed …good …

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif

IF GHODRA BURNING WAS THE ALLEGED PROVOCATION OF BEAST HINDUTVA HINDIAN VHP & BAJRANGI …THIS IS WAS A VERY MUTED ,RESTRAINT & CONTROLLED OUT BURST OF GRIEVED MUSLIM MINORITY.

IT NOW APPEARS MANY INCIDENTS SPREAD OVER ROUTE OF NON PILGRIMAGE JOURNEY TO ILLEGAL DEEMED SITE HAVE BEEN REPORTED THAN LET KNOWN BY HINDIANS.

]
Social Science to Social Forensic

TWO days before kar sevaks were attacked in the Sabarmati Express near Godhra, Jan Morcha, a little known daily from Uttar Pradesh, reported how Muslims were harassed by Bajrang Dal activists on the same train but heading in the opposite direction towards Faizabad.

This incident allegedly took place on February 24 and duly appeared in Jan Morcha on the following day. According to this report, Muslims in this train were beaten with iron rods, many Muslim women had the veils of their burqas ripped off, and even children were not spared.

Apparently, the harassment and intimidation of Muslims were at their height between Dariawad and Ridauli stations, that is, as the train was entering the environs of Ayodhya. Narendra Modi’s statement explaining away the carnage in Gujarat following the Godhra incident in terms of action and reaction gets a credible ring as the earlier incident around Faizabad was largely ignored in the national press. This is not to argue that two wrongs, or three (as in this case), make a right, but that neither Newton’s law, nor social science can really explain a riot.

By talking about action and reaction Mr Modi adroitly dodged the issue of political responsibility. But recourse to schoolboy science, including social science, more often than not, misses the main points of a riot completely. The killings of Sikhs in 1984 and the Bombay carnage of 1993 have proved, if proof indeed was necessary, that riots do not happen because social sentiments overflow normal bounds and move otherwise reasonable people to indulge in murder and mayhem. Instead of a social science analysis we rather need an autopsy of a riot. If such an autopsy were to be conducted it would become abundantly clear that riots are created by interested organisations that have the tacit, or active, support of the government in power.

A social science analysis of a riot can go off on a tangent. It might suggest that there are certain classes that are situationally more predisposed towards violence. It might also make the claim that there is an inherent and irreconcilable animosity between cow worshippers and beef eaters. To be anti-Muslim or anti-Sikh, or anti-Hindu is one thing, but to actually seek the hated other with blunt and sharp objects or with petrol bombs is quite another.

There is a qualitative difference between the two. Riots do not occur because of structural imperatives, or social compulsions. Nor do they happen because mass sentiments just cannot take humiliations any more. Riots need, as a necessary condition, organisations that plot mass killings with governmental support. The job of social forensic is to uncover such conspiracies and to expose the accused. Only a determined and dogged social forensic investigation can tell us about the most interesting and pertinent facts of a riot. The analysis of class structure, or occupational profile, or even historical memory, can hardly enlighten us as to who were the actual perpetrators of a riot. We have no option but to rely on social forensics if we want to know who paid money to whom for doing what, and which government officials and representatives protected the rioters, who actually pulled back the police, and who delayed calling in the army? Instance after instance can be cited in this regard to demonstrate the relevance of social forensics. Apart from the Sikh killings and the Bombay blasts one can think of the Bhiwandi riots, the Meerut massacres, the killings of Christians, the Ayodhya bloodlettings, and the list can go on.

Why should the recent Gujarat carnage be any different?

When Shiv Sainiks went to make the Bhiwandi riots everybody knew what was going to happen. They boarded trucks in Mumbai, armed with rods and cycle chains, openly announcing their intentions. They all looked like a happy bunch out for a Sunday picnic.

They knew very well, each and every one of them, that the government of the day was solidly behind them. This is the all-important fact behind a riot and it is only social forensics that can help us to grasp it. To bring in concepts of social science at a time like this can act as a smokescreen and provide an escape route for those who are guilty. We might even be tempted to believe that the fault is not that of the rioters and the conspirators, but of society itself.

There are then three theses of social forensics. The first, and the most obvious, one is that riots do not just happen, they are created. There are organisations that have a definite interest in fomenting riots but they need the active support of the government. Without this support a riot would never graduate beyond a skirmish. The second thesis of social forensics is that sectarians on one side desperately need sectarians on the other side.

A sectarian can do without a friend but is helpless and inarticulate without a good enemy. Bal Thackeray began his political career by targeting South Indians in Mumbai. Unfortunately, South Indians in this metropolis did not oblige the Sainiks by being good enemies. They learnt Marathi, identified with local festivals, and had no hesitation in putting up Shivaji’s portrait and lacing it with incense fumes. This is what pressured the Shiv Sena to cast the communists and Muslims as prime targets. The communists lived up to their billing for roughly two and a half decades. But with trade unions in a shambles and Russia a distant memory they lost their good enemy status. Only the Muslims were left, and after 1984 the Shiv Sena has concentrated almost exclusively on them.

