10-01-2012, 10:53 AM
Indiatoday - post Babri riots
Ayodhya</A> went onto the streets to protest. Finding, in several states, that the police were using considerable force against them, they felt even more indignant. As Saeed Hameed, editor of Tanveer Weekly in Bombay, said: "The feeling was that the police didn't even raise a lathi when kar sevaks demolished the mosque but are shooting us when we protest against the destruction." An analysis of what happened and the reasons for some unpredictable developments, such as the staggeringly high death toll in Maharashtra and the comparative calm in Bihar.</P>
<P>GUJARAT: 246 DEAD. The police collude and the administration sits idle. The violence which exploded in a state known to be a communal tinder-box shocked even thick-skinned residents hardened to atrocities and provided employment to ironsmiths who were asked by Hindu fanatics to work round the clock making sharp weapons. A majority of those who died were Muslims who had come out on the streets in cities such as Ahmedabad and Surat to protest against the demolition and succumbed to Hindu mobs or trigger-happy policemen. In Ahmedabad alone, 28 of the 3 7 Muslims who died were killed by police bullets. The administration lurked in the shadows, showing no will to stop the carnage. Five days after it began, the army had to be called in. When the police were not firing, they were passive. InSuratlSS peopledied, largely because the police appeared to be in league with Hindu communalists.</P>
<P>There is no evidence to show that political parties were involved. Lumpen elements were, though, particularly in areas where prosperous Muslim traders lived. Hundreds of shops were looted or torched under the police' s gaze. The end result was greater polarisation. One sign of this was the behaviour of Hindus who attacked a group of intellectuals protesting against the demolition, shouting: "Where were you when Hindu temples were demolished in Kashmir?" MADHYA PRADESH: 120 DEAD. Hindu fanatics and the press inflame passions. It was party time in Bhopal. As the news of the demolition arrived, Bajrang Dal and VHP workers celebrated by bursting crackers and distributing sweets. The police remained silent spectators. By the next morning, the bloodletting had begun. By December 12, the escalating violence had already taken 95 lives in Bhopal and 2 5 in other towns in the state. The stormtroopers of the Sangh brotherhood provided plenty of encouragement for the rioters by openly brandishing weapons while BJP MLA Shailendra Pradhan fuelled the hatred, saying: "In Bhopal, the minority community broke all limits of demonic barbarism."</P>
<P>Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa did little by way of damage control. It was only when it became clear that the Centre might dismiss his Government that the state police got a handle on the situation. Nor were matters helped by unsubstantiated reports in Bhopal dailies such as the Madhya Pradesh Chronicle and the Navbharat that about 70 girls had been abducted from the city and then gangraped publicly. The reports were denied by the administration but it was too late. Bhopal was already burning.</P>
<P>MAHARASHTRA: 259 DEAD. Numerous Muslims killed in police firing. Most of the people waiting outside the overcrowded morgue at J.J. Hospital in Bombay to identify their loved ones were Muslims. They all had a similar story to tell. Of a male relative being shot by the police. Nissar Ahmed spoke of how his brother Races Ahmed, 28, had gone out of their hut near the Bandra railway station to see a clash between two groups. The police opened fire, and Races was hit in the leg. As he hobbled back home, two constables shot him in the chest. The vast majority of deaths in Bombay were from police bullets as policemen, armed with handguns, rifles and sten guns, fired straight into Muslim crowds. Bombay Police Commissioner S.K. Bapat admitted that most of the deaths were caused by police firing.</P>
<P>What started off as a clash between Muslim youths and armed police trying to protect public property turned communal as the riots spread from the densely-populated Muslim areas of south and central Bombay to the huge slums of Dharavi, Deonar and Ghatkopar. And a new weapon appeared: a tyre tube stretched between two poles used to direct quarter liquor bottles filled with acid at targets. Estimated range: 500-750 metres. A helping hand was provided by the assiduously inflammatory Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray who said the Government was harassing Hindus just to keep Muslims happy. The Muslim League also swung into action, putting up posters urging Muslims to make their anger known-and they did, galvanised into further protests by images they kept seeing of the demolition on satellite television. After a week's madness, however, Bombay was limping back to normalcy.</P>
