by RAM PUNIYANI
The horrific violence in Assam has once again brought our attention to the malaise of communal violence in India. In the recent times one has witnessed such a violence in parts of UP, (Kosi Kalan, Barailly, Pratapgarh) and also in Gopalgargh in Rajasthan. In most of these acts of violence one has to confront the reality that there is a lapse on the part of state, the police and civic administration, due to which the violence sustains itself after the initial spark has been thrown by someone. The present spate (July, 2012) of series of acts of violence reconfirms that there is a lack of accountability, there is state complicity and impunity due to which the innocents are done to death and the culprits generally get away.
As such communal violence is a multilayered phenomenon. The foundation of this phenomenon lies in the negative perceptions about the ‘others’, the prevalence of ‘social common sense’ about the minorities in particular. ‘They are invaders, more loyal to Pakistan, beef-eaters, they convert by force, fraud, or allurement, they are infiltrators etc’ are a few from list of perceptions about minorities prevalent in our society and many firmly believe these to be true. These perceptions based on half-truths are made to become part of social common sense, through various mechanisms. Noam Chomsky, while talking about such perceptions amongst the people shows how in United States, state gets popular sanction for its aggression on other countries, by ‘manufacturing the consent’ of the people all around. US state does it particularly through media. In case of social common sense in India, it is propagated by the dominant communal forces through the word of mouth, through media and through school books. This negative perception of ‘others’, in turn leads to a sort of hatred for the ‘other community’. The hate for other community is like an inflammable mindset, which gets sparked into communal violence either due to small accidents or due to the agenda of some political forces which get the violence orchestrated for communal polarization which helps them strengthen their political base.
The anatomy of riots in India so for is constituted by a complex mechanism. At the base of this mechanism is ‘hatred for others’. Then come, the communal forces which instigate violence through various mechanisms. At the same time the state looks the other way around or subtly or directly helps the rioters. In the aftermath of violence state, mostly does not do any justice to the victims. The further trajectory of the communal violence is the communal polarization, and ghettoizarion of minorities. All this has been so far been manifest in India, various inquiry commission reports have confirmed this observation time and over again. It is in this light that when the UPA came to power in 2004, one of the promises which it had given was to bring in a communal violence prevention bill to see that these irritants of our system are done away. The focus was that the role of different players in the phenomenon of violence is curtailed. Different players in this game leading to violence are communal organizations-their hate speech, the acts of commission of and omission of political leadership and the state machinery. The aim of the bill was to curb the culprits and to give security to the targeted groups, whatever be their religion. Finally the aim was, to give justice to the victims and to rehabilitate them as a matter of duty not as mere charity.
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(Thanks to Feroz Mehdi)