04-09-2006, 11:41 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>After Aligarh </b>
The Pioner Edit Desk
There was a time in the 1980s when "religious riot in Aligarh" was not so much a news occurrence as a cliché. Like Kanpur and Meerut, Gorakhpur and Varanasi, it was one of the many Uttar Pradesh towns seemingly cursed by persistent social violence. This past week, the spectre of horrors past returned to the university town. It began innocuously, as such things often do, following the use of loudspeakers at a temple during Navaratri.
Soon, the temple wall was found damaged and things spiralled out of control - and half-a-dozen people lost their lives. It would be tempting to view the Aligrah fracas as the proverbial isolated incident. Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests otherwise - it points to a disturbing pattern. Late in 2005, the Dussehra festival saw Muslim mobs attacking Hindu devotees in the eastern Uttar Pradesh town of Mau. In March, the combined protests over President George W Bush's visit and the Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet saw Lucknow brought to a standstill, Hindu business establishments attacked. Now, shortly after the Holi-eve Varanasi terror outrage, come the incidents in Aligarh.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>If one includes the Diwali bomb blasts in Delhi, no major Hindu festival in the past six months has gone unmolested. It is a scary thought. </span>Having said that, it would be crucial to distinguish between terrorist attacks - which have a greater external dimension - and contrived "issues" leading to domestic attacks on a community, which was the case in Mau, Lucknow and now Aligarh. Across Uttar Pradesh, the restlessness on the "Muslim street" in the "Old City" has acquired an edge. The causes may be as far apart as anger against America or the feeling that, with the BJP in political retreat, this is the time to "strike". <b>The attackers in Aligarh were hardly concerned citizens anguished at the possible breach of sound pollution laws - never mind that mosques violate these all the time - but represented a raw, pugnacious sentiment in the minority community, one that identifies itself as Osama's local ambassador, part of a worldwide war against infidels.</b>
To be sure, the violent tendencies among sections of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh did not arrive in a day. Individual politicians - including some ruling party members in the State - encouraged and instigated this process. In Aligarh itself, the radicalisation of the student community was partly a result of assiduous, decade-long proselytisation by SIMI. Today, the built-up prejudice is simmering at the edge. Should it boil over, it would be catastrophic for Uttar Pradesh's society - and a bad, sad reminder that so many ghosts India thought it had buried are still around to stalk it. What is the way out? To call the Muslim disquiet a global phenomenon is to skirt the hard questions. In Aligarh as in Lucknow - or Kanpur or Allahabad for that matter, almost any Uttar Pradesh town - there is a small yet sizeable moderate Muslim class, academics and teachers, businessmen and ordinary labourers, even religious preachers. This group has to lead by example, keep the mohalla peace. The alternative is too dangerous to contemplate.
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The Pioner Edit Desk
There was a time in the 1980s when "religious riot in Aligarh" was not so much a news occurrence as a cliché. Like Kanpur and Meerut, Gorakhpur and Varanasi, it was one of the many Uttar Pradesh towns seemingly cursed by persistent social violence. This past week, the spectre of horrors past returned to the university town. It began innocuously, as such things often do, following the use of loudspeakers at a temple during Navaratri.
Soon, the temple wall was found damaged and things spiralled out of control - and half-a-dozen people lost their lives. It would be tempting to view the Aligrah fracas as the proverbial isolated incident. Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests otherwise - it points to a disturbing pattern. Late in 2005, the Dussehra festival saw Muslim mobs attacking Hindu devotees in the eastern Uttar Pradesh town of Mau. In March, the combined protests over President George W Bush's visit and the Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet saw Lucknow brought to a standstill, Hindu business establishments attacked. Now, shortly after the Holi-eve Varanasi terror outrage, come the incidents in Aligarh.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>If one includes the Diwali bomb blasts in Delhi, no major Hindu festival in the past six months has gone unmolested. It is a scary thought. </span>Having said that, it would be crucial to distinguish between terrorist attacks - which have a greater external dimension - and contrived "issues" leading to domestic attacks on a community, which was the case in Mau, Lucknow and now Aligarh. Across Uttar Pradesh, the restlessness on the "Muslim street" in the "Old City" has acquired an edge. The causes may be as far apart as anger against America or the feeling that, with the BJP in political retreat, this is the time to "strike". <b>The attackers in Aligarh were hardly concerned citizens anguished at the possible breach of sound pollution laws - never mind that mosques violate these all the time - but represented a raw, pugnacious sentiment in the minority community, one that identifies itself as Osama's local ambassador, part of a worldwide war against infidels.</b>
To be sure, the violent tendencies among sections of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh did not arrive in a day. Individual politicians - including some ruling party members in the State - encouraged and instigated this process. In Aligarh itself, the radicalisation of the student community was partly a result of assiduous, decade-long proselytisation by SIMI. Today, the built-up prejudice is simmering at the edge. Should it boil over, it would be catastrophic for Uttar Pradesh's society - and a bad, sad reminder that so many ghosts India thought it had buried are still around to stalk it. What is the way out? To call the Muslim disquiet a global phenomenon is to skirt the hard questions. In Aligarh as in Lucknow - or Kanpur or Allahabad for that matter, almost any Uttar Pradesh town - there is a small yet sizeable moderate Muslim class, academics and teachers, businessmen and ordinary labourers, even religious preachers. This group has to lead by example, keep the mohalla peace. The alternative is too dangerous to contemplate.
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