Jamal Kidwai: Violence in Trilokpuri - Hindutva Priming for Delhi Elections
The recent violence in Trilokpuri and communal incidents
in some other areas of Delhi Delhi
On Diwali night, Thursday, 23 October 2014 a minor brawl
between groups of young Hindus and Muslims in the Trilokpuri locality in Delhi escalated into a
full-fledged communal conflagration by the next afternoon. The violence
continued till late Saturday evening. There is no official version of what
caused the initial confrontation except for the fact that it began at the site
of a makeshift Hindu shrine called the Mata-Ki-Chowki. The locals
and the police confirm that the Mata-Ki-Chowki came up sometime in late
September at a spot where there was earlier a garbage dump. The violence took
the form of heavy stone-pelting between communities, some instances of gunfire
and the burning down of some vehicles. A clothes showroom called “A2Z” owned by
a Muslim shopkeeper was completely burnt down. It took the administration and
the police almost four days to quell the violence. The Delhi Police, the Rapid
Action Force and the Central Reserve Police Force were deployed, Section 144 of
the Code of Criminal Procedure was instituted, and curfews were imposed in
several blocks of Trilokpuri. By then, fearing more violence, a large number of
families had migrated to safer places in the city and many have returned to
their villages in western Uttar Pradesh (UP), in the districts of Meerut , Badaun and
Bulandshahar.
Over a hundred people were detained by the police and nearly
50 arrested. The police conducted sustained door-to-door searches and claimed
to have recovered a large number of swords, empty bottles, bricks and other
such objects used during the violence. For the first time, drones were deployed
by the police to scan terraces for such material and they claim this method
provided them much assistance in conducting search operations. By 31
October, exactly a week after the violence began, there was apparent peace and
gestures of reconciliation between the two communities. A prayer ceremony with
bhajans and kirtans was organised in the evening at the Mata-Ki-Chowki. Members
of the “peace committee” formed by the police and residents of Trilokpuri took
an active part in the event and, according to the police, over a thousand
people, including several Muslims participated in the event. Prohibitory orders
were relaxed for over 12 hours and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of
Parliament, Mahesh Giri, also participated in the ceremony for a short while.
A Difficult History - Trilokpuri, located in the
trans-Yamuna area of east Delhi ,
came up as a resettlement colony, along with several others like Kalyanpuri,
Seelampur and Nand Nagari during the post-Emergency years of the mid-1970s.
These colonies were established to house thousands of people who were evicted
from central Delhi
during the Emergency as a part of the slum-clearance drive by Sanjay Gandhi and
Jagmohan. Large number of Muslims and Valmikis (a sub-caste of dalits) came to
settle in Trilokpuri in 1976. The Muslims were mostly displaced from the
demolitions that took place at Turkman Gate near old Delhi
while the Valmikis were evacuated from Mandir Marg, behind the famous Birla
Mandir in central Delhi .
Trilokpuri has 36 blocks and five out of these 36 blocks
have a large population of Muslims, while the others have a significant dalit
(Valmiki) population. Until November 1984 Block 32 used to be dominated by
Labana Sikhs, who originally came from Sindh in Pakistan
but had migrated to Rajasthan after Partition and then subsequently to Delhi . Among the three
communities, they were the first to settle in Trilokpuri. In 1984 some of the
worst violence during the anti-Sikh pogrom was witnessed in Trilokpuri.
According to some estimates, more than 300 Sikhs were killed in this area.
One of the few people convicted by the courts for leading
and inciting the mob that killed the Sikhs was Kishori Lal, also known as the
“Butcher of Trilokpuri”. The massacre led to the migration of Sikhs from Block
32, which was subsequently occupied mostly by Muslims. The present-day
residents of Trilokpuri, like those of many other resettlement colonies of Delhi , are mostly
migrants and daily wage earners and work in informal sectors like construction
work, as cycle and autorickshaw pullers and housemaids. The construction of the
Metro line in Trilokpuri has temporarily created severe dislocation on the
roads and with the infrastructure, but as typically happens, the coming of the
metro connectivity has also led to a sharp rise in property prices in the
locality.
A Well-Honed Strategy - The scale of violence
and the damage caused in Trilokpuri in the past days is relatively minor if it
is compared to the characteristics normally associated with a communal riot in India . There
were no deaths, very few injuries and no major damage to property. Moreover,
the situation was brought under control in three to four days. What is
disturbing though about the Trilokpuri violence is that it seems to replicate
and reinforce several disturbing trends that characterised the Muzaffarnagar
violence in UP exactly a year ago. These events highlight and point towards a
well-thought-out political and social strategy by certain right-wing social organisations
and political parties to not merely systematically polarise society on communal
lines but to also drive a social and political wedge between dalits and
Muslims.
