(Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development, is the author of 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)"There is no communal violence problem in India," said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, admonishing Congress Party MPs in the Lok Sabha for demanding a debate on the subject. "Please don't raise unnecessary issues."
"You can't speak about communal violence in general,"added Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, rejecting a Congress Party adjournment motion on the same issue. "You must have specific instances to discuss."
No problem, Mr Naidu? Specific instances, Madam Speaker? Well, here are a few tragic episodes of communal violence that have occurred in the last eleven weeks since the BJP government has come to power:
- There have been over 600 incidences of violence against religious minorities all over Uttar Pradesh, especially in Western UP, since the new government came to power, 60% of them in areas near constituencies where bye-elections were occurring. Police records of communal incidents during this period scrutinized by The Indian Express show some 120 of them were triggered by the use of loudspeakers at places of worship - the largest contributor to tensions, alongside construction activities involving masjids, madrasas and kabristans.
- A Muslim techie, Mohsin Sayed Shaikh, aged just 24, was killed in Pune while returning home from a mosque in June 2014 by activists looking for any Muslim to assault, and only because, with a beard and a skull cap, he was obviously and identifiably Muslim.
- The death of a man in an accident triggered communal riots in Tauru, a town 32 km from Gurgaon, leaving at least 15 people injured.
- Tensions in the North-East have escalated since BJP MPs from Assam started spouting communal rhetoric targeting "Bangladeshi immigrants" and intimidating all Bengali Muslims, whether Bangladeshi or not. They were warned that if they did not leave the state within a fortnight, the activists of the BJP's youth wing would embark on a door-to-door search for Bangladeshis.
- Armed attacks in the Bodoland Territorial Area have killed over 40 people, almost all of whom were Bengali Muslims.
- Communal riots between Muslims and Sikhs over a land dispute in Saharanpur left 19 people injured, killed three and led to the deployment of additional security forces. Police have arrested 38 people for rioting and arson. The district administration has imposed curfew and shoot-at-sight orders in the area.
- In Moradabad, BJP called for a 'Hindu Mahapanchayat' following a communal clash over the removal of a loudspeaker from a temple in Kanth. Clashes between party leaders and local police, and the BJP leadership betraying a deal that had been brokered to defuse the situation, led to communal tensions over the issue simmering for days.
- There has been communal rioting in Bhuj and Idar in North Gujarat.
- Most recently, there has been the alleged abduction, gang-rape and forced religious conversion of a 20-year-old woman in the Kharkhauda area of Meerut district. The woman, a BA student, told police that she was forcibly converted to Islam in a madrasa in Hapur, and was held captive in another madrasa in Muzaffarnagar for three days, where she was sexually assaulted.
According to National Crime Records Bureau data concerning incidents of rioting, the years under Dr. Manmohan Singh's rule were the most peaceful in Independent India's history. That record appears in danger of being rapidly overturned.
The context against which such violence is occurring is a noticeable change in the communal climate across the country. A Shiv Sena worker shoves a chappati down the throat of a fasting Muslim caterer. A BJP leader casts doubt on the national credentials of India's leading woman tennis player, because she is Muslim and married to a Pakistani. The Bharatiya Shiksha Niti Ayoghas been constituted by the RSS-affiliated ShikshaSanskrit Uthan Nyas, under the leadership of the notorious Dinanath Batra, with a mandate to "suggest corrective steps" to "Indianise" the education system. In Gujarat under Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, an intense wave of 'saffronization' has already begun. And the Gujarat government has reinstated a police officer, GL Singhal, who was accused of being complicit in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. Tensions are on the rise in Gujarat.
Intangible factors have also contributed to the sense of communal polarization across our country. The election campaign afforded the first egregious instances of such rhetorical transgressions. Bihar BJP MP Giriraj Singhdeclared that "those who want to stop" BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi would soon have "no place in India... because their place will be in Pakistan". Amit Shah, the current President of the BJP,reportedly claimed in a speech that the election was a chance to seek "revenge" for the "insult" inflicted on the Hindu community during the riots in Muzaffarnagar in September last, in which nearly 60 were killed, hundreds raped and thousands displaced. (Most of the victims were Muslim.) Shah also condoned the violence: "Nobody wants riots. But when there is one-sided action, people are forced to come out on the streets."
Electoral victory has emboldened Hindutwadi voices across the country. Goa State Cooperation Minister Deepak Dhavalikar told his state assembly that "If we all support it and we stand by Narendra Modi systematically, then I feel a Hindu Rashtra will be established."
Goa Deputy Chief Minister Francis D'Souza, supporting his party colleague, said "India is already a Hindu nation" and "all Indians in Hindustan are Hindus." He added that he considers himself a "Christian Hindu". More recently, BJP MLA and party National Executive Member CT Ravi issued a tweet advocating the "Gujarat Model" to stem the Saharanpur riots. He said "Only the Gujarat model, that worked from 2002 in containing their [i.e. Muslims'] rioting elements, can work. Apply across Bharat."
It is easy to discount such verbal violence - and there have been worse from the likes of Pravin Togadia and Ashok Singhal, whom the BJP prefers to dismiss as fringe figures -- but the words in fact reflect a harsher reality. For the first time in the history of India, the ruling party has no Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha.
Indeed, the state that has historically sent Muslims to Parliament after every single General Election, Uttar Pradesh, failed to do so this year, when the BJP and its Apna Dal ally swept 75 seats out of 80 there. There is no starker evidence of polarization imaginable.
Prime Minister Modi has been either ambivalent or utterly silent on all these incidents, including the Muzaffarpur riots, and has not expressed disapproval of any communal actions taken by groups within the Sangh Parivar. As I have pointed out earlier on ndtv.com, he has missed several opportunities to reach out and reassure the Muslim community. He has not even made the simple gesture of attending an Iftar during Ramadan, let alone hosting one as his predecessors did.
Indeed, the Prime Minister's statements on the communal issue have not been reassuring. Before the election, he had notoriously compared Muslim victims of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom to a puppy, when he told an interviewer in July 2013): "If we are driving a car or someone else is driving a car and we're sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not?" But even after becoming Prime Minister, Mr Modi's language has betrayed a Hindu nationalist mindset: "1,200 saal ki ghulami ki mansikta Hindustaniyon ko pareshan karti rahi hai", he said as recently as June 11. (Colonial slavery of 1,200 years has weakened/troubled Indians). The reference is not to British colonialism, which only lasted less than 200 years. It is to the advent of Muslim rule 1,200 years ago. If "Muslims" are a foreign element that enslaved "Indians", isn't it time the tables were turned on them?
A Hindutva leader can indulge in such divisive thinking; an Indian prime Minister cannot. As I wrote in this column earlier, "The fact that so many seemingly localised but nonetheless disturbing incidents have occurred without a single word from Mr. Modi leaves the impression that he condones what is being said and done by these fringe elements of the Sangh Parivar... It is time for Mr. Modi to live up to his professed intention to be a prime minister for all Indians."
This is why we want a debate, Madam Speaker. We want the Prime Minister to be conscious of what is happening in the country he leads. We want him to rise to his responsibilities.
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