<P>ASSAM: 100 DEAD. Bangladeshi immigrants add a new dimension. The epicentre may have been in Ayodhya but the tremors were felt in Assam as though it were just next door. As the news spread like a raging prairie fire, furious Muslims went on the rampage killing Hindus and destroying temples. The worst affected were the districts dominated by immigrant Muslims. The state Government says only 68 persons died in the week of massacres but local newspapers put the figure much higher. The political ramifications of the violence are alarming. Since the Muslims who went on the offensive were largely immigrants from Bangladesh, the ethnic divide in the state now has religious overtones. Anintelligence official from Assam cautions: "The Assamese did not endorse the demolition of the masjid. But the violence unleashed by the immigrants will only harden attitudes towards them."</P>
<P>Critics blamed the Congress(I) for the violence. Former chief minister Prafulla Mahanta said ruling MLAs had been engineering riots. Chief Minister Hiteshwar Saikia said he could not control the outburst because: "I have only 62 companies of paramilitary forces while Punjab has 444."</P>
<P>WEST BENGAL: 32 DEAD. Marxist smugness exacerbates the violence. Last rocked by communal violence in 1946, the mayhem this time was far worse. The orgy of unreason not only drove the two communities apart, it also punctured the Marxist Government's cockiness that it could nip any communal trouble in the bud. This cockiness had caused complacency-one of the main reasons why Calcutta was so badly affected. The administration's responses were ludicrously slow. Even when police stations were half a kilometre away from trouble spots, help took ages to arrive. Ram Chandra Kashyapi, 63, rang up the police eight times but nobody came: "I have lived through the 1946 riots. What happened this time is infinitely worse.'' Said an army officer: "It was not a very bad situation but a badly managed one." The Marxists' optimistic decision to lift the curfew on December 9 helped the mobs regroup and reorganise and led to the second round of rioting.</P>
<P>UTTAR PRADESH: 201 DEAD. Bad, but not as bad as expected. It was the one place that everybody expected to go up in flames but, oddly enough, while sensitive towns such as Kanpur and Varanasi were gripped by the nationwide frenzy, other towns were relatively calm. The reason being that most people had had their fill of Ayodhya-related violence in 1990 under Mulayam Singh Yadav. But no thanks to the state Government. Most districts hardly had enough forces to cope with large-scale rioting. Anxious to pre-empt a Hindu attack, many Muslims went on the offensive. For all the tension, however, it was back to business as usual after a few days.</P>
<P>RAJASTHAN: 48 DEAD. Swift police action minimises deaths. The death toll in this Bjp-ruled state could have been colossal. What prevented catastrophe was the prompt reaction of the police. On the morning of December 7, as soon as a violent mob had gathered near a place of worship in Jaipur, the police opened fire, killing 15 people. But, in police parlance, it was "effective firing". Its impact was felt almost immediately. The situation was under control within two hours. Chief Minister Bhairon Singh -Shekhawat also called in the army in seven towns immediately. And eight towns were placed under curfew. Yet, the. toll stood at 48.</P>
<P>BIHAR: 24 DEAD. Muslims listen to Laloo. As soon as the first dome of the Babri Masjid collapsed under the kar sevaks' onslaught, Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav swivelled around in his chair, picked up the telephone and dialled the district magistrates and police chiefs one by one: "Shoot whoever foments communal violence. Deal with the situation ruthlessly, otherwise you know how I will deal with you." Before the incendiary news could get around, the police and paramilitary forces had moved into communally sensitive areas. The army was standing by too. Laloo's directives initially helped contain violence but pent-up emotions finally erupted in towns like Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Munger. However, the toll-24 dead-was among the lowest in the country. Of these, nine people died in police firing. One reason for the muted backlash was Laloo's nurturing of Muslim-Yadav unity. He was able to persuade Muslim leaders to influence their flock to maintain sanity in return for promise of protection. Laloo also went round the state appealing to both sides to keep calm. To beef up security, he even ordered the withdrawal of 82 sections of armed securitymen on VTP duties.</P>
