JAVED IQBAL - In Communally Sensitive Bhagalpur, a Non-Riot
NB - The whole world should know how communal violence is now the default mode of mobilisation for certain die-hard political hate-mongers in India. First the legs of a cow were thrown in a Hindu area and then
a dead piglet was left inside a mosque. Despite these deliberate attempts to
provoke violence, however, the efforts of concerned citizens and a dedicated
police chief ensured peace prevailed. An excellent piece of journalism. DS
Bhagalpur (Bihar): The minute you tell people
in Bhagalpur that you want to do a story to counter the narrative of
communalism in the mainstream news, they welcome you with open arms. On September 26 and then again on the 30th, Bhagalpur
town saw two mobs form over the deliberate placement of particular forms of
meat in a town that has seen widespread communal clashes and pogroms in the
past. A month-old piglet, with his hind legs tied, and its neck cut, was thrown
into a mosque; three days earlier, three beef shanks (legs) were thrown onto a
street in a predominately Hindu area.
Shops shut down in fear as mobs formed, threatening violence
and demanding the culprits be found, yet something else happened. A calmness prevailed over the swirling hatred, and it
was no coincidence that it was the older generation of Hindus and Muslims who
had lived through the 1989 riots that helped placate the mobs. This was the first time the provocative use of
controversial meat was used to spur communal incidents in Bhagalpur,
a town that has seen repeated incidents over inter-religious marriages,
and during the interlapse of durga puja, moharram for decades. The fact
that the incident took place just a fortnight before the first round of
polling in the ongoing Bihar assembly elections led to residents
claiming that someone was doing ‘rajneeti’. Yet one wonders
whether mere instigation is enough to polarise the vote.
Most people feel the Bharatiya Janta Party in Bhagalpur town
is in trouble, due to the breakaway faction of Vijay Kumar Sah – who ran as an
independent against the BJP’s Arijit Shashwat, and whose rallies saw over
500 motorcycles across town, against the 200 or so of the BJP. The
Congress’s Ajit Sharma also stood a strong chance due to this in-fighting and
the consolidation of Muslim votes, yet I shall restrain myself from one of the
most popular activities in Bihar today: talk about who is winning, and who
might lose in which area.
‘Why would anyone throw beef in a Hindu area?’
Tanti Bazaar in Champanagar, Bhagalpur is an unremarkable
road separating the Muslim bunkars (weavers) from their Hindu
counterparts. It is also the site of a large Jain temple. It was
around dusk when, in the cover of darkness, three beef shanks appeared to have
been left on the road. Within minutes, there was a mob of young people, locals and
outsiders, clamouring for the administration to arrive. They apparently called
for apt retribution, screaming at the few local Muslims how happened to be
around: ‘What would happen if we throw a pig in your locality?’
Nujahid Ansari, who lives a mere five minutes away was
called by the police and told to go and deal with the matter. He is part of the
Bunkar Sangarsh Samiti, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), as well as the
local peace committee. He wanted to take the meat away himself but was
restrained by the crowd who wanted the administration to appear first. His next
action was to send reliable people to nearby cross-roads, and make sure that
Muslims returning home from work did not walk into the angry crowd.
Uday Shankar, another middle-aged resident’s first response
to the incident, was the oft-repeated and sometimes cliched statement that
Hindu-Muslims here have always united with each other: ‘Yahan ke
log itne judey hain, hum taani aur bharni ke jaise hai.’ (We’re as
united here as the intercross of fibre on cloth.) ‘All the boys who were aggressive were 20 to 25-years old,’
he adds, a fact confirmed by a visibly upset Sajjan Kumar Sah, who also
debated with the angry mob. Sah was one of the first people to notice what had happened
as the meat was thrown right in front of his workshop.
As he began to appeal for calm, a young man whom Sah refuses
to name, yelled at him saying, ‘Aap chup rahiye, aap toh Ansari bann
gaye.’ (You keep quiet, you’ve become an Ansari.) People like him braved insults and continued to
press for peace and only went to their homes when the situation was
under control, as the administration and the police were swift to arrive. (The
District Magistrate was quick to point out that law and order was more
important than his ‘official duties.) Unlike 1989, when Satyendra Narain Sinha
of the Congress was the Chief Minister, the police did not act
partisan or instigate the mobs – as enquiry reports into that deadly riot
have established, implicating, in particular, the then Superintendent of
Police, K.S. Dwivedi.
