Introduction and Overview
The first impression of the
Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green with the sugarcane ripening for harvest,
is of utter desolation. Villages are tense with fear. Kasbas
and hamlets are purged of their Muslim presence and the Hindu quarters have
also emptied out in a self-imposed curfew even at midday, as women and children
peep out from behind closed doors and windows, their menfolk having fled to
avoid arrest as criminal complaints are made out against them. Fear is in the
air. The atmosphere reeks of embitterment and betrayed trust, with neighbour
now unwilling to trust neighbour, and apprehensive of ever returning to their accustomed
lives. All the evidence points towards people who were forced to flee their
habitations in sheer terror and seek out the safety of gathering among others
of their own faith, occupying any vacant space in areas where they could be
sure of not being targets just because of who they were.
“We will never go back to our villages”, say Muslim
women refugees in a makeshift camp in the tehsil
town of Budhana, some twenty kilometres from Muzaffarnagar. They are among two
thousand five hundred men, women and children who fled their villages to seek
safety in the town, among members of their own community. In the blazing
post-monsoon heat, they are camped under a shamiana,
where local community organisations scrape together the means to feed them twice
a day. An open drain runs nearby, fetid with stagnant water. There is no water
source and no doctor or health-care worker has visited them in the week that
they have been there. The sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) visited them close to
a week since they were uprooted from their villages. Police patrols are at a
distance and seem mostly static. There is a clear message that is held out to
them: that they can only call upon members of their own community for
sustenance and assistance in this hour of dire need.
Though the Home Secretary in the
Government of Uttar Pradesh has claimed that those displaced from their
villages had been sheltered in state-run camps, there was a conspicuous absence
of any official at the Budhana camps. Sanitation seemed to be the least
priority since meeting the basic needs of food was itself a challenge.
Inmates of the camp spoke of being
attacked without warning with seeming intent to terrorise and drive them out of
their villages. Several among them reported being sundered from their families
and not knowing their whereabouts. A week into the violence, hopes were fading
of ever finding those missing alive.
There were complaints of milk being
unavailable for the many children in the camp, though nobody really spoke of a
food scarcity. For those of the Muslim faith in Budhana, it was a matter of
honour to ensure that nobody seeking their protection at a time of danger
should suffer want. The local community leadership seemed especially proud of
the manner in which they had stepped up at the time. By the same token, they
were rather disdainful of the absence of any official assistance.
At the District Magistrate’s office,
staff were neck-deep in work preparing for the visits of the Chief Minister the
next day, and of the Prime Minister on September 16. Personnel of the Special
Protection Group (SPG) which attends to VVIP security, had landed in the sole
helipad available in the district and were examining all arrangements being
made for the Prime Minister’s visit. Since the Prime Minister intended to
summon top officials from the district for an evaluation meeting, arrangements
were being made in the vicinity of the helipad for the gathering. Part of the
district administration’s attention was diverted towards ensuring that the
helipad and the adjoining conference hall were in appropriate condition to host
a VVIP visit and conference. And there also seemed to be a strenuous effort
underway to ensure that at least some of the camps would be given the veneer of
efficiency and good cheer that could uplift VVIP spirits.
The newly appointed District
Magistrate, Kaushal Raj Sharma, was preoccupied with these arrangements, but
did this team the courtesy of a brief meeting. He was at pains to correct the
impression this team had gathered of a sense of official neglect of the
displaced people in makeshift camps. The official presence was thin he said,
only because the job of comforting and sheltering the victim-survivors was best
left to the community, which would not just deliver the service but also show deeply-needed
empathy and fellow-feeling. The administration meanwhile was active from behind
the scenes, providing all necessary supplies, including food, for the
sustenance of those displaced in the riots. DM Sharma was particularly anxious
to underline that the administration was being attentive to the special needs
of children and those of tender years, by supplying milk in adequate quantities
to the camps.
The Superintendent of Police (SP) and
other senior officials, including the Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) and
Inspector-General (IG) were unavailable since they were out in the field making
necessary arrangements for the Chief Minister’s visit the following day and the
Prime Minister’s anticipated arrival the day after.
The administrative vacuum also shows in the absence of official records of the magnitude of human suffering. Columns of the army moving through the villages and combing the fields for bodies – mainly to still rumours that are rife about untold numbers being killed – are the solitary assurance of state protection for the victims. The police have filed their FIRs from initial oral statements from some refugees. They are yet to record statements, or organise affidavits from the victims. Lists of those displaced and the loss of property that has been caused in the villages scattered through at least three tehsils of Muzaffarnagar district, are yet to be prepared.
As a fact-finding team from New
Delhi, we are dismayed by the evidence we see of the severity of the violence
in the villages. The official count of those killed is thirty-nine, of which it
has been firmly established, six were Hindus – or more specifically Jats – and
the rest, Muslims. Again, the official estimate of those displaced is
twenty-five thousand, of which all except about seven hundred are Muslims.
Those displaced from other faiths, the DM affirms, are Dalits who have fled
Muslim-dominated areas in fear of retaliatory violence, though they have not
been specifically targeted.
Unofficial counts of those killed put
the number much higher: at perhaps fifty-three, on the basis of the number of
autopsies performed at various hospitals around the district. And community
leaders put the number of the displaced at fifty thousand.
