Tag Archives: Communal Riot

As Indira Gandhi was getting red carpet welcome in Arab countries assuring them that our Muslims are treated so well and urging them to invest their petrodollars in India, we hear heart-rending reports of massacre of Muslim in Bihar Sharif and communal riots in Lucknow and Agra.  

According to newspaper reports about 300 people are killed in Bihar Sharif, although the official figure of the dead is put at 50 at the time of writing this. While in the entire three  month long caste war of Gujarat, the total dead is officially put at about 50, in mere three days of rioting in Bihar Sharif, the official figure of the dead reached 50 or so. In Moradabad, in a day about 1,000 Muslims are reported to have been killed. Does it mean the Muslim life is the cheapest in India? How can such ghastly thing happen in this “Land of Ahimsa” ? That too when Indira Gandhi is busy wooing the Muslim countries and selling out “secularism”.  

Bihar Sharif has a population of 1-60 lakhs of which Muslims constitute about 50%  .

According to the Patna based Special Correspondent of the “Hindu”, a newspaper whose name itself indicates its attitude towards Muslims, minorities were the worst sufferers. The Bihar Govt. was utterly callous and it got alerted only when Indira Gandhi rushed to Bihar Sharif. From newspaper reports, we can make out that the Bihar police and the administration were not moved by such large scale killing of Muslims.

If the ‘Hindu’ itself had to admit that the Muslims were butchered like anything, what could be the magnitude of the massacre?  

PRESS REPORTS  

To understand the gravity of the situation, we would like to quote few samples of the press reports from the so-called “national press”, which is hardly sympathetic to the plight of minorities. And all the reports that we quote here below are from the Hindu journalists.  

HINDU: (May 12) “The real story of communal flare-up in Nalanda can be told only after sanity returns to the strife-torn countryside and passions cool down.  

Meanwhile, suffice it to say that what happened in villages around Bihar Sharif, the district headquarters of violence-prone Nalanda during the first four days of the flare-up, is shocking beyond words.  

It would be a misnomer to describe the communal violence in Nalanda as a riot or clashes. It was a one-sided affair with minority community at the receiving end. Except in Gulani village under Deepnagar police station, marauders, a motley mob of communalists and rapists met with little resistance  

THE STATESMAN: Staff correspondent reporting from Bihar Sharif itself (May 7) says how mercilessly Muslims were massacred He also gives the names of those butchered. 

WHO PROVOKED?  

In Smt. Handisha’s family, a six-year-old baby was also hacked to death. One Lt. Col. Sahaya’s son was dragged out of the bus and murdered. Just because he was sporting a beard, he was mistaken to be a Muslim. The correspondent describes the area as the “desert of hatred and barbarity.  

TIMES OF INDIA: (May 3) Staff correspondent Janak Singh refers to the attack on a funeral procession. He says “several local residents put the blame on R.S.S. elements active in the town”. He also refers to the attack on Muslims engaged in Friday prayers. At least eight people were killed in this.

INDIAN EXPRESS: (May 5) Its staff correspondent points out one Mohammed Murtaza, a bidi worker, saying “I have lost 7 members of my family”. Mihir Mukerjee of the Statesman reporting (May 9) from Chorsua says “riots on such a largescale had never been witnessed in the area since 1946”. 

P. K. Krupakaran, the Indian Express staff correspondent at Patna, (May 14) in a review of the Bihar Sharif incidents, says how Hindu communal elements were responsible for provoking the violence. He says that full three months before the riots there was a clash between the two communities. The cause, some Hindus had planted idols on the Muslim dargahs and graveyards. No doubt the land belonged to the Govt. but the Muslims had been using these lands for years. Why did the Hindus indulge in this provocation?

What type of “secularism” we are practicing? The April 30 clash, which is the beginning of bloody riots, Krupakaran says war between the Yadavas and the Muslims. It was not a clash between the high caste Hindus and the Muslims. Backward class (OBCs) are as poor, if not poorer than the Muslims. Their poverty is mainly due to oppression sanctioned by the Hindu religion. And yet the OBC leaders and our Left movement have not tried to educate them on this vital aspect. 

R.S.S. HAND

How long the poor people of India go on killing each other? Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra has brought to light yet another important point. He said Hindu-Muslim clashes in villages was something unknown in Bihar after 1947. But this time the Hindu communalists took violence to villages as well.

