Communal lies and secular statistics

By Priyadarshi Dutta on April 24, 2013 

Tags: UPA government, indian secularism, Congress party, secularism in india, communal incidents in 2012, Home Ministry report, communal violence in 2012, casteist politics

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA) Annual Report 2012-13 is out. According to it, there were 668 communal incidents in the country during 2012. A total of 94 lives were lost and 3,117 people were injured. During 2011, there were 580 communal incidents reported in which 91 people died and 1,899 people were injured. The communal violence in Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts in Assam in July-August 2012 had led to 99 killings and displacement of 4.85 lakh persons to relief camps. In November, the violence recrudesced in Kokrajhar leading to death of 10 persons.

Under a professedly ‘secular’ UPA Government, the incidents of communal violence remain quite high.

Communal incidents during UPA rule

Serial No	Year	Number of communal incidents	Number of deaths	Number of injured persons
1	2012	668	94	3317
2	2011	580	91	1899
3	2010	701	116	2138
4	2009	791	119	2342
5	2008	943	167	2354
6	2007	761	99	2227
7	2006	698	133	2170
8	2005	779	124	2066

(Source: Annual Reports, Ministry of Home Affairs)

The communal situation of India is prickly and likely to worsen with sharpening imbalances in religious demography. The UPA, which consistently blames the previous NDA rule as communal, is now countenancing the reality. Assam, Maharashta, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh – Congress-ruled States have witnessed a lot of communal violence in recent years.

The only thing the UPA Government is hiding is the devil in the details. Until recently, the MHA annual reports used to have two additional columns – ‘Hindu-Muslim communal situation’ and ‘Hindu-Christian communal situation’. The Hindu-Muslim scenario generally engaged greater attention. The column used to identify the States where the most number of Hindu-Muslim communal incidents took place during that year. It also used to identify the major issues of communal riots. The major issues mentioned used to be — carrying and slaughtering of cattle, routing religious processions through mixed localities, construction of religious structures on disputed lands, playing provocative CDs/cassettes, dispute over land/property, eve-teasing and personal enmity.

The identity of the offender becomes evident in the first factor — carrying and slaughtering of cattle — if not in some of the others as well. This militates against the devious paradigm of National Advisory Council’s (NAC) ‘Prevention of Communal and Targetted Violence Bill, 2011’ that presumes only the majority community can be offender and minority the victim. Thus Hindus can be declared offenders even if they were trying to save a cow (cow protection is directive of state policy in the Constitution of India).

In the last two MHA annual reports, these two columns of Hindu-Muslim and Hindu-Christian incidents have been omitted. This seems to have been done to help the NAC. Admitting cow-trafficking/slaughter as one of the major reasons of riots would have exposed the NAC’s position. NAC wanted us to believe that minority cannot instigate communal trouble. There were rumours that the NAC’s controversial Communal Violence Bill might be introduced during the latter half of the Budget Session.

A long-term study of communal violence in independent India would show they became a permanent phenomenon after the 1960s. The graph remained high since the Jubbulpur Riots, 1961. In 1964, there were 1,070 incidents — in 1960 there were only 26. What it actually shows was that the Muslims, aided by ‘secularist’ friends, emerging out the post-partition stupor. During the 1950s, the Muslims generally lay low due to their guilt of having created Pakistan. Their numbers had depleted and their elite and middle class had migrated to Pakistan. During the 1960s and 1970s, this Muslim middle class was slowly being reconstituted. There was a popular belief that education would make Muslims progressive and content. The results, however, have shown the opposite.

In those days, there was a spirit of reprisal amongst Hindus. The Hindu identity had not been shattered by the rise of casteist politics co-opting Muslims. On May 21, 1970, NN Jha, India’s representative at the United Nations, had stated that communal riots in India were very often reactions of that type in Pakistan. Atrocities on residual Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh have resurged during the current decade. But the Hindus of India are no longer actuated by them, nor are present day diplomats courageous enough to make such statements in the UNO. In the meanwhile, Muslims have reorganised themselves in India far more powerfully. No wonder one of their leaders threatened that India could be overrun by Muslims if police were removed for a mere 15 minutes. The MHA is concealing this communal reality