This puts Muzaffarnagar in 2013 in
the category of the worst instances of communal strife witnessed in the
country. It is certainly the worst in over a decade. This fact-finding team is deeply
apprehensive at the short term and long term consequences of this massive and
systematic internal displacement, and of the chasm that has opened between the
two communities. What aggravates it
further is the fact that the victims had lived in close proximity of the
aggressors. They were farm labour in the fields owned by the people who attacked
them in their homes.
A
reconstruction of the events
When this fact-finding team visited
Muzaffarnagar, the threat of violence had abated, though rumour held the field.
There were rumours in a Jat quarter of Kutba village – deserted but for the
womenfolk who kept vigil over the fields and the cattle – that two from their
community had been shot at and possibly killed in another part of the district.
This rumour was soon scotched by the district administration. District
Magistrate Sharma though confirmed that two bodies had been recovered from the
Gang Nahar (or Jauli canal) the previous day and identified, though the causes
of their death had not at that time been ascertained. The positive aspect here
though, was that with the discovery of these two bodies, all members of the Jat
community reported missing, had been accounted for.
This team found however, that even a
week after the violence erupted in full-blown fury, there was no agreed narrative
on what led to it.
There was general agreement among all
those the team spoke to, that the Kawal incident of August 27 had lit the
immediate spark. Many among them hastened to add the important rider that the
embitterment of the atmosphere had been underway for at least two months prior to
Kawal. Few among the victims that this team spoke to could account for the sudden
strains that emerged in relations between the Muslims and the Jats of the
district. But several among the Muslims this team spoke to in the camps of the
displaced, reported being challenged and taunted for accustomed and long
accepted patterns of behaviour. Wearing the skull cap and beard has been a
custom for several among those of the Muslim faith in the district. But in the
two months preceding the September violence, many among them reported being
publicly upbraided for displaying emblems of loyalty towards the Taliban, which
supposedly made them sympathisers or even participants in what is constructed
in the media discourse as the global jihad.
Community honour, as represented in
the dignity and bodily integrity of women, was among the themes constantly played
on to sharpen the growing estrangement. A further twist was imparted by rumours
made up in the ideological factory of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), of a
“love jihad” launched by attractive
young Muslim boys equipped with the full range of the tools of enticement – modish
clothes, mobile phones and sweet-talk – to entangle young girls of the other
faith, all for serving the hidden agenda of boosting numbers of those born into
the faith.
In the circumstances, every incident
involving any manner of interaction between a man and a woman, came to be viewed
with suspicion, especially if they came from different faiths. On August 9, as
Muslims were preparing for their Eid-ul-Fitr festivities, one among them,
Idris, was killed at the doorstep of the Eidgah in Muzaffarnagar. There had
been an alleged incident of harassment involving Idris’ daughter for which he
had a few days before, confronted and slapped the offending individual in
public. His murder was seen as retribution by the man who had suffered the
public humiliation. Police were quick to apprehend the individual concerned,
along with two alleged accomplices.
There was an incident of a Muslim
girl being harassed by youths of the Jat community in the village of Shoram on
August 18. The offending individuals again suffered direct action by kinfolk of
their target. A minor affray ensued which the local administration allegedly
did nothing about.
Resentment was stoked by the VHP and
its affiliates in the area, over the seeming alacrity with which the police had
acted in a case involving the murder of a person of the Muslim faith in the
August 9 incident. The atmosphere continued to deteriorate without any manner
of an antidote being administered either by the political leadership or the
local administration.
The Kawal incident on August 27
occurred in a milieu that had been saturated with communal toxins and readily
lent itself to any interpretation that served immediate political agendas.
All that is known about Kawal, August
27, is that three young men turned up dead at the end of it. There have been
reports about a youth from the village, Shahnawaz, constantly harassing a young
girl from the neighbouring Malikpura village and being confronted by her
brother Sachin and cousin Gaurav. There are reports of Shahnawaz drawing a
dagger at that point, but being bested in hand-to-hand struggle and having the
dagger turned on him with fatal consequences. There are also reports that he
was simply shot dead by the irate kinsmen of the girl he had been harassing.
Sachin and Gaurav were then reportedly set upon by Shahnawaz’s community and
beaten to death in public.
There are also recorded narratives in
the media about Sachin and Gaurav being confronted by persons of the Muslim
faith because of their persistent pursuit of a young Muslim girl. At that time,
according to this narrative, they managed to snatch a weapon from among their
attackers and kill one among them, before they were themselves overwhelmed by the
fury of the mob.
Competing with these accounts, all deeply
suffused with community honour, is another one, rather more mundane: that
Shahnawaz and Sachin ran into each other on their bicycles and got into an
argument in which deeply offensive communal slurs were traded, following which
they fell upon each other. Gaurav who was in the vicinity ran to the aid of his
cousin. At the end of the fracas, all three lay dead.
In the circumstances, the U.P. state
government reacted in the worst manner possible. It gave in to accusations that
its supposed partisanship in allowing free rein to miscreants from the Muslim
side had emboldened them to take the law into their hands. This narrative of a
partisan administration arose, in part, from the action that had followed the August
9 murder and it prompted after the Kawal incident, the summary and abrupt transfer
of both the District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police within hours.
