The violence in Kaliachak was not spontaneous at all. The crowd that went berserk came prepared to strike fear in the hearts and minds of Hindus of Malda whose insecurity quotient has now gone up by leaps and bounds
Communal violence in India, invariably instigated by “members of a particular community”, as they were described till recently in media reports that suppressed the truth so as not to offend sensitivities of that ‘particular community’ comes with two descriptive tags. It could be either politically sanctioned and hence politically correct, to be glossed over irrespective of the consequences. Or it could be not communal at all, never mind the facts and the impact of the violence.
last Sunday’s violence at Kaliachak in West Bengal’s Muslim-majority Malda district came with the second descriptive tag. A massive crowd (some say 50,000 had gathered, others say there more than two lakh people; whatever the real number it was by no means a flash mob) ran amok, burning down the local police station, setting all vehicles in the vicinity on fire, sacking shops owned by Hindus and attacking at least one temple.
Malda, like many other districts in West Bengal along the State’s border with Bangladesh, has a Muslim majority population. In vast stretches of rural areas Hindus account for around a fifth of the population; in Kaliachak, Hindus constitute a third of the population. This possibly explains why there was neither resistance nor retaliation. In many ways, the Kaliachak rampage by Muslims is similar to what was witnessed at Deganga in 2010 and Canning three years later.
Indeed, Kaliachak comes in the wake of a series of violent incidents, no doubt smaller in scale than what was witnessed last Sunday, but equally ferocious in sending out a message to Hindus to vacate the shrinking space they occupy in Muslim majority or Muslim dominated areas. While attention has been rivetted on Assam’s rapid demographic changes, it is a pity that the huge surge in West Bengal’s Muslim population has gone virtually unnoticed and uncommented.
There was nothing spontaneous about the violence at Kaliachak. An obscure (from a distance but clearly popular in the area) organisation called Edara-e-Sharif issued pamphlets asking Muslims to gather in large numbers to protest against alleged blasphemous remarks against Mohammed by a certain Kamlesh Tiwari (of whom none had heard and whose claim of being a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha has been debunked) in Uttar Pradesh a month ago. Tiwari was arrested on December 2, 2015, on charges of creating disharmony and has since been in jail. Muslim leaders like the Owaisi brothers have gone unpunished for saying far worse from public platforms. But that’s another story.
Tiwari’s comments, tasteless and obnoxious if he did say what he is accused of saying, followed offensive remarks on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its pracharaks by Azam Khan, a leading light of the Samajwadi Party and a Minister in Uttar Pradesh Government. Azam Khan has stood by his utterances as he always has in the past. Tiwari says his riposte was to the Minister, but that debate is now pointless. Muslim organisations have latched on to his alleged comments to beat up a hysterical response which has had a cascading effect.
The rector of lucknow’s Islamic seminary Nadwatul Ulema, Rabey Hasan Nadwi, who also heads the All-India Muslim Personal law Board (the beguilingly named sharia’h -promoting organisation has no legal sanctity) thought it fit to condemn Tiwari’s ‘blasphemy’ and thus draw attention of Muslims across the country to it. Protests followed at Darul Uloom Deoband (where a case was lodged against Tiwari, leading to his arrest). At Bijnor, tens of thousands of Muslims gathered, screaming for Tiwari’s blood.
At the Bijnore protest, Jamiat Shababul Islam’s general secretary Maulana Anwarul Haq announced a ‘reward’ of Rs 51 lakh on Tiwari’s head. The last time we heard such outrageous threats being made was when Muslims in India protested against cartoons in a Danish newspaper whose name they neither knew nor could pronounce.
Mullah-led violent protests against Tiwari have also been organised in Dehradun, Indore, Bhopal, Nellore, Bangalore, Kanpur, Bareilly, lucknow and other places. The tone, tenor and content of the rabble-rousing speeches at these demonstrations of unrestrained Muslim anger were anything but suggestive of peace and reconciliation. They were meant to provoke a countrywide backlash and they have succeeded in doing so.
The large-scale violence at Kaliachak must be seen against the backdrop of this metaphorical call to arms. And its true purpose — while using Tiwari’s alleged offence as a convenient cover — must not be glossed over. The crowd that went berserk at Kaliachak came prepared to strike fear in the hearts and minds of Hindus of Malda whose insecurity quotient has now gone up by leaps and bounds. Migration for many of them is no longer an option. The violence was aimed at showing up the district administration which seems to have had abdicated its responsibility despite full knowledge of what was in store. The arson was meant to make the police look helpless and bereft of power to enforce the law of the land. Reports say the police personnel on duty fled for their lives, abandoning their station and task. All records of crimes and criminals have been rendered to ashes in an area known for trans-border illicit trade in drugs and supply of counterfeit currency.
As if on cue, Muslims led by a former MlA ran riot in neighbouring Purnea district of Bihar. The police station at Baisi was burned down. As at Kaliachak, all records of trans-border crimes involving local Muslims were destroyed. For all we know, this will now become the standard method of cleaning the slate. Expectedly, the Government of Bihar has chosen to ignore the violence, as has the Government of West Bengal. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee says Kaliachak did not witness communal violence, that it was an “issue between the people and the BSF”. Such are the joys of secular governance. Ever since the Burdwan bomb blasts of 2014, which confirmed what has been known for long, that West Bengal is inching dangerously close to descending into unrestrained Islamist violence, Banerjee has chosen to gloss over the emerging reality. Vote-bank politics couldn’t get more cynical. Marxist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya tried to stand up and halt the tide. He was washed away. His Trinamool Congress successor in office will not risk anything remotely similar.
Meanwhile, Jamaatis on the run from Bangladesh, where the ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami has been sentenced to death for his 1971 war crimes, continue to find welcoming hosts in West Bengal. A strange paralysis now afficts Bengalis. Even self-preservation, the most primal of urges, no longer spurs them into sitting up and taking notice of the creeping threat that could change West Bengal forever.
(The writer is a jounalist based in the NCR)