The fire has been lit

Neerja Chowdhury

Senior Political Commentator

Parliament, when it resumed the Budget session on Monday, did not think it fit to condole the death of 47 people who were killed in communal clashes last week. The riots, stabbings, shooting and arson had taken place, not in some remote corner of India, but in the heart of the country’s Capital, only a few kilometres from the Parliament building, shaking India to the core as few events have done after the 1984 riots.

In the years gone by, Parliament would have dispensed with every other business to take up a matter of such import immediately. The Lok Sabha Speaker has agreed to a discussion, but only after Holi (over two weeks after the killings).

Opposition parties demanded immediate discussion, but to no avail. Sixteen Congress MPs — not even all 54 of them had been mobilised — stood in front of Gandhi’s statue, shouting slogans. Most of their fellow party MPs were not even aware of this protest. It looked like tokenistic business, as happens in every session of Parliament.

The Delhi violence has underlined the nature of the government we have today, and the hopelessly inadequate response of the Opposition. It has not only brought into sharp focus the fault lines of the Indian Republic, but also deepened them.

Governments are elected by the people to look after their interest. Forget ensuring their well-being, the government could not even save their lives, with mobs on the rampage for three days. Delhi’s police force, which works under the Centre and is well trained in controlling mob violence, stood by watching passively, with some colluding in the violence. Every SHO knows the troublemakers in his area and when to round them up, particularly when someone like Donald Trump is in town.

Person after person, both Hindu and Muslim in northeast Delhi, revealed that the police had told them they had ‘no orders’ to intervene. If things went out of control on day one (when stone-pelting took place), they could have been controlled on day two (when terrible communal clashes took place). This was not done even on day three (when outsiders came and targeted Muslims, using guns; several casualties were from the Muslim community and Hindus were also brutally killed).

Many believe that the Delhi Police have been made the fall guy, for that very police force, once given orders on day four, had controlled the situation within minutes and hours, and things are limping back to normalcy.

A supposedly strong government, headed by a strong PM and a tough Home Minister, could not prevent the destruction of jaan and maal in the Capital.

Many believe that the CAA-NPR-NRC has come in as the next potent tool for the BJP to mobilise the Hindus in its favour in the coming years and it will keep the pot boiling — just as Ayodhya, now a dead issue, had yielded the party rich dividends in the eighties and nineties.

So far, the BJP’s goli maaro rhetoric was limited to words, surfacing during the Delhi election campaign. Last week saw it translated into gruesome action. It resurfaced in Kolkata, this time at the Home Minister’s rally, where for all practical purposes, Amit Shah launched the BJP’s campaign for the 2021 elections. It is obviously going to be used increasingly as a mobilisational tool in West Bengal and also elsewhere (UP in 2022). Its ability to polarise is more potent in states where Muslims form a sizeable chunk of the population. In West Bengal, their number is around 30%.

CM Nitish Kumar may be wary of such a strategy in Bihar. He has already made it clear that there would be no NRC in the state and only the 2010 version of the NPR, without the questionable posers, included in it. Would the BJP pursue a more restrained line in Bihar or would it be ready to break with its ally if it is confident of winning on its own on the strength of polarising the electorate?

Poll strategy apart, the underlying message of goli maaro is ominous: That differences in a democracy can now be settled, not through a debate but through violence, with people taking law into their hands and a passive government machinery looking the other way. The government can go on to make all sympathetic noises after it is over, and a ‘suitable’ message has been delivered to the opponents.

We are looking at an India which seems headed for greater conflict in the coming months and years. Forget economic development, forget creation of jobs for the young (50% of India is under 25). Will a ‘feel good’ factor, which comes from targeting the ‘other’, be good enough to fulfil the aspirations of the young and contain their frustrations?

Ghettoisation in Delhi — and other parts of the country — is bound to increase. Already there are reports of apprehensive Muslims sitting inside their locked houses in other parts of Delhi. Hindus are also sleeping with ‘their own’ at night in some affected parts of Delhi. Many ask what will happen when the force is withdrawn. The redeeming aspect has been the heroic stories of Muslims helping the Hindus and Hindus coming to the rescue of Muslims, and Sikhs helping both.

In the first 45 years of the Republic, 50 people had died in Hindu-Muslim violence in Delhi. But last week, only in three days, the number of dead has touched 47. This shows the enormity of what took place in Delhi.

But there was nothing more poignant about the ‘Dilli danga’ than to see a class X Muslim student, lying flat in hospital, with doctors unable to take out a bullet lodged in his spine, and to hear a class X Hindu boy, his school gutted, say, ‘I can’t sleep at night anymore.’

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