Ayodhya aftermath: Inflammatory whispers

The localities not driven to violence were those that succeeded in exposing rumours, the communalist’s most effective tool.

Though the mass media served as the most important source of information about the communal strife throughout the country, the first sign of impending trouble in a neighbourhood was the floating of inflammatory rumours.

Though these rumours were often ridiculous, nevertheless they spread like wildfire. In early January, word went around the Shivaji Park, an upper middle class residential area in Bombay, that “naval commandos” from a West Asian Islamic country had arrived in the city to avenge the killing of Muslims. Soon a mob of 200 people, armed with cricket bats, hockey sticks, knives and in one instance, a fused fluorescent tube, set out to “repel” the invaders and patrolled the nearby beach all night.

Often, the ability of a neighbourhood to resist communal frenzy depended on how effectively it was able to deal with disinformation. In Abul Fazl Enclave in the Okhla area of Delhi, when news spread about an impending attack by nearby Hindu villageers, Mohammed Yamin and a few others traced the rumour to a casual conversation between a 6-year-old boy and an elderly rickshaw-puller. Their finding led to the establishment in Abul Fazl Enclave of a committee to track a rumour to its source and then expose it as a lie.