A closer look at some events related to communal tension in
the recent past indicates that there is a running theme and design to create
communal polarisation. Issues such as vandalising of temples, conflict and
dispute over the use of loudspeakers in mosques and temples, “love-jihad” and
cow-slaughter have regularly been invoked in Delhi and surrounding towns and villages of
western UP in this project. The partisan role of the police and the systematic
utilisation of rumours as a tool to instigate violence and create panic, as
well as the transfer of assets and migration of population have become key
characteristics of this polarisation.
Let us look at some events related to communal tension in
the recent past. During the first week of October, just when the Eid festival
was approaching, tension prevailed for several days in north-west Delhi in the
Bawana-Narela area when a newly-formed group, called the Hindu Krantikari Sena
(Revolutionary Hindu Militia) put up inflammatory posters announcing that the India-Pakistan
war had reached Bawana, that the Muslims were slaughtering cows and that the
Hindu religion was under threat.
On 2 October 2014 some 200 young Hindu men patrolled the
area on motorcycles demanding that the police search Muslim houses, alleging
that there was cow-slaughter happening. Like Trilokpuri, Bawana-Narela is
also a resettlement colony inhabited by people who were displaced by
slum-clearance drives during the mid-2000s. A large population of Muslims now
living in Bawana-Narela came from Yamuna Pustha where their houses were
demolished to build a bus depot as part of the Commonwealth Games
infrastructure. And, as in Trilokpuri, dalits in Bawana-Narela have a
significant presence. An uneasy calm stalks the area even now with the Hindu Krantikari
Sena still carrying on its propaganda. As this article is being written,
posters have come up in Bawana where right-wing Hindu groups have called for a
“Mahapanchayat” (just like in western UP last year before the riots started) to
decide on a strategy to ensure that “Muslims do not indulge in violence during
the Muharram on 4 November” when Tazia processions are taken out.
Keep the Cauldron Boiling - The demographic
profile of Trilokpuri and Bawana-Narela is very similar to several towns and
villages of western UP that experienced communal conflagrations after the
Muzaffarnagar violence in August 2013. In July this year, removal of a
loudspeaker from a Valmiki temple in Kanth town of Moradabad led to communal
clashes between Hindus and Muslims; the town remained under curfew for several
days and the conflict was used by organisations like the Vishva Hindu Parishad
to deepen the divide, by giving a call to conduct rituals like the jal
abhishek at the same temple. This was followed by rumours that a Ravidas
temple in Badaun district had been vandalised, and then in Meerut Valmikis
alleged that their temple had been desecrated.
The similarity between Trilokpuri and Kanth is even more
stark. No Mata-ki-Chowki existed in Trilokpuri and no loudspeakers had been
used before in Kanth, which suggests a well-thought-out plan. In the last week
of July, Saharanpur ,
another town in western UP, was gripped by violence over a land dispute at a
gurudwara between the Sikh and Muslim communities. The confrontation began by
stone-pelting between members of these two communities but soon turned into a
full-scale communal riot in which three people died, many were injured and a
large number of shops and houses were burnt down.
Love-jihad” is the other running theme that the right-wing
Hindutva groups have successfully managed to install as an agenda in national
politics and around which communal mobilisations are taking place. The
accusation by a Hindu girl from Meerut
that her Muslim boyfriend had kidnapped her and she was gang-raped eventually
proved to be false and made under duress. It was discovered that the girl was
forced to make such a false accusation against the boy under pressure from her
family and a new organisation called the “Meerut Beti Bachao Andolan”. In
neighbouring Hathras, a dalit woman immolated herself and the accusations were
made that she did it because she was gang-raped by Muslim men, charges that
have not been proved yet.
For Hindutva groups and the BJP, Muzaffarnagar has been a
trendsetter in many ways as far as electoral politics and political dividends
are concerned. The Hindu-Muslim polarisation and the vicious hate campaign that
happened after the Muzaffarnagar violence is believed to be one of the reasons
why the BJP was able to win an unprecedented 73 Lok Sabha seats in UP (out of a
total of 80).
Three assembly seats in Delhi are going to the polls on 25 November.
The outcome of these by-elections is being seen as an indicator of which way
the votes will swing. If the BJP retains these three seats it will get closer
to the half-way mark and it will be that much easier for it to get the support
of the three MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly) needed to prove its
majority on the floor of the Delhi Assembly. If it is unable to do that and
fresh elections take place, it would have in any case created a rift between
the social alliance of the poor and working-class dalits and Muslims and the
middle classes that voted in large number for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which
has emerged as its main challenger given the electoral decimation of the
Congress. It is instructive that the sitting MLA of Trilokpuri is a first-time
MLA from AAP. Sunil Vaid, the former MLA, is from the BJP and one of the
accused in instigating the Trilokpuri violence; he had been proactive in the
setting up of the Mata-Ki-Chowki.
Partisanship and Rumours
The partisan role of the police during communal violence has
been extensively documented. Investigations conducted by independent
organisations have highlighted the fact that in many instances, the police have
actively participated in targeting members of the minority community. The
starkest examples are the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 in Delhi ,
the riots in Bombay in 1993 and the Gujarat violence in 2002. Fact-finding investigations
conducted by civil society and human rights organisations into the Muzaffarnagar
riots and the testimonies of Muslims from Trilokpuri have accused the police of
demonstrating their biases in two ways.