The third thesis of social forensics is that there is a great difference between those who die for a cause and those who kill for a cause. Social sciences are useful to understand factors that lead people to sacrifice their lives for a larger common good.

This is why we have some excellent sociological treatises on mobilisations spurred by the ideals of nationalism, communism and cultural identity. But when people are ready to kill for a cause, as in a riot, it is plain skullduggery at the highest quarters which is responsible. The interests in this case are very narrow, as any autopsy of a riot will show. When a riot happens it is because the killers know that no harm is going to come to them. If they had the slightest fear that they might not come home, that they might be in jail, even killed, they would never have ventured out. This is why only social forensics is relevant for conducting the autopsy of a riot.

LEADER ARTICLE
Autopsy of a Riot
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DIPANKAR GUPTA
]
THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2002 1:21:00 AM ]
]
Social Science to Social Forensic

TWO days before kar sevaks were attacked in the Sabarmati Express near Godhra, Jan Morcha, a little known daily from Uttar Pradesh, reported how Muslims were harassed by Bajrang Dal activists on the same train but heading in the opposite direction towards Faizabad.

This incident allegedly took place on February 24 and duly appeared in Jan Morcha on the following day. According to this report, Muslims in this train were beaten with iron rods, many Muslim women had the veils of their burqas ripped off, and even children were not spared.

Apparently, the harassment and intimidation of Muslims were at their height between Dariawad and Ridauli stations, that is, as the train was entering the environs of Ayodhya. Narendra Modi’s statement explaining away the carnage in Gujarat following the Godhra incident in terms of action and reaction gets a credible ring as the earlier incident around Faizabad was largely ignored in the national press. This is not to argue that two wrongs, or three (as in this case), make a right, but that neither Newton’s law, nor social science can really explain a riot.

By talking about action and reaction Mr Modi adroitly dodged the issue of political responsibility. But recourse to schoolboy science, including social science, more often than not, misses the main points of a riot completely. The killings of Sikhs in 1984 and the Bombay carnage of 1993 have proved, if proof indeed was necessary, that riots do not happen because social sentiments overflow normal bounds and move otherwise reasonable people to indulge in murder and mayhem. Instead of a social science analysis we rather need an autopsy of a riot. If such an autopsy were to be conducted it would become abundantly clear that riots are created by interested organisations that have the tacit, or active, support of the government in power.

A social science analysis of a riot can go off on a tangent. It might suggest that there are certain classes that are situationally more predisposed towards violence. It might also make the claim that there is an inherent and irreconcilable animosity between cow worshippers and beef eaters. To be anti-Muslim or anti-Sikh, or anti-Hindu is one thing, but to actually seek the hated other with blunt and sharp objects or with petrol bombs is quite another.

There is a qualitative difference between the two. Riots do not occur because of structural imperatives, or social compulsions. Nor do they happen because mass sentiments just cannot take humiliations any more. Riots need, as a necessary condition, organisations that plot mass killings with governmental support. The job of social forensic is to uncover such conspiracies and to expose the accused. Only a determined and dogged social forensic investigation can tell us about the most interesting and pertinent facts of a riot. The analysis of class structure, or occupational profile, or even historical memory, can hardly enlighten us as to who were the actual perpetrators of a riot. We have no option but to rely on social forensics if we want to know who paid money to whom for doing what, and which government officials and representatives protected the rioters, who actually pulled back the police, and who delayed calling in the army? Instance after instance can be cited in this regard to demonstrate the relevance of social forensics. Apart from the Sikh killings and the Bombay blasts one can think of the Bhiwandi riots, the Meerut massacres, the killings of Christians, the Ayodhya bloodlettings, and the list can go on.

Why should the recent Gujarat carnage be any different?

When Shiv Sainiks went to make the Bhiwandi riots everybody knew what was going to happen. They boarded trucks in Mumbai, armed with rods and cycle chains, openly announcing their intentions. They all looked like a happy bunch out for a Sunday picnic.

They knew very well, each and every one of them, that the government of the day was solidly behind them. This is the all-important fact behind a riot and it is only social forensics that can help us to grasp it. To bring in concepts of social science at a time like this can act as a smokescreen and provide an escape route for those who are guilty. We might even be tempted to believe that the fault is not that of the rioters and the conspirators, but of society itself.