The Hindu-Dalit (caste) riots used to be a rural phenomenon. But the Hindu-Muslim (communal) riots an urban phenomenon. Just as the communal riots are spreading to villages, caste riots are spreading to cities. The Gujarat caste war was inaugurated at Ahmedabad.  

In caste war and communal riots, we are breaking no grounds. What a tremendous progress we have made-thanks to secularism, ahimsa and socialism!!! Indira Gandhi, Jagjivan Ram, Devaraj Urs and others have already visited Bihar Sharif and their findings as to how Muslims were butchered have appeared in the press. But till the time of writing this neither the CPM nor the CPI has sent any team to this place. Nor did they bother about the killings of untouchables in Gujarat.  

That is why the persecuted minorities of India – untouchables, tribals, Muslims and Christians – are hardly evincing any interest in the Left movement. But it must be noted that these four sections together constitute over 50% of the Indian population.  

Jagannath Mishra never bothered about the Bihar Sharif carnage until he was forced to go there with Indira Gandhi. But he was quick enough to hold a press conference at Patna on May 3 to put the entire blame on the RSS for the Bihar Sharif incident. The CPI general secretary Rajeshwari Rao also held the RSS responsible.  

As days pass, we can hear more and more people accusing the RSS for the Bihar Sharif riots. Each political party will try to fish in the troubled waters, but will do nothing to go into the basic issues that spark off Hindu-Muslim clashes.  

It is easy to put the blame on the RSS and be done with it. Such accusations making RSS as the whipping boy, no doubt immensely please the persecuted minorities. Those political parties criticizing the RSS will get Muslim votes.  

SECULARISM  

But Hindu communalism is not the monopoly of the RSS alone. One need not be only in the RSS to be a communalist.  

We have any number of communalists in different parties, press, judiciary, business and professions.  

Persecuted minorities like the Muslims, Christians and untouchables all over India have been the victims of the Hindu communalism. We talk about “secularism” and go on persecuting Muslims and Christians. Indian brand of “secularism” . 

We found ample evidence of this during our two visits to Gujarat where the Dalits were the victims of the Hindu communalism. In Moradabad, Biharsharif and Aligarh, it was the turn of the Muslims. Tribals and Christians are also victims of Hindu communalism.  

In Ahmedabad, the very same Hindu communal elements did their best to turn the Hindu-Dalit caste war into a Hindu-Muslim blood bath. But owing to the effective steps taken by the alert Muslims of Ahmedabad and the Gujarat Dalit Panthers, such a holocaust was averted. We were immensely pleased to see the new-found friendship between these persecuted minorities at Ahmedabad. The Panthers’ official journals are printed in a press owned by a Muslim as Hindus refused to do this job.  

ROOT OF THE PROBLEM  

Muslims told us at Ahmedabad that these very Hindu communal elements let lose a section of the Dalits against Muslims in the 1969 communal carnage, in which unofficial but authoritative estimates put death toll at over 1,000 .

Therefore, it is easy to put the blame on RSS and close the chapter. But the roots of communalism in India are much deeper. Muslims, Christians, untouchables and tribals were being persecuted in India even before the RSS was born. Therefore, it is high-time the persecuted minorities go deeper into the roots of communalism and try to destroy it.  

They cannot depend upon political parties to do this job. Because political parties, including the CPM and CPI, are not interested in social change. But what the persecuted minorities in India want is social change and through that economic change. Will the awakened sections among the persecuted minorities realise this danger, and work for social change? 

After Biharshareef, it is now Hyderabad. There is no end to this blood-letting. The Biharshareef Hindu-Muslim communal riots, about which we had written in our first issue, has few parallels in the whole of India. Not only it is one of the biggest riots but the first rocking a rural area. But so soon everything seems to have been forgotten. And the Hindu communal elements are getting ready for another bout-eternal thirst for the Muslim blood.

D. R. Goyal, editor of “Secular Democracy” in an article published in his journal after a visit to the area, says “reasonable people tend to put the figure (of dead) around 200. We have received a list of 145 dead of whom three are non-Muslims”. Asghar Ali Engineer, a noted writer and reformer of Bombay, who visited Biharshareef also puts the figure at 150 to 200. In an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly (16-6-1981) and later reproduced in two parts in the ‘Deccan Herald‘, he quotes the local CPI MLA saying the deaths could not have been less than 150.  