Kawal was a localised incident that could have been contained by a strong dose
of political statesmanship. Instead of stepping up with what was required, the
U.P. state government signalled indecision, ineptitude, or even worse –
possibly a degree of collusion with the forces of disorder.
The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU),
ostensibly an apolitical force that represents the cause of the Jat peasantry of
western U.P., came up soon afterwards with the call for a grand council (mahapanchayat) or gathering of the Jat
clans of the region. That in itself may not have been cause for concern since
this manner of gathering has been summoned to deliberate on a range of issues,
including fair prices for agricultural produce. Yet the call issued for August
31 had overtones that were distinctly menacing: its theme was the honour of the
women of the community, as represented in the slogan “Ma, Beti, Bahu Bachao”.
The administration had by this time
woken up to the possibility of a serious breach of the peace and imposed
prohibitory orders under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. On August
30, community leaders of the Muslim faith in the guise of taking a delegation
to meet the newly appointed DM, Kaushal Raj Sharma, began assembling in
Muzaffarnagar town. Prominent political leaders from the area joined the
delegation, inevitably boosting its number in a manner that made utter nonsense
of the prohibitory orders in force. These included Kadir Rana of the Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) who represents Muzaffarnagar in the Lok Sabha, his party
colleague Jameel Ahmad Qasmi who represents the nearby constituency of Meerapur
in the U.P. legislative assembly, and a former Congress legislator,
Saeed-uz-Zaman. The district administration insists there was no permission
given – officially or otherwise – for the gathering. But when confronted by the
angry crowd that had assembled in a central area of the town, the DM had no
option but to emerge from his office and seek their dispersal through subtle
persuasion. That, rather than the use of force was deemed the more prudent
option in the circumstances. The petition seeking the reining in of hostile
actions by the new alignment that had sprung up to avenge the “love jihad”, was received and the gathering
dispersed.
Within the over-heated communal
atmosphere of Muzaffarnagar, the DM’s gesture in meeting with the delegation
from the Muslim community was read as a measure of appeasement of communal
aggression. The new consolidation under the Hindutva umbrella was quick to
portray what the DM thought was mere administrative prudence, as the blatant
display of a double standard: prohibitory orders would be imposed on the Jat mahapanchayat, but not on the Muslim
petitioners.
This imparted a fresh edge of anger
to the mahapanchayat that gathered on
August 31, focused exclusively on the defence of feminine honour. Again, the
administration faltered in its enforcement of prohibitory orders, for which the
DM offers the alibi that these gatherings are often organised by discrete
communications through community networks, which arrive at decisions to
assemble at a particular place and time without any prior announcement. The
clans (or khaps) of the Jat community
have their own means of mobilisation which they use frequently, often catching
the administration on its blindside.
Yet with all these alibis on offer,
the evidence seems overwhelmingly to indicate that the administration remained
passive as the spiral of provocative actions gathered momentum. The precise
reasons need to be ascertained. It is more than likely that the paralysis arose
from conflicting guidance from the political leadership, both locally and at
the state level. If so, the trail of formal instructions and informal verbal
orders conveyed by the political leaders through the two weeks that followed
the Kawal incident, needs to be uncovered.
District Magistrate Sharma, new to
his job, speaks now of having received some inkling of a cycle of Jat community
gatherings being planned after the “Ma,
Beti, Bahu Bachao” assembly. Again, because of the undercover mode of
communication and organisation adopted, the administration missed out on the
details. It received word that one panchayat
of a particular clan grouping (or khap) had been held on September 5. To add to
its confusion, there was also a call for a bandh
through the district by the BJP that very day.
Meanwhile, a video clip purporting to
show the killing of Gaurav and Sachin was circulated through the mobile phone
network, and posted on the facebook page belonging to Sangeet Singh Som of the BJP,
who represents Meerut’s Sardhana constituency in the state legislature. The
video never had great plausibility since it was easily traced to an incident in
Sialkot in Pakistan, two years back, in which two brothers were killed in a
grisly incident of mob violence. But in the overheated environment of Muzaffarnagar,
it circulated widely and ignited further animosities.
What seems germane here is that with
the buildup of tension and the continuing acts of default by the district
administration, there was no way that the mahapanchayat
planned for September 7 could have been stopped, except through a determined
assertion of administrative will. This would have involved a mass deployment of
security forces through Muzaffarnagar district and adjoining areas in Shamli,
Meerut, and Baghpat – not to mention the districts of Haryana from where
significant participation was expected.
The administration decided against
this course and instead, seemingly opted for the strategy of keeping a close
vigil over the events of the day. All the groups arriving at the venue of the mahapanchayat – Nangla Mandaur in
Jansath block, about twenty kilometres from Muzaffarnagar and very close to
Kawal village where it all ostensibly started – were closely observed for any
possible violent intent. DM Sharma states now that all the lethal weapons that
were later brandished at the mahapanchayat
were carefully concealed as the crowds assembled.
The mahapanchayat itself was raucous and unruly. Sangeet Som and an
itinerant saffron-robed woman from the vicinity of Muzaffarnagar, Sadhvi
Prachi, were reported to have made especially angry and accusatory speeches,
denouncing the continuing threats to the faith from the large Muslim presence
in the district. Lethal arms were unsheathed and brandished with clearly
threatening intent. The few political leaders who came to the event with the
purpose of injecting an element of moderation were shouted down amidst much
heckling and chanting of the name of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as
the man of the moment.