<P>KERALA: 12 DEAD. ISS keeps mum but police firing takes heavy toll. The Muslim League issued R c SAI a strike call the moment it heard the news. By early evening, everybody knew about the demolition. Students preparing for exams closed their books and sat glued before TV sets. Panic spread. In a pleasant surprise, the Government and the police swung into action immediately. Prohibitory orders were declared in all sensitive areas. And the Government announced that severe action would be taken against trouble-makers. Leaders of both communities urged restraint.</P>
<P>The violence began with a bomb blast in a autorickshaw in Trivandrum and exploded into an uncontrollable riot in Kasargode. Railway stations and Central Government offices were attacked. The police were clearly out of their depth and the army had to be flown in to Kasargode and Malappuram from Trivandrum. More troops were requested for from Hyderabad as the BJP called for a bandh on December 9.</P>
<P>The bandh evoked little response, yet it extracted a toll of four lives. The only redemption: no place of worship was attacked. Malappuram temple came pretty close but its priests managed to dissuade the rampaging mob. The rabid iss maintained a low profile. The Government too did not provoke it by making pre-emptive arrests of its activists. In fact, iss chief Abdul Nasser Mahdhani. who had reason to feel vindicated after the Ayodhya incident, remained silent, even in the face of reports about the ban on the ISS.</P>
<P>ANDHRA PRADESH: 12 DEAD. Police firmness keeps the hatred within bounds. Few cities in the country anticipated violence as well as Hyderabad, which has been a communal trouble-spot since the early '80s. But when trouble broke out, its scale was far less than expected. This was mostly because the police had made many preventive arrests and Chief Minister K. Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy had given the force a free hand. The carte blanche to the police turned out to be a mixed blessing. Expecting a long spell of curfew, the police did not impose one in the sensitive old city area till rioting actually started. Then, when faced with riotous mobs, instead of first trying to disperse them by using lathis, the police fired, causing many of the deaths. KARNATAKA: 60 DEAD. Muslim mobs outnumber the police. The moment the news about the mosque began circulating, furious Muslim mobs began gathering in the Muslim-dominated area of Shivajinagar of Bangalore looking for a confrontation. Half-a-dozen districts in the state were affected. The basic cause of bloodshed was that the police were hopelessly outnumbered everywhere as mobs, armed with broken tubelights, iron rods and cycle chains, took to the streets. The state's three CRPF companies had been posted at Ayodhya. As DGP A.J. Anandan said: "Our plight is pathetic. Most of my men haven't slept for a week since they came on duty on December 5." The Government desperately sought additional forces but the Centre, inundated with similar requests, was unable to help.</P>
<P>TAMIL NADU: 2 DEAD. All quiet on the southern front. While the rest of the country was exploding with fury, Tamil Nadu appeared to be an oasis of peace. Madras was particularly quiet. The only aberration was a few stray incidents in the southern districts such as Tirunelveli where two people died in police firing when a mob attempted to set fire to a police station. Even the reaction of the political parties seemed muted in comparison with other states. The DMK and the AIADMK decided to observe a bandh on December 9 but it was incident-free, thanks to the Government and the police who had' been on red alert as early as December 5. The relative calm can be attributed to the remarkable restraint shown by Muslims. All they did was stage a few demonstrations and close down businesses. The BJP'S limited base in the state was another reason for the relative calm. PUNJAB and HARYANA, Two towns affected, put under curfew. These two states were spared the carnage, though a curfew was imposed for the first time since 1947 in the Muslim majority town of Malerkotla in Punjab on December 7 when some people tried to take out processions and damage a temple. Haryana's Gurgaon district, with a sizeable Muslim population, was also put under curfew.</P>