But the official figure is put at 52. And in this country, official figures of the dead in any calamity are always suppressed. Can we expect the Hindu-dominated Government to speak the truth when it comes to Hindu-Muslim riot casualties?  

Tooshar Pandit, whose coverage of the Biharshareef appeared as the cover story in the ‘Sunday‘ (24-5-1981) under the title, “RSS spreads its poison again“, says of the 52 officially dead, 50 were Muslims. Even the ‘Hindu‘ correspondent had spoken about the one-sided business of murder in Biharshareef. Radiance, a Delhi weekly (21-6-1981) published a chart of the Biharshareef victims saying that 143 Muslims were killed. Different reports by impartial Hindu observers have admitted the Muslims have suffered like anything. All of them unanimously put the death toll at around 150. We have no reason to disbelieve this figure. But the official figure is kept at 52.  

Apart from the huge gap between official figure of the dead and the actual fact, the Hindu-Muslim communal clashes, which are becoming almost a daily feature, should make us think about yet another serious aspect of the problem. India’s capitalist-owned Press run by high caste Hindu journalists has always adopted a double standard when it comes to Hindu-Muslim riots. It takes shelter under a good old Nehru-Liaquat Ali informal understanding that the community of the dead in communal riots should not be identified. However, there is no official bar for publishing community-wise figures. The Muslims who are the victims of every communal riot, themselves have been demanding community-wise details of the dead, injured, arrested and the loss of property suffered by both Hindu and Muslims. But the press takes shelter under this outdated Nehru-Liaquat Ali understanding. Why? Because it is advantageous to Hindus.  

The Government, however, collects the data community-wise but does not release it to the public. Newspapers while reporting communal riots do not even identify the communities. They prefer to make it as vague as possible. The reason given both by the Government and the Hindu press for not identifying the communities and not giving the community wise break-up of the dead and injured is that such a publication will further aggravate the communal trouble. This is a fantastic logic. Why should the communal Hindus engineer a riot and then try to suppress from the public eye what they did? If the communal-minded Hindus are so much worried about the consequence of the Hindu-Muslim riots by the publication of the details of the riots, they should rather try not to start one. Hindu-Muslim communal riots and Hindu-untouchable caste riots have tarnished the already murky image of India in the outside world by suppressing facts, will such a blood-stained image get white-washed?

In the case of the Biharshareef, the very story of Tooshar Pandit (Sunday, 24-5-81) carries the headline indicting the RSS. Not only that, it names the very RSS leader who was responsible for killing so many Muslims – including women and babies: Raj Kishore, the RSS chief of the district. With a gun in hand, he was on a murder spree with his band of RSS volunteers in several villages. Tooshar Pandit’s report indicting Raj Kishore was supported by many other impartial observers. But till this day no action has been taken except for Indira Gandhi’s crocodile tears. Dalits and other persecuted minorities of India should be well aware of this Hindu game. They should fight not only the RSS menace but demand publication of community-wise details of the dead., not only in communal riots but also in caste riots. Remember, we are fighting for establishing truth. 

The first report of the Scheduled Caste & Tribes Commission headed by Bola Paswan Shastri says: “Untouchability is a byproduct of the Hindu caste system”. It also calls for “determined and consistent onslaught on the basic evil: i.e. the caste system”. But the commission, whose first report (total pages 230) is yet to be accepted by the Government of India though it was submitted over a year ago (Feb. 8, 1980), does not indicate how caste system can be destroyed. Some suggestions made by it to fight caste system are akin to Gandhian prescriptions, all of which have been tried but failed to cure the patient. 

Shastri, a highly respected former Chief Minister of Bihar and himself an untouchable, makes an important point when he says that caste riots are spreading from rural to urban centres. This is a new development in the history of India. Visiting (12-8-78) Villupuram (Tamil Nadu) where largescale atrocities broke out resulting in the death of several untouchables, he says (Page 113): A new phenomenon, is developing ……. The clash between the caste Hindus and the Harijans has so far confined to the rural areas only. I have no knowledge of any clash between caste Hindus and Harijans in the urban area in the recent past. Villupuram is the first urban area”. This is an eye-opener. Just as ‘caste riots’ (Hindu-Dalit) are spreading to urban areas, communal riots (Hindu- Muslim) so far confined to urban areas are spreading to rural areas. The over-fed Hindu communalists are out for the blood of the untouchables, tribes and minorities. Therefore, the persecuted minorities should be more vigilant. This is the message in the Shastri Commission report.