As the crowds dispersed, filled with
the spirit of revenge, Israr, a freelance photographer who had been hired that
day to film the event for the local police was set upon and beaten to death.
And from then on, divergent narratives emerge. One side has it that as a
tractor transporting a trailer full of participants in the mahapanchayat crossed the Jauli village, it came under fire from
Muslims who had hidden themselves in the fields adjoining the road. Six people
were allegedly killed and their bodies dumped into the Gang Nahar. That account
is disputed by one of the local elements who has been named in the police
report registered after the event. The reality he claims, is that those on
board the tractor trailer dragged a passerby on board and began mercilessly
beating him, ultimately leading to his death. A brawl ensued in which firearms
and lethal weapons were used after which a number from both sides lay dead.
Violence had meanwhile erupted in
Muzaffarnagar town, where Rajesh Verma, a news reporter who works as a stringer
for the IBN 7 network was shot through the chest and died on the spot. It is
difficult to escape the inference that Verma who was an extremely popular
journalist in the town, was shot with deliberate intent, though both sides were
reportedly using firearms quite freely by this time.
By that evening, curfew had been
clamped in three police station jurisdictions within Muzaffarnagar town, but
violence had spread like a contagion to the villages, especially in the tehsils
of Budhana and Muzaffarnagar, and the neighbouring district of Shamli.
Victim-survivors that this team met
from the village of Kutba in Budhana tehsil, spoke of assurances being given
all through the evening of September 7 by the gram pradhan Devinder, asking all communities to stay calm and keep
the peace. The next morning at eight, the pradhan
himself was seen leading a violent mob, burning down Muslim homes and hacking
those who came in their path. Kutba village reported eight deaths and is along
with other villages within the jurisdiction of the Phugama police station,
among the worst affected in the violence of those days.
There were also reports which
indicated the opposite: of Muslim families being sheltered by the gram pradhan through the night of
September 7 when violence began spreading, and being escorted to the safety of
camps set up by the community in neighbouring towns the following day. Such an
incident, also coincidentally involving a pradhan
named Devinder from the Kinauni village in Budhana tehsil, was recorded by a
delegation of the CPI(M) which visited the district at roughly the same time as
this team.
With violence engulfing widely
dispersed villages where Muslims and Jats have lived together in amity for
decades, the job of enforcement became much more difficult. In most cases, this
team found that the security presence had been pulled out of villages where the
worst outbreaks had happened, presumably since they had been evacuated by
members of the vulnerable community. A security presence was visible in the
more substantial towns such as Budhana and Tanwali, though only in the main
thoroughfares and squares and not in the vicinity of the camps and shelters for
the displaced.
Conclusions:
Of state failure and political cynicism
The conclusions of this team are that
the state government seems to have been taken by surprise, though they had no
reason to, and that there was probably a deliberate disregard of rising
tensions and intelligence reports. Muslims were attacked not so much with the
intent of causing deaths, which would invite serious opprobrium, but with the
object of chasing them out of the Hindu majority villages. The team has
concluded that there was a plan to end decades of coexistence and “cleanse”
certain villages of the Muslim presence. Having carried through this part of
their agenda, the young males – particularly those of the Jat community – have
also chosen at least during daylight hours, to make themselves scarce in their
usual places of habitation. The police response has been too little and too
late. Investigations into the cycle of provocation and violence that led to the
conflagaration of September 7 have made little headway. And the police have
been conspicuous by their absence in villages cleansed of the Muslim presence,
where even the Jat community has chosen to make itself scarce. Mobile patrols
and static pickets have been absent where they may have been most required.
With the kind of religious cleansing that has been attempted, a number of
pickets should have been set up in all villages of mixed religious composition,
to check the growing animosity between communities. And even if a number of
complaints and FIR’s have been registered, there seems to have been no attempt
to arrest the perpetrators of the killing and the violent expulsion of Muslims.
The state government has disregarded
all norms of prudent staffing of police stations in a district of mixed
religious composition. Police stations according to the many victim-survivors
this team met, simply refused to respond to their urgent calls for help because
they were manned by personnel in tacit sympathy with the caste agenda of the
aggressors. In this respect, the locals believe that the Akhilesh Yadav
ministry has reversed a healthy practice from earlier years, to assign police command
posts in a manner that minimised the potential for conflict of interests
arising from caste or religious loyalties. The outcome is a complete loss of
faith in the agencies of the state, with the police now castigated as an
accessory of caste and communal violence.
This team was shocked at
the inability and incompetence of the state government, with even the basic
measures not being taken to ensure that those provoking a communal
conflagration were thwarted in their designs. Under threat of communal strife,
a government has four major tasks to perform, and this team which includes an
experienced civil administrator and senior police officer, feels that these
tasks, if done with commitment and competence, would have averted the threat of
communal violence. The essential steps involved -- prevention, control, rescue,
rehabilitation and justice – are dealt with in greater detail below.
