Riots under BJP rule are the culmination of the Sangh Parivar’s ideological  impulse to keep communal tensions alive while for Congress they are  tactical instruments

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh’s decision to  accord a prominent role to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is  presumably based on the belief that the diverse Indian electorate would  forgive him for the communal mayhem of 2002, as it often has the  Congress for the riots under its rule. This can be presumed from the  comments Mr. Singh made at a function in Delhi in early February. In a  recriminatory tone, he had then asked, “Our opposition parties allege  that BJP is the party which creates enmity between Hindus and Muslims.  Did riots not take place during Congress rule?”

Not just the votaries and apologists of the BJP but even ideologically  neutral individuals often echo the sentiments Mr. Singh expressed. From  Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh) in 1961 to Bharatpur (Rajasthan) in 2012, the  Congress has palpably failed to control communal hotheads from running  amok periodically. Yet the party hasn’t been tagged communal, and still  garners a substantial chunk of the minority as well as secular votes.  What explains the dichotomy in the public response to the riots under  the BJP rule as compared to those under the Congress governments?

ELEMENTAL

For one, the phenomenon of communal riot is an elemental aspect of the  Sangh Parivar’s ideology, an extreme manifestation of its politics which is predicated on articulating and redressing the grievances of Hindus,  real or imagined, the provenance of which lies either in the medieval  past or in post-Independence public policies the saffron brigade  perceives as unjustifiably favouring the minorities.

This worldview pits the Hindus against the minorities, particularly the  Muslims, until such time the inexhaustible list of grievances is  addressed. The politics emanating from this worldview consequently  spawns an ambience of tension among communities, reduced or heightened  depending on the exigencies of circumstances but never allowed to  dissipate. In other words, the inter-community tension, signifying the  abnormal in politics, has no possibility of closure in the immediate  future. It is designed to become our daily state of existence.

The tension is stoked at pan-India, State and district levels. The Ram  Janmabhoomi movement sought to meld the Hindus, with all their class,  caste, linguistic and regional divides, into a monolith, through a  demand asking Muslims to voluntarily relinquish their custody of the  Babri Masjid. Of similar nature are the demands for relocating mosques  abutting the Krishna and Shiv temples in Mathura and Varanasi. These  symbols of pan-India Hindu mobilisation are augmented through the  manufacturing of disputes over places of worship of local significance.  Into this category fall the protracted disputes over the Bhagyalakshmi  temple at the base of the Charminar in Hyderabad, the Baba  Budangiri-Guru Dattatreya shrine in Karnataka, and the Bhojshala complex in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh.

In addition, there are hundreds of places of worship and graveyards in  mofussil towns whose ownerships are contended between Hindus and  Muslims. No doubt, some of these disputes date back decades but, over  the years, myriad groups comprising the Sangh Parivar have taken over  the leadership of these ‘little battles of liberation’. For variety,  Christian priests are attacked and churches vandalised on the charges of converting Hindus to Christianity.

In this culture of inter-community tension, alternatively fanned and  allowed to simmer, the riot is the logical culmination of an insidious  process. It is akin to a person experiencing a nervous breakdown after  suffering acute mental agony for months; it is similar to living life on the edge, uncertain though you are about the precise moment of the  inevitable fall off the precipice. Indeed, communal tension in  perpetuity is less traumatic only in degrees to an outbreak of a riot.

The sheer salience of tension-riot in the politics of BJP is precisely why a localised inter-community conflict under its rule acquires a resonance  countrywide. It is perceived as illustrative of the fate awaiting the  minorities in an India in which the BJP exercises untrammeled power. The 2002 riot of Gujarat was horrifying not only because of its barbarity  but also because it was viewed to have been ideologically driven and,  therefore, bound to be replicated elsewhere.

By contrast, the riots under the Congress rule, even the ones its  activists spearhead, are instrumental rather than ideological. Barring  the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, the riots under the Congress rarely spill  beyond a parliamentary constituency or two. The motive behind such  mayhem is usually a local Congressman wanting to win an election from a  constituency; a riot or communal tension rarely becomes a tool for  political mobilisation countrywide, again, the 1984 riots being the  exception. Though cynical, the breakdown in inter-community relationship is almost always followed by attempts to restore the earlier social  harmony.

ATONEMENT

No doubt, the Congress was justifiably implicated in the 1984 riots. It  symbolically atoned for its guilt by appointing Manmohan Singh as Prime  Minister, and he, on August 12, 2005, apologised not only to the Sikh  community in Parliament, but also to the entire nation “because what  took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood in our  Constitution”.

More significantly, the Congress is forgiven because the riots under it are  often (not always, though) the handiwork of organisations owing  allegiance or belonging to the Sangh Parivar. It’s a conclusion several  commissions of inquiry appointed to probe riots have reached. There are  just too many to be quoted. But sample what the Joseph Vithayathil  Commission on the Tellicherry riots of 1971 said. It traced the origin  of communal tension in the town to the RSS’s decision to establish its  units there. In an incident the rioters accosted one Muhammad and  offered him the following choice, “If you want to save your life you  should go round the house three times repeating the words, ‘Rama,  Rama’.” The commission noted, “Muhammad did that. But you cannot expect  the 70 million Muslims of India to do that as a condition for  maintaining communal harmony in the country”.

More than 40 years after Tellicherry, tension-riot remains the Sangh  Parivar’s defining strategy of achieving its ideological goal of turning India Hindu. This is why we remember the riots under the BJP and not  those under the Congress, which too has been responsible for the  spilling of blood and untold misery.

(Ajaz Ashraf is a Delhi-based journalist. E-mail: ashrafajaz3@gmail.com)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/why-memories-of-gujarat-2002-stay/article4570587.ece