First, violence could have been prevented if the police had acted swiftly when the trouble began. Second – a more serious accusation – that, on the one hand, the police collaborated with the Hindutva instigators and those indulging in violence from the side of the majority community, and on the other hand, also implicated Muslims in cases under false charges and indulged in custodial violence. These alleged atrocities by the police during the Trilokpuri violence have been submitted as a status report to the National Human Rights Commission by human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover and some residents of Trilokpuri. Though no official figures and estimates are available, the partisan role of the police is also reinforced when we find that the maximum damage caused to the property during the violence occurred in areas inhabited by Muslims. Yet among those arrested, the number of Muslims far outnumber Hindus. A total of 35 people accused of violence in Trilokpuri have been arrested by the
Rumour has always played an important role in instigating
communal violence. This has been demonstrated time and again in academic
writing and various fact-finding reports conducted by human rights groups. It
is typically assumed that modern methods of communication and a strong
independent visual media will assist in objective and transparent coverage of
communal violence and will act as a deterrent as those indulging in communal
propaganda.
On the contrary, the events of Muzaffarnagar, Trilokpuri and
other places mentioned above show that cell phone and social media have been
effectively used by the communal elements to incite violence and create panic
and insecurity. What caused the riot in Muzaffarnagar last year is still in the
realm of speculation and there is still no official reason given by the
investigating agencies. Whether it was the circulation of a fake video in which
Muslims were accused of killing two Jat boys that caused the riot, or an
alleged sexual harassment incident, or a combination of these factors and some
others that led to the riot, all of this remains unknown.
Similarly, in Trilokpuri, we still do not know when the
Mata-Ki-Chowki came up, how long it will remain there and whether it was the
drunken brawl between some young men of the Hindu and Muslim community at the
site of the Mata-Ki-Chowki that led to the conflict or a dispute at the illegal
gambling den that started a fight and became a riot. In Trilokpuri, there were
several other rumours doing the rounds throughout the week on cell phone
applications like WhatsApp and through the “sms”. One related to the death of a
Valmiki youth injured in firing, and this created fresh tension in the area.
This rumour kept doing the rounds for two days. There was another rumour which
claimed that some plain-clothed cops were raiding Muslims’ houses and illegally
detaining people, which led to widespread panic.
How to Conclude - Finally, what stood out in
Trilokpuri is the role played by civil society groups and various human rights
organisations in mitigating the violence and ensuring that minimum human rights
violations take place. Within hours of the eruption of violence, these
organisations got into action at several levels. There were groups who went to
Trilokpuri to mobilise people and campaigned for restoration of peace; there were
others who arrived at the various police stations in and around Trilokpuri to
put pressure on the police to take action while others appealed to the higher
officials in the state police administration.
Media was mobilised and monitored, and advocacy was
conducted to ensure that as far as possible, there was objective and unbiased
reporting. Legal assistance to those wrongly arrested and visits of the family
members of those lodged in were facilitated by these groups. Memorandums were
submitted to the National Human Rights Commission and National Commission for
Minorities, the members of the latter also made a visit to Trilokpuri. Peace
committees and interaction among members of the two communities were initiated
and regular coordination meetings were held in and outside Trilokpuri. The fact
that despite all these efforts, there were still reports of human rights
violations and atrocities shows that an absence of such groups could have made
the situation far worse.
In contrast, what was disturbing was the complete absence of
the mainstream political parties which claim to represent secular and liberal
ideologies. Most noticeable was the absence of AAP which is considered a
grass-roots party in Delhi and has developed a
wide network in slums and working-class colonies of Delhi . Their leaders made statements and
visits only when the situation was brought under control. The inactivity on the
part of these political parties is troubling, because on the one hand it shows
that they lack the political imagination to counter a resurgent Hindutva
politics in everyday life. On the other hand they practise politics in a narrow
sense of winning and losing elections. Perhaps, they fear that if they stand up
against the politics of communal polarisation they will alienate communities
and lose votes and face electoral setbacks.
The violence in Trilokpuri is a warning about the larger
strategy of Hindutva politics in the present context. The communal cauldron is
sought to be kept at just below boiling point, enough to polarise social
constituencies and individual voters along religious and caste lines. It is
instructive that dalit and other working-class voters are being targeted for
communal mobilisation in Delhi
when it is on the cusp of new elections. The by-elections in UP some months ago
indicated that voters saw through such cynical ploys and did not coalesce
around the BJP as had been hoped for by the instigators of the various communal
campaigns. What lessons the electorate of Delhi
learn, and teach, will be known soon in the future. However, the battle against
the present round of communal mobilisations will be much more difficult to
sustain, given how meekly political parties which claim to oppose them have
surrendered themselves.