Prevention: The Akhilesh Yadav government failed to still the
rumours that spread through the area like wildfire, adding to burgeoning
tensions and pushing communities into confrontation. There are no two views
that the Muzaffarnagar, and indeed the western belt of Uttar Pradesh, was
plagued by toxic rumours designed to pit communities against each other.
Instead of defusing these from the very beginning through a sustained
information campaign, the state government chose to ignore them, contributing
to a volatile atmosphere that could have erupted at any time.
Reports of the fake tape
that was posted on the social media by a BJP legislator of adjoining Meerut
district were also not acted upon by the state government until it was too late
to intervene. Arrest warrants of the legislator were issued, and the fact that
the video was of an incident in Pakistan, were made known only when the
violence had erupted.
Despite the tension over
the incidents of alleged harassment of young girls and the subsequent deaths,
the state government allowed large gatherings from both sides to take place without
check. Displaced villagers from different parts of the district told the team
that the violence started after panchayats
were held in their respective villages. Though DM Sharma claims that a number
of preventive arrests were made between August 31 and September 7, his case
seems to lack conviction.
The team does not accept
the explanation of the district authorities that they did not expect this mahapanchayat to take place. Villagers
confirmed that there was sufficient notice for this, and at least they all knew
it was going to be held. The failure to act on information was an abject
failure of the state government.
Control: The state government was unable to contain the violence
after it broke out. District authorities claimed that they had no idea it would
spread to the countryside, and were expecting it only in the town area of
Muzaffarnagar. The police was absent
with not a single incident being reported by the villagers of police
intervention to either arrest leaders making provocative speeches, or to help
those being attacked by mobs. There is not a single shred of evidence to prove
that the police acted against the mobs that freely attacked and killed their
neighbours, and looted and burnt homes. The Army was called in eventually, and
its presence brought down the levels of violence even though it was not authorised
by the state administration to use force for ensuring peace. Women and children
trapped in their homes told the team that they were rescued by the Army from
the burning villages. The displaced villagers also spoke of incidents where the
local police had supported the attacking mobs, but this could not be confirmed
independently. However, the absence of the police in itself was an act of
omission that really amounted to commission insofar as the raging violence was
concerned.
Rescue: The apparatus of the state government was not visible in
effecting the rescue of villagers from the mobs. Instead there are several
instances when Muslims from adjoining villages, rushed in to rescue those who
had been trapped in their bastis and could not escape.
Villagers ran for their
lives through the days and night, with the state administration unwilling or
unable to help them. Some were killed, others were injured, but the effort
remained to run to safety. Women spoke of how they ran with their little
children, terrified out of their wits, barefoot with no belongings for help, with
not a single policeman in sight. Their homes were looted and set ablaze but the
police are still to visit several of the affected villages till date.
Relief: Government figures place the number of displaced persons at
25,000 but the villagers of Muzaffarnagar insist the number is well over
50,000. Hundreds and thousands of men, women and children ran for their lives
over September 6-9, as they were attacked by mobs armed with lathis, guns,
swords, daggers and broken glass. They just ran without knowing where they
would go, as the crowds attacked them and their homes that were looted and in
several cases gutted. Many villagers ran for shelter just out of fear of being
attacked. They ended up in the bigger kasbas, in madarsas or just some open spaces where they were assured that
surrounding habitations held no threat.
They have been living
under the open skies since then, dependent entirely on the goodwill of those
around them for food, clothing and medical help. The local community has been
looking after their needs to the extent possible, by arranging food, bedding,
clothes. The state government had not stepped in according to the testimony of
the victim survivors, though DM Sharma insists that the district administration
had been organising supplies of essential commodities. It is difficult to avoid
the inference that these interventions came rather late and were intended to
embroider the scenario just ahead of a series of VVIP visits.
The team does not believe
that it is a good idea for the district administration to make a virtue of
community self-help in such situations. When the authority of the state is seen
to have eroded, or even collapsed, a visible presence of its agencies in the
subsequent rescue and rehabilitation is essential to restore public confidence.
Mothers with little babies
complained about the lack of food and medical aid. There were no doctors at the
camp. No police, no state official at all. The thousands of displaced persons
who made it clear they could never go back home, have been left by the Akhilesh
Yadav government to fend for themselves.
Justice: The state government has still not been able to initiate
the process of justice in the district. The police has filed a number of FIR’s
but these represent something of a scattershot approach and seem to have not
named the real perpetrators of the violence. Eyewitnesses to the violence told
this team that they have not been interviewed by the police. The essential step
to restore confidence, of setting up small police posts near the shelters where
the displaced have gathered, to gather their testimony, has not been taken.
At one of the larger
villages, Kutba, the team found a number of safai
karamcharis brought in to sweep the streets of what was a virtual ghost
town. Everyone had fled, the Muslims as they were attacked, and the Jats for
fear of arrests. Only a few women and old men remained. Asked about it a sub-divisional
magistrate supervising the arrangements said he was there for cleaning up. Then
seeming to realise that this safai could
well be interpreted as clearing up the evidence of serious crimes, he said that
his job was to take stock of the situation.
This team believes that
the procedure adopted shows a desire to cover up some of the worst acts of
violence that have occurred. The safai
operation which has been undertaken even before panchnamas with the victim have been registered about the losses
they have suffered, creates grave doubts about how compensation will be
evaluated in future.