Ayodhya</A> went onto the streets to protest. Finding, in several states, that the police were using considerable force against them, they felt even more indignant. As Saeed Hameed, editor of Tanveer Weekly in Bombay, said: "The feeling was that the police didn't even raise a lathi when kar sevaks demolished the mosque but are shooting us when we protest against the destruction." An analysis of what happened and the reasons for some unpredictable developments, such as the staggeringly high death toll in Maharashtra and the comparative calm in Bihar.</P>
<P>GUJARAT: 246 DEAD. The police collude and the administration sits idle. The violence which exploded in a state known to be a communal tinder-box shocked even thick-skinned residents hardened to atrocities and provided employment to ironsmiths who were asked by Hindu fanatics to work round the clock making sharp weapons. A majority of those who died were Muslims who had come out on the streets in cities such as Ahmedabad and Surat to protest against the demolition and succumbed to Hindu mobs or trigger-happy policemen. In Ahmedabad alone, 28 of the 3 7 Muslims who died were killed by police bullets. The administration lurked in the shadows, showing no will to stop the carnage. Five days after it began, the army had to be called in. When the police were not firing, they were passive. InSuratlSS peopledied, largely because the police appeared to be in league with Hindu communalists.</P>
<P>There is no evidence to show that political parties were involved. Lumpen elements were, though, particularly in areas where prosperous Muslim traders lived. Hundreds of shops were looted or torched under the police' s gaze. The end result was greater polarisation. One sign of this was the behaviour of Hindus who attacked a group of intellectuals protesting against the demolition, shouting: "Where were you when Hindu temples were demolished in Kashmir?" MADHYA PRADESH: 120 DEAD. Hindu fanatics and the press inflame passions. It was party time in Bhopal. As the news of the demolition arrived, Bajrang Dal and VHP workers celebrated by bursting crackers and distributing sweets. The police remained silent spectators. By the next morning, the bloodletting had begun. By December 12, the escalating violence had already taken 95 lives in Bhopal and 2 5 in other towns in the state. The stormtroopers of the Sangh brotherhood provided plenty of encouragement for the rioters by openly brandishing weapons while BJP MLA Shailendra Pradhan fuelled the hatred, saying: "In Bhopal, the minority community broke all limits of demonic barbarism."</P>
<P>Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa did little by way of damage control. It was only when it became clear that the Centre might dismiss his Government that the state police got a handle on the situation. Nor were matters helped by unsubstantiated reports in Bhopal dailies such as the Madhya Pradesh Chronicle and the Navbharat that about 70 girls had been abducted from the city and then gangraped publicly. The reports were denied by the administration but it was too late. Bhopal was already burning.</P>
<P>MAHARASHTRA: 259 DEAD. Numerous Muslims killed in police firing. Most of the people waiting outside the overcrowded morgue at J.J. Hospital in Bombay to identify their loved ones were Muslims. They all had a similar story to tell. Of a male relative being shot by the police. Nissar Ahmed spoke of how his brother Races Ahmed, 28, had gone out of their hut near the Bandra railway station to see a clash between two groups. The police opened fire, and Races was hit in the leg. As he hobbled back home, two constables shot him in the chest. The vast majority of deaths in Bombay were from police bullets as policemen, armed with handguns, rifles and sten guns, fired straight into Muslim crowds. Bombay Police Commissioner S.K. Bapat admitted that most of the deaths were caused by police firing.</P>
<P>What started off as a clash between Muslim youths and armed police trying to protect public property turned communal as the riots spread from the densely-populated Muslim areas of south and central Bombay to the huge slums of Dharavi, Deonar and Ghatkopar. And a new weapon appeared: a tyre tube stretched between two poles used to direct quarter liquor bottles filled with acid at targets. Estimated range: 500-750 metres. A helping hand was provided by the assiduously inflammatory Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray who said the Government was harassing Hindus just to keep Muslims happy. The Muslim League also swung into action, putting up posters urging Muslims to make their anger known-and they did, galvanised into further protests by images they kept seeing of the demolition on satellite television. After a week's madness, however, Bombay was limping back to normalcy.</P>
