Above: A Gurdwara under attack last week in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
New Delhi, India
Communal flare-up has gripped India in the last two months since the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power.
Sikhs of neighbouring Punjab and Haryana are on the verge of clash over formation of a separate Gurdwara management committee.
Two sects of Muslims clashed in the Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow.
And now the Uttar Pradesh town Saharanpur is under curfew following armed clash between Muslims and Sikhs over a property dispute in which three people were killed and 20 injured. [These are official figures which are regularly downplayed through censorship when the government is embarrassed by them.]
“You cannot blame Modi for these incidents. We in BJP believe in secularism but the communal elements within the Muslim community are not at ease with formation of the BJP government and are trying to discredit Modi,” said BJP leader Jawahar Yadav, adding that the entire Muslim community cannot be termed as communal and responsible for the communal flare-up.
Yadav’s explanation notwithstanding, the track record of some BJP leaders and those of its associates are far from encouraging. If the row created by the BJP legislative party leader K. Laxman over the Telangana government nominating tennis star Sania Mirza as the new state’s brand ambassador was disgraceful, Goa’s deputy chief minister Francis D’Souza’s statement that all Indians are Hindus was totally unwarranted. D’Souza termed himself as a Christian Hindu.
The radical Vishwa Hindu Parishad chief Praveen Togadia is back in the news again by calling for converting the secular India into a Hindu nation, while lawmakers of BJP’s ally Shiv Sena were in the news for force-feeding a fasting Muslim at New Delhi’s Maharashtra Sadan to express their displeasure over the quality of food served to them.
“These incidents are being blown out of proportion. I don’t think Modi has any role to play in these. As the prime minister of India he has to fulfil his promises on the economic front and he knows it well that communal tension would drive away foreign investors. As for the force-feeding issue, it’s possible that the Shiv Sena lawmakers did not know religious background of the canteen supervisor but their act, even if the supervisor was a Hindu, was condemnable. As a member of parliament you have to behave with dignity,” explained political commentator Vinod Mehta.
Dr Jolly Bansal, a heart specialist, is not convinced that Modi cannot be blamed for the recent communal flare up in the country, saying Modi’s charisma is on the wane and people would realise hollowness of his leadership quality.
“As an honest leader you need to be with the people and work for them. Modi is losing his grip over the administration as his priorities are wrong. He seems more keen on foreign trips than taking up the issue of communal harmony,” Dr Bansal said.
TV journalist Rajan Sharma, however, does feel that the Muslims are being provoked.
“No doubt there is a fear psychosis amongst Muslims. The vested interest has scared them and the administration is also responsible. The other day I was at Jama Masjid and the barricading on a Ramadan evening which is like a festival in the walled city was as if the security personnel were preparing for a terrorist attack. They booked 4,700 persons, most of them Muslims, for traffic violations. I was told, when I asked them why they were targeting people of one particular community only, that they have instructions from the federal home ministry."
It may seem that the fundamentalist elements from all communities who were not getting the opportunities earlier have become active, though for different reasons and different objectives. Modi and his government will have to do lots of explanations if the communal flare-up is not controlled and those fanning it are not dealt with firmly.
[Courtesy: Gulf News. Edited for sikhchic.com]
July 28, 2014
Amit Shah, who was accused in fake encounter murder cases and the alter-ego of Modi is now the BJP Chief in New Delhi. During Lok Sabha elections he was leading the BJP's compaign in UP where he organized large scale riots in Muzaffarnagar when 68 people were killed and more than 50,000 had been displaced. By polarizing Hindu votes, BJP won 71 out of 85 seats, thereby ensuring victory for Modi. Just three days ago, VHP's Togadia literally admitted their role when he said that if "Muslims have forgotten Gujarat (2002), I hope they remember Muzaffarnagar (2013). The next target of the RSS is Uttar Pradesh state assembly. Just in the last two years, more than 200 incidents of communal and sectarian violence have taken place in the state including brutal rapes of Dalit women who were hanged naked after they were killed. This weekend, planned violence was engineered in Saharanpur between Sikhs and Muslims when a huge mob of thousands trucked in from outside suddenly came and attacked Sikhs and their businesses. All these acts are designed to build up to a scenario when the central Government would justify dismissing the state Government and ordering fresh elections. Modi, whose blood-stained clothes were exchanged for designer kurtas and silk pajamas and branded as a development messiah by the corporate and media conglomerate owing allegiance to right wing fascist RSS is now increasingly looking like a nine-day wonder. Therefore, to keep their grip on power and to advance their aggressive Hindutava agenda, expect more riots, killings and chaos to divert attention from their failure on all fronts.