Media mischief
It has been just over a
year since graphic images were circulated over internet and the mobile phone
network about the supposed atrocities inflicted on Muslims during the riots
that engulfed the Bodoland areas of Assam. The images were quickly discovered
to be manipulated and pulled out of an entirely irrelevant context, with
deliberate intent to stoke the flames of vengeance. Soon, rumours were spread
through the mobile phone network, that all people of northeastern origin in all
parts of India had been marked out for a severe retribution. A mass flight of
these people from some of India’s most cosmopolitan cities such as Bangalore
and Pune ensued. In Assam, where they were mostly headed, journalists and
social media users put all their energies into combating the noxious spread of
rumour. Despite the state of panic in which they arrived back in their
hometowns, those who had fled did not become agents of a further escalation in
the cycle of violence. Soon they were all travelling back to their places of
work. It was an incident that illustrated the worst of the possible uses of the
social media. By the same token, it showed also that the same media when used
with a degree of social responsibility and sensitivity, could be the best
antidote to sectarian political agendas.
Similar lessons emerge
from Muzaffarnagar, though with one rather crucial qualification: though its
use for destruction was amply on evidence, nobody quite stepped up to show how
the social media could be used for building bridges and cooling the embers of
sectarian hatred. The circulation of the images from Sialkot already referred
to, was one of the most blatant abuses of the power of the social media in the
Muzaffarnagar context. Those suspected of responsibility for this dark deed
have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including
forgery, criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity on religious grounds. But no
arrests have been effected, though one among those responsible is believed to
be roaming free in full public view in the district just adjoining
Muzaffarnagar.
Further mischief has
arisen from the use of stories and visuals published on mainstream media
platforms, though after morphing and manipulating them to serve a sectarian
agenda. The hand of the VHP functionaries in Muzaffarnagar is suspected in
these particular acts. For instance, on September 8, a story from the
Muzaffarnagar edition of Dainik Jagaran, a widely circulated daily newspaper in
the Hindi belt and especially U.P., was circulated with the headline “Muzaffarnagar mein Musalmaanon ka Aatank,
Hinduon mein Khauf” (Muslim terror in Muzaffarnagar, Fear among Hindus),
when the story was originally published under the headline “Panchayat se laute do logon ki hatya”
(Two killed while returning from panchayat).
On September 9, another scanned
news story from the Dainik Jagaran was
circulated with the headline reading: “Musalmaanon
dwaara HInduon ka Katile-aam Jaari” (Mass Murder of Hindus by Muslims
Underway), while the headline as published by the newspaper was “Dangaaiyon ko goli maarne ka aadesh”
(Orders issued to shoot rioters on sight).[1]
The authorities seemed to
respond to these threats in the worst possible manner: blocking the circulation
of various newspapers in the district. On September 9, it was reported that
copies of newspapers published in Delhi, Muzaffarnagar and Lucknow, were being
examined by the authorities and deliveries being delayed for fear that their
content could aggravate communal animosities.[2]
This was quite clearly the
worst possible response to the crisis of hatred spread through the social
media. In all such situations, it is the considered opinion of those who have
studied the role of the media in conflict situations, that the best recourse is
to allow the people to judge for themselves. Any reasonably well informed social
media reader would, on seeing the purported Dainik
Jagaran headline circulating through social media, make an effort to check
it against the original. The forgery and the mischief would in other words,
have been quickly detected if access had been ensured to the original item. In
seeking to deny this access, the authorities acted in panic and ill-considered
haste.
It is also appropriate to
flag the response of the mainstream media – including the numerous news
channels – for what seems a rather tepid response to the horrors of
Muzaffarnagar. From the days of Gujarat 2002, India’s first major communal
pogrom in the age of the twenty-four hour news channel, it has been evident
that a close watch over the course of the violence, once it flares up, often
shames the authorities into acting even against those with political
connections. That element of media pressure for swift and purposive administrative
action seems to have been absent in Muzaffarnagar. The reasons would need
careful study by all, including the media community.
The larger
politics
Finally, it is vital to take into
account the larger context in which the most recent round of communal violence
in Uttar Pradesh was constructed. This is a story that goes back to an early
date in the life of the Akhilesh Yadav ministry. In October 2012, riots broke
out in Faizabad district after some idols were reported missing from a temple
and politicians of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad appeared on the scene to blame the
administration and whip up hostilities against those of the Muslim faith. The
idols were soon afterwards discovered, but by then the violence had occurred,
the estrangement between communities had set in – and political dividends had
been harvested by whichever force staged that entire episode.
This was followed by a number of
minor skirmishes over the next few months. In August this year, when the VHP
chose to visit its old battleground of Ayodhya with the ritual mobilisation of
the “chaurasi kosi yatra”, the U.P.
State Government responded with a heavy-handed security cordon to prevent
Hindutva activists from arriving at the proposed site of the action. Local mahants at Ayodhya spoke up against the
VHP effort to take over as its exclusive patrimony, spaces they had learnt to
share over generations between various cults associated with Hindu divinity. And
the kosi yatra was soon called off
with the VHP retreating in disarray.