There are then three theses of social forensics. The first, and the most obvious, one is that riots do not just happen, they are created. There are organisations that have a definite interest in fomenting riots but they need the active support of the government. Without this support a riot would never graduate beyond a skirmish. The second thesis of social forensics is that sectarians on one side desperately need sectarians on the other side.

A sectarian can do without a friend but is helpless and inarticulate without a good enemy. Bal Thackeray began his political career by targeting South Indians in Mumbai. Unfortunately, South Indians in this metropolis did not oblige the Sainiks by being good enemies. They learnt Marathi, identified with local festivals, and had no hesitation in putting up Shivaji’s portrait and lacing it with incense fumes. This is what pressured the Shiv Sena to cast the communists and Muslims as prime targets. The communists lived up to their billing for roughly two and a half decades. But with trade unions in a shambles and Russia a distant memory they lost their good enemy status. Only the Muslims were left, and after 1984 the Shiv Sena has concentrated almost exclusively on them.

The third thesis of social forensics is that there is a great difference between those who die for a cause and those who kill for a cause. Social sciences are useful to understand factors that lead people to sacrifice their lives for a larger common good.

This is why we have some excellent sociological treatises on mobilisations spurred by the ideals of nationalism, communism and cultural identity. But when people are ready to kill for a cause, as in a riot, it is plain skullduggery at the highest quarters which is responsible. The interests in this case are very narrow, as any autopsy of a riot will show. When a riot happens it is because the killers know that no harm is going to come to them. If they had the slightest fear that they might not come home, that they might be in jail, even killed, they would never have ventured out. This is why only social forensics is relevant for conducting the autopsy of a riot.

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Chin-o-arab hamaara
hindostaan hamaara
muslim hai hum, vatan hai saara jahaan hamaara

[ZZ]

while it is possible that kar-sevaks on route to ayodhya might have gone for provocative slogans or ghoonda-gardi or not paying shopkeepers, (even the students going for student union meeting behave that way on route and sometimes get beaten but not killed), they clearly did not rape or murder or do something which would justify burning the train bogees along with women and children.

[ZZ]

having said this, gujrat govt. should not have taken more than two days to put in army and put all towns under curphew though riots did not take place in its usual centres this time. few rioters killed by army would have stopped riots.

[Andhra]

It is definitely a communal problem.
If it happened between Hindus-Sikhs, Hindus-Chrsitians things wouldn't be so bad.
It is ineviatable given India's history that HIndu-Muslim problems easily spin out of control.
However the problem has to be attacked at the grass roots level.
Like it seems Hindus and Muslims are just fine in Lucknow. They learned to live with each other.

Still Gujrat govt's inaction is criminal, depsite the fact that provocation came from Muslims.
And THAT is another incident that spiralled out of control I believe.
Still, let's remmember there are no Christain Martyrs who got crossed in this whole affair.
Both communities are to blame.

[kabir]

[quote]
Originally posted by ZZ:
**
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by kabir:
** so bombay bomb blast were prefectly justified

**
[/quote]

even bombay riots were started by muslims. read ur favourite sri krishna commission report. violence was started by muslims. same in gujrat. muslims started violence. they suffered disproportionately. but that does not deny the fact that they started it. **
[/QUOTE]

you mean to say that if tommorow hindus start a riot we muslim must turn india into a killing field

[AAmir43]

SECURITY ,is the gurantee of every govt.worthy of its name & RESPONSIBILITY OF EVERY HUMAN worthy to be called one IS NEVER conditional.

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/disgust.gif

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YOU SHOULD SEE THE BELLIGERENT ,ABUSIVE & FOUL INMATES OF A PRISON ,yet any retaliation by viloence ,is criminal on the part of the Wardens,

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/disgust.gif

Same is true in Hospital where no matter how obnoxious abusive & combative a patient is no amount of provocation justifies denial of his basic hunman rights .There is no clause in bill of rights or human rights where any behaviour EXCLUDES those rights from the offender.

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/disgust.gif

Bad behaviour provocations & combative nature is Law & Order areas to be handed over to Law & order authorities.In this case the AUTHORITIES were BJP govt,. What EXCUSE do VHP ,Bajrangi can they have when EVEN, ther state machinery was THERES!!!

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/confused.gif

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Chin-o-arab hamaara
hindostaan hamaara
muslim hai hum, vatan hai saara jahaan hamaara

[FYI]

Sign the petition against Gujrat Govt. for irresponsible administration & face trial of omission & negligence of duty …after all 700+ lives are worth what single life is worth in case of Mal practice law suite ???
http://www.petitiononline.com/nhrc/petition.html
http://www.petitiononline.com/nhrc/petition.html

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Main Akela he chalaa thaa janib-e-manzil magar
Log saath aatey rahey aur Carvaan Badhta gaya