I don't think the BJP should be blamed for the actions of Muslims. The Indian media seems to assume that Muslims are infants who should never take responsibility for their own actions. What happened in UP between Sikhs and Muslims was not the result of the BJP flaring up communal tensions, it was the result of the Muslim community who felt that their superiority complex puts their actions before matters which have been legally adjudicated in court. The BJP was not the one who bussed in hundreds of rioters at 6 am in the morning to attack a minority community which is present in even smaller numbers in UP.
I take issue with the way that this article has presented the current situation between the SGPC and the Sikhs in Haryana. It is not an issue of Punjabi Sikh vs. Haryana Sikh, it is Sikh vs. Hindu Congress. Once again the Congress is sticking its nose into religious issues of the Sikhs.
What happened in Saharanpur cannot be blamed on the BJP. The Samajwadi Party which is in power in UP which has its support base in the Muslim votebank is to blame. This political party, like all political parties in India, practices a policy of appeasing the Muslim community and is reluctant to take action where Muslims are involved. The Muslims realize this and take full advantage of the situation. Anyways, this lawless land is no place for the Sikhs to live in.
Our leaders committed a blunder in 1947 when they had the option to have their own country but chose to merge with India. Sikhs will have to endure this and much more in the times to come. This was a sort of November 1984 flashback.
Communal violence has been synonymous with India before there was an India. A few community leaders easily sellout for personal gains and they in turn manipulate their own to fight and die in the name of religion. Divide and rule never gets old. After seeing the failures of Sikh leaders after the Partition, is it a real shock that they did not work for the Sikhs and their cause before and during Partition?
Never saw Sikh-Muslim clashes in the seven decades of Indian independence but now ever since we have BJP in power we have had two: Hyderabad and Saharanpur, both in the last few weeks with similar modus operandi. In two different parts of the country! The natural reaction is to blame BJP but think carefully and you will see that the only party that benefits is the Congress. Congress has always played this game (and very successfully).
The BJP has a lot to gain by engineering riots between Sikhs and Muslims too. Do they want minorities to unite? Do they want Sikhs and Muslims to get along? Do Hindus in general want that? No, they want Sikhs to be considered Hindus and to have nothing to do with Muslims in a positive way. All these dirty games will just get worse and worse. I have been predicting for years ago that when the BJP come into full power they would get Sikhs and Muslims to clash and get Sikhs to do their dirty work for them against Muslims and try to make Sikhs hate Muslims with a passion. They started the nonsense days before they came to power. I hope both the Sikhs and Muslims wisen up to the evil ones who use idiots and traitors in the respective communities to cause these riots. If they don't, they will both regret it when they both start getting slaughtered wholesale.
@#8: You are absolutely correct. Congress and BJP -- or, for that matter, all other political parties in India -- are all chips off the same block. All are Hindu supremacist parties and represent the interests of Hindus, especially right wing, extremist Hindus. One should remember that anti-Sikh violence that took place all over India in November 1984 regardless of which party ruled a particular state. There were a few notable exceptions, not out of love for Sikhs but for the hatred of Congress and Indira Gandhi. The Sikhs and Muslims and other minorities should be wary of these parties and should not allow any of them to manipulate them. Unity among the minorities will ensure a balance and hence the well-being of minorities in this sad land.