Book review: 'Riots And After In Mumbai'

Riots And After In Mumbai: Chronicles Of Truth &
Reconciliation
Author: Meena Menon
Publisher: Sage Publications
Pages: 254 pages
Price: Rs595

Nearly two decades after the savagery on display during the December 1992 and January 1993 communal riots that gripped Bombay, here is a gritty and compassionate rendering of the lives of those charred by its fires. It is both a fascinating foray into the past — looking up reams of archival material to trace the antecedents of communal riots in the city — as well as a meticulous tracking down of hundreds of victims in far-flung suburbs like Mulund and Mira Road.

This book will remain significant for a number of reasons: Firstly, the author expresses the importance of not letting events hang loose as fragments of history — they have to be recovered and represented in a way that helps people make important linkages with the past. Secondly, there is, fascinating in itself, amazing archival material pieced together to trace the history of communal strife in the city. Thirdly, the author looks at the status of cases registered during the riots, as well as the status of the Shrikrishna Commission Report, fourteen years after its completion.

Meena Menon starts by sifting through volumes of archival history to look for causes for the first recorded instance of a communal riot in the city in 1893, precisely a century before the December 1992-January 1993 unrest that killed thousands, injured hundreds and left scores missing. Just as the Ramjanmabhoomi movement led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, forming the backdrop to the 1992-93 carnage, it was the Gaorakshak Mandali-led cow protection movement in the then state of Bombay that was the cause of the antagonism that led to the riots on August 11, 1893. The role of nationalist leaders and parties is interesting to note: Bal Gangadhar Tilak did his bit to stoke the fire by launching a public celebration of the Ganpati festival the next year, in 1894. The next riot to hit the city in 1929 shows the role of the Red Flag Union.

The author has painstakingly tracked down victims — like the Bane family, survivors of the Gandhi Chawl (or the Radhabai Chawl) incident of January 8, 1993. There are startling accounts of those forced into ghettoisation — Hindus from the mixed slums of Jogeshwari resettled with the help of a Sena corporator in a State Housing Board colony in the eastern suburbs of Mulund, and Muslim victims from various mixed localities of Bombay were forced to move out of the city to Mira Road, leading to the growth of
Naya Nagar.

The pattern has remained the same, whether Bhagalpur and Bhiwandi, both in 1984, or Bombay. The players have changed of course. In place of British rulers who could be charged for their divide-and-rule policy, there is a very partisan administration in
place today.

While Commission after Commission has talked about a communalised police force and the need for police reforms, what can one conclude from the non-implementation of any of the Justice R Prasad (Bhagalpur 1984), Justice Madon (Bhiwandi 1984) or the most comprehensive one so far, the Justice Srikrishna Report into the Bombay riots? Or from the non-prosecution of those accused of punishable crimes during the riots?

The statistic is telling — while those accused in bomb blasts get tried under the most stringent laws and punished by the system, not a single perpetrator of riots has had to face trial behind bars or has been punished.

While the author has been unsparing in telling the truth in a no-holds-barred style, the aspect of reconciliation remains a mirage. What has won the day, as attempts to prosecute Bal Thackeray and others accused in the riot show, is mob justice and impunity for its perpetrators.

Susan Abraham is a lawyer and democratic
rights activist