<P>ASSAM: 100 DEAD. Bangladeshi immigrants add a new dimension. The epicentre may have been in Ayodhya but the tremors were felt in Assam as though it were just next door. As the news spread like a raging prairie fire, furious Muslims went on the rampage killing Hindus and destroying temples. The worst affected were the districts dominated by immigrant Muslims. The state Government says only 68 persons died in the week of massacres but local newspapers put the figure much higher. The political ramifications of the violence are alarming. Since the Muslims who went on the offensive were largely immigrants from Bangladesh, the ethnic divide in the state now has religious overtones. Anintelligence official from Assam cautions: "The Assamese did not endorse the demolition of the masjid. But the violence unleashed by the immigrants will only harden attitudes towards them."</P>
<P>Critics blamed the Congress(I) for the violence. Former chief minister Prafulla Mahanta said ruling MLAs had been engineering riots. Chief Minister Hiteshwar Saikia said he could not control the outburst because: "I have only 62 companies of paramilitary forces while Punjab has 444."</P>
<P>WEST BENGAL: 32 DEAD. Marxist smugness exacerbates the violence. Last rocked by communal violence in 1946, the mayhem this time was far worse. The orgy of unreason not only drove the two communities apart, it also punctured the Marxist Government's cockiness that it could nip any communal trouble in the bud. This cockiness had caused complacency-one of the main reasons why Calcutta was so badly affected. The administration's responses were ludicrously slow. Even when police stations were half a kilometre away from trouble spots, help took ages to arrive. Ram Chandra Kashyapi, 63, rang up the police eight times but nobody came: "I have lived through the 1946 riots. What happened this time is infinitely worse.'' Said an army officer: "It was not a very bad situation but a badly managed one." The Marxists' optimistic decision to lift the curfew on December 9 helped the mobs regroup and reorganise and led to the second round of rioting.</P>
<P>UTTAR PRADESH: 201 DEAD. Bad, but not as bad as expected. It was the one place that everybody expected to go up in flames but, oddly enough, while sensitive towns such as Kanpur and Varanasi were gripped by the nationwide frenzy, other towns were relatively calm. The reason being that most people had had their fill of Ayodhya-related violence in 1990 under Mulayam Singh Yadav. But no thanks to the state Government. Most districts hardly had enough forces to cope with large-scale rioting. Anxious to pre-empt a Hindu attack, many Muslims went on the offensive. For all the tension, however, it was back to business as usual after a few days.</P>
<P>RAJASTHAN: 48 DEAD. Swift police action minimises deaths. The death toll in this Bjp-ruled state could have been colossal. What prevented catastrophe was the prompt reaction of the police. On the morning of December 7, as soon as a violent mob had gathered near a place of worship in Jaipur, the police opened fire, killing 15 people. But, in police parlance, it was "effective firing". Its impact was felt almost immediately. The situation was under control within two hours. Chief Minister Bhairon Singh -Shekhawat also called in the army in seven towns immediately. And eight towns were placed under curfew. Yet, the. toll stood at 48.</P>
<P>BIHAR: 24 DEAD. Muslims listen to Laloo. As soon as the first dome of the Babri Masjid collapsed under the kar sevaks' onslaught, Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav swivelled around in his chair, picked up the telephone and dialled the district magistrates and police chiefs one by one: "Shoot whoever foments communal violence. Deal with the situation ruthlessly, otherwise you know how I will deal with you." Before the incendiary news could get around, the police and paramilitary forces had moved into communally sensitive areas. The army was standing by too. Laloo's directives initially helped contain violence but pent-up emotions finally erupted in towns like Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Munger. However, the toll-24 dead-was among the lowest in the country. Of these, nine people died in police firing. One reason for the muted backlash was Laloo's nurturing of Muslim-Yadav unity. He was able to persuade Muslim leaders to influence their flock to maintain sanity in return for promise of protection. Laloo also went round the state appealing to both sides to keep calm. To beef up security, he even ordered the withdrawal of 82 sections of armed securitymen on VTP duties.</P>