The Commission has regretted that no State Government has conducted a survey of the working of the PCR, Act nor set up any special court for trial. It is foolish to expect the government to undertake such a work because if any Government makes such an attempt the government will be toppled by the ruling class. The high castes who control every Government do not want to enforce the PCR Act. This is the simple truth.

As regards the root causes of atrocities (page 86) the Commission cites social causes. The social cause lies in the practice of untouchability which is a byproduct of the Hindu caste system pushing the SCs down to the lowest rung of the social ladder in the caste hierarchy. How can we remove untouchability without disturbing the caste scaffolding? Will not the Hindu religion shake if the caste system – its very foundation – is sought to be destroyed? Who is prepared to make such a sacrifice? If caste goes all the property and privileges enjoyed by the high castes of India will also go. Therefore, we can safely conclude that as long as the ruling class of India is allowed to continue, the caste system will also continue. Hence the need to destroys the ruling class becomes all the more urgent. We thank Bola Paswan Shastri for boldly hinting at the need to destroy caste.  

We also appreciate the commission’s recommendation for a special police force comprising 50% SC constables to be posted particularly in sensitive areas. We would go a step forward and recommend that the other half the special force should be Muslims. In that case, the jurisdiction of such a force can be extended to areas prone to Hindu-Muslim riots as well. Such a force should be airlifted within four hours of the violence breaking out. But why confine the recruitment of the special police force only to the level of constables? Even officers manning it should be SCs, STs and Muslims – 50:50.  

The Commission has passed strictures on the work of the Central and State Governments for not fulfilling the job quota to SCs. The SCs will not come to the desired level even after the next 10 years, it says.  

The percentage of reservation was raised by the Government of India vide resolution No. 27/25/68 – ESTT (S.C.T) dt. 25th March 1979 in proportion to the population of these communities as shown in the 1961 census. The report mentions that the 15% reservation to SCs is to be enforced through direct recruitment on all-India basis: – a) by open competition b) posts to be filled by promotions c) and on the basis of seniority. But, the commission, observes that “the actual percentage of SCs are nowhere near the prescribed one”. In annexure I, it has given the data to prove the failure of the Government. However, in Class IV posts, reservations have exceeded the quota fixed because these positions of sweepers, scavengers etc. are permanently reserved for the untouchables, as there are none else to take up these jobs. The real position of SCs, in RBI, nationalised banks, public industries different Government departments are all furnished. A very valuable document. 

Meenakshipuram has turned into a forest fire engulfing the entire Tamil Nadu, if not the country. An Indian Express report says the Government of India appears to be very much worried about this fast-spreading epidemic that is sweeping the South. Reports of conversion are coming from Kanpur and Gujarat also. 

While every conscious Dalit should be happy about these developments – the revolt of the Dalits -they should be equally concerned about its consequences. As we have hinted in our previous issue, our fears about the prospects of a communal riot rocking TN are expressed by both Muslims and Dalits.  

Since then, we had reports of a clash in Wandiwash in TN. Our information is that a big preparation is going on. Communal and political interests are out to exploit the present situation and see that TN is seized from the hands of Periyar’s followers who have been ruling the country’s most progressive State. This is the one State in India where the RSS is weakest. The trick it always adopts to gain a foothold is to start a communal riot and then pitch its tent. This is what it did in Kerala, where it has gained sufficient following.  

CPM – RSS clashes are a daily feature there. Over 100 have been killed so far. It wants to repeat the same thing In TN by starting a series of clashes, if possible, between the SCs and Muslims themselves. If this is the game of the communalists, anti-Periyar political leaders are wanting to seize TN by raising the bogey of law and order and proving that the lives of the SCs and Muslims are not safe under MGR’s ADMK Government. The very same political and communal forces are collaborating in Kerala and the same pattern will be repeated in TN – at the cost of much bloodshed of the poorest of the poor.  

Unfortunately, our CPM-CPI comrades have not till now opened their mouth on the TN conversions. Perhaps, they are also welcoming the bid to oust Periyar’s followers and restoration of the Brahmin rule in TN. Therefore, once again we call upon all progressive forces led by the DK, DMK, Left forces, Dalits, Muslims and Christians to frustrate the game of this unholy communal-political axis and keep alive the torch of Periyar EVR in TN.  

Fascist clouds are gathering over TN. Dalits must not only revolt but also give no room for fascists.