Muslim political groups in U.P.
remained unimpressed since the Akhilesh Yadav ministry has had a history of
double-dealing ever since it took office last year. There were rumours rife of
a “fixed match” in which the VHP had made a pretence of withdrawal on the
Ayodhya battleground, only to raise the stakes elsewhere. And the entire thing
was seen to be a choreographed spectacle in which Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi
Party (SP) and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would create a sharp
polarisation on communal grounds, compelling the electorate in the state to
make a choice between them, and squeezing out the other parties which have been
claiming significant shares of the popular vote in recent elections.
Political formations and civil
society actors in U.P. and elsewhere will have to watch the unfolding of any
such agenda in future months since the BJP has with the formal nomination of
Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate for general elections in 2014,
signalled that it will raise the temperature of confrontation between
communities as a matter of electoral strategy. The possible retreat of the
Muslims into a siege mentality would suit the cynical calculations of other
parties that thrive on the vulnerability of the religious minority. Political
formations committed to secularism and civil society actors working for
communal peace need to blow the whistle on this agenda before it causes deeper damage.
The consequences in human suffering of its full implementation could be beyond
imagination.
Recommendations
This team has on the basis of its
discussions with victim-survivors and the local administration, arrived at a
number of concrete recommendations in regard to immediate priorities for
action:
·
A Supreme Court judge should be appointed to carry out an
immediate and time-bound inquiry into the incidents of violence;
·
The Communal Violence bill should be brought to the first
rank of legislative priorities, making dereliction of duty by public officials involving
both acts of omission and commission, a punishable offence and instituting the
principle of command responsibility.
·
Legal and mandatory duties be instituted under the bill for
rescue, relief and rehabilitation of the victims of communal violence.
·
Immediate arrest of the political leaders who incited
violence at the mahapanchayat.
·
Arrest of the originator of the fake video which fomented ill
feeling among communities and contributed directly to the violence.
·
Lists to be prepared of all those displaced; their material
losses evaluated; supplies of food, drinking water, shelter and clothing to be
ensured, with special attention to the needs of women and children.
·
Doctors and medical attendants to be pressed into service at
all camps.
·
Urgent attention to the conditions of sanitation in the
camps.
·
Deployment of police personnel, including women constables to
guard the camps.
·
A coherent and credible plan to be worked out for the
rehabilitation of all the displaced in their original habitations.
·
Review of all
police postings in communally sensitive districts; reassignment of officers
seen to be too closely integrated with local caste and communal interest
groups.
ANNEXURE
The Role of Political
Parties
The trajectory of communal riots in
Uttar Pradesh has always displayed political hand/hands behind the violence.
The incident said to be triggering off the violence is usually preceded by days
or even weeks of rumours seeking to spread distrust and suspicion between the
targeted communities that eventually erupt in communal clashes. This has been
documented in reports over the years.
It was no different in Muzaffarnagar, a district and parliamentary
constituency with a high proportion of Muslims, Jats and Dalits peppered with
other castes. Estimates place the number of Muslims in the district as close to
47 per cent, although most of them are not land owners, according to the
District authorities, but work as labour on the land owned by the Jats, or have
petty businesses such as selling cloth from village to village.
Significantly, the relationship between the Jats and the Muslims has been
fairly stable with both voting together for the same political parties in the
past. Unlike the Dalits, the Muslims, while poor have not faced discrimination
at the same levels in this district, with Muzaffarnagar not experiencing
communal violence in the past. It has also been one of the first districts to
move away from the Congress monopoly of Uttar Pradesh after Independence,
searching for parliamentary alternatives as early as 1967.
A glance at the voting pattern bears this out. The Congress party held
sway in the initial years after Independence but in 1962 Muzaffarnagar departed
from the political norm to vote for the Communist Party of India in two
successive elections for the fourth and fifth Lok Sabha in 1967 and 1971
respectively. Latafat Ali Khan of the CPI was the first Muslim MP from
Muzaffarnagar in 1962. The Janata Party won the seat in 1977 and the Janata
party (S) in 1980. The 1984 election after the assassination of then Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi, brought back the Congress to Muzaffarnagar but only for one term in office. It returned to the Janata Dal whose
candidate Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was elected from this constituency in 1989 and
since then Muzaffarnagar constituency has remained with the opposition. The BJP
came to power for the first time in 1991 and stayed for three terms till 2004.
The Congress returned for one term, followed for the first time by the
Samajwadi party and currently in the 15th Lok Sabha by Qadir Rana of the Bahujan
Samaj party. In the 15th Lok Sabha Muzaffarnagar has returned only five Muslim
MPs to Parliament, despite the high percentage of the minority vote.
Secular voting has largely characterized this constituency until recent
years, since 1991 to be precise, when the BJP came to power for three
consecutive terms on the non-Muslim vote, followed then by a succession then of
three Muslim MPs albeit from three different parties, the Congress, Samajwadi
and BSP respectively.
It is clear from the political history of Muzaffarnagar that the
Rashtriya Lok Dal under Ajit Singh is not a factor here. His party has never
won the seat, and in the battle for the Jat vote between the RJD and the BJP in
western UP, the Muzaffarnagar Jats have clearly opted for the BJP as the
political parliamentary trajectory indicates.
The Political Players
Bahujan Samaj Party: its sitting MP Qadir Rana has not been seen since the violence broke
out. Muslims in relief camps are highly critical of his absence. An FIR has
been filed against him for hate speech at a public meeting addressed by
different political parties on August 30.