<P>KERALA: 12 DEAD. ISS keeps mum but police firing takes heavy toll. The Muslim League issued R c SAI a strike call the moment it heard the news. By early evening, everybody knew about the demolition. Students preparing for exams closed their books and sat glued before TV sets. Panic spread. In a pleasant surprise, the Government and the police swung into action immediately. Prohibitory orders were declared in all sensitive areas. And the Government announced that severe action would be taken against trouble-makers. Leaders of both communities urged restraint.</P>
<P>The violence began with a bomb blast in a autorickshaw in Trivandrum and exploded into an uncontrollable riot in Kasargode. Railway stations and Central Government offices were attacked. The police were clearly out of their depth and the army had to be flown in to Kasargode and Malappuram from Trivandrum. More troops were requested for from Hyderabad as the BJP called for a bandh on December 9.</P>
<P>The bandh evoked little response, yet it extracted a toll of four lives. The only redemption: no place of worship was attacked. Malappuram temple came pretty close but its priests managed to dissuade the rampaging mob. The rabid iss maintained a low profile. The Government too did not provoke it by making pre-emptive arrests of its activists. In fact, iss chief Abdul Nasser Mahdhani. who had reason to feel vindicated after the Ayodhya incident, remained silent, even in the face of reports about the ban on the ISS.</P>
<P>ANDHRA PRADESH: 12 DEAD. Police firmness keeps the hatred within bounds. Few cities in the country anticipated violence as well as Hyderabad, which has been a communal trouble-spot since the early '80s. But when trouble broke out, its scale was far less than expected. This was mostly because the police had made many preventive arrests and Chief Minister K. Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy had given the force a free hand. The carte blanche to the police turned out to be a mixed blessing. Expecting a long spell of curfew, the police did not impose one in the sensitive old city area till rioting actually started. Then, when faced with riotous mobs, instead of first trying to disperse them by using lathis, the police fired, causing many of the deaths. KARNATAKA: 60 DEAD. Muslim mobs outnumber the police. The moment the news about the mosque began circulating, furious Muslim mobs began gathering in the Muslim-dominated area of Shivajinagar of Bangalore looking for a confrontation. Half-a-dozen districts in the state were affected. The basic cause of bloodshed was that the police were hopelessly outnumbered everywhere as mobs, armed with broken tubelights, iron rods and cycle chains, took to the streets. The state's three CRPF companies had been posted at Ayodhya. As DGP A.J. Anandan said: "Our plight is pathetic. Most of my men haven't slept for a week since they came on duty on December 5." The Government desperately sought additional forces but the Centre, inundated with similar requests, was unable to help.</P>
<P>TAMIL NADU: 2 DEAD. All quiet on the southern front. While the rest of the country was exploding with fury, Tamil Nadu appeared to be an oasis of peace. Madras was particularly quiet. The only aberration was a few stray incidents in the southern districts such as Tirunelveli where two people died in police firing when a mob attempted to set fire to a police station. Even the reaction of the political parties seemed muted in comparison with other states. The DMK and the AIADMK decided to observe a bandh on December 9 but it was incident-free, thanks to the Government and the police who had' been on red alert as early as December 5. The relative calm can be attributed to the remarkable restraint shown by Muslims. All they did was stage a few demonstrations and close down businesses. The BJP'S limited base in the state was another reason for the relative calm. PUNJAB and HARYANA, Two towns affected, put under curfew. These two states were spared the carnage, though a curfew was imposed for the first time since 1947 in the Muslim majority town of Malerkotla in Punjab on December 7 when some people tried to take out processions and damage a temple. Haryana's Gurgaon district, with a sizeable Muslim population, was also put under curfew.</P>