Julio Riberio Column: Addressing Muslim alienation

Last week, Governor Tathagata Roy of Tripura suddenly decided to do what Governors are not supposed to do. He vented his spleen on the mourners who attended 1993 Mumbai blasts accused Yakub Memon’s funeral rites in Mumbai, after he was hanged on July 30. “Many are potential terrorists”, he said and advised the Mumbai police to make a note of the participants, like a totalitarian State would have done!
 
Governor Tathagata Roy should have known that thousands of villagers were wont to attend the ‘bhog’ ceremonies of notorious terrorists killed while battling the Punjab police in the 80's. The great majority of the mourners were not proponents of Khalistan, but admired the ‘boys’ who laid down their lives for a principle far removed from their personal comfort and well-being. “They fought for the ‘quom’, not for themselves” was the justification!
 
I was in Romania in 1992-93 when the Babri Masjid was pulled down and the riots ensued. On return to the city of my birth, I found that local Muslims were acutely alienated from the mainstream and the police were finding it difficult to man a metropolis where 15% of the citizens refused to trust them. What is worse is that I could discern a latent appreciation among the Muslims for the ‘reply’ that Dawood Ibrahim, the gangster, had delivered in the form of the bomb blasts that took so many innocent lives.
 
I noticed the same form of latent appreciation 10 years later, when I visited Ahmedabad in the wake of the Gujarat riots of 2002. My Hindu middle-class friends, who I met over dinner at a doctor's home, were convinced that the Godhra train killings were carried out by petty criminals belonging to the Ghanchi community that populate the Signal Phata slums along the railway lines, and that the incident was well avenged by the rampaging Hindu mobs.
 
Warped thought processes are legitimised in this way. The murder of a Prime Minister by her Sikh bodyguards causes a retaliation against thousands of innocent Sikhs, not only in Delhi but across the country. The murder of a Swami by unknown killers causes a retaliation against hundreds of Christians in the region of Kandhamal. 
 
The real culprit for this is the judicial process system that just does not function. It takes years to bring offenders to book and if anyone does get convicted and is sent to jail, he or she, if influential or rich, soon manages to emerge on bail or on parole or for some medical treatment that may not even be required. There is no fear of punishment and hence no respect for the law. The middle-classes, who feel threatened by all this violence, are happy when a lone convict is executed or the police usurp the role of prosecutors and judges to dispense instant justice by eliminating the offenders through ‘encounter specialists’.
 
In the Mumbai Muslim’s subconscious, Yakub Memon did not participate in the wanton killing of 287 innocent lives to take revenge for a wrong done to him personally or to his family. He did it for his community which felt wronged by the fact that the police failed in its duty to protect them to the best of their capabilities. And hence, their sympathy for the executed man.
 
There is an added grouse that the Mumbai Muslim nurses. Those who instigated the killings of their compatriots in the 1992-93 riots got off without batting an eyelid. Unfortunately, there was no Teesta Setalvad to hound the culprits. On the other hand, the investigations into the bomb blasts were vigorously pursued. 
 
A further grouse arises when there is a lack of consistency in deciding mercy pleas. Dara Singh, the man who burnt alive the Australian missionary and his two sons while they were asleep in a caravan, was spared the noose on the ground that the missionary’s widow was of the view that no one had the right to take away a human life.
 
Priyanka Gandhi, influenced by Buddhism, had a one-to-one talk with Nalini, the woman who was part of the conspiracy to murder her father. Nalini was saved from the gallows because of the intervention of the Gandhis. Bhullar, the terrorist leader involved in the conspiracy to murder Chief Minister Beant Singh of Punjab has been similarly favoured because of the Akali pressure. Are we surprised then that a communal flavour is sought to be given to Yakub’s hanging?
 
As for me, I know that Yakub was guilty of conspiring to kill and was duly sentenced as per the law of the land as it exists at present. If the sentence had been promptly executed, all this fuss would not have arisen. But 21 years is a very long time to keep a man on tenterhooks, even if he is a murderer. 
 
Personally, I am in favour of abolishing the death penalty altogether. It is morally indefensible for the State to take a life. Also, empirical evidence shows that the prospect of death has not acted as a deterrent. This extreme punishment represents retributive justice, a concept in penology that civilised societies have long since abandoned.
 
But our middle-classes who form public opinion in the country, are not ready for this change. They will agree only after the judicial process system is put back on the rails. As things stand today, I am afraid we are in for a long haul. In the meantime, Herculean efforts have to be made by civil society groups like the Mohalla Committees, to address the galloping pace of alienation in the Muslim community.