The BSP has asked for the dismissal of the Akhilesh Yadav government, and
the imposition of President’s rule in Uttar Pradesh. But apart from this one
demand and criticism of the state government’s role, the BSP seems to be
following a “hands off” policy with the party remaining out of the current
conflict. Although some Jats in one of the worst hit villages, Kutba said that
the Dalits had attacked the Muslim homes, there was no confirmation of this
from the affected Muslims who were categorical that they had been attacked by
their Jat neighbours and not the Dalits.
The BSP stands to gain politically if the Muslim vote that seems to be
shifting from Samajwadi Party at this point in time gravitates towards it, as
it has done in the past. Muslims in relief camps recalled the peaceful days
under the Mayawati government, and insisted individually that her
administrative policies were inclusive and not divisive.
Congress Party: Clearly in the assessment of the party leadership, the violence
provides an opportunity for garnering the votes. As a result of this Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi paid a flying visit to
Muzaffarnagar, with the former taking the unprecedented step of having a
meeting with district and state officials at the helipad itself. A day before
the district authorities were busy renovating two rooms near the helipad for
this meeting by the Prime Minister to send out the message that the Congress
party was monitoring the situation closely.
The police field an FIR against Congress leader Saeedujjama for allegedly
provocative speeches on August 30.
Bharatiya Janata Party: The BJP has been actively involved in the violence and could emerge,
when the embers die down, as the major gainer. Its leaders have been active in
organising the panchayats and the mahapanchayats in the villages where hate
speeches pushed the crowd to take revenge against the Muslims for harassing
their women. Slogans against Muslims for killing cows and assaulting Hindu
women mixed with slogans in support of Narendra Modi rent the air after the
series of meetings and mahapanchayats in the villages. Several Muslims,
including women, in the relief camps told the team that the mobs were shouting Har Har Mahadev and slogans in support
of Narendra Modi when they attacked the villages.
After speaking to the district authorities and the residents of
Muzaffarnagar, the team came to the conclusion that the BJP had played a major
role in spreading lies and rumours across the countryside. There is concrete
evidence of
1) A video of an over two-year-old incident in Pakistan was posted
on the social media by legislator Sangeet Singh Som from Sardana assembly
constituency as an act of violence perpetrated by Muzaffarnagar Muslims. A
warrant is out for his arrest but he has so far not been nabbed.
2) Hate speeches by BJP leaders inciting crowds to attack the Muslims and
teach them a lesson. FIRs have been registered against at least four senior BJP
leaders and many others who have still to be apprehended. BJP workers have
successfully blocked the police from arresting these leaders so far.
3) Of rumours spread through the villages based on lies, and calculated
to stir passions. These spread like wildfire across the belt, with villagers
running for shelter for fear of impending attack. In most of the affected
villages, the men armed themselves with sticks, broken glass, guns and daggers
to attack the Muslims and prevent them from harassing their women, while in a
few the Jats also ran for shelter believing they would be attacked by the
Muslims. Here the theme was “save our women” and not “Muslims are
terrorists”.
4) Tension was already brewing in Western UP before the alleged eve
teasing and subsequent murder incident. The panchayats and in particular the
last mahapanchayat held on September 7 openly incited the mobs to violence so
as to "save" their women. Leaders belonging to the BJP, according to
eyewitness accounts, were in charge.
The BJP stands to gain substantially through the polarisation of votes.
Uttar Pradesh is an important state with 80 parliamentary seats, for the
forthcoming general elections. Jats dominate western UP and the violence in
Muzaffarnagar has had impact across the belt. The consolidation of the Jat and
other caste vote with a fractured minority vote, will allow the BJP to reap in
huge electoral dividends.
Samajwadi Party: The Samajwadi Party now has the most to lose. The level of violence in
Muzaffarabad has taken away whatever advantage it could have had through a
polarisation of the vote.
The inability of the Akhilesh Yadav to prevent and control the violence
has turned the Muslims completely against the Samajwadi party in Muzaffarnagar.
Muslims forced to leave their homes and villages attacked the state government
for not protecting them, with some even maintaining that it was working along
with the BJP for electoral gains.
The Muslim vote in western Uttar Pradesh that has been impacted by the
violence is likely to move away from the Samajwadi party, and look at other
alternatives. This is one of the major reasons why the Congress has already
stepped in for benefits, while the more cautious BSP is still testing the
waters.
One of the main rumours circulating not just in Muzaffarnagar but in UP
and Delhi as well is that Mulayam Singh and the BJP have been working together
to ensure the consolidation of the vote bank. There is not sufficient evidence
on the ground to support this except for the fact that:
(i) despite information the state government did not move to prevent the
mahapanchayat and subsequent panchayats that vitiated the secular atmosphere in
the villages; and
(ii) till date its police, despite supposed instructions, has not
arrested a single BJP leader despite the FIRs against them.
The district authorities told the team that they had expected some
violence in Muzaffarnagar but had not expected the flames to engulf the
villages. Here, the authorities said, they were completely taken by surprise.
The Samajwadi party, for the moment at least, has factored itself out of
this belt and has lost the support of the Muslims.
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