Dwivedi is now an Inspector General in Bihar. The Congress paid
dearly for the complicity of the state administration in the violence. The
Muslims of Bhagalpur, until then loyal Congress voters, eventually moved over
to Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The present Superintendent of Police, Bhagalpur, 37-year-old
Vivek Kumar followed the letter of the law: he heard about the incident
when he was in the headquarters and instantly directed the civil society shanti
committees, policemen and women from eight to ten police stations, the Rapid
Action Force, the CRPF , and only then left for the site. ‘People from
both communities had shown lots of maturity,’ he said, adding, ‘Whatever the
anti-social elements wanted, they failed.’
‘Are you aware of what had happened in 1989 in Bhagalpur?’ I
asked him.
‘Of course.’
‘So what motivated you to act with such diligence when you
heard about this?’
‘That this just doesn’t go out of control.’
Later, Sajjan Kumar Sah recalled for me the riots of 1989:
how he and few young men would patrol the area, where just two kilometres away,
Muslim localities were being attacked. ‘Doh mussalmaan bhaag rahe the,
aur unke peeche thode log talwaar leke aa rahe the.’ (Two Muslim men were
running away from people with swords.)
Sah remembers that he saved the life of 70-year-old Inamul
Haque, describing the men who were trying to kill him as ‘BJP-minded’
people. He goes on to add that whoever threw the beef to provoke people were
neither Muslim nor Hindu, but inhuman. ‘Why would anyone throw beef in a Hindu area?’ asks Nujahid.
‘And why that part of the animal? The legs? I don’t think any Muslim could have
done this. If a Muslim wanted to provoke the Hindus why would he throw the most
cherished part of the animal? He could throw bones, he could throw the waste.’
It was around 8 in the morning at the Shahi Masjid at Jabbar
Chowk that labourers working on the second floor of the mosque discovered a
piglet with its throat cut left on a rug. They quickly informed the Imam,
25-year-old Mohammed Ulfad Hussain, whose first action was to shut the
gate of the mosque, and then call the people whom he trusted the most.
Yet rumours began to spread, and within 30 minutes,
hundreds of people had gathered near the mosque. Dr. Sallauddin Ahsan, Principal of M.M. College Bhagalpur
was one of the first to arrive on the scene, and began calling the police and
the administration.
‘We wanted the administration and the police to just catch
who did this,’ he said. ‘The DSP was the first senior officer to arrive, but he
was also a Muslim. So we decided to wait for the SDO or DM who is Hindu.
Otherwise they would’ve thought that we Muslims did this to ourselves.’
Within minutes, hundreds of security forces had cordoned off
the area and prevented people from coming towards the mosque, which is off the
main road. Yet those who knew the neighbourhood managed to come to the mosque
and climb the roof of the neighbouring house to try to get a look at the body
of the piglet. When the media arrived, a whole mob managed to get inside the
gate of the mosque along with camera persons, but were swiftly chased out. Yet
not without taking photos.
With all the clamour about Digital India, there was a unique
moment of mature self-censorship. When Sallauddin and Professor
Hasnayn Alam saw that their relatives in Delhi and the Gulf began to put the
photo of the pig on Whatsapp and Facebook, they instantly called them and got
them to delete it. They refused to share the photos they had with people they
knew, keeping it only for evidence – to show that this was no accident but a
deliberate attempt at provocation: the image clearly shows the animal with its
neck slit and its hind legs tied.
‘People wanted to go do a chakka jam on
the street, all the young boys, but we made sure they didn’t,’ said Sallauddin. ‘The local media also behaved well, but tell me one thing,’
he said, but then asked, ‘Why is it that in the national media’s talk shows,
three maulanas are given the right to speak for all Muslims?’
Post-Script
In Champanagar, Nujahid Ansari had offered to cart away the
cow shanks, but it was Alam, a driver who works with the police, who
finally took it away. In Jabbar Chowk, the ‘safai karmachari’ took the pig carcass
away, and the caretakers of the mosque cleaned the space. The offending meat was taken to the police station,
catalogued as evidence, photographed, and disposed of as there were no freezers
in the evidence room. The police are still trying to find out who was
behind these attempts to stir up trouble.
A few days ago, I received a story that is going a bit viral
amongst Indian Muslims, whose author I am unable to trace:
“In a small village in India, a little fox told its father
of his desire to eat human flesh. Next day father fox managed to get some pig
meat and offered it to his cub. But the little fox wouldn’t have it. Then
the father fox managed to get some cow meat and offered it. The
cub refused to eat that as well. “The stubborn little fox was adamant that he will not settle
for anything other than human meat. That night the father fox left the pork in
the front of a masjid and the beef in the front of a temple. The
next morning the entire village was filled with dead humans and the little
fox ate his fill.
“Story might be hypothetical, but the Fox is for real.
Author unknown.”
Javed Iqbal is a freelance journalist and photographer
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