Ayodhya aftermath: Divisive trends
Down to Earth, 28 February 1993
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Divisive trends
The scale of violence in the country that followed the demolition at Ayodhya makes it hard to imagine that any volatile area would escape communal frenzy. Numerous economic, political and social factors are leading to a decline in social cohesion.
The examples of community cooperation from Bhagalpur, Bhiwandi and Okhla do not in any way mitigate the barbaric savagery that has rent the fabric of so many Indian cities in the past two months. The ferocity of the rioting has been sickening and frightening. Bombay alone counted more than 800 dead; Surat, 320, and Ahmedabad, more than 200. The number killed in nine major cities is officially estimated at about 2,300. Even in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala, where Hindu-Muslim violence is termed a Hindi-belt aberration, incidents of mindless madness occurred and took a toll.
It is against this scale of violence that the success of maintaining amity in a particular neighbourhood must be measured. The reasons for their success are important if one is to understand the ongoing contest between sanity and insanity and bring it to an end in the country.
There are many factors that induce communal attitudes in the individual, the locality, a political party, the administration and even the nation. It is important, therefore, to examine every aspect of a neighbourhood situation to understand how local tensions can exist and grow within a wider context of regional- and national-level disputes.
The cities that have witnessed the fury of communal frenzy are also those in which incidents of urban violence are a frequent occurrence. Often these disputes centre on possession of land, a scarce and precious commodity in a city. On January 25 in Kanpur, for example, two men were burnt alive when a mob attacked and burnt the Kanhaiya Lal Ka Hata tenement in the Bakr Mandi locality. A resident who escaped disclosed later that the motive for the attack was the desire of the owners to get the tenement vacated so they could then sell it. And, it is common knowledge that the worst communal violence in Calcutta broke out in the Dhobiatala Muslim camp, a proerty coveted by slum-dwellers as well as industrialists.
The fragile solidarity of slum communities also tends to break down under the onslaught of tensions caused by unemployment and exploitation. Because slums are frequently illegal, they cannot get legal access to civic amenities such as electricity, drinking water and sanitation. These can be obtained but only through the patronage of the local slumlord or political power broker.
Leena Joshi, who heads a voluntary agency, Apanalya, in the Gajanan Lotus Colony of the Govandi slum in Bombay, confirms, “All activity in slums must be exactly the way the slumlords like it to be. Workers have to restrict themselves to non-political activities, such as operating balwadis (creches) and primary education and health centres. Communal harmony and peace are matters reserved for the slumlords and the police.”
Hence, the only available political space in slums often comes to be occupied by the criminal element, working in tandem with the politician seeking to move into the neighbourhood. Cooperative efforts of the neighbourhood, on the other hand, cannot grow in the absence of what Italian theoretician Antonio Gramsci calls “civil society.”
The recent outbreak of communal violence clearly demonstrates that class and ethnic sentiments exist alongside each other in the consciousness of the working class. Since the initial reports of rioting in Bombay, there has been much speculation in the media on why and how communalism had infected Hindu, Muslim, Tamil and Gujarati labourers rioting in Dharavi and making forays into the city’s high-rise neighbourhoods.
Conditions in the labour market can bring communalism to the fore. For example, when there is excess labour supply, workers can turn against each other. In Surat, the first sign of communal trouble in December came during a bandh called by the Minority Dalit Suraksha Mandal (MDSM) led by Mehmood Padadewala, an underworld figure, following the demolition in Ayodhya. MDSM activists attacked Shantinath Silk Mills, which had a notorious record of maltreating workers. Many of the attackers were former employees. The mill ownership sought revenge and recruited the services of Balak, a job broker for the more than 2 lakh Oriya workers who form the single largest immigrant community in Surat. Two days later, the Oriya workers attacked the Muslim settlements near the mill.
The recent riots have also exposed the gap that exists between neighbourhoods and mainstream politicians. In Kanpur, former CPM MP Subhashini Ali admitted that despite her party’s opposition to communalism, “very few leaders ventured forth during riots. There are very few leaders who have the credibility to go among the people in disturbed times.”
A distrust of the mainstream political process was obvious in Bombay’s riot-turn Govandi slum. The local MLA, Javed Khan, who is also Maharashtra’s housing minister, reportedly did not visit his constituency even once after the riots broke out. Muslim residents of Govandi assert he ignored their repeated attempts to get in touch with him. Govandi’s Hindus, on the other hand, are suspicious of Khan and accuse him of helping the Muslims “clandestinely”.
Even in Calcutta, where the CPM government describes commitment to secularism and protection of the minorities as basic credo, party representatives did not show up in the riot-ravaged Dhobiatala Muslim Camp for nearly three weeks after the violence nor did they make any official aid available to the victims.
Distrust of politicians exists even in neighbourhoods where community initiatives have become institutionalised. When Kanshi Ram Rama, the BJP MP from Surat, tried to visit a relief camp in the old city, he was firmly refused entry by local elders. In Bhagalpur, the Kendriya Sadbhavana Samiti, the apex organisation of the pahra committees, is reportedly losing its effectiveness as compared to the neighbourhood-level pahra committees, because according to one of its convenors, the central committee’s politician-members are constantly bickering.
But political marginalisation, even if it is self-imposed, can endanger a neighbourhood’s initiatives to extend beyond its physical boundaries so as to interact with a larger world. The state, too, tries to restrict the latitude of neighbourhood initiatives. Local administrations are generally unenthusiastic about localities operating autonomously. Bhagalpur district magistrate Arun Kumar Singh, for example, ruled out extending the city’s efficient pahra system to nearby riot-struck villages pleading “insufficient machinery”.
He argued the pahra committee would be effective only if it was under “our definite contro. Otherwise, we are not very keen on having them.” In Bhiwandi, mohalla committees maintain control over latent tensions through extremely tight monitoring of immigration into the town and restricting to those from the same family or village as earlier migrants.
Local administrations invariably tend to view neighbourhood tensions as law-and-order problems for which they evolve simplistic solutions, bypassing community-based initiatives. Aligarh district magistrate D. K. Kotia, for example, congratulates himself on imposing curfew in the city at the outset and contends this was the main reason why Aligarh remained relatively peaceful. “We caught the people unawares. We did not give them any chance for any communication and this paid off,” says Kotia.
In Bhiwandi, as well as in Aligarh, local officials credit themselves for barring local cable-TV operators from feeding BBC and CNN telecasts as a key element in their riot-prevention strategy. Neighbourhood initiatives, in stark contrast, as it happened in Okhla, call for even more intensive communicatin and dialogue during periods of crisis and tension. The more people from different religious communities talk to each other, the more they can deal with, for instance, rumours – a key tool in the hands of the communalists out to inflame passions.
It is evident there are several complex factors that act both independently and collectively in sparking a communal riot. What provokes violence in one area may be entiredly ignored in another. Everyday tensions that are not always apparent can suddenly explode into an orgy of violence, especially in the absence of enlightened community leadership.
