DNA Edit: Rioting the wrongs

And in another dreadful redux of the same old story, communal riots have erupted in the North-western town of Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh. The immediate provocation seems to be stone-pelting at a ‘Tiranga Yatra’ motorcycle rally held last Friday. In this rally, organised by members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a 22-year-old Chandan Gupta lost his life.

Subsequently, people who were a part of Chandan Gupta’s cremation allegedly went on a rampage and vandalised public property. This new breakout of violence, once again, begs the question of why is it that the police time and again prove to be so incompetent in controlling these outbreaks of violence. Before one jumps to a hasty conclusion, one must also account for the fact that the police is often fettered, especially because of the express direction of the political executive to look the other way. A brief gander at the history of communal or political riots in India highlights the humiliating and complicit role of police during times of social upheaval.

Take, for instance, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, when the political establishment had hijacked the police machinery. Despite hundreds of Delhi police personnel stationed in the capital, not to mention the presence of a sizable force of Central Reserve Police Force, armies of Congress-backed hooligans raised hell in the streets of Delhi and perpetrated a horrifying pogrom. Justice still eludes the victims of the massacre and those accused of orchestrating the pogrom still roam freely. As the violence in Kasganj escalates, expect senior leaders of Congress to make all the right noises. The same old tired refrains will be repackaged and deployed for immediate consumption on overheated TV debates: The BJP is instigating communal violence for political gains; Fringe elements that are ideologically coterminous with the BJP are responsible for the ruckus in Uttar Pradesh; The BJP is tearing apart the fabric of our secular society.

What the Congress leaders conveniently fail to account for is their party’s own legacy of electorally-motivated communal pandering, which includes but is not limited to, sidelining the interests, the voice and the security of the majority. Also, how can one forget the despicable leadership exemplified by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee during the Malda and Basirhat riots of 2016, when mobs ruled the roost? Even as the mobs blockaded roads, set a local police station as well as a BSF vehicle on fire and destroyed public property, the TMC government acted as if it was business-as-usual just so that it could make inroads in a Congress-stronghold.

In the coming days, when the same old motley group of opinion masters and intellectuals come out hammer and tongs against the BJP, criticising it of mining communal discontent for electoral prospects, would they remember the times when they had nothing to say- conspicuously so- during the violence in Bengal? It is obvious that states and the police machinery have been derelict in executing their duties with unreserved commitment.